As it happened, my grandpa only played one match for them before injury put paid to his rugby career. That was in 1921, but he wore this affiliation like a badge of honor right up until his death at the age of 99.  

The All Blacks were revered a hundred years ago, and they still are. This makes them a perfect case study for Professor Alex Hill, co-founder and director of the Centre for High Performance, a collaboration between Kingston University London, Duke University, London Business School, and the University of Oxford. 

Building Centennial Organizations

For more than a decade, he’s researched organizations that have outperformed their peers for over 100 years. In addition to the New Zealand All Blacks, he’s studied NASA, Eton College and the Royal Shakespeare Company, among other household names. 

Hill has identified 12 habits they share, looking at how they analyze success and failure, recruit great talent, and create new products and ideas. He lays these out in his new book, “Centennials,” and offers advice for others who aspire to such longevity today. 

In this clip from our Expert Interview, Hill reflects on how corporate behavior can embed itself from generation to generation. (You can stream the audio clip below or read a transcript here.)

The How and Why of Centennial Organizations

Hill acknowledges that not all organizations are in it for the long haul. Some don’t want to last 100 years, so for them, a focus on short-term returns is appropriate. 

“A lot of management thinking comes from business, and actually those principles and ideas are great if you want to burn bright, but then disappear,” he says. “But if you don’t want to do that and you want to build something that’s going to last, then you have to think in a very different way.” 

And this is a worthy goal, he believes, as “centennial” organizations deliver benefits for communities and society as a whole, as well as for themselves. 

“They help us solve bigger, more complex questions, things like climate change or poverty or health or education, where actually you’re building a collective knowledge in an institution that is growing over time. And you’re solving a problem which can’t just be solved quickly, where actually it might take many decades or many generations to actually work out how to fix it,” he explains. 

The 12 habits in Hill’s book provide a framework for organizations with such ambitions. The first six help to build a stable core, identifying a strong purpose for the work, developing stewardship, and fostering an open attitude toward the world. The last six focus on what he calls the “disruptive edge.” These habits encourage new ideas that propel organizations forward. 

The Power of Performing in Public

I was particularly struck by habit five, “perform in public,” about harnessing the power of strangers. Within an organization, it’s hard to see what you’re doing well – or not so well. Whereas, if you perform to a trusted stranger, you can learn a lot from their feedback, which may include fresh ideas from the outside, too. And of course, when we’re being watched, we almost always raise our game. 

“They’ve done lots of different studies around this, [and] they found that if you have a stranger present in a group, the group feels that they need to perform better,” says Hill. “So they will often be more rigorous in their discussion or their debates, they will explain things more clearly, they make [fewer] mistakes, and they often perform at a higher level because of that.”  

As a freelance producer, I’ve seen this firsthand. Often, I’m the stranger, going into organizations to record a podcast or interview employees. In these situations, I’ve noticed that people do tend to make an effort to act as professionally as they can. 

A few years ago, I produced a series of educational podcasts for a U.K.-based university. Each episode consisted of a roundtable discussion between academics teaching on a particular degree course. As soon as the microphones were set up, all the participants switched into “performance” mode. 

They listened attentively to one another, articulated their views with clarity and verve, and sometimes asked to redo something if they felt it could have been expressed better. If I hadn’t been there, the discussion may have been a bit more relaxed. But it might not have been as useful for the audience of students. 

Outside Observation Brings Centennial Results

Hill says he’s seen performance work in all sorts of situations. 

“You start to realize that every high-performing organization has a performance, and sometimes it happens very naturally, like an Olympic Games or a World Cup or a moon landing – this moment where they have to really perform,” he says.  

“But other organizations where it doesn’t happen naturally will artificially create it. So, like the Royal College of Art has open studios, where strangers can walk through, or they’ll get students to do shows where people can come.” 

It’s an effective way for organizations to practice the mindset they need to last for 100 years. 

The post The Centennial Mindset: My Expert Interview With Alex Hill appeared first on Mind Tools.

I got to know both men shortly after they'd retired, and I discovered that they were very different in character, too. Herbert was kind but formal and detached. Frank was down-to-earth, unassuming, and excellent fun.

But when I learned a little more about them, I realized that, for all their differences, these two men had one big thing in common. Throughout their lives, both had an almost complete lack of choice.

The No-Choice Career

Herbert and Frank were born at a time when educational options were closely linked to family finances, and most working lives followed the same predictable pattern.

Whether you were marked out for one of the "professions" (like Herbert) or channeled into manual roles (like Frank), you could expect to spend 30 or 40 years at work. And then enjoy a short retirement – if you were lucky. In England in the early 20th century, the average life expectancy was just 51.

Herbert and Frank both started out by giving much of what they earned to their parents. Later, as married men, they both had to become breadwinners. Their wives looked after the childcare, along with all the household chores. They too had little choice in the matter.

Herbert and Frank both worked into their 60s, after which their brief retirements were paid for by simple pensions and state aid. They both outlived average life expectancy then, but died young by today's standards – not long after I'd met them. They were my grandfathers.

When Long Life Meets High Tech

I thought a lot about Herbert and Frank when I read "The 100-Year Life" and "The New Long Life," both by Andrew J. Scott and Lynda Gratton. The world described in these books is starkly different from the one my grandfathers inhabited, with a wealth of new choices on offer.

Now that further education is widely available, career options are much less connected to social standing, and family roles are so much more flexible.

But two other factors loom even larger in this landscape: dramatically longer lifespans, and vastly improved technology. Both of these bring choices that my grandfathers never had. Along with some significant new challenges.

Long-Life Possibilities and Pitfalls

That 51-year life expectancy has now climbed to 80. Children born today are more likely to live to 100 than not. We're staying healthy for longer, too, allowing us to keep working if we want to.

Plus we get more time to change fields and take sideways or even backward career steps, to secure the roles that suit us best at different times in our lives. Neither of my grandfathers viewed their careers like that!

However, the flip side is that we have to work for longer – or the country will quickly go broke. We must also find our own ways to fund longer retirements. Herbert and Frank both assumed that savings and state aid would fund theirs, and they were right. But they'd likely have seen things differently if they'd expected to reach 100.

Technology is also a double-edged sword. It's given many of us new choices about where, when and how we work. Including the chance to do tech-driven "side hustles," like delivery driving or selling online.

But millions of jobs are now at risk, as automation and AI muscle in. True, many of the jobs that go will be difficult or dangerous ones that no one will miss. But if we reallocate too much to robots, what will we all do with our time? Where will we find meaning and a sense of satisfaction every day?

Career Choices and Challenges

My grandfathers certainly had far fewer choices than I do, and their lives were harder. But their world was also less complicated in many ways. As Scott and Gratton make clear, living for longer in a world of far-advancing tech throws up some huge new challenges. For individuals, organizations, and society at large.

They say that we've been presented with "a profound invitation to social ingenuity." We'll need to choose how to support an aging population, as healthcare keeps more people going for longer – many still with significant medical needs. Education systems must change too, to ensure that the information, skills and attitudes that we learn prepare us for multifaceted careers.

Our employers will also have to meet the future head-on. People will no longer train for a job, do that job (or very similar ones) then retire. Instead, they'll take career breaks, seek different working arrangements at different times, want to change roles – and even switch between sectors.

Employers will need to accommodate all of this and find ways to get the best out of people at every life stage. Ideally, this will come from jobs that are re-energizing and learning-oriented, within organizations that allow workers as much choice as possible.

Career Planning for a Bright Future

My life crossed over Herbert's and Frank's, but my career has already been dramatically different. I've changed industry not once but twice. I've had phases of working part-time to help with childcare. I'm now embracing hybrid working, and looking forward to plenty of interesting and fulfilling opportunities in the future.

But as this book makes clear, I'll also have to approach work very differently from the way my grandfathers did. That is if I'm going to keep benefiting from the "new long life," and face up to its challenges.

I'll need to stay curious about technology, not scared. But not blasé either. I'll need to spot ways that technology can help me to thrive, and avoid distraction and overwhelm. I'll also need to be prepared to pivot when parts of my role are no longer done best by any human, let alone me.

It will pay me to be a lifelong learner and I'll have to keep mastering new skills. But I'll get what the authors call "compound interest" on my learning during my extended career.

I'll have to keep redesigning my work-life balance – to suit my changing priorities on both sides. (I wonder what Herbert, Frank and their families would have made of that?!)

And I'll have to be very clever with money. Long lives are expensive! My grandfathers had few choices about finances. However, I'll have to explore an array of possibilities – and make some very good decisions – if I'm going to seize all the opportunities on offer.

Play the "Long Game" With Your Career

None of us knows what our future holds. But all the data in "The 100 Year Life" and "The New Long Life" makes a strong case for taking a "long game" approach. That's something that previous generations simply didn't get to do.

I was talking to my youngest son the other day about what he "wants to do when he grows up." Many of his peers will live into their 12th decade – and have more healthy and productive years in their careers than any generation before.

As he described his dream job, I had to resist saying: "… and what about after that, and after that, and after that?" Whether he likes it or not, Herbert and Frank's great-grandson has got lots of big choices ahead.

Download Our "100-Year Life" and "The New Long Life" Book Insight

Mind Tools reviews the best new business and self-development books, alongside the tested classics, in our monthly Book Insight for the Mind Tools Club.

So, if you're a Club member or enterprise licensee, you can download or stream the full "New Long Life" Book Insight in text or audio format.

How do you feel about the idea of living to 100? Which choices will help you to make the most of the "new long life"? What will the biggest challenges be? Join the discussion by adding your thoughts below!

The post Living to 100 – Career Choices and Challenges in the "New Long Life" appeared first on Mind Tools.

We’ve all heard of “bring your child to work” days, but have you ever thought about bringing your parents to work?

Yesterday, I discovered an initiative called LinkedIn Bring in Your Parents day, which was encouraging businesses all over the world to invite their employees to do just that. But when I shared the post on my Twitter feed, the response it received wasn’t exactly what I’d call enthusiastic. I can’t think why?!

LinkedIn actually has a very good rationale for its scheme. According to its recent survey, more than a third of parents said that they had skills and knowledge that could benefit their grown-up child’s career, but they kept quiet, either because they didn’t know enough about what their kids did for a living or because they thought their offspring wouldn’t want to listen.

I find this topic quite intriguing – not only because it made me wonder how I’d feel about bringing my own parents to work, but also because, although my daughter is still only young, several of my friends now have children who are just entering the world of work, and I wondered how they would feel about it.

It would take a lot of confidence to take Mom and Dad into a situation where you’re trying to establish your worth as an employee. We spend such a long time psychologically individuating ourselves from our parents that we’re often reluctant to let them into domains where we’ve established ourselves as adults in our own right. But let’s think for a moment about the wider implications of expanding generational diversity at work.

Familial relations aside, our ageing society means that people are living and working for longer. According to a recent article in the Economist, well-educated, highly-skilled Baby Boomers are now putting off retirement, while younger, less-skilled people are finding themselves out of work.

The Economist claims that, counter to popular opinion, trends in technology may actually be helping the “educated elderly” to continue to be productive members of the workforce; largely because the skills that complement computers, such as management expertise and creativity, do not decline with age.

Now, I’ve written in this blog before about the role that technology and social media play in my job. Pretty much all of my time is spent at a laptop, editing articles and BSTs, composing blogs, tweeting, posting status updates on LinkedIn, checking my email, and fiddling with code in Dreamweaver.

None of these skills are beyond my parents' capabilities but, as people who spent their entire careers working closely with others, I don’t imagine they’d envy the solitary hours I spend tapping away at my computer wearing headphones, rarely talking to anyone and even communicating with my neighboring colleagues through instant messaging!

The way we work today, it’s hardly surprising that the news is filled with reports about Millenials who are afraid to talk on the phone. Add to this what Newsweek’s Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman have dubbed the “Creativity Crisis,” in which recent studies have shown that creativity scores among young Americans are falling, and it’s clear to see that the older generations still have plenty to offer.

In fact, the whole of society benefits when we have a more integrated mix of generations at work. If we allow increasing longevity to translate into longer retirement, economic growth will stagnate and government budgets will struggle to provide for growing numbers. But if older members of society remain in employment, the decline in economic growth will be more controlled as they continue to earn money and contribute through their taxes.

Economics aside, recent demographic trends show that people of different age groups are becoming increasingly segregated in society, leading to intergenerational feelings of isolation, misapprehension and even mistrust. But in communities where there is a high level of interaction between generations, people of all ages report feeling a greater sense of understanding and friendship, as well as feeling personally valued for their effort and skills, enjoying better physical and mental health, improved learning and elevated employment levels.

So, I say bring your parents to work. In fact, why stop there? Put the kettle on, Granny and Grandpa are coming too.

The post Bridging the Gap appeared first on Mind Tools.

A reflection of this trend can be seen in recent developments at the centenarians team's Anniversaries office.

In the U.K., the Queen traditionally sends a telegram to citizens on their 100th birthday. At one time, demand was sufficient to employ one person (who likely had plenty of other duties to perform as well). Today, it requires a team of seven.

As the population ages, we all need to adapt our working practices in response. To explore the implications of this, I went to see Professor Andrew Scott at the London Business School, who is writing a book on the topic.

Scott foresees an end to the current three-stage life that reflects education, work and retirement. The new model, he says, will consist of many more stages.

In this audio clip, he predicts what this will mean for society.

Listen to the full interview ¦ Install Flash Player.

He calls one of the new stages, comprised of people aged 18 to 35, the "beconomy." Listen to the full, fascinating interview here, to find out how the beconomy and the economy interact and what this means for the world of work – and for all of our lives.

Question: How has the possibility of a longer life affected the way you think about your career? Let us know below!

The post Longevity and the Workplace appeared first on Mind Tools.