Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was 56 years old when he created his monumental masterpiece Guernica. In many industrialized countries, had he been an employee, he would have been sent into retirement just a few years later. Just stop and think for a moment how fundamentally misguided that practice is.
To many art lovers Picasso was the outstanding genius of the twentieth century, producing large quantities of paintings, sculptures, drawings, etchings, ceramics, and other works of art. Yet it was only when he was age 66 that Pablo Picasso even began working with ceramics. At age 70 he created the powerful painting Massacre in Korea. And at age 76 in the Las Meninas series he once again showed in 58 paintings (44 of which were interpretations of Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece Las Meninas) what an astounding mix of playful virtuosity he could bring to handling different styles, topics, and techniques, while always maintaining his characteristic touch. At the ripe old age of 87, Picasso produced a series of 347 etchings titled The Artist and His Models. Undeniably, Picasso’s tremendous inventiveness and seemingly endless creativity, right up to his death at the ripe old age of 91 years, made him one of the most important modern artists.
We are living at a time and in a society in which people are growing old in good health. Bearing in mind how important demographic development is to the economy, as a manager you, too, need to consider this issue. As an individual, you may prefer to consider the personal contribution you envisage making even at an advanced age; but as a manager you must also consider how you can best exploit the opportunities that a generation mix opens up for your organization. Is there any good reason why your organization should not have staff covering an age range of, say, 25 to 75? After all, some of Picasso’s most outstanding works were produced when he was way past 50, yet even at that age many people already have a tough time finding a new job if they lose their old one. Even though they are still full of mental creativity and have a real wealth of experience, they are deprived of the opportunity of making a worthwhile contribution to their organization. By exhibiting such a naive fixation on employing young people—a trend that thankfully now appears to be waning—organizations fritter away some of their most valuable resources: specialist knowledge, management know-how, general knowledge, business relations, and experience. As a manager you need to think about how you can create ways of harnessing such precious assets. Bear in mind, too, that it is usually older people in particular who can be expected to exhibit such positive traits as discipline, diligence, modesty, conscientiousness, and a sense of responsibility. Unfortunately, nowadays the importance of such character traits is sometimes overlooked.
Being prejudiced against the over-50 population positively undermines the effectiveness of an organization. Institutions need to devise new employment concepts in which both young and older people can pull together. In practice, this means doing the following: looking for possible ways in which the potential of older workers can be maintained and continue to be harnessed for the good of the organization. Why not consider steadily reducing their working time while simultaneously adapting their duties? Arrange things so that older employees want to stay in the organization because they are being deployed in areas where they can perform well and thus remain productive. Think about concepts that enable people to work in mixed groups, so that young and old can make joint contributions, drawing more effectively on the strengths of different age groups.
It is a major and very frequent mistake not to fully integrate older staff members into continuing training programs, because not only are they often expensive employees, but intelligence research has ascertained that human beings start exploiting their full mental capacity only when 50 years old and remain capable of learning up to a high age. Naturally, decisions about who embarks when on what kind of training need to be made carefully, on a case-by-case basis. But if you expect employees to remain in your organization for several more years, sending them to a training course will always pay off. It will also show them that you value them, which they are likely to appreciate. So bear in mind that if you create opportunities here, you will be sending out an important signal regarding your corporate culture. And do not underestimate the value of the trust such an approach will generate.
The next time you think about how to design continuing training programs or sending staff to undergo training, remember that the German statesman Konrad Adenauer was elected federal chancellor for the fourth time at the age of 85 and only finally relinquished the leadership of his party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), at the age of 90. Alexander von Humboldt concluded his five-volume Cosmos when he was 88 years old, an age at which Michelangelo was still working on his Pietà Rondanini sculpture. Of course, you may rightly point out that not everybody working for your organization is such a genius. And no organization is likely to envision continuing training programs for people who are over 85 years old.
Maybe you will choose to follow the personal advice given by the German writer Paul Heyse, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1910: “If your short time here on Earth is to yield a life of worth, when young your elders heed, and when old from younger feed!”1
What do you need to do in your organization to establish an effective generation mix? What specific use can you make of it?
Review your training and continuing training programs to see whether all age categories are adequately integrated. Think where you personally would like to take part in these programs.
Find out about demographic change and its anticipated consequences. There is hardly any other area in which the future can be so accurately predicted. Try to “recognize the future that has already happened” and foresee the impact on your organization, as discussed in Chapter 24 on Ray Kroc.