BossaNova Media’s Paul Heaney laments the brain drain of experienced executives caused by economic woes and the work from home culture, the effect that has in upskilling newcomers and why the industry would be wise to halt this slide.

I get it, old people can be annoying – telling stories about when they used to work in TV when it was just a big green field and we all sold shows for three bales of straw.

But aah, the golden era, don’t get me started. Friends of mine, you know who you are as I don’t have that many, have started drifting away or deliberately leaving the business. This gives me disquiet. These older and hugely experienced people leave a gaping hole in our collective wisdom that we’d be right to address – it’s a silent yet devastating exodus.

Since Covid and the advent of working from home, younger people have even less passing exposure to these experienced veterans and the question here is, are we underestimating this value escaping us? Offices are now comprised often of four generations at least who all work better together rather than in generational silos. For example, the BossaNova team is comprised of Baby Boomers, Millennials, Generations X and Z – proving that a close relationship across the divides makes a whole much greater than the sum of its parts, my favourite phrase.

These multi-decade professionals have knowledge and sound advice oozing out of their pores. Often, they don’t even know themselves how useful this knowledge is. Let’s not tell them. In any case they’ll forget right? Rather than it be exit time for these keepers of wisdom, shouldn’t we be selfish and extract all the intel, experience and reflection that these elders hold? One thing that is for sure is that our business right now is in desperate need of a steady calm hand.

Eric Smith, my history teacher, would sagely guide us to ‘analyse the past to predict the future’. He wasn’t alone in his thinking. In the recently launched book The 100 trillion Dollar Wealth Transfer, the author Ken Costa, a leading figure in global investment banking, emphasises how we’re in a moment where a new generation with a focus on ethics, purpose, social justice and environmental causes will transform our world as we know it. Global wealth is flowing from one generation to the next and as they look to invest, create value and make decisions, intergenerational engagement is naturally the key to avoiding the mistakes of the past.

We need to create physical spaces at work where we can invite in the wisdom, patience and humanity of those who have seen it all before. Our industry has always been confronted with huge challenges, resets, sudden dips, even within my early professional life I’d seen a few. We will also all keep making mistakes, hopefully, as that’s where the learning lies. I remember being young, I think, and the frank reality is no one really listens to you. It went on for quite some time. We must learn from that too and ensure younger generations have a proper voice. We need a combination of the generations, learning from each other through the sheer osmosis of being with each other.

The tragedy is that younger generations are perhaps not aware of what they’re missing out on and if they are, have no idea how to access it. In a slight gear change, even the way we actually do the buying and selling content part of the job is changing. The content we create and sell now is not a commodity, though it can often feel like it, they’re cultural artefacts with the power to change hearts and minds, to evoke emotion, meaning and culture. They deserve to be watched, for professional reasons, to know what the buyers want or know what the competition is showing. With such a surplus of primetime, we’re focusing more on what we personally like for own leisure or the algorithm’s advice rather than understanding the market. Other forgotten interpersonal skills, mainly random analogue soft ones like debating, negotiating, telephone conversations, relationship building are applicable now, some of the revolutions have already been televised.

Do I have an answer? Not yet but I’m working on it, don’t rush me, my typing speed isn’t as fast as yours. More two-way mentoring could be one idea, and the WFH era upon us we need to try harder to make community work, making sure when TWAT (Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday) people are in the office, we create better spaces for them to truly collaborate. Being collegiate is a real privilege if you ask me, we can make decisions easily and quickly. To break down the hierarchies a bit to make space for us all to fuse ideas and wisdom together more effectively. Otherwise, how exactly will knowledge move from one generation to another, the gift that builds the resilience we need to ensure the future of our business.