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the lost generations
Posted on www.pakpositive.com/specials by Deevaan on 31 January 2005


someone commented to pakpositive that they notice a lot of our young people spending time chatting on msn than doing anything worthwhile... this is a valid observation and points to a growing trend & disappointing habit in the younger generation...

a long time ago, I read a poem about the best minds of a generation going stark raving mad... a lament perhaps about the loss of brilliant minds to social excesses and drug culture.....this could very well apply to our current generation of young graduates who spend more energy chatting on msn than self improvement & career development...

what i have found from my own experience is that learning the ropes in the market place comes at the expense of hard labor.... for me personally, bouts of depression was also part and parcel of the learning process but with this came valuable experience even if customers were rude, impatient, obnoxious, full of themselves….i had the privilege of working for thorough professionals and taught us all the right things …emphasis must remain on professional conduct…

be polite, call the customer even if you have to be the messenger of bad news face, it is not a personal popularity contest, say what is right, keep the conversation tactful yet to the point... no need to be a wise guy, be their advisor not their supplier, invest in your friendship with customers, be in control, mark someone as your role model and when caught in a tight situation think what he/she would do or say….

basic principles come in handy every day as experience has no substitute and money cannot buy it either, like fine wine, it is a product of time

what bothers me is that i no longer find this “old way” of doing things in young interns and trainees, they spend their time infront of the screen on msn, chatting their lives away or they fidget around with their mobile phones and download ringtones all day

when I interview young graduates, I find little content, graduates from leading business school just talk salary expectations.... they have the cocky attitude that is probably inculcated by business schools as an essential quality of a successful manager… but how/what will they manage a business when they do not know the basics that are the foundation of running it the blood sweat and tears it takes to run a business is not something one can learn at school….

the work place is an extremely dynamic arena of competition of enterprise of business ideas evolving to new products and new services... you need your eyes and ears fune tuned to new changes and msn is your enemy if you get addicted to it.... i see the world change infront of young people and they do not notice that time is slipping away from them