This post follows up on the thoughts posted yesterday. Considering where the responsability for management failure lies, I started thinking about the experience currently being wasted by those unwillingly sitting on the sidelines, for any number of resaons.
Tough times call for tough minded decisions, informed by the wisdom of experience, not just the numbers and economics.
Many of those now fronting organisations are products of the last decade of good times, they have not seen the tough ones, at least from a perspective of having the responsibility to make the decisions.
The experience and wisdom to manage the current difficulties is sitting around wondering what to do in their semi retirement. The batch of baby boomers, born 1946 to 1952 are often underemployed and bored, early retirement, winding down towards retirement (often unwillingly) or having been impacted by the substantial removal of management layers that has occurred in the last 15 years has affected them to a disproportinate degree . Unlike their fathers, they are looking to another 25 years of life, and many are unused to inactivity, and are looking for outlets.
As young adults they were the most active and intellectually inquisitive generation in history, questioning the status quo in ways that shocked their parents, Vietnam, Rock n roll, and feminism to name the three most obvious manifestations of this energy.
What makes you think they are now happy to sit on the verandah and watch the grass grow? Why not seek their wisdom, after all, they have seen a few recessions in their time.
