"The young mistake intelligence for experience and the old mistake experience for intelligence" is a quote I read somewhere and I was reminded of this when I was invited to be a judge for a "Best Practices" presentation at a leading BPO.
As I sat through presentation after presentation by 26-28 year olds I was truly amazed by the depth and strategic thinking capabilities of today's youngsters!Here was a bunch of vibrant youngsters redefining their businesses and telling their bosses what to do to increase productivity, increase revenues, cut costs, tackle attrition, improve employee morale, the whole 9 yards of the kind of consulting that the Mercers and the McKenzies of the world carry out for a hefty fee - and these youngsters were churning out brilliant ideas all on their own!
To me again I was reminded of one of the biggest lessons in leading GenY - how to get out of their way! As senior leaders, our job really is to ask all the right questions, set the direction, empower the youngsters, ask for their ideas and get out of their way! It takes a lot of courage and guts to accept the fact that the young today have better ideas and a lot more energy making it difficult for us to keep pace with them.
Although I went to "judge", I was humbled because I came away having learnt so much from these young minds. I came away with a lot of conviction about the future leadership of India - and only wished that I could see more organizations unleash the potential of the young like I saw in this organization. I salute the leadership of this organization!
