Balancing Mentors and Newbies

There is a great TV commercial from the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Old man on a golf course with a young golfer.  Old man says, “When I was a young man, I would hit the ball right over that tree and onto the green.”

So the young gofer takes a swing and drives the ball right into the tree.  The ball bounces back.

Then the old man says, “Of course, when I was a young man, that tree was only three feet high.”

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Can’t think of a better illustration why in all the programs we run for innovators, we try to get the experienced folks to avoid saying, “We did it in the 60′s and it didn’t work,” while getting the newbies to learn how they did it in the 60s and why it didn’t work.

They say that insanity is trying something over and over and expecting a different result.  If that is true, we need more crazy people.

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