Training Older Executives – The Economist
May 13, 2010 | By Kim Walker
I’m always interested when The Economist tackles issues related to ageing. Here’s one where they look at Executive Education where they comment that “older executives are shunning corporate training. This is a problem both for them and the firms they work for”
The thinking is that for older executives formal programmes are often seen as a repetition of lessons already learned and become increasingly irrelevant in the light of experience and expertise.
They seem to prefer a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach, conducting their own research and swapping war stories with their peers rather than take a place at business school.
Some proposed solutions:
- Throw money at the problem. When senior managers are offered the chance to mix with their peers at a top business school, rather than a bog-standard institution, they seem to be quickly won over.
- Make training less about abstract theory and more about the actual workplace. To accomplish this, training should be delivered in short, sharp bursts so that executives can take a lesson, put it into practice, assess its effectiveness and then return to shape it further in light of this “trial by fire”.
- Get them to train themselves. Bring experienced executives together for 90 minutes at a time. Managers are supplied with learning guides but not teachers.
The Economist sensibly concludes; Whatever approach an organisation takes to embrace its veterans, an ageing population means that it must do something, or else face the much more serious problem of how to replace them and their valuable knowledge in the near future. Unfortunately teaching an old dog the value of lifelong learning is notoriously tricky. problem both for them and the firms they work for.
