Difficult as it may be to believe, middle age comes awfully quickly in management. We have been such a youth-oriented society that the peak promotion years traditionally have been forty to forty-five and after that, unless one is poised to make it to the very top, promotions tend to come more slowly if at all. Over fifty, your resume depreciates quickly. I am not talking about "failures" or "losers." Many very effective and successful executives just below the top levels were casualties forced out in the staff prunings that accompanied mergers and corporate restructurings in the 1980s. Indeed, one of success's ironies is that it can make you more vulnerable to the inflexibility and obsolescence that in middle age can undermine personal effectiveness and happiness. As The Wall Street Journal survey of the "shattered" expectations of mid-life executives put it:
By 45, most managers have weathered a failure or two, made peace with authority figures and, ideally, fully guided and inspired some younger managers. By then, too, most know whether or not they have a shot at top management jobs. The majority won't make it and must accept for them that the race is over.
Let us see how successful achievement oriented managers can confront mid-life problems and strive to keep mentally alive. We begin with the dangers confronting successful middle aged executives from the perspective of a loving child. Here are the words of a twenty-seven year old MBA student about her father.
A Daughter Talks about Her Father
My father's friends from high school and college paint a portrait of an intensely achievement-oriented, ultra-serious young man. Graduating from high school with straight A's at the age of 16, he briefly entered a seminary. After deciding that this wasn't what he wanted from life, he went to college as engineering major. One of his friends describes him as the kind of student who would stay up all night to figure out a tough problem, even when he knew that he would be the only one to come up with a solution (perhaps because he would be the only one). No matter what the task, no matter how difficult the assignment, he was driven to do the best job he could do.
After graduating he began work at Westinghouse as an electrical engineer. Soon afterwards he married my mother. He sat down every year and outlined his goals for the year. He projected his salary increases for the next fifteen years. Each year, he plotted a new point on his graph and compared his actual progress with the goal he had set. Every year he exceeded his expectations.
My parents had five children in seven years. My mother stayed home with us; my father worked and traveled. He told my mother that he had to pay his dues. He had to work hard now to prove himself so that he could keep moving up the ladder. Later, he said, he could slow down, stay home more and spend more time with the kids. His career progressed quickly.
Becoming an Entrepreneur: At Westinghouse, my father learned about computers. And after working his way up through the ranks, he and some colleagues decided to go off on their own. They were among the brightest minds working on semiconductors and they believed they could achieve more working for themselves.
They formed a small company called Higher Technology, Inc. My father served as vice president for engineering. The technology they were working with was becoming increasingly critical to the computer industry and therefore to the American economy. The company grew and prospered because the demand for the product was high.
However, to sustain the company's growth, my father and his colleagues had to devote their lives and energies to the work. There were many late nights and long weekends with no vacations to relieve the stress.
My brother, sisters and I were young children at this point. I was seven when the company was founded. We didn't see much of my father for many years. I still remember a car ride I once took with him when I was about ten. He had agreed to drop me off at my friend's house. It struck me during that ride that this was the first time I had ever been in a car alone with my father.
The years passed quickly; we were all growing up and the company was struggling onward. Competition was beginning to take its toll. The semiconductor market was booming, but there was no room for small firms. National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments and IBM were entering the battlefield. My father's company didn't have the firepower to survive the shakeout. Eventually the inevitable happened: the company was bought by a bigger player.
After years of working hard, inventing chips that hadn't yet been imagined, and controlling a company, my father was unemployed. To be sure, he had made a lot of money, but he had nothing to do. He had no hobbies; his family had moved on without him; and he was having trouble convincing anyone to hire a senior executive in his mid-forties.
He felt useless. He tried to get involved with a hobby. He built radio-controlled airplanes for awhile. He learned about the stock market so he could manage the money he had earned from the sale of the company. He went on vacation. He tried to get to know his children.
Universe Electronics: Eventually, my father found another job. Paging through the Wall Street Journal, he saw an advertisement for a vice president of engineering at Universe Company's electronics division. A few weeks later, after almost a year of unemployment, my father started working again. He had accepted the job because it was offered to him and he wanted so much to run something.
Although he worked hard, he hated his new position. He didn't like answering to a boss whom he didn't respect and he didn't like the corporate culture at Universe. Most of all, he didn't like the loss of control he felt working for someone else.
Nonetheless, my father spent almost ten years at Universe becoming a nationally recognized expert in laser-scanning technology. But he was never happy in this position and he became increasingly tired and disinterested in life. He would come home from work, eat a short silent dinner, and then settle into his chair where he would nod off over a book. One by one we all left home, relieved in a way to escape from my father's oppressive unhappiness.
He wouldn't leave his job because he needed to work. And as he moved into his fifties, he became convinced that he could never start a new job. Who would hire a tired, beaten executive who was set in his ways? He didn't have the energy to start a new life, so he got old before his time. Eventually when he approached age 55, he decided to retire early. He had enough money to support himself and my mother. And he thought he could keep himself busy with his investments. He even decided to get a certificate in financial planning and help other people manage their money.
The Last Job: My father was retired for only eight months and he drove my mother crazy around the house, "moping" as she said. He had thought he was ready to start living a new kind of life--a life that didn't involve a fifty-hour work week and a staff of 200 engineers. But he wasn't.
When my father's friend Sid approached him with a job offer, my father told him no. Sid had worked under my father at Universe and had now formed his own company. He knew my father had enough experience and wisdom to advise his new firm and help it stay afloat. So Sid persisted. No one knows what Sid said to convince him, but my father decided to return to work.
His last career ended in less than a year. He had signed a three-year contract and was determined to honor it. But he was tired and sick. He kept working relentlessly, traveling to the west coast, returning home exhausted and interested in nothing.
When he found out he had cancer, my father wasn't surprised. He had known for a long time that something was wrong. He had ignored the signs hoping it would go away, determined to keep working. He had major surgery twice in four weeks. And as he lay recuperating, he talked about how soon he could return to work. He wanted to stay until January so he could get his bonus.
He never did return. He got sicker and sicker and he had little energy left to live or fight. He knew he would never survive to old age and he just didn't seem interested in prolonging the life he had left. Eight months after his initial diagnosis, at age 56 he died of pneumonia following surgery.
I often wonder what my father thought about during all those long, quiet months of sickness. He had made a lot of decisions along the way that plotted his life's course. He had decided to devote himself to his career when his children were babies, leaving my mother with five children and little help. He had decided to form his own company, forcing him to spend even more time working and less time with his family. He had accepted a job he probably knew he would hate because he had to satisfy his intense desire to work and be valuable, and he decided to cut short his retirement because he couldn't resist the temptation of money, power and work.
What made father run?
Like taxes and to do lists, death eventually comes to us all. My student's father certainly died young and we have no knowledge of a possible link between his fatal illness and his later career and personal difficulties. But we can see themes that warn us all of the dangers of career success.
His focus on his job was so intense that outside interests and family enjoyment were postponed. His intensity brought financial and professional success, but also such personal inflexibility that his high activity eventually was transformed into inertia. His daughter observes:
Once my father had defined a goal, he pursued it doggedly until he reached it. He never wavered from his course once it was set. This intensity carried him far in life. It helped him to develop great technical expertise and to rise quickly through his company. More importantly, it gained him the respect of everyone who knew him.
But I believe that my father's stubborn intensity caused him to make mistakes. Once a decision was made, it was never questioned. When he determined that he would remain at his position at Universe until he was ready to retire, he could not leave, even though he was unhappy. Later he made a commitment to Sid and would not break that promise until he was physically incapable of returning to work.
In addition, our reporter's father became so used to controlling people and events that later ambiguity was very threatening to him.
My father had an intense desire to control. Any time we played a game in my family; he read the rules and told us how to play. He opened up the little bags and counted the pieces. And he usually won the game.
I can understand that as a boss he must have been both a comfort and a torment. In crises it must have been nice to have someone who remains calm under fire, ready to solve any problem. But in quieter times the control must have been overwhelming. I know I felt the frustration of having my father take control of every situation that I wanted to manage myself.
He was so organized! His days like his years were planned in advance. He attacked every problem in a systematic, analytical way. These skills enabled him to become a successful executive. However, when these skills failed him, when problems were too ambiguous to be analyzed step by step, he felt out of control.
