No Passengers

Here in Caxton, our three-and-a-half-year-old hybrid hens (stars of one of my very first posts back in 2009) have gone off lay as the days shorten. The irrepressible optimist in me still checks the nesting box each morning. Every time I’m met with disappointment the volume of my chiding increases as I tell them that at their age and in this season they’re adopting a seriously high-risk strategy. The chancellor of our domestic exchequer (that’s me) is not minded to carry passengers.

It’s potentially a chilling metaphor for a female business development consultant of my age. We face a harsh economy (Obama’s won now we face the fiscal cliff, pundits say, without even a comma, semi-colon or decent pause for a celebratory exclamation mark). We have high levels of graduate unemployment. Young, eager, talented people and a whole generation of new ideas are fighting for their first break (and boy do they need and usually deserve one). Which means that all managers and consultants in their middle years risk vanishing from the work-place and the economy unless it is patently obvious they’re adding value. I don’t normally make political or gender generalisations but in this instance I will add that this danger is worse for women who suffer the disadvantage that whilst for men grey hairs and lines add gravitas, for women they’re often interpreted as a sign of impending obsolescence.

But every downside has its upside. The huge advantage we middle-age chicks have stored up under our feathers is a wealth of finely-honed skills, time-management techniques perfected through years of running multi-track professional & family lives, a balanced sense of perspective & proportion and wide experience that give valuable insights. Which means that when we do lay our eggs, they’re often golden.