About a year and a half ago a good friend passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. As well as being a friend, John was also a mentor and a colleague, and he left way too early in my estimation. Over the past months there have been a number of occasions when I have been talking to others who were also friends and colleagues of John. We would be discussing some situation, issue, or topic, and at some point one of us would comment that we really missed John’s voice in these situations. Of course we missed his friendship, but we also missed his wisdom and perspective.
John had a way of seeing things others did not. His was that voice that often found the view, or detail, or insight that others missed. One particularly helpful talent of his was to see the historical side of things. He often knew why things were done the way they were or would offer some longer view of a situation. It was an important voice on many occasions.
All of this crystallized for me while I was reflecting upon a conversation I had with a team lead recently. The company she works for has gone through a major merger in the past couple of years and her team was a reflection of that merger. Since bringing the two companies together, there has been a great deal of turnover as the team re-built itself. As we were talking about this, she commented that one of the things her team lost was a sense of history. There was no one left who had that 15 or 20 years of experience that they could draw on when necessary.
We usually value being on the cutting edge, being innovative, or being able to adapt quickly to the changing times; and there can be great merit in this. But what often gets left out of this discussion is the voice of those who have been around for a long time, those who have that sense of the cycle of business or industry; those who know there are ups and downs and an ebb and flow to things.
Most of us cringe when we hear someone say “we tried that before” or “we’ve always done it this way”. But there are times when it is good to hear a voice that says something like, “there were reasons why we chose to do things this way that we may want to consider here”.
I recently read that more organizations are trying to re-recruit traditionalists for their teams. Traditionalists are the oldest representatives of the four generations that make up our current workforce. They have been around for a long time but their numbers are dwindling for obvious reasons. More companies are starting to realize though that their longer perspective of things can be incredibly valuable and if they can find a way to bring together that perspective with the innovation, enthusiasm, and adaptation skills of the generations that have followed the traditionalists into the workplace, great things can happen.
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Hearing Voices
John had a way of seeing things others did not. His was that voice that often found the view, or detail, or insight that others missed. One particularly helpful talent of his was to see the historical side of things. He often knew why things were done the way they were or would offer some longer view of a situation. It was an important voice on many occasions.
All of this crystallized for me while I was reflecting upon a conversation I had with a team lead recently. The company she works for has gone through a major merger in the past couple of years and her team was a reflection of that merger. Since bringing the two companies together, there has been a great deal of turnover as the team re-built itself. As we were talking about this, she commented that one of the things her team lost was a sense of history. There was no one left who had that 15 or 20 years of experience that they could draw on when necessary.
We usually value being on the cutting edge, being innovative, or being able to adapt quickly to the changing times; and there can be great merit in this. But what often gets left out of this discussion is the voice of those who have been around for a long time, those who have that sense of the cycle of business or industry; those who know there are ups and downs and an ebb and flow to things.
Most of us cringe when we hear someone say “we tried that before” or “we’ve always done it this way”. But there are times when it is good to hear a voice that says something like, “there were reasons why we chose to do things this way that we may want to consider here”.
I recently read that more organizations are trying to re-recruit traditionalists for their teams. Traditionalists are the oldest representatives of the four generations that make up our current workforce. They have been around for a long time but their numbers are dwindling for obvious reasons. More companies are starting to realize though that their longer perspective of things can be incredibly valuable and if they can find a way to bring together that perspective with the innovation, enthusiasm, and adaptation skills of the generations that have followed the traditionalists into the workplace, great things can happen.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2012 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.