By Alden S. Blodget
When I turned 60, I received a great birthday card. On the front was a referee blowing a whistle and shouting, “You’re old!” Inside was the same ref, thumb pointed over his shoulder, yelling, “You’re out!” And that’s pretty much the fate of old people: ejected from the game. Just when they finally have enough experience and knowledge to understand the game and to improve a team’s performance, they are expected to become irrelevant and invisible — preferably neither seen nor heard.
Several factors contribute to this sense that old people are finished. The young want their turn, so the old face societal expectations to step aside. Older workers are often more expensive, so they’re economically nudged to the side, too. And old people themselves often contribute to attitudes about them. Many are tired of work, ready to pursue other interests; many others need to retire because they are no longer productive. Several of my older colleagues remained so anchored to the past that they became unwilling to understand the present or imagine a future that isn’t the past. Too often, these are the ones who refuse to retire and become the source of the impatience with which the young respond to the old.
Lost in the morass of expectation and stereotype are those old people whose understanding and vision could produce transformative changes in their professions, if anyone were to recognize their potential. Typically, that potential is lost in an assumption that old people have nothing worthwhile to say. Perception shapes reality. The same creative idea will be received differently depending on whether it was delivered from the lips of a 45-year-old or a 70-year-old. Of course, because transformative ideas often require the experience and perspective of age, they are less likely ever to be spoken by the 45-year-old. This need for more seasoned insights may well be one of the reasons that truly meaningful progress is so slow in so many human endeavors. Conversely, the lack of these insights within organizations may be the reason that humans are more likely to repeat past mistakes and to constantly reinvent the wheel.
For the past few years, I have been watching one old, retired man attempt to change the culture of youth hockey so that fewer players will be hurt in that sport. His ideas are not merely new; given the history and culture of hockey, they are revolutionary.
