Talent vs. experience in top management
Which factor should carry greater weight when evaluating a candidate for a top management position: experience or raw talent, regardless of age? Of course, people may answer that the ideal is a combination of the two, or that experience normally entails talent, or that this dilemma is fallacious. However, if you have leadership or recruiting responsibilities you may have encountered this challenge more than once.
Moreover, given that active working lives are being extended in most countries, we will face many cases where we may have to choose from members of different, sometimes distant, generations. According to some experts, cross-generational diversity is an increasing challenge for human resource managers and CEOs. I have argued elsewhere that employers face the important responsibility of recognizing, integrating and exploiting the synergies provided by people of different ages and generations. Creating a company demographics map to help handle this challenge may be recommendable, given that an ageing population can impact on the talent coming through the pipeline as well as productivity. [i]At the same time, to get the most from what older staff members have to offer, introducing more flexible working hours is a good idea.
Most people would answer that when selecting a candidate for a top position, talent should prevail over any other attribute. In any event, shortlisted candidates for top positions are usually all reasonably talented.
Younger aspirants may bring more energy, fresh ideas and native technology skills, along with other features associated with youth: idealism, disruptive thinking, dynamism and a degree oof rebellious spirit.
More senior contenders normally have other valuable assets, such as a consolidated network, knowledge of the industry, intuition and a wider vision.
Some years ago, I was invited to speak at a conference with the intriguing title "Merit, Not Age as a Discriminating Factor", organized by the Aspen Institute Italy jointly with the Agnelli Foundation, at their headquarters in Torino, Italy. n the eve of the conference, the Financial Times organized an interview with John Elkann, then Vice-Chairman of the Fiat Group, who I guess had aspirations to govern Fiat, the company where he had inherited a major stake. At the conference, Mr. Elkann chaired the plenary sessions with Mr. Mario Monti, who would afterwards become prime minister of Italy.
When I was invited to contribute to the conference I believed that the main theme was the consequences of an ageing population for European businesses. Consequently, my presentation dealt with some foreseeable measures, such as postponing the age of compulsory retirement, along with some solutions provided by educational institutions, for example promoting entrepreneurship programs for older peopole, since this segment of the population is experienced, skilled and in many cases has the resources to pilot new start-ups. Peter Drucker said in one of his last contributions that the fastest growing segment of future education will be programs for older people.
However, when I talked with my table companions at the inaugurual dinner I realized that the crux of the conference in Torino centered on how to facilitate access by young people to key positions in Italian institutions. Interestingly, gerontocracy –or age- is the prevalent regime for promotion not just in most Italian organizations but in many other countries, from business to politics and academia.
This is largely due to tradition and culture, but is also the outcome of strict labor laws, lack of real internal competition and long-standing systems for selecting and promoting people at the top. Indeed, Italy has one of the highest average age ratios of leaders across the board, along with Japan.
I believe the debate between meritocracy and gerontocracy is fake, but I guess that the deeper question is how much should experience and seniority inflluence the choice of candidates for important positions. Allow me add some suggestions, based on my experience:
- Since diversity is always a value in human relations, and complementarity renders many lessons, I suggest that if you are a markedly younger manager you surround yourself with more senior people than yourself. This principle works the other way round: if you have achieved the threshold of seniority, it’s advisable to work with younger people in order to stay connected with new trends, keeping you mentally agile.
- There are positions traditionally associated with greyer hair. This includes appointments for the C-suite, seats on boards and the like. However, this custom has also changed over recent decades, and if you now check lists such as Fortune’s 40 Under 40, you’ll ind a good number of young managers at the helm of global corporations.
- Again, back-office positions and related analytical functions, crunching numbers, developing studies or dealing with raw data were conventionally assigned to graduates fresh from their studies, whereas functions linked to customers and key stakeholders –front-office roles- were the domain of experienced workers. This has also changed, and depending on the nature of the business and the profile of customers, the ideal interface person may vary.
- Overall, the question of whether seniority is a plus has changed over time due to customs, fashions and new trends. We may be entering a phase when age will once again be regarded as the key management qualification.
Notes
[i] R. Strack, J. Baier and A. Fahlander, “Managing Demographic Risk”, Harvard Business Review, February 2008.