A wise company will have, in roughly equal proportions, two types of directors and senior executives — old donkeys and young horses.
The former will be primarily responsible for preserving the company, while the latter will ensure its development and growth.
The cooperation required between these two types of powerful animals within the company is a demand that must be addressed with intelligence and a practical sense.
Of course, circumstances will often dictate which should prevail — prudence or energy — in the governance of the company, although ideally both should exist in the exact right proportion.
The fundamental problem of management is therefore one of proportion, and since that proportion must be fairly precise in order to avoid harmful dynamics, governing an organisation becomes even more difficult.
If company governance is excessively marked by prudence, opportunities for growth will probably be lost, ambition will cool, or the most dynamic employees will leave.
Conversely, if governance values energy above all else, excessive risks may be taken, more sensible opinions may be disregarded, and people may come to believe mainly in what they want to see, without taking threats or false expectations into account.
The problem of achieving a balance between old donkeys and young horses can only find a stable solution through the demographic stabiliser — a quantitative factor — and the promotion model — a qualitative factor.
Demographics decisively influence the balance of power because, if the number of old donkeys is disproportionate to the number of young horses, the organisation will tend towards cultural conservatism, and the rule of prudence will eventually prevail at the expense of a dynamic of growth and ambition that would otherwise promote expansion and the satisfaction of younger executives.
Conversely, if the leadership population is made up predominantly of young horses, displays of energy and creativity become fundamental values, potentially reinforcing a vision of the company as a rapid-growth project, with less consideration given to profitability and consolidation.
The promotion model, meanwhile, introduces into the internal power structure a balancing mechanism that operates over time, capable of correcting or reinforcing the predominance of one type of leader by accelerating the influence of one group over the other.
It is therefore fundamentally within the promotion model that the question of balance is decided, because professional advancement ultimately becomes a way of legitimising the replication of the type of leader the company wants to have in the future — more old donkeys or more young horses.
Paulo Fidalgo
CEO of Marketividade
