In this week's Careers Newsletter, read BoF senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young's latest: When Is the Right Time for Executives to Retire?
When Mark Cohen retired from his role as director of retail studies at Columbia Business School last month at the age of 75, he was confident he was far better at the job than when he started his career as a professor in 2006.
The reason: a few years ago, the former Sears Canada CEO, sensing a rapidly widening "chronological gap" between himself and his students, enlisted the help of a young teaching assistant. She helped him turn his lecture notes into more engaging PowerPoint presentations, and gave him tips on how to adjust his "syntax and emphasis" to better resonate with a younger crowd.
Cohen said modernising his approach allowed him to walk away still feeling he was in his prime.
"At the end of the day, it's all about performance, and performance characteristics need to step up, not down if someone gets older," he said.
Age is never far from the fashion conversation, whether it's the clothes sent down the runway or the makeup of the boardroom. In the US, the average fashion retail chief executive is 58.5 years old, less than a decade from the average retirement age of 65, according to Kirk Palmer Associates. Many prominent executives and creatives are older than that: LVMH chief Bernard Arnault is 75, Skechers CEO Robert Greenberg is 84, as is Ralph Lauren. Kohl's newly appointed CEO, Tom Kingsbury, is 71. Prada chairman Patrizio Bertelli and co-creative director Miuccia Prada are 78 and 75, respectively. At 90, Giorgio Armani continues to lead the fashion house he founded in 1975.
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