True story … I worked for a very large semi-manufacturer. An engineering team was attempting to invent a new device for cloud data centers. The engineering team built early units. The price, performance and capabilities were all best in class. But, it was incapable of hot-plug; meaning to add this device, the server must be shutdown first. Server shutdown defeated the reason to use this fancy new device (doh! forehead slap).
For some unknown reason they asked the person with gray hair (me) about hot plug. Try googling “Serial ATA hot plug” there is a 20-year old spec, literally billions already built. Problem solved, but too late. Preventable negative outcomes: these (costly) efforts were eclipsed by a competitor; opportunity lost, ROI was zero. This is admittedly anecdotal, the point is late career innovators (often) know how to efficiently innovate. They (often) cleverly re-apply existing methods to solve new problems.
Bigger picture.
Every organization is undergoing some sort of digital transformation.
Every digital transformation effort requires innovation. amiright?
Innovation thrives in a “Lab-environment”.
Innovation falls short in a “Factory-environment”.
Lab-environments use the hypothesis-experiment-failure analysis-improvement method. Mistakes are encouraged. Mistakes indicate progress. Trying something new equals new learning and innovation. Factory-environment is about avoiding mistakes. Mistakes indicate low quality. Mistakes thwart progress. Trying something new equates to un-necessary risk. Factory-environments are typically functional and silo’d. Functional management may work well in manufacturing settings, but is counterproductive for innovation settings. And yet we still apply century-old factory management approaches for innovation; and we wonder why we fail to innovate (another forehead slap).
Innovation thrives in self-directed teams. Identify addressable customer problems. Know the customer needs and success criteria. The self directed team works closely together and iterate to solve the problems. And herein, is where late-career talent shines.
Late career talent is better at conflict handling and emotional maturity. I’ve witnessed conflicts when young, smart, ego-driven tech talent gets sideways with one another. Its un-necessary, counter productive, creates turnover. Functional/silo’d management is incapable of solving team conflicts, so it often just festers, rather than heals. Adult supervision is needed.
Late career recruiting food for thought:
— look for late career talent with cross functional team and product management experience
— ask candidates for examples of innovations (look for a team-first answer)
— ask candidates what they have done to keep their skills current (assume people keep learning after graduation and ask what they’ve pursued)
— ask candidates about the project urgency and will to compete balanced with the need to give the team time to get work done.
— ask candidates about delivering mentoring (mentoring is an overlooked secret weapon for healthy workplaces)
— ask candidates for examples of handling team conflict (look for emotional maturity, accepting accountability for problems, and giving credit to the team)
— look for late career talent who have worked successfully with remote teams. world-wide talent pools are the future of innovation.
The cautionary tale … most big orgs stick to factory/functional-management rather than self directed teams. This thwarts innovation, resulting in diminished profits, resulting in a not-so-great place to work. Talent quits, layoffs happen. That talent, that experience, doesn’t just fall off the planet.
Late career talent often founds startups (I did).
We have know-how, we are competitive, we offer better employee experience (EX), we know partners and channels, we don’t require physical offices, we recruit from a world-wide talent pool.
We are coming to take your lunch money. … just sayin’