The Law of Life (and Leadership)

I love talking about leading and managing change.  To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes (by Former Secretary of Defense and Retired U.S. Marine Corps General James N. Mattis), leadership is about managing change.  If you don't like managing change, stay out of leadership (admittedly, General Mattis' exact quote is a little different, "A leader's role is problem solving.  If you don't like problems, stay out of leadership").  There are literally hundreds of thousands of articles and books on leading and managing change.  There are probably as many quotes about leading and managing change.

According to the physicist Albert Einstein, "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."  In other words, the only way we can develop and progress as individuals is through change, and the smartest individuals are the ones who recognize this point.  While most experts recognize that it is easier to lead and manage change when there is consensus (more on this point below), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."   

It's also important to recognize that leading and managing change isn't easy (and it's not always fun).  As a matter of fact, the philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli said, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

While there are countless models of change, I particularly like the following model developed by the business and leadership consultant Mary Lippitt in 1987, which was later modified and adapted by the education consultant Timothy Knoster in 1991 (it's actually really hard to find the original citations).  The model is typically called the "Lippitt-Knoster Model for Managing Complex Change".  According to Lippitt, managing change requires five components: vision, skills, incentives, resources, and a plan of action.  

First, successfully leading and managing change requires a vision for the future state that you want to achieve with the change.  As the great New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra quipped, "If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up somewhere else." Your vision is your North Star, your guide, your beacon of hope for a new and better future.

Second, navigating through and implementing change requires knowledge and skills.  Similarly, the right incentives must be in place to help change behavior and make the change stick.  Most change initiatives require time, energy, and (often) money, so leaders of change have to provide the requisite resources up front to implement the change.  Finally, as Benjamin Franklin said, "By failing to plan, you are preparing to fail."  Not to be outdone, Winston Churchill said, "He who fails to plan is planning to fail."  Leading and managing change requires an action plan.

Timothy Koster modified and adapted Lippitt's original model by adding a sixth necessary component - consensus.  Successfully implementing a change requires the collective agreement and support from all the major stakeholders who may be impacted by the change.  When there is consensus, the change is collaborative in nature, which reduces the resistance to change and makes the change initiative more likely to succeed and be sustained.  Whether that consensus comes through the proverbial "burning platform" (what change guru John Kotter calls "creating a sense of urgency") or through negotiation and collaboration is not important.  What is important is that change leaders have a critical mass of individuals who not only support the change, but are willing to work towards making that change a reality.  As Greg Shea, a Senior Fellow at the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management said, "If you are leading change and there is no sign of resistance, either you’re not being taken seriously, or the resisters are not telling you the truth."  Pay attention to those individuals who are most likely to help you, get them on board with your vision, and move forward.  Shea says, "The reality is that when you have a large enough group, you won’t get buy in from everyone."  Nor do you need it!  Shea goes on further, "There are simply too many conflicting interests, values, and agendas to get everyone on board. In every organization, no matter the problems, there are people vested in not wanting to change."

What I particularly like about the model is the following figure that tells you what happens when one of these six factors (vision, consensus, skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan) are missing:

The 35th American President John F. Kennedy said, "Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."  Again, I will paraphrase and say that change is the law of leadership.

Turning to the dark side...

There have been countless articles about the relationship between physicians and hospital executives ("white coats versus blue suits").  During the best of times, it's often a frictional relationship.  During the worst of times, it can become downright adversarial.  Dr. Diane Shannon writes (see "Bridging the Divide for Leaders and Physicians" from the American Association of Physician Leadership), "The gap between administrators and physicians manifests as lack of understanding, lack of cooperation, lack of engagement, anger, frustration and, sometimes, disrespectful behavior. These slights, both real and perceived, between managers and providers are a source of underlying tension in many health care organizations."

One of the most commonly cited reasons for why hospital administrators and physicians are often at odds is the complexity of our health care delivery system.  J. Deane Waldman and Kenneth H. Cohn suggested an alternative viewpoint in The Business of Healthcare writing, "...the real enemy is our dysfunctional health care system."  Regardless of the reasons, there can still be an contentious relationship there, and one way that health care organizations have attempted to solve this issue is by promoting physicians into executive leadership positions.  

Speaking from my own personal experience, I have often found that working as both a physician and health care administrator can be difficult at times - for example, the physicians will say things like, "You've gone over to the dark side" or "You've become a suit".  You're never quite fully accepted by either group ("You are one of them" - and being a "them" is not meant to be a compliment).  Finally, you frequently have to shift both your mindset and the language that you use, depending on which "hat" you are wearing at a specific point in time.  However, I will also say that the positives have outweighed the negatives, and my career so far as a physician executive has been extremely rewarding.

With all of this in mind, I found a recent article by Sachin Jain appearing in Harvard Business Review to be quite interesting - it's called "Tips for Physicians Transitioning to the Business Side of Health Care".  Here are Dr. Jain's four recommendations:

1. Don't expect others to do your job

Importantly, Dr. Jain is currently an adjunct Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.  He basically states that physicians are paid to think, not necessarily do - and while that may be true for some physicians, it's not necessarily true for all physicians (I am thinking specifically of my surgical colleagues, who are expected to think and do).  He uses the example when a physician at the bedside will enter an order for a medication into the electronic health record (or write a prescription), which is then transcribed by a pharmacist, at which time a nurse will administer the medication to the patient.  Conversely, when a physician becomes an administrator, he or she may expect a similar infrastructure, which is not necessarily the case.  Physician executives are often asked to not only develop ideas, but also to build and execute a plan to implement them.  He writes, "The best physicians who work in organizations roll up their sleeves and make things happen, owning both vision and execution - being close to every detail and shaping and doing the work."

2. Be thoughtful and curious, not reflexive and defensive

Dr. Jain emphasizes that practicing clinicians often have to make quick decisions under uncertain and ambiguous conditions.  For example, if a patient is having a heart attack, the physician has to be able to quickly recognize the clinical presentation and administer treatment as quickly as possible.  In contrast, he suggests that physician administrators are often faced with complex situations where careful deliberation and making informed (based upon data) decisions are imperative.  Again, I do not completely agree with him here.  In my experience, I've often found that administrators have to make difficult decisions with imperfect information - we live in a VUCAT world after all!  It would be great to wait for perfect information, but I've found that perfect information is a rare exception and not the norm (whether I am wearing a "physician hat" or "administrator hat").

3. Focus on outcomes, not politics

Dr. Jain argues that health care organizations are political organizations, and while I have found that to be true, managing an organization as complex and as heavily matrixed as an academic medical center (as an example) can't be one that depends solely upon consensus.  As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr once said, "A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."

4. Learn the new language

Here, I completely agree with Dr. Jain.  I have found that the language used in the C suite to be quite different than that which is commonly used on the hospital wards.  For example, a Chief Financial Officer once asked me why physicians don't ever write business plans.  I responded that there is very little difference between a business plan and a research grant proposal (to that end, I recently compared the two at the Leadership, Empowerment, and Development Program provided by the Society of Critical Care Medicine at its annual meeting a few weeks ago.  Importantly, because different terms are used, if someone spends all of their time on the business and administration side, they may not fully appreciate that things are more similar than they are different.  Regardless, learning the language is important!

Overall, I found Dr. Jain's recommendations to be interesting and worthwhile to consider.  However, perhaps the most important advice that I can provide for any physician considering a change in career paths towards health care administration is to find a group of colleagues and mentors to help you along the way.  Over the years, I have often discussed problems that I have encountered with my peers as well as my mentors, and I usually have found that they have experienced something similar at some point in their career. 

Let’s Celebrate Women Physicians!

Today, February 3rd, is the 203rd birthday of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the very first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree.  Dr. Blackwell was famously allowed to attend medical school as a prank by her fellow students.  She had applied to a number of medical schools, only to be told that medicine was a profession not meant for women.  She applied to Geneva Medical College (now known as Norton College of Medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University).  Apparently the faculty asked the other (both current and incoming) medical students to vote on whether to accept her or not (the stipulation was that the vote had to be unanimous).  The students voted unanimously for her acceptance as a funny way to get back at the faculty.  Dr. Blackwell entered medical school with the 1847 class and graduated in 1849.  During those days, medical school consisted of a one year course of study that was repeated in the second year.  The faculty and students eventually came around, and when the dean of the medical school awarded Dr. Blackwell her diploma, he stood up and bowed to her.

Dr. Blackwell continued to encounter prejudice throughout her career, and later left the United States to continue her training in Europe.  There, while caring for an infant with ophthalmia neonatorum, she accidentally contaminated her own eye and contracted the infection.  Unfortunately, she became blind in that eye, which forced her to abandon her dream of becoming a surgeon.  She would later return to the United States, where she founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with her younger sister, Emily Blackwell (who incidentally was the third woman to graduate from a U.S. medical school).  Both Drs. Blackwell focused on women’s health, pediatrics, and social justice.  

The Doctors Blackwell were pioneers in medicine and early advocates for a woman’s right to practice our profession.  Their story was superbly told in an excellent book by the author Janice Nimura (The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine) National Women Physicians Day was established to honor Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and recognizes the contributions of all women in medicine.  While we have come a long way since Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College, the struggles for women’s equity in our profession remains a real one today.  There is work ahead, and we all must play a role.  However, for now, congratulations to all of my women colleagues and friends in medicine, and Happy National Women Physicians Day!

Talkin' 'bout my generation!

My wife recently watched an online video of a 2016 interview with Simon Sinek called "On Millennials in the Workplace" (which now has more than 13 million views on YouTube).  I've read (and thoroughly enjoyed) a couple of his books (Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last are two of my personal favorites), and I was finally able to listen to the interview myself.  Sinek doesn't pull any punches, starting the "interview" (I use quotes because the interviewer never really said anything during the 15 minute video) with, "I have yet to give a speech where somebody doesn't ask me the Millennial question.  So, let us get straight to the point.  They are accused of being entitled, narcissistic, lazy, unfocused, and self-interested.  They're not happy, there's a missing piece."  Wow!  I thought Sinek was a little too harsh, even if he did make some good points.  It's worth a listen.

I've always found it difficult to compare and contrast the supposed differences in beliefs, attitudes, and motivations between the different generations.  It's kind of like that old saying that parents often tell their kids, "When I was your age, we walked to school every day in 3 feet of snow.  Up hill both ways!"  I also keep playing a song by The Who ("My Generation") in the back of my mind.  However, I do think that it's an important discussion for leaders (more on this point shortly), particularly at a time when there are five different generations in the workforce.

Speaking of five different generations in the workforce - there's an interesting statistic that keeps coming up in the media, suggesting that by the year 2025 (which is admittedly not far away), so-called Millennials will make-up 75% of the workforce.  Millennials (also known as Generation Y) are defined by the Pew Research Center as individuals who were born between 1981 and 1996 (see the chart below).

The term "Millennial" was apparently first used in the book Generations: The History of America's Future , 1584 to 2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe, who felt it was an appropriate name for the first generation to reach adulthood in the new millennium.  Most Millennials are the children of Baby Boomers (individuals born between 1946 to 1964) and older Generation X (individuals born between 1965 to 1980).  They were the first generation to grow up with the Internet, they tend to be more educated and more diverse than preceding generations, they tend to forego marriage and family until later in life, and they are now the second largest generation in America.  

However, contrary to what is commonly believed, they will not comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025!  Of course, this is an older assertion that started with the "Gen Y Women in the Workplace" study, which was conducted by the Business Professional Women (BPW) Foundation in 2011.  The study claimed that by 2025, Generation Y (or Millennials) will make up roughly 75% of the world’s workforce.  The study referenced U.S. Department of Labor statistics, but it wasn’t specific about the data source.  Unfortunately, the statement grabbed a lot of attention and has been perpetuated ever since.  Josh Zumbrun conducted some fact-checking for a 2014 Wall Street Journal article, "How to Tell if a 'Fact' About Millennials Isn't Actually a Fact".  Based upon a more rigorous statistical analysis, Zumbrun concluded that in 2025 Millennials will make up a little over 40% of the labor force (which also turned out to be much closer to the truth in more recent studies):

As you can hopefully appreciate from the graph above, Generation X will make up nearly 50% of the workforce, so why Millennials are assuming ever greater importance, they are still outnumbered by the Gen X'ers. 

So, the next logical question with these more accurate statistics is "So what?"  Does it make any difference that 40% of the workforce next year will be Millennials / Generation Y?  I guess the answer to that question depends on whether you think (1) there are differences in how individuals from different generations approach work and (2) whether those differences, if they exist, matter to how you lead and manage those individuals.  Monique Valcour wrote a nice article a few years ago for the Harvard Business Review ("Hitting the Intergenerational Sweet Spot") and started with a similar statement to Simon Sinek above:

"The stereotype Millennials get tagged with goes like this: they are a generation of smartphone addicts who live for feedback and praise, lack appropriate deference, feel entitled to rapid advancement but are unwilling to 'pay their dues', prioritize personal life and work-life balance over employers' needs, and think they should be able to work wherever, whenever, and however they want."  If you stopped reading there, you would miss out on perhaps her most important point.  She follows this statement with, "Although this portrait drives a robust market for multigenerational workforce training, it misconstrues the qualities of employees born in the last two decades of the 20th century - while over-hyping the differences between them and older employees."

Now we're talking.  It's important to remember that the use of stereotypes to generalize to a large group is never a good idea.  Merriam-Webster's online dictionary even has a new, updated definition and defines stereotype as an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic.  As Valcour (and others too) points out in her article, "large-scale studies using random samples and validated measures have found only slight differences in the job attitudes and values of Millennials and members of older generations."  In other words, the so-called differences in motivations, attitudes, and values between different generations probably are not as important as commonly believed.  And as another article in the Harvard Business Review emphasizes, "Generational differences at work are small.  Thinking they're big affects our behavior."

So what can we conclude from all of this?  First, don't believe every statistic that you come across - it's important to fact-check!  Second, don't believe all the hype about the important differences between the different generations that are currently in the workforce.  Rebecca Knight ("Managing People from 5 Generations") recommends the following when it comes to leading and managing multigenerational teams:

1. Don't dwell on differences

2. Build collaborative relationships

3. Study your employees 

4. Create opportunities for cross-generational mentoring

5. Consider life-paths

Bottom line.  People from a particular generation have questioned the attitudes and behaviors of the succeeding generation since antiquity!  Consider this quote from a 1911 article in The Atlantic:

"Veteran teachers are saying that never in their experience were young people so thirstily avid of pleasure as now...so selfish."  Talkin' 'bout my generation...

Horrible Bosses

It's almost a cliché to say that people don't quit a job, they quit a boss.  As you would expect, it's not quite that simple - I've even read that it's the biggest lie in HR!  Most of the research I've read can be summarized by three points:

1. People leave bad leaders and managers, but it's usually not the number one reason why people leave organizations.

2.  Leaders and managers can make a huge difference in "good organizations."

3.  Good or bad leaders and managers make very little difference in people's decision to leave "bad organizations."

I've mentioned Lt General Hal Moore in the past (see my post "We were soldiers once...") and his excellent leadership book, Hal Moore on Leadership: Winning When Outgunned and Outmanned.  In his book, Lt General Moore developed a rather lengthy list on the different types of "toxic leaders" that he encountered during his long and distinguished career in the U.S. Army.  He defined "bully leaders" as leaders who inflict emotional pain, deliver threats and ultimatums, hurl insults, and invalidate the opinions of others.  What's important is that this particular type of "toxic leader" has far-reaching implications, even after an employee leaves.  

I came across what I thought was an important study in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology titled "Scarred for the Rest of My Career? Career-long effects of abusive leadership on professional athlete aggression and task performance".  The investigators in this study looked at data obtained from professional basketball players and coaches in the NBA between the 2000-2001 and 2005-2006 seasons (693 players and 57 coaches).  They conducted an extensive leadership analysis of each coach (who held a coaching position for at least one full season during the period of study) based on publicly available descriptions of their leadership style.  They then rated each coach using a validated scale of abusive leadership.  Analyzing player performance was much easier due to the abundance of statistical data available.  Player performance was based upon a composite measure (previously validated) based upon points, rebounds, assists, turnovers, field goal percentage, free throw percentage, etc.  Player aggression was based on the number of technical fouls that each player received.  

Controlling for tenure, salary, team winning percentage, and absence due to injuries, players who were exposed to an abusive coach were more likely to be aggressive as well (based on the number of technical fouls received) for the rest of their careers, even after leaving the coach.  Similarly, players who played for an abusive coach also performed worse for the duration of their career (compared to their performance before playing for the abusive coach).  

While playing professional basketball is different from, say working in a hospital or business, I think at least some of the findings are transferable to settings different from sports.  First, there are at a number of studies outside of professional sports that suggest that working for a toxic leader leads to worse job satisfaction, lower motivation, and worse performance.  Second, though I suspect there are not a lot of studies to answer this question, it is possible that working for a toxic leader can lead to toxic behaviors in the future.  Toxic leaders create a toxic work environment and culture (that has been shown consistently).  In addition, we often model our behavior based upon what we have been exposed to in the past.  If we've worked for a toxic leader in the past, it's not a stretch to say that we may be more likely to exhibit some of these toxic behaviors in the future.  

There is a dark comedy with an all-star cast about toxic leaders, called "Horrible Bosses".  One of the main characters says, "We were all working at pretty terrible jobs for some awful bosses and we just thought, if we ever got a chance to be our own bosses, that we'd do things differently."  Hopefully that is the case, but it wasn't necessarily what happened in the movie nor in the study discussed above.  

Whether you leave or stay in an organization with a toxic leader is a difficult question and probably one that you can only answer for yourself.  However, I've found some great advice for how to cope with a toxic leader: "Surviving a toxic leader's influence while remaining a strong leader yourself, is a never ending task. Wherever you find a vacuum of leadership, step up to the plate and provide the real thing. Not by opposing others but by showing them a different way. Remember to take care of yourself and stay positive."

The 70's weren't all that bad...

I admit that I may be biased, but there was nothing better than Saturday morning cartoons and television shows during the 1970's!  Some of my personal favorites were Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (I especially liked "Peabody's Improbably History"), Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (particularly Commander McBragg) and  Schoolhouse Rock!, The New Adventures of Flash Gordon, Land of the Lost, Scooby's Laff-A- Lympics, and Shazam! (and the Shazam / Isis Hour).  I'm sure there were more, but these were the ones I can still vividly remember.  Land of the Lost was surprisingly complex in some of its themes, and I think I learned from Schoolhouse Rock! at times than I did at school.  Many of my favorite shows often had a moral at the end, where characters would break the "fourth wall" and speak directly to the television audience about the show's lesson.

I'll admit that I've watched a few episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! on Amazon Prime recently, and I've found all of the episodes of The World of Commander McBragg on YouTube.  I'd love to find all of the episodes of Land of the Lost somewhere (the 2009 Will Ferrell movie was a travesty in my opinion - the Saturday morning television series was never meant to be a comedy).  There were of course some forgettable shows, but overall, I just think the shows were better than what was on television when our own children were growing up (they may argue with me on this point)!

While looking for old episodes of some of my favorites, I came across a television show that I hadn't remembered, until reading about it.  The show was called Ark II, and it was a live-action science fiction show about four scientists (well, okay three scientists and one chimpanzee) named Jonah, Ruth, Samuel, and Adam (the chimpanzee - who apparently talked, but I don't remember that) who drove around in a highly specialized vehicle set in a 25th century post-apocalyptic Earth.  Earth had been decimated by the effects of waste, pollution, and warfare (sound familiar?), and the surviving scientists pooled their knowledge and resources to send the Ark II (Get it?  The first Ark was Noah's Ark) to search for remnants of civilization.  Every episode started with Jonah, the leader, introducing the backstory:

"For millions of years, Earth was fertile and rich. Then pollution and waste began to take their toll. Civilization fell into ruin. This is the world of the 25th century. Only a handful of scientists remain, men who have vowed to rebuild what has been destroyed. This is their achievement: Ark II, a mobile storehouse of scientific knowledge, manned by a highly trained crew of young people. Their mission: to bring the hope of a new future to mankind."

The show would end with Jonah submitting his captain's log, which contained the episode's lesson (thus not breaking the fourth wall).  The show was revolutionary at the time for introducing a racially mix cast, though unfortunately there were also concerns expressed by the actors about how the chimpanzee was treated during filming.

They say that "art often imitates life".  Well, art also plays a major role in shaping culture, challenging societal norms, and influencing social change.  As I look back on many of the television shows that I watched as a child, I find they did have an impact on culture and social change.  I'm not sure that today's popular television shows (mostly reality TV) do that, which is unfortunate.  And at some point, most Saturday morning cartoons (which aren't even a thing anymore) were more geared to marketing a product versus providing any kind of moral lesson.  It would be hard to go back to the 1970's, but maybe there are some things that we can learn from that decade.

Youth Movement

Yesterday, the National Football League (NFL)'s Atlanta Falcons passed on the opportunity to hire former New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick.  Instead, they went with the current Defensive Coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams (and former Interim Head Coach of the Falcons) Raheem Morris.  Here is what the Falcons owner, Arthur Blank explained his choice:

"This is a historic day for the Atlanta Falcons – after a comprehensive search we are thrilled to welcome Raheem Morris back to Atlanta as the team’s new head coach.  With 26 years of experience in the NFL, including the last three in an outstanding organization that has won our league’s championship in that time, Raheem emerged from a field of excellent candidates and is the right leader to take our team into the future. His time in LA has given him an enhanced perspective on everything from personnel, team operations, game planning, working with an outstanding offensive staff and many other things that has helped him develop into an even more prepared coach in all aspects of the game. I believe his leadership skills have grown and his understanding of what it takes to have a highly collaborative one-team culture are now at a much higher level."

The Falcons reportedly interviewed 14 different candidates, include Belichick (they actually interviewed him twice, suggesting that he was at least receiving heavy consideration).  I think the Falcons made a great hire, and I hope Morris is successful there.  Of course, now the speculation begins on whether Belichick, who needs just 14 wins to become the NFL's all-time leader in wins as a head coach (he is currently second behind legendary coach Don Shula), will coach again in the NFL.  As of today (1/26/2024), there are just two head coach vacancies - the Washington Commanders and the Seattle Seahawks, and Belichick is currently not under consideration for either job.  I read at least one article by Senior NFL Reporter Charles Robinson that gave two reasons why Belichick won't coach this year - time and power.  He has too little time (he is already 71 years of age) and wants too much power.  

Surprisingly, former Seattle Seahawks Head Coach Peter Carroll is also waiting on a new job.  Carroll has won both at the college and professional level, winning the National Championship at USC in 2003 and 2004, and following up with a Super Bowl XLVIII win with the Seahawks in 2014 (he's actually one of just three head coaches to win a championship at both the college and professional levels - the other two being Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer). Carroll is 72 years of age, and given his credentials, he may suffer from a similar issue as Belichick - he has too little time and wants too much power.  We will see.

I say all of this at a time when the NFL seems to be hiring younger and younger head coaches.  The average age of coaches in the NFL right now is 47.3 years, and over half of the current group of head coaches is under age 50 years.  The Patriots replaced Belichick with Jerod Mayo, who at 37 years of age is one of the youngest head coaches.  As recently as 2016, the average age was 53.4 years.  The trend even has a name - the "Sean McVay effect", which described a youth movement that began in 2018 when the Los Angeles Rams hired Sean McVay at age 30 years, the youngest coach at the time in the history of the NFL.  McVay found success early, which led other teams to follow suit and hire younger coaches.

I have to point out that there doesn't seem to be a "youth movement" with the upcoming U.S. Presidential election (the two likely candidates are currently 77 years and 81 years) - I won't comment anymore on politics today, as the trends in the corporate world are more interesting.  According to a study by the recruiting firm Spencer Stuart, the average age of CEO's of S&P firms increased, with a peak in 2021 of age 56 years.  Apparently, the trend increased in the pandemic, as firms were seeking CEO's with more experience to help lead and navigate their companies through a particularly challenging time.  However, there was a sharp decline in the average age of CEO's in 2022 at 53.8 years (see the Figure below), and nearly 30% of newly appointed CEO's were under the age of 50.

In other words, boards could be changing their tune, investing in leaders with less proven experience but with the kind of potential to be great leaders for long periods of time.  The "youth movement" in the NFL is all about the ability of younger head coaches to relate to their players and perhaps less about predicted tenure.  Perhaps the "youth movement" in the corporate world is about both?  It remains to be seen.  Right now, I will continue to watch the NFL Head Coaching Carousel and the trends in CEO age and tenure with great interest.