Why do old coaches get fired?

Taking a (needed) break today from the seemingly endless series of 'Robots that are coming to take your job and destroy everything you love' posts and getting back to something far, far more important - sports!

I caught an excellent piece on the AJC College Football blog featuring college coaching legend, and the current head football coach at my alma mater, the University of South Carolina, Steve Spurrier. Spurrier, also known as the Head Ball Coach, has has a legendary collegiate playing and coaching career. He won the Heisman Trophy as the nation's best college player in 1966, had a 10-year NFL playing career, and then has had a stellar college coaching run starting at Duke, then Florida, (winning a national title in 1996), and finally at South Carolina. At Carolina, Spurrier has led the Fighting Gamecocks to three consecutive 11 win seasons and become the most successful coach in school history.

But now, at 68 years of age, some observers are wondering just how much longer Spurrier can continue to put in the work and successfully compete at the highest level of college football, and in a position that is notorious for insanely long hours, tremendous pressure to win, and significant demands on ones time. Or, said differently, some are asking, 'Is Spurrier, or any coach of more advanced years, still able to get the job done?'

To that, in a recent AJC piece, Spurrier offered what I think was one of the sharpest observations about age and on the job performance, and one that resonates and applies just about in every field.

Check out the take below:

“I will tell you what is neat. You look around at college basketball now, and there’s Jimmy Boeheim, who is almost 70 years old. He has got the only undefeated team in the country. Larry Brown is at SMU. He’s 73, and I think they’re a top 10 team. Mike Krzyzewski is in his upper 60s and so forth. Coaches don’t get fired for being older coaches. They get fired for not winning. 

Love that take from the Head Ball Coach. 

Coaches, (or usually pretty much anyone working in a company/industry that cares about winning), don't get fired solely because they seem too old or that somehow the game or business has passed them by. Coaches (young and old) get fired because they don't win. Winning makes everyone look better, younger, smarter.

More from the HBC:

"It all comes down if you are winning and losing, if you’re recruiting well, and if your program is on the upbeat and it’s positive. That’s what we all shoot for and obviously it’s not that easy to do.

“But the age of a coach really has nothing to do with it.”

This may seem like a kind of throwaway concept, or just something really obvious, i.e. keep performing at a high level and usually anyone's job is safe. But as I know I have posted about on the blog here, and has become an increasingly prevalent dynamic in many US businesses, employees are getting older and older, and the percentage of people age 55 and up still in the workforce keeps climbing.

We could all do for reminding ourselves from time to time that unless there are some really specific and challenging physical elements to the job, that often age, by itself, simply does not matter when evaluating performance. And we have to get used to working with, learning from, and leveraging these older employees.

Old coaches get fired not for being old. They get fired for not winning. Which is the same reason young coaches get fired.

CHART OF THE DAY: American Household Trends

Spotted this beauty on the Big Picture site a couple of days ago - a look at how the composition of American households has changed, kind of dramatically, over the last 40+ years.

Have a look:

Of course you spotted the major changes since 1970 - the percentage of households consisting of 'traditional' families, i.e.. married couples with children has fallen by over half. 

What has grown pretty significantly over that time, (and for many readers of this blog, and me too is our lifetimes), are 'non-traditional' households and people of both genders who are living alone.

And taking a couple of these household categorizations and combining them we see that in 1970 about 70% of all households included a married couple, but by 2012 that number fell to 49%.

Americans are getting married, (or staying married) less, living alone more, and have by a wide, wide margin moved away from what are now fast becoming antiquated ideas about what the traditional American family and household is.

Why post this kind of data on the blog you might be asking? 

I don't know, maybe because I find it interesting, (which is pretty much the only reason anything gets posted on the blog).

And maybe because I do think it is important to think about what is going on at a macro level sometimes as these trends and new realities do impact our organizations, the people we employ, their challenges and needs, and how HR will be done in the future.

What do you think? Does it matter to your organization that America has changed so dramatically in the last few decades?

Happy Thursday.

Disconnect (but rendered in nice colors)

I sort of think the infographic craze is starting to get a bit played out and certainly a bit overused. But once in a while I catch an infographic, (or in this case two infographics), that whether it is the compelling design or simply the starkness of the data being described I think are worth sharing. 

Both the below infographics are from the GOOD.is site, and when taken together, they paint a picture of a significant disconnect between the education and demonstrated achievement that today's employers demand, and the stark reality of trends in demographics and experiences in a changing and increasingly diverse population. Take a quick look at the two charts and think about the data for a minute.

Chart 1 - Educating the Workforce of the Future (click image to see in full-size)

Money point : We need to produce significantly more workers with either Bachelor's or at least Associate's or Trade School credentials to meet the expected demand for these skills.

Source : GOOD.is

Chart 2 - The Opportunity Gap (click image to see in full-size)

Money point : The faster growing segments of our population also have the worst prospects to attain the advanced degrees and certifications that we know the workplace will increasingly demand.

Source : GOOD.is

There's an obvious disconnect here between what kinds of education and experiences the future worplace will require, and the ability of the complex combination of primary schools, colleges, trade schools, labor unions, communities, government, and really all of us to provide. It can be argued that on a micro-level that employers can and should relax some of these often artifical educational requirements, and that these kinds of barriers really don't do a great job at helping organizations obtain superior talent. I even took on the subject here once. 

But even if some employers take steps to expand their thinking around degree requirements there is no doubt that overall, the gap or disconnect in education and skills will persist, and possibly drive even more work, opportunity, and income to other parts of the world that are adapting more rapidly to these changes that we are here in the US. 

I certainly don't have a simple answer to address these kinds of systemic, structural issues, but I do think that talking about them more is a needed initial step.

What do you think? What can we do to better prepare for these shifts?

Hat tip to Bryon Abramowitz whose presentation on these topics at the Aquire Structure 2011 conference put the bug in my ear to start thinking about this topic.