Is She/He Old School or New School? Really? … FEH!
Aren’t you weary of people saying things like “oh he/she is old school, we need new school thinking” and 1,000 permutations of the same? I was doing some work for a tech company last year and as I was being introduced around my sponsor I heard things like “He’s old school but he’s OK.” I didn’t know what to say so I naively said, “What does that mean?” After a fair amount of fumfering ( old school term) on the part of my employers I just laughed it off saying something like “I guess some school is better than none” and we got on with what we were trying to do.
The older I get the more that “old” word ticks me off. – I am OK with having gone to school. But, unless I am mistaken, Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill and oh so many others would be classified as “old School” by those who embrace this human typology today. Actually, Albert Einstein never finished school. Ok, maybe I am being hard on the new school generation. They would probably say all these folks are exceptions.
Success requires learning from history as well as imagining the future and a willingness to challenge the status quo. While life’s real success role models are all visionaries they are surely not all new or old school.
I see no value in categorizing people in such broad inaccurate and unproductive ways and yet if you could listen in on the discussions with HR about criteria for new employees the conversation often comes down to typing employees and prospective employees in that way. In fact, I have actually heard of people defending “old School” executives by saying, “Oh, he/she is old school but different”. Now, what the hell does that mean?
If we spend more time talking to and less time typing employees I suspect we will get a better sense of who they are, what they think and how they might contribute to the success of the organizations we are trying to grow.
Just saying …