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Q: What
impact do you think John McCain’s age will have on the
coming election? Paul Bartlett,
Lake Mary,
Florida
A: You’ve
come to the right place for an answer. One of us (guess
who) happens to be the founder and president of the Life
Begins at 70 Club. The other—well, she attends all the
meetings.
We’re
kidding, of course, but obviously we can’t help but be
somewhat biased about this topic. Our lives, and the lives
of many of our friends, have been only enriched by the
passage of time, with its myriad encounters and
experiences.
But that
doesn’t mean we believe that John McCain’s age is reason
enough for him to be elected. John McCain should be
elected (or not) on the issues. Because age isn’t a
virtue—in politics, business and life in general—all by
itself.
BUFFETT: When it comes to
business, he feels like he was born yesterday.
--BLOOMBERG
Age is
generally useless if it’s not accompanied by an
open-mindedness and curiosity about the times. For
instance, Andy Pearson, the former president of PepsiCo
who passed away in 2006 at the age of 80, loved to have
his grandchildren explain the lyrics of rap music to him.
Indeed, Pearson found new cultural trends relentlessly
fascinating and relevant.
Age also
needs to be accompanied by a willingness, and even an
eagerness, to change. We recently heard Andrea Jung, the
CEO of Avon, suggest that leaders (informally) fire and
rehire themselves from time to time in order to freshen
their mind-sets. Now, at 48, Jung is still plenty young,
but her approach to reinvention is actually the hallmark
of the most effective “older” folks we know.
Case in
point is K.P. Singh, the Indian real-estate developer who,
at age 77, has just expanded his business into an
international cricket league—because, he says, it will
teach him “all sorts of new things.”
Or take
Hank Greenberg. After being forced out of AIG, the hugely
profitable insurance company he built well into his late
70s, he is reinventing himself at age 83 by delving into
real-estate ventures in Vietnam, Russia, China and India.
The former global corporate czar has become a global
entrepreneur.
Age, we’re
basically saying, is a state of mind. That is, of course,
putting health issues aside. Because vigor does matter;
when it ebbs, so do presence of mind and availability. But
with vigor, the playing field is level.
After all,
we’ve all known people who were born old. Forty years ago,
one of us (Jack) knew people his own age who were donning
vests and smoking pipes to look “executive”—and they liked
it!
Just
recently, we met an extraordinarily talented 27-year-old
executive in Istanbul who told us she would never take a
global assignment because she so loved living near the
Bosporus River. Not even the ripe old age of 30, she was
already stuck in a permanent comfort zone.
So when
you’re looking at someone to fill a job—be it John McCain
for president or a 72-year-old candidate sitting across
your desk—forget age as a number. Check for curiosity
about the world and the readiness to change with it. And
then, check for wisdom.
Now,
wisdom is something of a loaded word, because some older
people would like you to believe that it comes with the
territory. But wisdom isn’t just knowledge of the
past—it’s the thoughtful processing of life’s patterns so
as to better inform future decisions. It’s perspective.
It’s judgment.
The poster
boy for wisdom is, no surprise, Warren Buffett. At age 77,
he’s seen enough economic cycles, government policies and
company dramas to make most people jaded. But
Warren is anything but. He uses his experience to make smarter
investments than ever, all the while explaining to the
world what he is doing and why, with the least “been
there, done that” attitude imaginable. In fact, Buffett
would probably be the first to tell you that, when it
comes to business, he feels like he was born yesterday.
So, to
your question, do we think John McCain’s age will spark
debate in the coming election? Yes. But should his age
matter? We’d say no.
From where
we’re sitting—neither of us in a rocking chair, by the
way—age isn’t something to fear. Indeed, with the right
attitude, it can be the best thing that ever happened to
you.
Q: Is
Nafta good for the
United States? Muhammed Usmani,
Bayonne, New Jersey
A: There
can be only one reason you ask, and that’s because Nafta
has become the latest political hot potato, sparking all
sorts of hooting and hollering for its demise, from union
halls to the campaign trail. Regardless, our answer to
your question is absolutely yes.
Now, we
don’t want to sound extreme. But we’ve come to understand
what kind of opposition Nafta is up against. A few weeks
ago, we wrote a column that suggested deporting 12 million
people was an unimaginable managerial challenge.
Immigration-amnesty opponents—who heavily overlap with the
anti-Nafta crowd—came out in droves, with e-mails that
said things like, “I hope you are killed by a band of
illegal immigrants,” and, “If illegal immigrants end up
being allowed to stay in the United States, consider
yourselves warned.”
The
vitriol of this well-organized “fan mail” made us realize
just how hard it is these days to have a reasoned debate
about matters involving organized labor. Everyone’s
temperature rises.
We’ll try
to stay cool, then, while making our case for Nafta, the
North American Free Trade Agreement that went into effect
in 1994. But basically, there’s no getting around the fact
that we see it as one of the greatest achievements
President Clinton left behind. Opening it up for
renegotiation, now or in the foreseeable future, would be
wrong.
We
realize, of course, that Nafta’s opponents would probably
use the same word—that is, wrong—to describe what has
happened in some Midwestern states over the past decade.
But Nafta alone is not the cause of Ohio’s pain, or any
state’s, for that matter. Remember, Nafta frees up trade
between Mexico, Canada and the United States. The
companies in the Midwest that moved operations to Mexico
did so to stay competitive with China, India and the
countries formerly of the Eastern Bloc. Nafta made that
possible, but global competition made it necessary.
Which
brings us to the underlying reason people hate Nafta: It
represents globalization. Indeed, maybe that’s why we
support it so much! Yes, it’s possible government agencies
and companies might have done more to replace the jobs
lost in the Midwest by supporting laid-off workers with
better bridging benefits. And yes, globalization causes
dislocations. But it also makes America healthier and the
world overall a better, safer, more interdependent place.
We’ve seen its enormous benefits with our own eyes:
countless product lines resurrected from heavy losses by
the integration of US and Mexican operations. The same
process—combining Mexican and US manufacturing and
engineering—certainly led to a small net loss of jobs in
industries like electrical-distribution products and major
appliances. But it also allowed them to compete
successfully against an onslaught of Asian imports, saving
thousands of US jobs in the long run.
Statistics
tell the same story. According to the United States Trade
Representative (USTR), American employment has grown 24
percent since Nafta took effect and inflation-adjusted
wages rose 19.3 percent, compared with only 11 percent in
the 14 years prior. The USTR also reports that, due to
Nafta, the value of American farm and food exports to
Mexico and Canada has grown 165 percent, compared with 65
percent worldwide. Such data—and we have seen much more
like it—suggest that Nafta, along with the other benefits
of globalization, like low-cost imports, has had a
net-positive effect on the US economy.
Nafta’s
opponents, of course, have their data, too, seeming to
“prove” free trade’s destructive powers and supporting
some people’s fears about globalization’s impact on their
immediate future. Without question, in some quarters,
these fears are justified. But the response should not be
to kill Nafta, or even to reopen trade discussions with
our partners in Mexico and Canada that would likely step
onto their sovereign rights. It should be using domestic
legislation, if need be, to make appropriate adjustments
to the agreement, such as improved training and
dislocation benefits.
With
political causes, it’s always so, well, political to take
the expedient, hard-line stance. But with Nafta, and
indeed all globalization efforts, that would be a mistake.
They need to be considered for their impact not just on
our generation, but also on our children’s, and not just
on our country, but also on the world. When you take that
view, opportunities for those who embrace free markets and
open competition looks, well, not easy—creativity,
innovation, hard work and winning are never easy—but very
bright indeed.
*****
Jack
and Suzy Welch are the authors of the international
bestseller Winning (Collins). Their latest book is
Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the Toughest
Questions in Business Today (Collins). They are eager to
hear about your career dilemmas and challenges at work and
look forward to answering your questions in future
columns. You can e-mail them questions at Winning@nytimes.com.
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