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As 2007 gets under way there is every indication that businesses generally are facing yet another key change. This one, like others recently identified, is related to the impending retirement age of a very large proportion of the workforce - but has little or nothing to do with the pensions time bomb.

This impending, and potentially huge, business culture change can arguably be seen as positive; and better still, it has an inbuilt solution – one which is strongly linked to a specific area of learning and people development.

In a nutshell, the “baby boomers” who were born just or soon after WWII ended are, en masse, reaching retirement age. One recent estimate is that 77 million of them now in employment will exit over the next decade. And a large proportion of those are in senior management and leadership roles with impressive personal reservoirs of knowledge and skills. The complementary fact is that their replacements are going to be harder to find than in any previous period in business history. Falling birth rates in developed nations have lead to a serious shortfall in the upcoming generation of managers.

However, if they make the right changes oganisations can take advantage of the fact that today’s retiring management cadre is not that keen on completely cutting its ties with the world of work and collectively putting its feet up. Their continued contribution can be counted on – on their own terms. Many of them want a downshift to part-time (but no less intellectually demanding) work, or project-based employment which uses their knowledge and expertise without tying them to office hours.

The crucial word there is “project”.

Organisations are, or should be, preparing themselves to see much more of their endeavours and processes as projects, where objectives will be achieved though setting up and managing teams of in-house and externally contracted people of very mixed ages, experience, attitudes and approaches, and who will increasingly be based in different places – home or office, different regions or even different countries.

What does it take to get the best and most cohesive teamwork out of a 62-year-old ex-exec living near his favourite golf course in the Canary Islands and a 25-year-old fast tracker in a glass tower at Canary Wharf? It takes world class project management, and part of this is to ensure that people working on projects are committed to them

Work will increasingly be organised as projects – structured with project objectives, with stated phases and overall duration, defined budgets. Teams will form based on the necessary skills, will set up project plans and timelines, will work together, complete the set tasks, evaluate, and disperse.

Project management and leadership are the vital elements for success in this way of working. It is no coincidence that the Project Management Institute has issued over five times as many project management professional certifications since 2000 that it did in the previous 17 years of its existence.

Equally vital is that project managers are supported by systems and processes, and by the appropriate, sophisticated, high quality tailored training. To make the best of project-based operation, companies must invest in people, tools and techniques.

Rhema operates nationally and globally as consultants and providers of blended learning and training solutions to a wide range of organisations and enterprises. We see growing demand for ever-better project management training and tools: we are already responding.

Rhema has greatly enhanced its offering in this respect. A new member of the Rhema team is Rob Clark, Member of the Institute of Management Consultants and of the Association for Project Managers whose main specialisation is in project management consultancy and project support services.

At the same time our new strategic partnership with Enliten IT means that training on IT project management tools can be linked to consultancy and delivery of training programmes for Managers.

Rob Clark sets out his views and describes some of his current activities in the Big Issue section of this newsletter, and you can read more about him in the Rhema People section, as well as seeing more details about Enliten IT in the Strategic Partnerships section.


Managing Director