Combining youth with experience to achieve better outcomes

Many international sports teams are made up of a combination of youth and experience.

One often hears national selectors talking about the virtues of such a combination. The experienced players bring – well, experience. They know how to cope with the pressure from the media, the fans and, of course, the competition. These players have been in the game for a long time and bring stability to the team. On the other hand, the younger players bring new energy, commitment, flair and skill. Putting the two together brings continuity and excitement and can, sometimes, take the game to a new level.

Just think of any successful national sports team and the best teams will, more often than not, be a combination of youth and experience.

So why don’t we try the same thing in business? What if we could find a winning formula to combine young entrepreneurs with seasoned business people? Would we be able to achieve better outcomes? I am convinced that we will.

I am aware of so many seasoned senior business people, professionals, consultants and investors who have reached ‘retirement’ age and have simply stopped what they were doing, what they were good at, and what they have tons of experience and passion for doing. Why?

Organizations, in particular, and society, in general, have somehow determined that these people no longer fit the business or no longer have any value to add.  That is just not true! Many of today’s 60 or 65 year olds have plenty of energy and a willingness to contribute their many years of experience to others.There are so many retired people who would love to continue ‘working’. It may be that they don’t want the same frenetic pace and pressure as they had before ‘retiring’, but they probably also don’t need to work for the same monetary reward either. Many of these people are looking for ways to ‘give back’ to society. What they really want, is to feel needed and valued. They want to feel that are making a positive difference and contributing to the betterment of society.

On the other end of the scale there are many young entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses, but are not sure how to take their businesses to the next level. How do they ‘professionalize’ the business, introduce new and more sophisticated systems and streamlined processes, hire and train employees, raise additional funding for expansion and so on. There are so many questions to be asked and potential pitfalls to be avoided – and all this while managing and growing the business.

I was working with a young, very dynamic, entrepreneur who was keen to expand into a number of new areas which were related to his core business. He wanted my advice on how to raise the necessary funding. Once we had worked through a series of propositions as to why he wanted to expand, he came to the very refreshing realization that he hadn’t optimized the current core business. If he just focused, for a short period of time, on getting that right, he would be in a completely different position from a financial point of view and could fund the expansion from his own resources. All he needed was a little  little patience,  some additional clarity around priorities and the comfort from an experienced person that he was doing the right thing. All I wanted was to help someone solve a problem that would make him and his business more effective.

This is a win-win combination from so many points of view.