It’s almost springtime in Brazil. I was walking around in a t-shirt two days ago and almost froze to death this evening. The weather is one of the things I can count on to be unpredictable everywhere I go. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view), I don’t get outside much—mostly I am working inside with groups of people. Today I had two meetings with two groups and was struck by how similar conversations seem to be in this world of global business. Everyone seems to read the same business magazines, use the same buzzwords and have the same long list of concerns starting with how to stimulate growth while cutting costs. This is business—and it is the same around the world.

My business partner had her 51st birthday today. She is 8 years older than the next oldest person (other than myself) present in today’s meetings. I am 22 years older than that person, who happened to be the boss. This is a very big and successful company, part of an even bigger multinational enterprise. The average age of their senior people is around 33. I might not have even thought about age today except for the birthday cake we brought into the meeting to surprise my colleague. As I reflected, however, I was struck by how much of a non-issue this was for anyone. My work in the company seems to be unaffected at both the professional and personal levels by age at all.

What I realize is that one explanation for why age is a non-issue is that we all share certain common concerns, such as the success of the business, empowering the people, and figuring out better ways of working. We are also engaged in a serious commitment to changing the organizational culture and achieving what seem like impossible goals. We’ve also learned to relate to each other’s commitments, rather than relate to each other based on how we feel or what we think of each other. Most of the time, when someone is upset, they have a lot of space to express themselves and, while people are open to requests, there isn’t a lot of effort to ‘help’ or sympathize—-folks are mostly responsible and relate to other as being responsible adults.

This ‘young’ group of men and women are extraordinarily mature and clear that they have a choice about almost everything and that the future is up to them. Who they are is more important to them than how old (or young) they are. Producing results, having their work be meaningful and enjoyable, empowering others and ‘playing the game of work’ to push the boundaries of what is possible is what motivates everyone.

I wonder what our communities and societies might be like if everyone lived by the example of these ‘young’ people. Speaking for myself, I don’t experience being even a little bit ‘older’ than everyone else in this kind of an environment. It is the closest I have come to experiencing the way it looks when something is a non-issue. It is totally missing from anyone’s awareness—it’s not even present in any way in our conversations. We all contribute whatever we have to contribute and are all learning and growing and succeeding in the process of day-to-day activities together.

I think this may be what it looks like when we are ‘eldering’—that is, when people of my generation are collaborating with younger people in a mutual commitment to take on intractable problems. I am sure that I could not produce the results that have been produced by this team even in my wildest dreams. I am reasonably confident that they would not have produced these results without me. Together, we did something that by any reasonable standard would have been deemed impossible 18 months ago. And we cannot imagine what will be possible 18 months from now.

The Eldering Institute was founded 3 months ago as our ‘stake in the ground’ for the possibility that these kinds of projects can become more of the rule than the exception. I am inspired by what this group of people have accomplished and I think that they are inspired as well. Imagine if, rather than debating the nature and causes of the long list of horrible problems on our planet, we joined hands and ‘took them on’ with all the grace and generosity that we’re capable of. I don’t think that intelligence, talent or skills are what make the difference here: I think extraordinary commitments do. And the proof of what is possible is clearly observable in the results this group of people has achieved, in their relationships with one another, in the smiles on their faces and on the faces of their families.

Bravo Brazil—especially this group of Brazilians. Take a bow!