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You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks
Human Resources
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, devised a series of rules that describe our reactions to technology at different stages of our lives. They state: anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works; anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new, exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it; and anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things. So I think a recent article suggesting the top l0 ‘in-demand’ jobs for 2010 did not even exist in 2004 would have made Adams smile – proof 15-35 year-olds were destined for exciting new careers. And if the track record of UK employers is to be believed he may well turn out to be right, because in the past it’s been the younger end of the workforce that has been pressed to acquire the know-how required for organizations to seize opportunities. Why? Because most line managers will tell you there’s no point trying to get the existing workforce to do anything ‘new, exciting and revolutionary’. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks they say. But can you?
A few years ago I recall a heated debate between two colleagues on this very question. People clearly change as their lives progress, argued the junior colleague: ’I’ve changed, and I only graduated five years ago.’ Her boss shook his head. Tests such as the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator, he corrected her, identify your personality type and this never, ever changes. ‘You may think you’ve changed – but that change is an illusion.’
Research would suggest he was 50% right. Your personality type is innate and is very unlikely to change. The problem is the same studies also indicate he was 50% profoundly wrong, because, as Carl Jung (on whose work the Meyers-Briggs tests are based) stated, we spend the first half of our lives confirming and using our strongest personality preferences and the second half developing the lesser used functions to add depth to our personalities.
In short, even though your personality type may not change, you certainly do. And I believe this reality is highlighted when you talk to people who have been forced to reappraise their career as the result of redundancy or some other radical change in their personal circumstances.
For many of these individuals, fate has obliged them to take an objective look at both their total skill set (the skills they have acquired over their whole lives, not just in their current job) and their current personality preferences – and then map these onto the ever-changing employment landscape. And the results can be transformational. I expect most readers will know at least one or two such individuals who now regard what at first appeared to be a setback as ‘the best thing that ever happened to me’.
Which begs the question: is HR missing a trick here? Are we making an assumption that a career has a straight-line trajectory with no crossroads, deviations or U-turns? And will we be failing both our people and our organizations if we allow this assumption to be maintained as we enter the upturn?
When I joined McDonald’s I was struck by the number of people whose careers had moved between organizational disciplines in anything but a straight-line trajectory. I soon discovered, however, that encouraging such moves is part of the corporate DNA. After all, I was told, if the organization’s founder, Ray Kroc, was able to successfully make the switch from milkshake-machine salesman to quick-service restaurant operator at the age of 52, why shouldn’t others be given the same opportunity?
This is a philosophy I think Adams would have endorsed. After all, as he once observed: “I may not have gone where I intended to go,but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Oct 2009
© 2009 Human Resources. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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© 2009, YellowBrix, Inc. 
jlodgesharonmp
18 days ago
2 comments
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