Daniel Babb - Never Slow Down

From the time we were born people have constantly been trying to “teach” us what they know, with factors of personal motivation, desire to manipulate, mal understanding, personal limitations and a general acceptance to accept only what they already know. Our generation (anyone who has grown up with technology) has a unconscious understanding that it no longer takes years of study to aggregate the compilation of individuals’ life work as it is at our fingertips. What used to take months or years of dedication to research in a given subject we can now do and fully understand in minutes with a few internet searches. This allows us to compile more information to make better decisions faster in every aspect of our life. We can research where people have succeeded, where they have failed and the root barriers to industry topics.

I would like to talk a bit about how our generation has a mass psychological advantage in the workplace because of our superior learning capabilities due to growing up in an era of video games. We have a psychological advantage in the workplace because we know how to fail. Our generation has played games in our spare time for fun that are designed to make us constantly fail, adapt and overcome to achieve a personal goal with societal comparisons or game scores, rankings etc. We translate this to the workplace by never accepting defeat or mediocrity. We psychologically do not accept the commonly known problems or barriers and strive to win or get past these problems. There has never been a problem in my experience that has been unsolvable. If we dedicate ourselves to any problem and completely understand the issues, we have the technical capabilities and drive to solve them. Sorry Malcolm Gladwell I’m not sure that the 10000 hour rule applies to our generation.

Our generation has no limitation. We organically know how to research and solve problems in a way that is uncomprehendible by our predecessors. The societal meme that we cannot be multi skilled is false. We have the united understanding that we can be experts in anything if we choose to dedicate time to understanding the subject at hand. The thing that should be feared most is that we can gain this understanding in record time. What used to take years of dedication and study can now be achieved in weeks or months. Do not get me wrong, I fully respect and support the modern education structure and think it is important to go and graduate from college but for different reason than our predecessors. I believe that it is important to go to college to learn how to learn, collaborate and be able to understand industry standards. Our predecessors believe that you must go to college to learn how to do a job, which a very different mentality than what I believe.

The system is set up to give priority and status to those with tenure. This is not a terrible system but as the most advanced companies show, it is much more effective to allow employees to dream and work on what they are interested in without penalty. The barriers to innovate are becoming so low that anyone in any place can create anything, this can be manufacturing a product in china with injection molding and a full sales cycle to creating a social network from a dorm room in college. This barrier may be low but the modern corporate advantage is to aggregate these smart people and let them work together on what they are good at or on an idea which they have a solution for even if this is out of their domain of expertise. We understand that our peers are not smarter than us but have only dedicated more time to learning certain things which can help us solve a problem in a completely unrelated field. This mode of operation will inevitably be incorporated into every work environment as more of us emerge.

The single most contributing factor to employee attrition in my generation is the corporate non conformity to innovation. We do not want to be put into a silo which does not allow us to think, learn and spread our wings. I personally believe that everyone has great ideas; individuals may not know how to grasp their expertise based on their antecedence and belief in what they have been told but we all have it. It is important to understand personally what you know and what you don’t know and how to have a mode of honest self evaluation.

Innovator Vs. Outcast

It is a fine line between innovator and outcast. It is important to learn these lines and they should never be crossed. You must respect these lines and live on their borders. I once heard an interesting quote “if your not living life on the edge, your probably taking up too much space”. This is significant when working in an organization and defining tactics to solve your companies’ problems. The first and single most important rule to live by is that you should never make your decisions based on the opportunity for personal gain. This will spiral out of control and lead you to a place that will inevitably harm your organization as they are not structured for this type of mentality. If you live by this rule and make every decision for the benefit of the company, success will be a byproduct as visibility into your productivity and respect cannot be suppressed by any force. You can learn and define these lines from tenured employees and your peers. If you run into a company at 300 miles an hour throwing grenades at people, you may think your helping but only destruction will be left behind. It is important to not point fingers at problems without having a complete solution. It is important to collaborate with key employees or learn the needed skills to solve these problems and NEVER point fingers at people and make excuses for not solving them. Honesty and integrity are core to solving problems in the workplace.

Choosing the right company to work with

Never go to work for someone, choose to work with someone. If it is your intention to go get a job and make money than you will never stay employed. It is obviously important to make a living but should not be an evaluator in your job selection process. You should go somewhere where you know that you can contribute and solve problems, every company has them. If you cannot identify any high level issues and fully comprehend the technical factors surrounding these problems, then that company is probably not for you.

In summary it is important to understand what you are great at and how you can help the organization you work with. It is paramount to have the skills to recognize key individuals that can make a difference and help you solve your problems. Always performing an honest self evaluation and never slowing down will lead you down a path for success. If you are struggling to find your path I recently heard a motivating quote that could help, ”if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there”. To me this just reminded me to keep learning and never slow down.