How A COO Manages the Generational Gap

I got involved with a very young blockchain development company and I realized that there's a huge generational gap. I'm being called the old one and I'm 37 years old. How do you deal with the generational gap when, you know, it's like, I still think I still got it.

You do still got it. You know, my dad, when he was 80 years old, was still as smart as ever, and he had a lot more wisdom to bring to the table. And he was still young at heart. Right. And I think we need to. So all the generations need to learn a couple of things. We need to learn that each generation has something that they're bringing to the table. You know, gen Y and Gen Z bring technology skills to the table that baby boomers don't have. Baby boomers can bring some wisdom to the table and wisdom of time that the younger groups don't have. Like, I was just mentoring one of our COO alliance members recently, Savannah. She's 25 years old. She's taken a company from two employees to 108. Technologically, she could probably kick my ass. But the questions that she was asking me and the scenarios she was giving me to me were kind of laughable in a way that I was like, I couldn't believe that she didn't know the answers. But of course she doesn't. She hasn't been through these scenarios so many times to have seen it so many times. So it's, it's starting to get those gaps reduced by respecting each other's strengths, by looking for each other's Strengths. You know, 30 years ago, a book came out called Men are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. And it was to show that men and women are different. You know, men are not hairy versions of women. Right? We, we see the world differently, we think differently, we act differently, as do women. And how do you respect that and understand that? So that's really the course as to how do you bring the employees together to see each other's strengths and weaknesses? And it's by doing some to team building skills. Not the skills where you all take marshmallows and straws and build something, but the team building skills where you all do a lifeline exercise and you talk about your highs and lows, you talk about where you suck and where you're really good. It's about truly understanding vulnerabilities and then being able to come to the table and feeling safe with some of their vulnerabilities. It's sitting down with them and asking them you know, showing them what we're weak at and asking for some of their help. So it's us showing up and being vulnerable to allow them to be vulnerable. I remember years ago I was at my tennis club in Vancouver. I forget who it was. It was here from Vancouver. Maybe it was Chris who said, I was at my Vancouver tennis club. And Jimmy Patterson walked in, who's one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Western Canada. Tens of thousands of employees. Jimmy was probably 80 years old at the time, maybe older. And Jimmy walked in with his MacBook and his iPad and his iPhone, and they were almost like stacked up like a little pyramid. And I saw him walking in and he sat down near me at a table and he was waiting. And this younger girl came in, she was about 25 years old, and she came in to sit down and Jimmy stood up and shook her hand. And then he reached into his pocket and he pulled out a $50 bill. And you know how like seniors will take the bill and they like, they kind of hold it and show you. They're handing the bill. Jimmy, like showed her the $50 bill and he hands it to her and she goes, thanks, Jimmy. What do you need to learn today? He goes, I hear I can talk to these things and they'll do stuff. Can you teach me how to talk to my phone? And she goes, okay, what else? And he goes, well, I hear that I can get all three of these things to. If I delete something here, it'll delete them there. Can you teach me how to do that? Jimmy is one of the smartest entrepreneurs in Western Canada. He's the biggest employer in Western Canada after the government. Government's number one. All the Jim Patterson companies are number two. And he's showing up as the dumb person in the room with a 25 year old woman who could not touch anything that he does in the business world. And she's asking, he's asking her for help on things. At the end of 20 minutes, he says, okay, what questions do you have for me about business? And she goes, I want to know what it's like to do this. I want to know what it's like to do that. He was paying her for her time, but he also recognized that he could flip the switch a little bit after he was being truly vulnerable and allow her to ask him some questions too. And I think that's the environment that you want to try to create, Justin, inside of your company is this. We have stuff to learn together. And, and it's, it's the one plus one can equal three. You know, it's also starting to show them some of your relationships. Like, I, I recently heard of a CEO alliance member. I was out with his CEO for dinner last night and we were laughing. He goes, I can't believe that my CEO has just learned about Simon Sinek, you know, with his Start with why and his, his golden circle. And I was laughing with Dave. I'm like, Simon was on my board of Advisors in 2004, four years before he wrote the book Start with why. Five years before he did his first TEDx talk that went viral. Simon flew out to Vancouver to meet Brian and I to be on our board. And if I tell this COO alliance member this, it's gonna blow his freaking mind that Simon used to sleep on my couch. So sometimes, sometimes you leverage a relationship or, you know, a connection that you have with, with somebody that young, and it kind of, they go, whoa. Like, I, you know, I was an, I was an advisor. Sorry, not an advisor. I was a reference in the very first round of funding for Elon Musk and Kimbal Musk in their first business, Zip2, when they, they, they only wanted to raise 600,000, they raised 3 million. They had one employee there was Kimball Musk, worked for me in 1993. So you tell that kind of a story to a 21 year old and all of a sudden their jaw drops and they go, whoa, teach me shit. Right? But it's to also realize they have a lot of stuff they can teach us too. Like, I want to learn technology and these automations and hacks that Gen Y can teach me.