Sunday, March 20, 2011

Grey Hair


Please let me look this fabulous at 60..
I’ve just spent three days with some of the most impressive people that I’ve ever worked with. Senior people from around the world with huge amounts of experience and brains so smart they give you a headache.  We were sharing the issues we’d been facing with a client, when one practice head summed up her major stumbling block.  “The problem is,” she announced, “They’re all just kids.  They know nothing.  There’s no-one older than 26 or 27 in the client team.  They think they know it all, but they don’t know anything.”

As I hurtle towards my next birthday, it has been crossing my mind that I’m getting older.  I’d like to think I’m in pretty good shape for my age, I regularly get mistaken for younger, and body-wise, I’m as thin as I was ten years ago.  (Perhaps not as firm, but we can’t have it all AND work 12 hour days.)

So hearing this disparaging verdict on those in their twenties made me feel so much better.  Yes, I don’t have the trampoline face of a 26 year old (although that can change with a quick trip to Dr Ahmed!), but I have something far more valuable.  Experience, knowledge and wisdom.  Next time a 25 year old tries to tell me how much they know about business, I’ll cast my mind back to that conversation…..

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