Progressive responsibility means nothing more than a structured corporate environment where you hold your lip 99% of the time, others take credit for your work, and there is a level of bureacracy surpassed only in government halls in India.
The only thing I've come to accept is the phrase "Grind, Mind, Find". First you grind. You work your butt off. Then you mind. You start to think about processes and coming up with new ones. And then you find. You start to bring in business. The mind is difficult to do without knowing the business but it doesn't take decades to learn. The find is the only thing I do think age helps in because I can't work the magic of someone above me who dines with some CEO and his wife every Friday and then golfs with that same client all the time. It's near impossible.
And I'd love to know how interns learn reality. In 99% of the cases I know interns do nothing. There is no reality there and that dream they live is either a great one or a nightmare.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's not black and white. As much as age helps with experience, age also gets a free ride at youth's expense.
-Rudey
--Quick, write that line down...it belongs in a movie script.
Quote:
Originally posted by DeltAlum
Noted, and now, I hope you will allow me to share my opinions without branding them as nonsense.
One of the buzzwords in hiring management level people for the past few years has been "progressive responsibility." I think that means that as you gain experience, perhaps manage more people, bigger projects or a bigger budget, you also gain the skills and understanding to keep on progressing into more and bigger responsibilities.
In most businesses (and the military -- which is part of what this thread talked about earlier -- more responsibility comes with age and experience.
Sorry, but how many thirty year old Fortune 500 CEO's do you know of? There may be a couple, but I can't name them.
That's not to say that older people are smarter. Some people are naturally more gifted than others. Brother John Elway wasn't a Hall of Fame Quarterback when he graduated from Stanford, though -- although the basic skills were there to hone. Nor could Colin Powell have understood how to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when he graduated from West Point. (I think he went to USMA -- if not, change "West Point" to "college").
In school, you learn theory and basics. In business you learn how things really work. Isn't that why there are internships -- to learn how to turn theories into reality?
To rankle at the suggestion that greater responsibility comes with age and experience would assume that a person pretty knows all there is to know and is ready to tackle anything life or business has to offer coming out of school.
I just can't agree with that. I think it works that way in our personal lives as well.
Of course many of us have/had responsibility (and stress) early in life, but most of us continue to gain knowledge, experience and responsibility for many years.
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