We were sitting in a meeting and the young person across the table started talking about the “good old days.” I was intrigued by this comment, so I asked, “When were these good old days?”
“The late 90’s,” he replied. “It was so easy back then to get things done and to make things happen.”
And then, he proceed to tell me all about the late 90’s and how business leaders back then did not struggle like we do today.
I just smiled, and replied: “I have been doing this work since the mid-80’s. I have helped a wide variety of organizations, for-profit and non-profit, figure out how to move through the challenges that were before them. I even helped them during the ‘good old days’ of the late 90’s, which, by the way, were not always that good.
For example, the internet was on the rise and changing how businesses ran their day to day operations plus what strategic investments they needed to make. Non-profits were worried about funding streams and how to recruit and retain employees. Next, the Silver Tsunami, i.e. the retirement of the baby boomers, was just beginning to impact companies and all of them were worried about where the next generation of middle and upper management were going to come from.
Furthermore, there were even a series of global economic financial crises in the late 90’s that threatened the U.S. economy. Yes, there were economic boon times in the 90’s, but the best leaders knew they would not last forever. And they were right when the dot-com bubble burst in March of 2001, and was followed by a devastating recession.
Some days, we forget that we have been through hard times before. The best leaders take the long view and remember that hard times will come again, especially if you have lived through them once or twice before. These leaders always focus on being prepared.
I get that from your perspective the late 90’s were the good old days. But from my perspective, they were just the old days and an opportunity to learn from that history so we do not repeat the same mistakes over and over again.”
Then, we proceeded to discuss the lessons learned from the last 20 years. We talked about hard times and good times, easy times and challenging times. Those around the table that day realized that there is a tendency to experience selective organizational Alzheimers when it comes to thinking about the past, i.e. we either remember all of the good things and none of the struggles, or we remember all the struggles and none of the good things. The key is not to forget the past as much as to learn from it.
As the best leaders understand, history changes us, and it changes the people around us. Our goal is to understand these changes and to respect these changes. As leaders, it is not to judge people as much as to remember that in the past people did the best they could with the information and tools that they had. Our hopes is that we can do even better when it is our turn to rise to the challenges of our hard times.
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