Modern Elder

"Overqualified" is corporate code for "too old," "too expensive," or "too unimaginative." It’s often an ageist term. The fact is, most companies should want someone overqualified, especially if that talent comes at a fair price. It’s really the job applicant, not the company, who needs to determine if they’re overqualified.

I grew up on a big wheat and soybean farm in Kansas. It’s a place so rural, the nearest fast food and movie theater is almost an hour away. It was quiet in a way that you could hear the rustling and songs of meadowlarks and quail, and the coyotes at night. You could hear the constant wind rushing through the tall grass. You could hear your own thoughts.

Thurgood Marshall once said, "None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots." This is just one quote that marks him as a Modern Elder.

I’m often asked which cultures in the world most value elder wisdom. We all know that the western world sent their elders out to pasture long ago. But, even in places that have culturally respected elders - like Asia and Latin America - we’re seeing more and more young people seek out Google instead of Grandma when they want the answer to a question.

An MEA alum recently asked me why I’ve never reviewed my last book, “Wisdom@Work,” for Wisdom Well. Honestly, I’d never thought of it...until this past week with the Airbnb IPO. So, here’s my attempt at giving W@W a new view based upon my past eight years as CEO Brian Chesky’s in-house mentor.

Weird subject given I just had my 60th birthday. Here in Todos Santos, most gringos live north of town. What we call “El Otro Lado” or the other side. “The other side” has another meaning here at MEA, one that revolves around our love for the film, “Coco,” which is a Pixar ode to Dia de los Muertos.

I got my real estate license while in college at age 19. I was subsequently hired to work for my uncle’s commercial real estate brokerage firm in 1980, at a time when Silicon Valley was primarily fruit trees and vacant land.

A curmudgeon friend recently shrugged, “I hate change!” I responded without trying to be too cheeky, “You’ll probably hate irrelevance even more.”

Long before ICE T popularized the “Original Gangster,” the world was blessed with another OG: Old-Growth forests. MEA alum Douglas Tsoi sent me this bumper sticker from Portland, heralding the verdant green regions that populate his state.

My friend and modern elder Tom Frank created something generative for society that Ashton Kutcher has been promoting on his Facebook page. Here’s Tom’s story.