Remember IBM Selectric typewriters and offices with four walls? If you’re over 50, the workplace looks very little like it did when you began your career. The tools, the physical layout, the culture have all changed. And the speed of that change is expected to increase exponentially. Which is why having a growth mindset and mental flexibility are essential work skills mid- and late-career. Refuse to adapt, and you’ll be out of a job.
Most subtle are the invisible changes—shifts in work culture, attitude, and values—that we need to adapt to. Major shifts in these areas have already happened, some accelerated by the pandemic. Are you adapting, or are you fighting them? The latter, no matter how principled, will not work in your favor. Some major changes:
It’s not the length of your experience, it’s the relevance of it.
Sure, you may have put in the years. But what you were doing in your field 20 years ago may be irrelevant to what you’re doing today. You may want to cling to those accomplishments—you’re proud of them! But increasingly, employers are focused on what you bring to today’s table. Twenty years ago I had a deep understanding of what made a great print magazine article. Today, I am not only no longer in that business, but publishing has totally changed. Heck, even some spelling and grammar “rules” have changed! That experience was valuable, but the specifics have become irrelevant.
Work culture is more relaxed.
Remember when “business casual” was an exciting new thing? When I began my career, women dressed in suits that were imitations of men’s, complete with little bow-ties. Today, dress codes have greatly relaxed (thank goodness!), and not just on Fridays. But other areas are more relaxed, too. Conversations are more casual. Work hours are less rigid. Work culture in general is less pretentious. This is a change I’m really happy to see.
You can bring your whole self to work.
Working from home—and on camera—during the pandemic changed our culture in an unexpected way. Kids and pets crawled onto executives’ laps. News anchors and celebrities came to us from their living rooms. Colleagues created home offices in their bedrooms. No longer is there a hard line between work and home. Work/life integration (notice: not balance) can be done in a healthy way, and I for one am here for it. This is a particularly important trend for women, who (unfortunately) all too often bear the conflicts of caregiving while being an employee.
We’re moving away from drive and overwork as values.
I have heard a number of Boomers complain about Millennials being unwilling to work long hours, “like we did.” When I hear this, I think, “Well, they are our generation’s kids. They watched us work the long hours. They saw what it got us and our families. Shouldn’t that tell you something?” A corollary is the shift from valuing hours logged to actual work produced. The complaint may have been, “He never stays late at work.” Today it’s more like, “She met her OKRs,” with no thought to how many late nights that involved. This trend favors companies with strong cultures of goal-setting and accountability metrics.
Iteration and speed trump perfection.
Silicon Valley pioneered the concept of minimal viable product as a way to experiment and improve. This concept has spread throughout most business cultures. In a recent interview, Elon Musk even touted iteration as an important value in SpaceX’s rocket production. What mattered was getting a rocket up and learning from it. I don’t remember this becoming mainstream until the last few years. Even in journalism, there’s a much greater tolerance for typos. It’s most important to get the piece into the world quickly—and corrected immediately, if need be.
Take notice of what’s evolving in work culture, then embrace it. Not just because you have to in order to survive. But because the change is usually a positive development. That’s how you’ll thrive in today’s workplace—no matter how much experience you have.
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