160: Is Forty The End Of The Line For Most Leaders

<p>Sport is a popular source of inspiration for corporate leadership.  Coaches attend off-sites and make good money telling business executives how to be better people motivators.  Sports journalist Simon Kuper made an interesting observation in his column in the Financial Times about famous football coaches falling into decline, supplanted by younger, more innovative rivals. These superstar coaches were the original innovators, but then they ran out of gas.  Well, not all of them.  Almost as an aside, he flagged the difference between the shorter longevity of the flash in the pan “innovators” and those more hardy types who excelled at “people management”.</p> <p> </p> <p>This is an interesting observation because often we surge through our careers based on our ideas, innovation or technical expertise.  We are thrusters, shining like comets across the evening skies.  In Kuper’s article, the age of forty was singled out as the pivot point.  The planets start to align and leadership hopefuls begin their move to the very top.  In my native Australia, historically, you were not thought to be a real man until you reached the age of forty.  At that point you were considered to have amassed the knowledge, experience as well as the physical strength.</p> <p> </p> <p>Kuper notes that at this age of forty, when you get the big promotion or the shot at a significant job, you have probably expended all of the your innovator ammo just getting there and now it is all downhill.  That doesn’t sound too hopeful does it. What does this mean for those who have risen in the organisation based on their technical knowledge or the strength of their ideas?  They are thinking that now they make that all important swing up to the top job.  According to Kuper instead they cross that ominous forty threshold and can look forward to nothing further than creeping decline?  Are the leader’s ideas now escaping the muse and thinkers block has set in like a black mist?  As a side note, the age of forty is also considered the danger year for men (<