Senior Generation

 

My friend's father was a successful businessman all his life. 

But recent challenges have negatively affected his business.

Read on, despite the length of the post, it will be useful for your business.

He and his friends - generations of the old school of the USSR - directors of factories, rectors of educational institutions, even the head of the Tbilisi KGB - all of them could not adapt.

Mr. J. - this is how I will mention him. It is an honor for me to know this person, to visit him repeatedly, to sit at the table with him and his friends, comprehending their experience, their view of humanity, homeland and faith.

I consider Mr. J. one of the best representatives of my country. The ideal of the head of the family, in love with his city, country and friends. He very carefully passed on to me and his son, my closest friend and classmate, what he received from the older generation.

Now I do the same, I pass it on, but if Mr. J. did it ritually, using toasts, as a toastmaster, I use social networks.

I will draw a generalized portrait, because I have met quite a few such people in my life, and therefore I named this post - the Senior Generation.

I had to get in touch with them from the business side.

These are disciplined, responsible people - directors of the old school. Successful in the past, possessing the capital and management skills of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, they could not master the business at 21.

I will never dare to point out the mistakes to my friend's father, but here I will tell my last visit a couple of years ago and you will understand everything.

But let me satisfy my craving for writing and start with a period when my friend and I, still schoolchildren, found ourselves in the company of his father and his friends, who ruled the business world of that time.

Then Mr. J. was the director of a furniture factory.

On the weekend, he and his partners flew to Moscow to unwind. Sometimes they decided to fly away in the morning, hungover, so that they could feast with their Moscow partners in the capital of that strange and vast country. So they arranged business there, rendering friendly services, presenting with Georgian wine.

I was often at a party and almost every evening I found the same picture - Mr. J. with his friends, sat and performed the ritual that they received from their fathers.

If we, with his son, appeared, the company invited us to the table, which was the highest honor, we were not forced to drink a lot.

The ritual itself lasted a long time. Wine was not the main thing, my friend and I remembered what the elders were talking about, quoting poetry, expressing their attitude to philosophical concepts: friendship; love; homeland; humanity; reverence for ancestors and deceased friends.

So they continued the chain - they passed on what they received from their fathers to us, the next generation.

in vino veritas - the truth in wine, a large banner hung on the walls.

I mean the Georgian ritual of toasting, where the toastmaster alternately chooses topics: homeland, faith, parents, friendship ...

Among the instructions on how to conduct group discussions, Stephen Covey offers an Indian stick - one holds the stick and speaks, everyone listens, then the next one comes. This is how a new type of Vin - Vin negotiation is achieved, instead of Vin - Luz.

The toastmaster takes a vessel with wine, and forms his thought about something important, ending with a blessing. And one by one everyone follows his example. Inattention to the words of others is condemned.

It doesn't matter how much or what you drink, my mother told me that my father very often was a toastmaster, although sometimes he did not drink at all due to health problems. What matters is ritual, sincerity and attentiveness to the opinion of the interlocutor. You have to find some common ground to bless the chosen topic in the toast. As if the whole society agrees on the general in their words, and all together bless it.

This is the essence of the ritual formed in Georgia. We call it the Academy.

Let's go back to Mr J.

My friend and I absorbed words, stories, delighted, listening to poems quoted by heart, listening to songs and watching a dance, or a virtuoso performance to the piano. Sometimes the feast lasted for several days.

The ritual of the Georgian Feast was also used by these people for business purposes.

So they encrypted new partners and smoothed corners. Things were discussed, decisions were made and deals were sealed with a handshake during a feast, this was a distinctive feature of doing business in Georgia.

By the way, Stalin also used this ritual, slightly changing it. He drunk a close circle, believing that wine loosens tongues and allows you to look deeper into the soul of subordinates.

Mr. J. and his friends were very powerful. In the USSR, success was measured by power, not money.

I remember seeing one of their subordinates, the manager of hunting grounds and providing elite hunting for those in power, a document with which he was presented for his service:

"Do not stop! Do not ask for documents! Obey orders!"

K G B. "

This became the limit of my youthful dreams for many years, to have something like that.

Then the time began to change - the Soviet Union has sunk into oblivion, and these people found themselves facing the challenges of our time.

So that you understand what I see as one of the reasons for their fiasco, I will tell you my last visit to Mr. J., which took place several years ago.

Everything was the same.

One offered to call a mutual friend and invite him, took out the latest model phone, an ordinary paper notebook, found a contact and began to dial the number with his finger.

I don’t think the situation has changed much over the past few years.

I remember the fear of telephone conversations imprinted in the subconscious of these gentlemen, because they knew not by hearsay about total wiretapping. It is unlikely that over the past few years these people have mastered WhatsApp, and other technology-related business tools of the 21st century.

I think you get my point - it is impossible to keep up with the frantic pace of the business of our time without using the tools used by competitors.

Georgian Attitude Psychology has a theory on this - the difficulty of adapting to everything new. We all fall into 2 categories: those who have the installation for a long time; and those who have

changing rapidly.

The former are difficult to accept everything new, the latter are more flexible, and quickly adapt to the changing world.

Maybe the two ruling parties in the United States can be viewed in this aspect as well?

What category do you belong to, without reference to biological age, is there in you the ability to learn new things, as in childhood?

I can only answer for myself and the people I know very closely.

In just a couple of months, I turned back the clock.

I feel younger every day. In the end, I learned to use my mobile no worse than young people whom I envied deep in my heart.

For example, this morning, walking and listening to YouTube through headphones, I whispered the cherished OK Google and ordered to remind two things that I have already performed, or rather, I finish the second one.

I came up with this post, ordered the assistant from Google to remind and now you are reading these words.

This is very convenient, especially when it's cold and you have your hands in your pockets, or when your hands are busy with something, or when you are driving a car and Google Assistant chooses the best way to avoid traffic jams.

I can go on and on.

Just a couple of months ago, my brother and I started looking for a pen and paper to write something down, not knowing that you can take notes by whispering "OK Google. Google keeps" and "remind."

Meditation changes a person, adds flexibility to the psyche, just like physical exercises to the body.

Our personality does not lose the ability to learn and life remains a mystery that must be comprehended all the time.

There is a Zen saying:

"The master walks as if on horseback, although he is without a horse.

As if armed, although without a sword. "

Recently, I have been feeling this - a virtual genie with the broadest possibilities follows with me, ready to respond to the password - OK Google.

Exercising in meditation adds plasticity, and we become open to everything new. This is how we conquer old age, at least on a mental level. And is it important.

For the first time there was a word.

The change in the psyche is reflected in the physical body, we literally rejuvenate. Add to this the specific state of "Flow" and you have unlimited access to energy and satisfaction.

Alas, I cannot convince the close people themselves. The other day I bought a premium package on YouTube, where you can enter family members. I installed it on my brother's phone, suggested to my mother to install it on the TV. But both are conservative in their preferences, not open to new things.

In order to somehow compensate for your time spent reading my words, I will try to cheer you up by telling a story about my mother:

She is a very modern person, a retired German teacher, she sits at the TV all day and watches YouTube, using the remote control masterly. All day long she searches for various medical topics, recipes for healthy food, then she writes it all down in a notebook for me and my brother.

So she takes care of us, she has a lot of notebooks.

Yesterday she asked for help with something related to the calendar.

It turned out that my mother took the old calendars and is trying to change them.

I silently took her phone, turned on the calendar and showed her that she already had an electronic calendar.

Today I asked how she learned to use the electronic calendar. She replied that she had done all the work. Seeing my misunderstanding, she proudly provided a 2-year-old calendar, in which, thanks to the electronic calendar, she found coincidences with the year 2021.

She solved the problem to genius simply by rewriting the names of the months.

Mom is not going to turn on the electronic calendar, because she is used to wall-mounted, paper ones.

There are older people who are unable to read books in electronic form, although you can adjust the lighting, the size of the letters.

All this is the inertia of consciousness, an attitude.

Decide for yourself whether to overcome it or not.

For success in any business, you must use everything that is available and what competitors are using.

And it’s better to start with mobile, and all the tools that are available with it.