All too often these days, young people receive a bad press.
In one or two of my grumpier old man moments, I think I may have chipped in with one or two derogatory remarks (possibly about oat milk) – but then I wasn’t brought up with the monstrous pressures of today’s non-stop social media world; nor was I locked up in my prime due to a pandemic, which no surprise, made many people very cranky about venturing out into that big scary world.
We all spend a disproportionate amount of time on our beloved ‘smart’ phones, unable to function without, so apart from my humble attempts at taking photos with my phone, I’ve been heartened of late to engage with some outstanding young people on site visits – away from those highly addictive screens.
The spoiler-alert moral of the story here I hope is to ask our younger work colleagues to find that glorious balance of accessing the online encyclopedia of Google, but to also kiss that desk and mesmerizing screens au revoir from time to time, to meet people face-to-face. Yes, face-to-face.
Go wander round a site getting your hands and clothes covered in some unmentionables. See it all, embrace the odors, hope that the ear defenders work, get some interesting things stuck under your fingernails and maybe just swallow a few wayward insects for good measure. Your vehicle that you lovingly cleaned over the weekend may also get covered in crap – but the good news is that you’ll probably live, and you’ll have had a proper hands-on experience that will provide inspiration far more vivid and inspiring than any dreary online meeting. Zzzzzz.
At a farm business I visited just recently to write a case study about how mixing with the right pumps was crucial to their biogas operation, I found myself mighty impressed by my host – a lad in his early 20’s. I have no doubt that his vast farming and engineering knowledge has been gained since the day he could stand up, but aside from his expertise in all things slurry and pumps and separators and digestate and cows and milking, and much, much more, his enthusiasm and thirst for yet more knowledge was infectious. He fully understood that for his fourth-generation family farm to not only survive but prosper, diversification into new technology was essential.
Not just change for the sake of change but realizing that slurry once/still thought of as a waste product is (when managed properly) an extremely valuable commodity. By choosing the right pumps, he’s helped the farm produce so much clean green renewable energy that they’ve not only wiped out their once huge energy bill, but now have plenty left over to sell to the grid. Oh, and the digestate from the biogas digester makes all the farm’s crops grow like never before – also wiping out the cost of fertilizer.
“Not bad,” I thought, “for a lad in his 20’s.”.
I thought I worked hard, but at my age there was no shortage of long boozy lunches, and who the hell cared about tomorrow or the planet. How dare I now say anything critical ever again about young people!
As if I wasn’t impressed enough already, this enterprising young farmer/businessman was also modest, polite, a good listener, and not without humor. And no, he didn’t even mention the need for oat milk. There wasn’t one of my sometimes daft layman’s questions that he didn’t answer without patience and clear explanation. Armed with a first-class brief, I had no excuse but to write a first-class case study, which he very courteously and almost apologetically made a few changes to, while thanking me for my interest in what was happening at the farm. What a cheek!
WhatsApp, messages, emails, and especially online meetings (even more annoying than oat milk) are all well and good, but I’d implore every budding young technical sales engineer to get out there, meet that person you’re trying to sell to, shake their hand, look them in the eye, and listen to what they are trying to achieve. You might be just the problem solver that they are looking for. They don’t give a toss about how many ‘likes’ you’ve had on Linkedin about: “We’re all just having such a lovely, wonderful perfect day!”
Far too many people (of all ages to be fair), still seem stuck or all too ready to retreat into that lockdown bubble, but the real world is very much back open for business.
At my ripe old age, I felt greatly encouraged to find myself looking up to this 20-something lad. Hard working young people like him, who care about planet Earth and want to find long term solutions are our future. We live in hope.
