COMMENTARY
FIGURE 3
Management of the current generational
transition between these cohorts has been the
NEAR ELIGIBILITY
This graphic illustrates AAW acquisition experience distribution and the breakout of those within 10 years of retirement eligibility.
and mid-career population has grown, filling much of the perceived mid-career shortage.
Tere are two other, less obvious, features of Figure 2 worth mentioning. Tese are the expansion of the distribution’s right- and left-hand tails. Tese show recently increased early career hiring (left tail), and employees working longer after retire- ment eligibility (right tail). Te latter is an important factor in understanding the generational transition. Simply put, many people do not immediately retire upon reaching eligibility. Consequently, we should not view retirement eligibility as a cliff employees reach and then fall off.
NO SUBSTITUTE FOR EXPERIENCE Viewing baby boomer retirement by the sheer number of pending retirees is misleading in several important ways. First, it carries with it a hidden assumption.
Namely, it assumes all else is equal with regard to those exiting the workforce. But this is simply not true. From an institu- tional perspective, it is very important to take the time to understand the composi- tion of those going out the door.
Expertise, or skill, is difficult to measure, but if we use experience (or time in the saddle) as a proxy, we can draw some broad conclusions. Figure 3, above, shows this distribution. Te first thing to notice is that the near-retirement- eligible population (aqua line) is nearly uniform from about zero to 30 years of experience. So, we see the retirement- eligible population represents every experience level in the AAW about equally (including acquisition novices). As shown, 30 percent have fewer than 10 years of acquisition experience compared to the entire AAW, where about half (47 percent, dark blue line) have fewer than 10 years of acquisition experience.
subject of years of proactive planning, focused policy implementation and dedicated effort.
TEN THOUSAND HOURS TO MASTERY Here we should consider research conducted by K.A. Ericsson, R.T. Krampe and C. Tesch-Romer, in a 1993 Psycholog- ical Review article, "Te role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert perfor- mance," studied how people improve. Tis research was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book "Outliers." You may recall that Gladwell articulated his well-known principle of “10,000 hours to mastery.”
In their investigation, Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer “argue that the differ- ences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.” Further, they state that “many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a mini- mum of 10 years.”
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