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Generation X -
Sinner, Saviour or Slacker ?
13/09/2007 - View From The Top, Post Magazine Andrew Holman, Chief Executive, Holman's
Another month, another few more independent brokers scrubbed out as the juggernaut of consolidation continues its grim course. At least that seems to be the mantra of the assorted naysayers and pessimists, which appear to make up our industry commentators.
But just as the market will turn, so the consolidation of intermediaries is just a phase - and now is perhaps about the right time to start thinking about what will happen to the market when the process has run its course. We are constantly being told what the environment will look like at this point but where does it go from there; and what happens next?
To look at this, we ought to start with the last great change in the intermediary model; the creation of large numbers of brokers by entrepreneurial 'inspectors' in the early 1970s. These are the so-called demographic brokers and we are led to believe that many have succession problems and are selling out. But what exactly are these succession problems? It is not that there are no capable managers to take over from the principals - despite the continual reappearance of 'lack of talent' headlines - rather that these capable managers simply cannot raise the cash for the business that the proprietor wants to realise.
So when the consolidation process is run, where does it leave the typical manager who has dedicated the best part of their career to a business? Many of whom understood that if they worked hard and kept their nose clean, they would have some influence in its future direction; but now find themselves cut out and working for a consolidator's head office only in profits.
The answer to that question is beginning to be seen, as increasing numbers of 'Generation X' managers begin to fulfil their own demographic stereotype and start-up on their own. Granted, regulation has made it harder and more expensive for new start-ups than it once was, but those that take the plunge are more professional, better organised and have a far greater chance of success than the generation before.
Work is as much about fulfilling a basic emotional need as it is about money, whether that need is for recognition, security, or simply being responsible to yourself for your own actions; it is what makes up human nature. And it would be a very bold consolidator that can claim to control human nature as well as a market.
