Engaging with recent graduates and current students of top schools including MIT Sloan, Harvard Business School, and Wharton to name a few, we have observed how the stress to perform every day continues for many of these overachievers who seem intent to run even faster to fields like consulting:
2023’s employment reports of students entering the consulting industry
Columbia: 36.0%3[1]
Harvard: 25.0%[2]
MIT Sloan: 33.7%[3]
Stanford: 15.0%[4]
Wharton: 28.8%[5]
As you started working for MIT in 1957 and have since engaged with baby boomer alums to current students, what advice do you have for readers who are striving to create a life plan that takes them from student to an encore career (post-retirement)?
(Lotte Bailyn):
For overachieving MIT Sloan students as well as others at top schools, my advice is do not let your work dictate who you are. While it is a natural stepping stone to pursue consulting firms that position you for high-powered and well-compensated jobs, recognize that these roles tend to consume an inordinate amount of your waking hours. As the workloads will always be there, it is up to you to protect slivers of time and energy for other life activities; so that you can pay attention to these edges of your life journey. With societal pressures, I recognize that an individual needs to have the maturity and capacity to self-reflect on whether they are chasing consulting jobs for prestige or pursuing them because it is an industry that they truly want to enter.
Having been associated with the MIT community since 1957, I have connected with several students and alumni and a common theme among those who pursued consulting is the importance of having a life plan. If you don’t have one, it is very easy for the years to slip by as you are constantly traveling and meeting with clients. That is why having a life plan is invaluable. One needs to have a life structure where you will make decisions on the places where you spend your time, the activities you undertake, and the people in whom you invest your energies.[6] One needs to invest energy and time today in order to build the relationships with those people who will be part of your future post-retirement or encore career.
Whether a reader is one of the 73 million baby boomers reaching their full retirement benefit age or Zoomers just entering the workforce, at some point, most Americans will retire. Given the research that your co-authors and you recently uncovered[7], what are your top recommendations to help create a life plan that works for them?
(Lotte Bailyn)
To start off, one needs to self-reflect and answer three tough questions that most people don’t want to think about, and they are a. who you are, b. what you want to be, and c. what you will regret when you’re about to depart from your life journey.
Then, one needs to insert time into your calendar so that you build activities around the life edges which I mentioned earlier. These activities can help you elevate existing relationships with family and friends as well as create new ones with people whom you will need in your encore career. As my co-authors and I recently shared in the Harvard Business Review, having a clear sense of self and of what day-to-day retirement life might look like will help in the transition away from full employment.[8]
Finally, on a tactical level, consider this framework that my co-authors and I developed:
Task 1: Deciding when and how to retire: This refers to not only financial readiness and health considerations but also to issues of identity: who will you be when you are retired?
Task 2: Detaching from work: As status and recognition are often the fuel that drives many overachievers, consider new activities and interests that might give a new sense of self and personal satisfaction beyond the trappings of the consulting world.
Task 3: Exploring and building a new provisional life structure: Determine people who will be part of this new life journey with you. Often, they will not be from your consulting colleagues and professional network. Hence, invest the time to nourish these contacts sooner rather than later.
Task 4: Consolidating a new, relatively stable life structure: If you have been exploring and experimenting in retirement life for some time, determine if you have enough information about what’s working and what’s not to move toward consolidation, at least for the time being.[9]
In closing, even for your readership who are currently students and think that their retirement is so far away; I would say that creating a full life all through your primary career will ease your transition to a satisfactory life in retirement. When I gave a commencement speech at my undergraduate alma mater[10], I could not believe how fast 61 years had passed by so quickly. So, start to plan today for an incredible life journey of tomorrow.
Lotte Bailyn[11] is the T Wilson (1953) Professor of Management, Emerita at the MIT Sloan School of Management. For the period 1997-99, she was Chair of the MIT faculty.
Professor Bailyn studies the relationship between managerial practice and employees’ lives. Her research investigates how institutional and organizational processes intersect with people’s lives. Her work in organizations shows that work and personal life are complementary, even synergistic, rather than adversarial. By challenging the assumptions in which current work practices are embedded, the goals of both business productivity and employees’ family and community concerns can be met in ways that are equitable for both men and women[12]. In 2021, she was awarded the Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The highest honor awarded by GSAS, the medal is given to “four distinguished alumni who have made fundamental and lasting contributions to knowledge, to their disciplines, to their colleagues, and to society.” Professor Bailyn holds a BA in mathematics from Swarthmore College as well as an MA and a PhD in social psychology from Harvard/Radcliffe.
Partha Anbil is a Contributing Writer for the MIT Sloan Career Development Office and an alum of MIT Sloan. Besides being VP of Programs of the MIT Club of Delaware Valley, Partha is a long-time life sciences consulting industry veteran, currently with an NYSE-listed WNS, a digital-led business transformation company, as Senior Vice President and Practice Leader for their Life Sciences practice.
Michael Wong is a Contributing Writer for the MIT Sloan Career Development Office and an Emeritus Co-President and board member of the Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Association. Michael is a Part-time Lecturer for the Wharton Communication Program at the University of Pennsylvania and his ideas have been shared in the MIT Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business Review.
[1] https://business.columbia.edu/sites/default/files-efs/imce-uploads/CMC/cmc-employment-report-2023-10_accessible.pdf
[2] https://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/employment-data/Pages/default.aspx
[3] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2023-12/MBA-Employment-Report-2023-2024_2.pdf
[4] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/2023-12/report-2023-mba-employment-report.pdf
[5] https://statistics.mbacareers.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Wharton-2023-Career-Report_.pdf
[6] Amabile Terea M., Bailyn Lotte, Crary Marcy, Hall, Douglas T., Kram, Kathy E., 4 developmental tasks you — and everyone else — will face in retirement, MIT Sloan Review, September 3, 2024
[7] https://www.amazon.com/Retiring-Creating-Life-That-Works/dp/1032451505
[8] Amabile Terea M., Bailyn Lotte, Crary Marcy, Hall, Douglas T., Kram, Kathy E., Retire Without Regrets, Harvard Business Review, November-December 2024
[9] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/4-developmental-tasks-you-and-everyone-else-will-face-retirement
[10] Swarthmore Commencement 2012 – Lotte Bailyn ’51, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE26gtI4hLQ&t=3s
[11] https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/05/centennial-medalists-2021
[12] Bailyn, Lotte, Fletcher, Joyce K. Fletcher, Kolb, Deborah, Unexpected Connections: Considering Employees’ Personal Lives Can Revitalize Your Business, MIT Sloan Management Review, July 15, 1997
