Age Limits Are Arbitrary

Age Limits Are Arbitrary

(c) Copyright 2006 by Gerald Czarnecki - All Rights reserved



In a recent article in BussinessWeek, writer Peter Burrows

interviewed the CEO of Network Appliance, Daniel

Warmenhoven. He shared his views on the current state of

corporate governance, the consequences of SOX and his

opinion that to set a 70-year age limit for directors is not

a good practice. Dan Valentine, the highly respected venture

capitalist who was an early investor in Apple, is now over

70 and due to his age will not stay on as a director at

Cisco. He is also on the board of directors at Network

Application, and there the age issue is not an issue at all

according to Warmenhoven:



"The only public board he'll remain on is NetApp. Why would

you want to get rid of someone with his talent and

experience? If he was senile, that would be one thing. But

he's still one of the sharpest minds you could ever meet,

and he has been through every kind of circumstance you could

imagine, three or four times and lived through them."

http://www.forbes.com/home/columnists/2005/07/27/

warmenhoven-opinion-regulatoin-cz_dw_0726compliance.html



I concur with Warmhoven that age should not determine

retirement as much as the question of whether there is still

a "fire in the belly". Unfortunately, the hidden reason for

most board policies on age or term limits is not related to

the core belief that people should leave based on those

criteria. More often that not, the real reason is that the

board finds it difficult and unpleasant to fire an

individual who really has become unproductive. If boards had

effective evaluation processes for each director, it is much

more likely that these limits would be viewed as

undesirable.





Gerry Czarnecki promotes excellence in leadership through

activities as an author, public speaker & consultant. He

also trains boards of directors in corporate governance best

practices. For leadership books & programs go to

www.the-czar.com; for his business consulting & governance

training visit www.deltennium.com