[Lanny_McDonald]

Apologies in advance as this is a derail.

Originally Posted by Bandwagon Surfer

I got into in more in a previous post, but cultural shifts over time, and how human brains change as they age, people who are older are more likely to take a do as I say approach to management. That does not mean that you or the people you have interacted with are like that. Only that if you took random samples of populations you would be more likely to older people would be more likely to be a "do as I say" person.

Some really bad assumptions made here. Cultural shifts, aging, brain changes over time, and authoritarian behaviors are four very different things. A lot of variables there that can lead to some dramatic differences.

You mentioned making assumptions based on demographics and study the data to make many of your determinations, but demographics are not used to study and determine generalizations about personalities, behaviors, values, opinions, etc., that is where psychographics comes in. I don't think the data supports your assumptions.

People raised in rigid authoritarian environments are more likely to be accepting of such structure and allow that to become the backbone of their culture and identity. It is why cultural shifts take time and do not spontaneously happen overnight. Millennials and GenZers are the way they are because they grew up in environments where they were given the freedom and latitude to develop these democratic and open attitudes toward issues and each other. You can attribute this to many things, like a shift from the patriarchy to matriarchical foundation in the home, or broad social/ethnic integration in our culture, or the shifting attitudes in masculine and feminine energies of the sexes (women becoming more masculine and men becoming more feminine in their natures and behaviors), and so on. There are lots of influences that have nothing to do with age or demographics.

Experience and knowledge do not mean nothing, but they do not mean as much as people think.

I don't think this is accurate. Knowledge is the intersection of learning and experience. Learning means nothing without application. You may have all the book learning in the world but until you have the experience of applying that learning you have not achieved knowledge. The more experience you have the greater your knowledge on a subject is going to be. It is why those who have experience are thrust into leadership roles, either through direction or through organic means. It's why kids coming out of school aren't just handed leadership roles in most organizations. The knowledge to be an expert has not yet been achieved and the experience to be a successful leader has yet to happen. Cross pollination of certain experiences may contribute to gaining knowledge more quickly, but it takes time and opportunities to learn.

The average person is at their peak intelligence in their mid 20s, but experience lets them improve their job performance until their 40s. Experience can only compensate so much as our brains degrade with age. At a certain point experience becomes out of date, and relying on it instead of learning something new becomes a detriment.

A real over simplification and misunderstanding of peak intelligence as there are many ways to approach and identify intelligence. Generally speaking, speed processing and information recall (fluid intelligence) peak in our early 20's and then slowly degrade over time beyond that age. For some people they do not achieve their peak their peak fluid intelligence until their 40s. That is only one of dozens of measures used to determine cognitive function and performance, many of which don't peak until later in life. Emotional intelligence is thought not to peak until the late 40s or early 50s and accumulated intelligence is thought not to peak until the 60s or even the 70s. It is not easy to make these determinations for individuals without consistent psychological testing. Cognitive decline is a very real thing and affects everyone, just not on the schedule and not all functions at the same time.

To get back to the topic of Sutter, I see him as someone who crossed that threshold of overly relying on out of date experience and knowledge, while undervaluing learning new things and changing. He has had am amazing career, and was a great coach. He just aged out and can no longer adapt to what works better now.

Nawww, he's just stuck in his ways having grown up in a very rigid patriarchical environment and he used that as the foundation of everything he has done. His success was borne out of this so he was not incentivized to change this thinking. Could he? Yes. We all have the ability to change and adapt. Would he? Not a chance. He likes being the cranky old bastard behind the bench and playing mind games. He's not going to change because he's comfortable in who he is and how he does things. There comes a point in everyone's life when you just say, "I'm comfortable, I like who and where I am, #### everything and everyone else." That point comes at different times and different places for different people. Sutter reached his a long time ago. So while he could change, he just isn't changing because that is who Darryl Sutter is.