Older is Better

Table from WSJ (rectangle added)

Baseball, the sport that has more statistics than you can shake an ash-or-maple stick at, says that managers get better with age.

These data, which only include managers with at least five years of experience, show their average winning percentage generally increases with age. The 38-to-40 group is the worst at .474, and the 62-64 group is tops at .541. Managers at 57 years old had the best average winning rate, while 35-year-old leaders, including a spry Tony La Russa in 1980 with the Chicago White Sox, were the worst at .445.

Rigorous statisticians caution that one must be careful about drawing conclusions:

This idea that managers get better with age, though, might be somewhat self-fulfilling. Managers who perform poorly in their youth aren't able to drag down older managers' average since they probably got canned.

So what? If a restaurant, a bank, or an auto repair shop has been around for a while, chances are it knows how to take advantage of good times and survive during the bad. That adaptability and experience is what I would need to manage my business....or my team. © 2010 Stephen Yuen