{"id":1004,"date":"2015-04-09T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2016-10-28T13:15:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T12:15:22","slug":"the-value-of-age-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/04\/09\/the-value-of-age-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value of Age Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m no one to comment on the Nigerian elections<\/a>. But I do have one observation to make: the elected President is 72. How many people run for President (and win the election!) at this age?<\/strong> I bet not many.\u00a0Africans have\u00a0a young population, youthful mentality and respect for elders \u2013 the right values to get the best out of age diversity in management teams <\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Diversity\"<\/a>
Diversity can be valuable if managed properly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let\u2019s compare a company to a forest. A forest contains trees and other living organisms, and biodiversity plays an important role in its functioning. Similarly, a company is a human community comprised of people with different characteristics.\u00a0Diversity \u2013 and age diversity in particular \u2013 may contribute to a company functioning\u00a0well. <\/span><\/a>\n

Younger people are like new\u00a0shoots: they can\u00a0contribute innovation and bring new ideas and ways of doing things.<\/strong> Older people are like established\u00a0trees: they may act as repositories of knowledge and company values and \u00a0pass these on to others.<\/p>\n

At the same time, each generation has its own drawbacks. Younger people may not have a full picture of the company and its environment and might take undue risks; their elders may not embrace present times, and think things were better in the past.\u00a0Of course, not all people fit the stereotypes: some young people are very wise, and some old people are very youthful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once I heard Carlos Ghosn<\/a> (Chairman and CEO of Nissan Motor) say that when you have a common purpose, diversity is transformed from a source of conflict into a basis for complementarity.\u00a0If people of different age groups work together, they can mutually enhance each other\u2019s contributions and offset each other\u2019s drawbacks. <\/span><\/a>\n

These ideas might apply not only to companies, but also to other communities such as families or society at large,<\/strong> don’t you think?<\/p>\n

As I finished writing this post I read about a study by McKinsey<\/a> showing that companies with more diverse workforces perform better financially.<\/strong> Curiously,<\/strong> they focus on gender and ethnic diversity while age diversity is overlooked. Any ideas on why this may be the case?<\/strong><\/p>\n

On a different note, next week I’ll offer an open webinar<\/strong>: “Alliances and Acquisitions: 1+1=? It depends on how you do it!” Tuesday April 14th<\/sup>, 5:00-5:45 p.m. (GMT + 2).<\/strong> For additional information and free registration, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, I want to express my condolences to the families of those killed in Kenya last week. My thoughts and prayers go out to them, with the hope that this will never happen again.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m no one to comment on the Nigerian elections. But I do have one observation to make: the elected President is 72. How many people run for President (and win the election!) at this age? I bet not many.\u00a0Africans have\u00a0. Let\u2019s compare a company to a forest. A forest contains trees and other living organisms, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":1008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85385],"tags":[80776,19447,240,1020,1080,100447,80201,100265],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-doing-business-in-africa","tag-civil-society","tag-diversity","tag-innovation","tag-mckinsey","tag-nigeria","tag-nigerian-elections","tag-politics","tag-youthful-mentality","megacategoria-mc-africa","megacategoria-mc-strategy"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1071,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions\/1071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}