An ancient looking fellow with a long gray beard showed up yesterday driving what may be the largest backhoe I have ever seen. He explained that he needed to do some repairs on a nearby water line that feeds one of the water tanks for the horses over in the next pasture. He stopped his machine, got out and just walked back and forth for a bit, looking at the ground. We talked about the weather, horses, the usual things that people talk about way up here in these mountains. Then he climbed back up the steps into the backhoe's cab, moved the machine about 15 feet over to a spot that appeared to me identical to any other place in the field and began digging. I sat down to watch him and became amazed at how precisely he could cut a trench with his machine, the big bucket never moving more than necessary and within a few minutes he'd reached whatever he needed to find - a valve or fitting or something.

Another person had arrived in a pickup truck, who then stepped off into the hole and changed the part. Once completed, the backhoe's engine fired up and in the space of time it took me to roll and smoke a cigarette, the hole (big enough to bury a car) was filled in and the sod, which had been initially peeled off the ground, was put back in place with fast but sure strokes of the bucket's long teeth. The old man waved and drove off down the dirt road. I've watched backhoes being operated in the past, the operator banging the entire bucket and arm on everything and making a giant mess, not so this time. The guy with the gray beard definitely had many years of experience and the ability to probably out-dig and out-produce a whole crew of younger, inexperienced drivers. There are plenty of people like the old man, those who have mastered some skill or skills, having a lifetime of practice, the knowledge to do something correctly every time and the wisdom to sometimes sit back and look around for a moment before just charging in and tearing up the dirt.

Why, then, do so many companies now discard their experienced people and court only the youth, who have multiple diplomas but no real history? I have heard the excuses that older people just cost so much more regarding medical insurance (might they not be worth the cost), older people can't grasp modern management techniques (whatever those happen to be this month), older people are set in their ways and/or can't learn. Really? Perhaps the notions of "set" or "can't" are hiding something else. Companies hire the young and educated. Those people move up into positions in management, where they find they are supposed to be leaders. They make decisions and other young employees carry out the orders, sometimes blindly but without question as none of those subordinates have the experience to truly know whether any given decision was correct. The young manager is likely going to feel threatened if anyone were to actually question what's been decided. The problem for the manager is that the older, experienced people often will question, or will simply say no.

Experience and age can and often do give one the capacity for independent thought far beyond whatever is taught in some university classroom. Companies will expouse the concept that employees should be "courageous followers," and while this is taught as being a noble undertaking, reality is found to be much different. What is actually expected of a follower is agreement without question, the mindlessness of a herd of sheep. No bleating is tolerated. These same companies will put into practice the concept of mentoring, but then it's the young managers who become mentors for other younger employees. I'm not sure that there's much experience being passed along at all. Those with age and experience, those who are not sheep, they need to just go away and not apply elsewhere.

Oddly enough, sometimes those old, discarded people don't even have to apply elsewhere. My friend, a tool and die maker, recently retired early after having grown tired of the herd of young supervisors at the company where he worked. At the same time, his wife, who spent her career learning about and managing computer systems, retired early from her company for the same reason. She's since been asked back as a consultant multiple times but has decided not to bother. It seems the company cannot find anyone with her skills. Her husband is so busy now that he doesn't have time to be retired, as a lot of other "old people" are happy to pay him for his experience and ability to make machine tools correctly the first time, rather than creating piles of scrap metal.

I sometimes wonder what some of these award-winning modern management companies are going to do when all the managers look at each other and realize that there's no one left who has any real-world experience. I suspect the managers will have a lot of meetings and then find something - anything - and completely change whatever it is, with grand accolades to one and all for the progress they've made. Nobody's left who could judge otherwise, who would have the knowledge to point out that if it didn't work the last five or ten or however many times it was tried before, it won't work this time, either. I think if I were to ever start a company, I'd only hire old people and I'd make sure they all knew that when I made a decision, they would be free to say no and say it loudly if they think I made the wrong choice. Then I would be the one learning from their experience. I've already earned the old, discarded title so I'd much prefer to end up a wise manager rather than a modern one.