Teenagers might have answers
We have all been there, either by working with someone straight out of University or when you were entering the workforce straight out of education – full of passion and enthusiasm, and keen to make a change. The teenager (or person in their twenties) may challenge and ask questions about how and why things are done. All the starry-eyed questions that they raise will be replied with “that is the way it is done“. It is possible that teenagers might have answers, which are “educated out of them” by the work-hardened middle management who tell the new employee to toe the line.
That enthusiastic young person is offering to help, hungry to learn, but also has a fresh viewpoint that allows them to see that things might, just might, be able to be done better. They have come into the workforce with no preconceptions, even when they have completed a three or four year undergraduate degree in the exact field that they are now working on – but everything is different when it comes to the real world. They enter the workforce and find practices, approaches, and even tools that are older, less flexible and inefficient. So, they bring their new knowledge and enthusiasm forward, and bring up new ideas from a fresh perspective. Well, not all of them, as there are many who just do what they are told and comply with the older approaches of the workplace.
We have to wonder what happens, some time during the first five years of a person’s career, which stops them wondering if there are better ways to do tasks. This person may be straight out of formal education, or they may have wider experiences that can be used to solve wicked problems – but they may be consistently overlooked when it comes to ideas or solutions. The teenagers are told that they need to go “up the chain of command”, which may filter the idea, or even worse, it may get stolen by someone in the chain, further demoralising the bright young employee. They get job training or induction, or even written procedures and work instructions – all strengthening the view that “this is the way that it must be done”.
Instead, we, as employers, managers and leaders, need to embrace the ideas of teenagers and the newly employed. The ones who have learned life lessons or taken advice are worth even more, but the new ideas that the your bring can help us all resolve those difficult problems from their new insight, fresh education and views, and passion to make things better.
