The 60's have the money and the 20s the ideas?

Over the past week I've been exhibiting at a conference in Christchurch.  Our stand was positioned under a glass like conservatory area.  Isn't it odd how your inner wimp comes out and takes over and before you know it, you've made 20 trips to the little girls room.  Glass in an earthquake zone does make me nervous, more so when I was shown the place where the building had dropped heights compared to the one it used to be adjoined to.  If no one had shown me, I would have thought it was just a ramp!

What a sad sight the city is, we drove right around Christchurch over the week we stayed, thankfully we had a 4x4 as we needed it.  The roads are still very damaged and although there are signs of rebuilding, there are still suburbs which are now like ghost towns, a very empty and sad feeling for those having to drive by all day.  It also upset me to see the vast amounts of tagging and graffiti around these condemned houses.  These graffiti artists should be locked up, the city has already gone through enough without visual garbage being added to the city for no reason! Who-ever they are- shame on them. At least the container artists have found a better outlet for their creative skill and have added beautiful images to what is normally a huge eyesore. Kia kaha Christchurch.


So last week I heard an interesting comment which I don't totally agree with.  It was someone who had spent a great deal of time in the public sector and said, "The problem is, the 60- something-year-olds have all the money but the 20-something-year-olds have all of the ideas".

My first thought was how very brave to say this comment out loud to a nearly 40 year old ideas person who runs a technology company, who also has the money to make the decisions!

My second thought was, there was actually some truth in what they said.
Yes, in many traditional cases, management or the approvers, the people who sign the checks are sometimes older and yes, the new, younger, recently graduated talent coming through have a different way of looking at the world.  But isn't this just about risk taking?  The older you get, the less you want to take risks as you are older and wiser and know the consequences.  The younger you are, the more willing you are to take a risk as you have no clue what is around the corner.
I am still inspired by people like my father-in-law.  He came around to watch the rugby last weekend and we asked- how was your week? He replied 'good, had great Peking duck in China last week'.  So there he is, gold card in hand, yet still young enough to drop everything and fly to China with 1 days notice for a business meeting!  He knows about risk, gain, globalisation and ideas.  Who said you can't have both the ideas and hold the purse strings??

Myself, I like to think I sit in the middle of that sea-saw.  Old enough to know better, young enough to still take risks, and purse strings.....oh, I forgot to mention I have a great bank manager!

I did have an odd set of circumstances last week which relates to our bank which made me smile.  We launched our new 'ASLO' brand last week which is primarily a blue logo.  Our Business Mechanix colours have a lot of green.  I smiled to myself as we started the conference wearing our green shirts and for the ASLO launch put on our blue shirts.  The last day back to green.  The same but different?

It did remind me of the call from the National Bank, our manager saying- 'we're still the same- just changing from Green to Blue'.  I thought it was awesome that he gave us a personal phone call to take us through what was happening and to re-assure us the changes were not going to be an impact.  I did take the chance to ask for a discount in rates as a customer loyalty bonus, but I don't think that one got through for approval in this case!

So coming back to the original comment about the 20s having the ideas and the 60s with the cash, to be fair, I must add some context around the comment. The conversation was about public sector funding and how innovative ideas and products often got stomped on by those in power who had been in the same organisation nearly all of there life and had not been exposed to new ways of thinking. This then forced those in the organisation to do other, cheaper, easier things as it was just too hard to do what they originally proposed.

I came to the conclusion that what I learnt from the originator of the comment is that he ended up solving his own problem.  Isn't this what we all do? When times are tough, we innovate more.  No time to build a new website?  Just create a blog using a free blogging tool?  Need a CRM system but can't afford the hardware- go to CRM in the cloud.  Sometimes those who won't take risks encourage a deeper level on innovation and creativity.  So think about the next proposal you have declined....is there a way to innovate more with what you have or smarter ways of doing things?  Using technology to solve your problems?  I'm sure there is!