I spoke with a company recently that had offered a “deceleration” option to older employees – with no takers. Hmm . . .

I’ve argued for several years now that one of the keys to retaining Boomers post-“retirement” age is to create career paths that allow people to step back, to do less. Very few of the people I’ve interviewed say they want to work as hard at age 80 as they are at age 50 – but a lot of people say they enjoy their colleagues and their work, and would enjoy staying on longer if options to slow down a bit were available.

That’s what they say.

But confronted with the reality of stepping out of prestigious senior positions, hard-won over decades of competition with high-intensity peers, no one in this firm was making the move. Remember, as I’ve also argued, Boomers are notoriously competitive – reared in a world that was fundamentally too small for their bulging generation.

But the smart leaders had a new idea – a judo-like move: to turn the very characteristic that was standing in the way into a driver for success of the new program. They made participation a contest.

Now, candidates in this firm need to compete for a limited number of slots on the deceleration path. Those selected have, once again, won – in this case, won the right to slow down.

They found a way to make winding down into a competitive, Boomer-friendly activity

This example got me thinking of other possible “judo moves” that managers might make – essentially aligning an individual’s preferences with either the desires of the organization or, in the case of the deceleration move, with a program that would allow the individual to remain in the company, rather than quit cold.

You could say that that’s what in fact many of the hot employers of Gen Y are doing. Companies like Google harness Y’s desire for what I call immediacy – for doing important and valuable things now – and, in doing so, gain extraordinary productivity from these folks. Many traditional corporations, in contrast, miss the boat in two ways – by giving Y’s work that they view as boring and unimportant, they both fail to benefit from the productivity this judo move would likely prompt – and end up loosing the Y’s in the end.

How about thinking about looking for ways to leverage Gen X’s desire to keep multiple options open by tying the corporation’s request for them to relocate explicitly to a broader career path at the end, rather than to specialization (“after two years, you’ll be qualified for three very different next steps, rather than the narrow path you’re on if you stay where you are”)?

Or harnessing the Boomers’ competitive streak for . . . well, just about anything. Boomers love a contest!

One of the key axioms in any change management program is that understanding the motivations of the individuals involved, and building programs around those motivations, is the easiest way to the successful, mutually beneficial end.