I asked my good friend, Heather Bussing, to try to restate the last article. I want to be sure that I am communicating the idea clearly. Having another person reframe the same thing is a really good way to make sure that the idea is being effectively delivered.

Here is her version of yesterday’s article:

John Sumser has been thinking and writing about demographics for the last 15 years. He was on the cutting edge of identifying both declining population as the precursor to a labor shortage and the effect that new communication technologies would have on finding new employees and the nature of work itself.

As we have seen both these predictions play out, new layers and complexities have emerged. One of the best ways to understand the changes is to look at population diagrams—shapes showing population and other factors such as gender and age over time. The shapes of the diagrams and how they have altered in the last few decades gives tremendous insight into how the decrease in overall population and increasing age of the population is changing our culture, our companies and recruiting.

Changing population shapes will also change how we have to talk and think about hiring people. Race will either become a non-issue or ahuge one as the population of Caucasians is shrinking the fastest. Age and gender will become more important to be able to talk about because the needs of an aging population and child-bearing women will become essential to consider if you want employees. Both the cultural and legal changes will be significant.

We are used to the pyramid shape—our economy, organizational structures and assumptions about growth and success are all about making it to the top—a mountain shape with broad base of young or new people angling to a pinnacle symbolizing the point of power or achievement. There’s even a pyramid on our money. Our organizations and government are all set up in a pyramid with someone on top and increasing layers of people with decreasing amounts of responsibility as you slide down the slope.

But a pyramid no longer reflects what is going on in the population of the United States and most of the first and second world countries. Older people are living longer and so the diagram of older people is widening. The Baby-Boomers are moving up through the pyramid widening the top. The entrance of women in the work-place and the equal rights movement has meant that women are waiting longer to have children and having fewer of them. So the bottom of the pyramid is narrowing.

The resulting shape is more of a rectangle—or as John calls it—a phone pole.

When you then evaluate specific populations in specific industries, geographical places, cultures or companies, other shapes emerge. In some places like the Midwest, the young people are leaving in droves and moving to the coasts because corporations have taken over farming or they don’t want to build cars. Some industries are politically incorrect or unattractive to younger people. You just don’t hear little kids saying they want to grow up and work in a coal mine or an offshore oil rig near the Arctic. Those diagrams have a narrow point at the end reflecting decreasing population with age. They look like fenceposts. Others seem to be missing any newcomers and look like a floating box.

The shape of the diagram tells you what the future of the company, culture or economy will be. A fencepost is headed toward a floating box. A floating box is headed toward extinction. A phone pole needs to figure out how to re-tool and re-think how it functions, how it works and what opportunities for advancement are available for an evenly distributed population, how to attract new energy and how to function effectively with a lot of people at the top.

These are the challenges we are facing at work and in the world. They are essential both to managing companies and recruiting for those companies. Thus, creating the diagram of your own company’s or industry’s population is an essential place to begin to solve the challenges and develop a solid recruiting strategy for a changing economy, culture and world.