LIFE AS WE KNEW IT IS OVER. TIME TO START LIVING: Observations of a Golden Boomer on the Economy, Workplace, Workers, and the Future

Abstract The article will focus over thirty years of community building through the perspective of a Golden Boomer, Chamber of Commerce professional on the current economy, the workplace, workers, and the future. It will attempt to show that we are in a period of rebuilding what the baby boomer generation built since 1945 and is currently broken. In the end it will discuss what can be next for those with enough courage to embrace the change necessary to make the next twenty years a move toward significance. The catalyst for writing this article was a talk I made to the membership of the Garland Texas Chamber of Commerce on being successful going forward in this economy. Any Chamber of Commerce worthy of the name is all about the individual success of business in their communities. To that end I was attempting to make a wake-up call to those who were still waiting for the economic circumstances to revert to that of pre-2008 . One of the strong characteristics of my generation is denial of the changes that are occurring and unwillingness to address the future in terms that coincide with the evidence that has been surrounding us for years. At the end of my talk, Dr. Helen Harkness, a preeminent career developer, author, and futurist on the subject of careers and a friend of mine and of my community, asked me to share some thoughts based on my thirty three years in the Chamber business. With the disclaimer that I am not a professional career developer and with my sincere gratitude for those who are, allow me to proceed. First let's address the biggest issue before us, the economy. The economic run that the boomer generation started is broken. That fact has to be accepted before we can move on. Intellectually we know that what goes up, must inevitability come down, that with every boom must come a bust, that when the balloon get too big it will pop. We know this, and have seen it happen over and over in our lives. The first bail out of a major automobile maker occurred in 1979 with the first rescue of Chrysler. In 1982 I watched the effects of the closing of steel mills in Youngstown Ohio as a consultant to their Chamber. Through the decade of the 1980s and 1990s we all watched jobs move overseas and the decline of American manufacturing. We lived through the Savings and Loan scandal while we experienced the effects of greed in an industry that had always been a trusted member of our communities. With the Enron Crisis another prop was knocked out from under us. We could no longer trust our employer to do the right thing and act ethically. I was in Houston in the late 1980s at the Greater Houston Chamber of Commerce. Our offices were across the street from Enron's headquarters. Their leadership was all over that city and their employees had the swagger of folks that were moving up fast. I remember clearly the look on the faces of those same employees as they walked out of the headquarters with boxes in hand. When the Tech Boom and Bust occurred, I had moved to Garland, Texas and observed as a neighboring community who had branded themselves as the Telecom Corridor went through the pain of companies laying off hundreds of people. In Garland we felt the wave as our companies that were suppliers to the major telecom players lost 85 per cent of their sales almost overnight. Beyond our own experience, trained observes and writers were giving us clear signs. Tom Peters in 1987 with his book, Thriving on Chaos; Helen Harkness with her article in the Career Planning and Adult Development Journal, The Yo Yo Model for Your Future Career in 2008 and her book Capitalizing on Career Chaos in 2005 all pointed to what was happening. The life as we had know it was being shaken through a series of major events and each time we were moving toward a time when our world was simply not sustainable in its current form. We however ignored the signs, for the most part. With each of those cycles we recovered and moved on. …