Openers

The Conference Board Review^® Article

Openers

Gray Matters

By A.J. Vogl

Show me the man who says older workers aren't as good as younger ones and I'll show you somebody who doesn't know what he's talking about. Their energy level is at least as high as that of their younger brothers and sisters, and higher still is their devotion to the companies they work for. As for the charge that they tally up more sick days than their corporate brethren—well, that's just ageist propaganda.

I've just cited some of the conventional wisdom that clings to that population group I affectionately call geezers. They have been much praised. They have been much maligned. And, above all, they have been much studied. Still, we know very little about them, so that we can't definitively resolve many of the issues surrounding them.

Why not? Not for the obvious reason—that we haven't studied them enough. In fact, if anything, as Mary Young suggests in our main cover story this month (page 48), we've over-studied them. There's a lot of profit to be made in surveying geezers, to the point where geezer studies has become a mini-industry of sorts for both profit and nonprofit groups. Unfortunately, however, these groups keep asking the same questions over and over again. Moreover, for fear of seeming antipathetic or unfair to geezers, they don't ask questions that might produce uncomfortable answers or that might put the noses of geezers—or the powerful geezer lobby—out of joint. What kind of questions? Well, for instance, how many geezers are just putting in face time at work—older workers who have essentially retired on the job? How many lack up-to-date technological skills? Who are the ones who have vital job skills who will be the most difficult to replace? Until we have the answers to questions like these, we're whistling in the dark. Which is why Young's skepticism is so timely and on point.

She is not alone. Skepticism is part of the DNA of The Conference Board Review, and it's reflected in other articles in this issue. See, for instance, "The Master's Voice" (page 16), Peter Krass's speculation on why CEOs' annual letters to shareholders are so dismally bland, conspicuously evasive, or both. There are some striking exceptions, and Krass mentions a few, but most of the examples he cites are, unfortunately, not flattering to either the CEO or to his company. One wonders why. This is a once-a-year opportunity for a CEO to really say something, so why dilute it with bromides from the corporate PR department? Most CEOs have a voice (or at least like to think of themselves as having one), so why not use it? That corner office—and the annual letter—is a bully pulpit.

Nicholas von Hoffman also has a bully pulpit—his syndicated column in The New York Observer, a gossipy weekly newspaper that has opinions on just about everything. As does von Hoffman, and in this issue he trains his wicked eye on the vocabulary of business (page 35). I think you'll find his definitions (or redefinitions) both amusing and instructive. And you may also find yourself agreeing with former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, who said of him: "My life would have been a lot simpler had Nicholas von Hoffman not appeared in the paper."

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