middlescence

vinay kamat

At the height of corporate structuring in the mid-nineties in India, one HR species was grabbing all attention: the middle manager. Caught between a demanding top management and a restless entry level, middle management was being squeezed into irrelevance. Between the ages 45 and 55, middle managers could either reinvent themselves or get marginalized.

Those days CEOs would harp on downsizing, short-sizing, and smart-sizing. But what they were all really talking about was the middle manager. HR departments were busy drawing up retraining and retooling modules to help middle managers morph into hybrid men, with multiple skills and more KRAs.

Nothing could explain the phenomenon better than an obscure word just waiting to be put into circulation: middlescence. A combination of ‘middle’ and ‘obsolescence,’ it was intelligently coined by some management writers. It symbolized the fat, multi-layered, organisation.

Often, it was left to the organization to yank a manger out of obsolescence brought about by newer technologies, changing work ethic, and high-powered growth. At a big multinational that I visited in November 1996, for instance, a middle manager had just moved out of his shop-floor function which was getting redundant. Top management had offered him another job: canteen management.

Even though he initially lacked the skills in canteen management, the manager was able to learn them fast enough to bag two consecutive ‘best industrial canteen’ awards. His approach of learning everything fast was an antidote to middlescence.

During the first internet wave, which lasted in India until end-2000, middlescence reflected the agony of the analog generation: it was caught right in the middle. But since then, the middle has started aggressively reshaping and recalibrating itself to cope in an era where email, Google, PDAs, and PowerPoints have become workplace fixtures.

Even as middlescence has been reinterpreted by the brave middle manager, it has had an impact on life as well. Wordspy.com, which showcases newly-coined words, defines it as the turbulent, rebellious middle age of the baby-boom generation. Talking about middlescence, America’s retirement guru Ken Dychtwald told BusinessWeek Online that the period 50-70 in one’s life represents the search for a new identity. As he summed up: “It’s not the end of life but really just the third quarter.”

If you broaden the definition of middlescence, you will realize that it affects all of us at all ages. It is a strange urge to do something different in your career or life, which could provide the one thing we miss: satisfaction.

The picture of middlescence is incomplete without Po Bronson’s fascinating account of people who have been courageous enough to chart their own lives or careers: What Should I Do With My Life? In his introduction to the book, Bronson describes his literary journey: “Looking for guidance and courage…I became intrigued by people who had unearthed their true calling, or at least those who were willing to try. Those who fought with the seduction of money, intensity, and novelty, but overcame their allure. Those who broke away from the chorus to learn the sound of their own voice.”

Now, Bronson expands the theme further in a riveting account of families: Why Do I Love These People? Even as it explains the idea of the family through real-life, moving, experiences, it shows what makes people different.

Middlescence is not just about careers or middle managers. Its answers don’t lie in management or psychology books. It’s an idea that opens a whole Pandora’s Box of life’s intricate issues. Like the newly-appointed canteen manager, it’s about trying. It’s about willingness. And it’s more than a job.

Indeed, it’s an interesting time of your life when you ask: What next?