FENCE SITTER

Can an old man be put in charge of a young group to give it direction, lend it gravitas and get the organization through a rough patch of financial reversals and eroding market share?

may be coded, and not intended literally.

The age advantage in a social setting applies as well to females. In the case of the older female matched to a much younger male (previously the domain of dance instructors, now more of yoga and life coaching) the term used is zoological in nature, with the current nomenclature, for reasons unknown to me, being “cougar,” a feline predator heavily availing of cosmetic treatments. Why a lecherous female is not called a “Dirty Old Woman” or DOW is a mystery.

DOM can be viewed as an ageist slur. In the workplace, such a tag denotes that productivity for one so designated is not workrelated, implying undue attention to the workers more than the work. Whatever happened to the concept of mentoring where an older master guides the career and skills enhancement of a young and fetching ballet dancer? ( Your tutu needs pressing.)

In business, it’s easy to tell organizations that respect age presumed to embody experienced leadership. Just check out how old the CEO is. Those still actively running a mature business beyond the usual retirement age consider succession plans in the same category as earthquake drills.

The determination of the appropriate age for leadership is a clue on how number of years in life or in business is regarded in an organization.

When senior management regularly throws around disparaging phrases like old fogies, dinosaurs, and expressions like “the notebook was a stationery during his time,” to draw laughter, rest assured that this is a young culture with a CEO in his early thirties. On the other end of the spectrum, if the phrases in vogue in the boardroom are angry young man, wet behind the ears, milk on his lips, raw and impulsive, jumps before he thinks, and spends all of his time in the gym... well, you don’t get a prize for guessing what kind of organization that is.

Can the DOM model work in business? Can an old man be put in charge of a young group to give it direction, lend it gravitas and get the organization through a rough patch of financial reversals and eroding market share? This particular coupling (no pun intended) of age and vitality in a corporate setting does not draw smirks if it works. It can even be a successful business model. Still, even in this age-hospitable climate, the supervising adult needs to be unobtrusive and prove his added value. He can skip the parties.

As in other May- December pairings, the generations can part ways when the company is back on its feet. The old leader and his young troops take different paths, having learned from each other and achieving a shared success.

Still, the generation gap whether social or corporate is best left unexplained. The proffered justification anyway is sure to be dismissed with a knowing smile — nice tie, Sir. �