Life begins at 70

Romesh Sobti joins the growing list of reluctant retirees

IndusInd Bank Managing Director Romesh Sobti is scheduled to retire in March next year when he turns 70. But Sobti says he would be happy to continue if the Reserve Bank of India allows him to do so. In an interview to CNBC TV 18 this week, Sobti also roped in his counterpart at HDFC Bank, saying “both of us would be happy to continue”.  The views of Aditya Puri, MD of HDFC Bank, aren’t known, but there is no evidence to suggest anything to the contrary.

While his desire to stay on even after reaching the retirement age is a debatable issue, Sobti’s candour is refreshing. Many others at his age and position have also been reluctant retirees, but have used all kinds of other excuses to hang on. The usual excuses are the company’s failure to find a suitable successor, or that the company is in a transition mode and needs continuity at the top. Some believe in their indispensability so much that they simply refuse to leave — even if that means repeatedly increasing the retirement age of the entire board filled with people who share the same opinion about the leader’s rare brilliance. There is the case of this famous chairman who increased the retirement age of directors twice to stay on at the helm, but reduced it just before finally retiring from the group. In recent times, at least two other high profile gentlemen have stayed on as non-executive chairman after appointing their chosen ones as managing directors. An Insead study (“The Retirement Syndrome”) attributes this to what it calls the “edifice complex” — the strong desire to leave a legacy. 

It’s nobody’s case that these leaders haven’t done much — they are all super-brilliant, have given everything to work and have left a huge impact on their respective organisations. The only thing is they didn’t learn to let go, making things difficult for their chosen successor. All of them are a reminder of a Wall Street Journal cartoon showing a man hunched over a desk. The cartoon caption read: “He retired as an executive, returned as a consultant, and now he’s a brooding presence.” After a life of working, the idleness of retirement can indeed be a problem for anyone.

And it may not have anything to do with financial obligations. The strong desire to stay on stems in a large number of cases for people seeking to stay in control. To be fair, letting go is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do for everybody — whether you are an MBA student or a CEO after the “official” retirement. For example, Stanford researchers conducted an experiment in which 282 MBA students were recruited to play the roles of managers or subordinates who were designing a new wristwatch advertisement. The data showed that the more involvement and control a manager felt he or she had over the task, the more favourably the manager judged the final ad.

People also find it difficult to give up because they need emotional crutches after retirement. It’s ironic that most of them looked forward to retiring in the hope that it would free them from daily work obligations. However, most never really planned for their big respite and soon grew bored, lost a sense of purpose and felt unwanted. The recurring question they face when they go to bed every night is: What do I do after I wake up tomorrow? 

It is this experience of nothingness that single-minded careerists suffer from after retirement that was brilliantly captured in About Schmidt. The story is about Warren Schmidt’s life after retirement from a senior position in a life insurance company. In the film, Schmidt finds it difficult to adjust to his new life; he visits his young successor periodically to offer advice and help, but his overtures are politely declined. 

One obvious solution for the breed of reluctant retirees is to work as long as they can. In fact, quite a few are doing so. Research shows that the number of people working after retirement has soared in the last five years. But HR experts suggest people who tend to stay on for ever exposes the organisation to the risk of being crushed under the burden of one man or woman's indispensability. Experts say people should look at going off the beaten track – even after retirement, they shouldn’t just keep doing something they have anyway done with distinction in the most productive years of their life.