A CEO client of mine was recently fired through no fault of his own. His performance and business results had been consistently outstanding. Still, a regional executive vice president sat down with him in Japan, ostensibly to talk about the future, and told him he was being let go. When he asked why, the answer was, quote, "to make room for new blood and reduce headcount."

He later found out he wasn't the only one. This same executive was going around quietly sacking other senior people. And every single one of them had one thing in common. They were all over fifty. Age, apparently, is a sackable offense.

Here's the problem with that. Wisdom isn't something you can buy, and it isn't something you can train into someone. It comes from experience, accumulated over years of doing, living, making mistakes, and succeeding. Nobody learns to ride a bike from a book.

So when you fire your most experienced people simply because they've gotten older, you're not trimming fat. You're surgically removing the wisdom from your organization. Some HR types will tell you this saves money. Younger people, lower salaries. Fine. But let me ask you something. How much did your last bad business decision cost you?

Let me tell you about a company I read about whose entire business model was parachuting interim CEOs into companies in crisis. Real firefighter work. One of these CEOs walks into a company on his very first day, and the staff are waiting for him in a panic. They can't make payroll. It's payday. That's his first crisis, and it's not even nine in the morning yet.

It takes real wisdom to stay calm under that kind of fire. Not everyone has that in them.

I think about another case. A massive, household-name American company, with a lot of fanfare, brought in a brand-new CEO with a spectacular resume to run their Japan operation. The volatility of that business wasn't anything unusual. But pedigree and fanfare don't actually create wisdom. The pressure got to him. A few months in, he just didn't show up to work one day. And he never came back. No warning. No resignation. Nothing. He was like a deer caught in headlights, frozen, as if he were facing a real, physical threat.

As far as I know, nobody has ever died from a nasty email from their boss.

I once asked a successful entrepreneur how he handles stress, ambiguity, and uncertainty. He told me, very calmly, "Nothing is as bad as being chased through the jungle by people shooting at you." Turns out, in an earlier life, he'd been a CIA operative in Laos during the Vietnam War.

If it's not wisdom exactly, some experiences definitely give you perspective.

So, back to my CEO client. The one fired for being over fifty. He told me he'd actually planned to retire in a couple of years anyway and move to Portugal.

I told him, "I don't see that for you. I think you'll find Portugal charming for about three weeks. After that, you'll be bored out of your mind. And that's not living. That's just waiting twenty-five years to die."

Here's some perspective. In 1955, life expectancy for men in Japan was sixty-three. Today, it's eighty-five. Whatever social convention tells you, we are not here to go gently into that good night. Age is not a disability, unless you decide to make it one.

Let me give you a few examples. The artist Yayoi Kusama is still making art today. She's ninety-seven. Takeshi Kitano is still acting, writing, and directing. He's seventy-nine. The Paralympic cyclist Keiko Sugiura became the oldest medalist ever when she won gold for Japan in 2021, at fifty. She'd actually decided not to compete because everyone told her she was too old. Her coach talked her out of that thinking. Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera, took over as CEO of Japan Airlines in 2010, at seventy-eight, and brought the company back from bankruptcy. Shigetaka Komori became CEO of FujiFilm in 2003, at sixty-four, and rebuilt the business after digital photography wiped out their core product. And Cormac McCarthy, the novelist this piece is named after, kept writing until the very end. He died in 2023, at eighty-nine.

Age is not the disqualifier everyone treats it as. Wisdom doesn't expire. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.