I’m going to be as vague about this as possible, both because my point is not to gossip and because I have certainly heard people complain about this in other organizations.
But let’s say there’s this liberal bakery. And their specialty is baking a large amount of chocolate cakes, which they then sell to raise money for their liberal causes. And they have been doing this since the 60s. Now, in this case, the bakery looks around and sees that everyone who is actively baking is in his or her late 40s or older or college age students who are responsible not for the baking but for the distribution of the baked goods. So, they start talking about how they need to include more young people.
This ends up being people in their 30s. But, okay, fine.
Now, say that the traditional chocolate cake that this group makes requires that you hand fold in some chocolate chips at the last minute. And, since this last step requires hand-folding chocolate chips in, these liberal cake bakers have been hand-stirring the cake through the whole process.
So say these people in their 30s are like, wow, that takes a long time, means only a very few people can make cakes (since there are only so many bowls and stirring spoons to go around), and we have very few cakes to sell. What if we just used a mixer until the last step and then hand-stirred in the chocolate chips? That would be easier and faster and require less time commitment.
What do you think happens next?
A. These quasi-young people are thanked for their good idea and everyone smiles and marvels at how awesome it is to have a fresh take on the good work they’ve been doing and cake making procedes in an easier manner and they all live happily ever after.
B. There is a long, serious discussion about how the “young people” don’t understand that we simply cannot allow the chocolate chips to be stirred in in any way but by hand while the “young people” try to explain that, yes, duh, they get it and, in fact, have not been advocating for changing how the chocolate chips are added.
C. There’s a long, serious discussion about how important it is for the bakery’s history to be appreciated and while the young people might have a good idea, we remember back in 1975, when Russell tried to use a mixer back at the old building and it blew a fuse and they all were stuck in the dark, stumbling around. Never mind that we’re not in the old building, that it’s not 1975, and that both fuses and mixers have improved since then, the bakery has taken a lesson from this historical moment.
D. Well, sure, maybe the bakery could use mixers, but it would have to get the okay from the State and from various organizations who’ve come to depend on the cakes and there might be rules or it might make folks uncomfortable, so I’ll look into it, but…
E. The “young people” start to feel like the bakery isn’t actually preparing for what will happen when the current crop of chefs leave and are confused. After all, a bakery that only existed for the span of interest and ability of its core bakers is not unheard of. The bakers could have decided that they would see this thing through until their end and then it would be over and someone else who wanted to start a bakery could do so on their own terms. But the bakery approached the “young people” about finding a way to keep the bakery current and passing it on to the next generation of people who would come to care about it and feel invested in its well-being.
I will give you a hint, only A. did not happen.
And I quite honestly don’t get it. I mean, yes, I see that it happens all the time. I’ve seen churches kill themselves in this very way. But I’m still stunned by it. If you want people to care about what you’re doing and feel invested in it, you’ve got to give them some stake in it. Bringing them on-board in hopes that they will help you preserve things just as they are now with museum-like quality is really no way to keep your organization living and thriving.
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo
Churches?! Hell, I thought you’d been hanging out where I work!
The upside is that the young folks will have to band together with each other and figure out how to (a) finesse or (b) force the older folks into changing or (c) start a
rivalalternative bakery of their own to make even more chocolate cakes to sell to raise money for the liberal causes. So that they will be a very tight, coherent group with a common understanding of shared mission and means. Some of the older folks will see that the younger folks are selling more cakes and either invite them to come show how it’s done, after all, or (more likely) leave the older group and join with the young’uns, thus providing them with a key to the older group’s experiences (which actually do matter). And they will be in place to take over once the stubborn olders retire or die off. The downside of all that is that the close-knit band will act the same way a few decades down the road when 20- and 30-somethings come along and explain the miracle of solar-powered mixers or whatever the latest twist is.Or the young folks will feel their goodwill being squandered and their efforts being thwarted and decide they’re fed up with trying to make cake. And they’ll leave it to the old bakers to just go on as they always have until they can’t anymore. And eventually nobody has any damn cake.
The former CEO of AT&T said it best when he said, and this is a paraphrase “When the speed of things outside an organization is faster than inside an organization, that organization is doomed.”
If your suggestions are not taken seriously, just do what you’d like to see done yourself. Constantly asking for permission or constantly offering suggestions or ideas and then complaining when others don’t act on your brilliant ideas is a submissive, powerless dead end road filled with diaper pales of endless caterwauling blather.
Fire up your own machine and fold in the chocolate chips whoever you see fit. If you were right, those old hippies will either hire you or fade into the sunset.
Sometimes those youn bakers only see things through their hip new urban aviators, and think that if it works in hipsterville it should work in hickville. Then they find out that all the key customers all wander off to another bakery. Because you can’t build a dominate bakery off of a small demographic.
Well, I’m not involved in liberal bakeries, but I am–at least nominally–”involved” in a church that behaves the same way.
Personally, I’m a bit over the Boomer generation right now. It’s sort of like they came on the scene thinking they were All That and have never gotten the point that at some point they have to relinquish the high ground if they want the organisation to continue in perpetuity.
Then again, I think many of them are so arrogant that they’d rather their organisations die so no one else can be the Head Baker or whatever. It’s that limitless arrogance I see so often.
Great. Now I want dessert.
Ha, upon re-reading my post, so do I! I should have made it a roller-skate factory or something.
Anyway, I think it’s just human nature, not something inherently wrong with the Baby Boomers. I mean, in this case, it is baby boomers, but when they started this particular bakery, they did it because their elders were failing to meet a need and they stepped up and did this really innovative and great thing.
But I wish they’d remember that lesson–the very reason they exist in the first place.
And I don’t think the solution is to just do one’s own baking–in this case–because they are doing a fine job of supplying cakes to the people they supply cakes to. So from the outside, no one is unhappy. The bakery is meeting the needs it’s identified.
This really is about whether something changes and continues or doesn’t change and the young people they solicited decide that they aren’t really wanted and quit.
At least, that’s how I see it.
Rbt, in this case, the youngsters are the hicks.
Enough with the picking on the boomers, already. Half of the “young folks” are boomers anyway, in any real life scenario anyone has in mind. Trust me on this one.
Great. Now I want dessert.
ditto. vending machine, here I come!
But I’m young, and I prefer pie.
“Rbt, in this case, the youngsters are the hicks.”
I dont know it seems to me that plenty of young people as well as novices ARE getting involved and they think that because things work in their neighborhood that they will work everywhere. Its important to remember that we’ve done as well as we have because those old guys do know what their doing 80% of the time
> But I’m young, and I prefer pie.
Thus the decline in popularity of Christianity, and the increase in popularity of Paganism, in this country. Frankly, I don’t care how *those people* mix their cake or fold in their chips; the final product is a toxic torte.