Something happened today that I just really want to share, and I don’t know of a better place to share it…
We have a high school intern doing some analysis. I haven’t been working with him directly until yesterday, when I came across some new testing that I didn’t have time to do myself. I’m rushing through trying to teach him how to do something because I need to leave for a meeting, trying to make sure that I’m dumping whatever knowledge I have that he’ll need to do the work while I’m in the meeting.
I’m trying to describe to him how to use our commercial software to produce the data that I’m looking for. At one point, he stops me and says, I’d like to do the calculations in Excel so that I understand what’s going on and that I don’t make any mistakes because I don’t understand what the software is doing.
Wow. How incredible is that?
You know, when people ask me why we need young employees around, I always say something about how we need to have fresh ideas, new innovation, and new ways of looking at things. I always think of myself as being the person as part of the “young” generation that can provide that perspective.
I never thought of myself as being on the other side of that fence – the old fart who has gotten into such a routine that he doesn’t even question certain things any more. I can actually learn something from a high school student after all. That was a heckuva wake-up call.
Wow.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:00 am
Great story River. I found myself ‘the old fart’ when I was inspired by the Gen Y perspectives powerpoint. It made me re-do my standard, dull work talk into something a lot more engaging.
It’s also cool that he was making something old school (Excel) into something fresh and valuable.
February 29th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Nice… once again, the human touch of the importance of having more Gen Y involvement!
March 10th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Many times, I feel the same way, but I take on the role of the student trying to re-invent the wheel. I always tell myself, I don’t want to be one of those “institutional” guys that does things because that’s how its always been done. Unfortunately, we’re in an organization that loves doing things because that’s the way its been done in the past (i.e., everything you do must have heritage), and does not promote individual thinking and creativity. Of course this is veiled by the idea of “anything new should be better than what we do right now, otherwise its not worth doing.” I’ll keep coming up with my own ideas and pressure the conventional thinking. The day I lose this ability is the day I become “institutionalized.”
March 11th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Go Gen Y!
WOHOO!
March 13th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Yeah, but why did he have to use Excel to do it? Real old school would have been a quick Fortran executable…