Review of Hip and Sage

Fellow blogger and speaker Alexandra Levit wrote a review of Hip and Sage - and the general topic of generations in the workplace on her blog, Water Cooler Wisdom. Check it out!

I have been getting lots of interesting feedback about Hip and Sage because it taps into a couple common situations:

• I am an "experienced" professional and I want to continue to be relevant - but all the technology changes, and resulting communication practices, are overwhelming! How do I begin? How can I maintain balance? How will online networking and communicating affect my life?
• I work for/know/care about some one who is sage but has stopped learning. How do I help them? Why don't they see the connection between how we communicate and how we work?

Over on Management Central, I had a brief exchange about this notion of stopping learning. Here are the comments back and forth:

MC Member: I'm still reading Hip and Sage. While I'm learning how to communicate with the "hip" I'm also able to see those that came before me more clearly. I can almost see the point in which they gave up learning....


Me: Wow, that is very interesting. I wonder how they see things? I wonder if they feel as though they have stopped learning?


MC Member: I would have to say they believe they've stopped learning about new technology. A manager I know refuses to get a PDA and uses his cell phone only for calls.... Because he doesn't feel the need to move forward. Unfortunately, he's always slightly behind whatever the movement is at the moment. Interestingly - he's supposed to be a leader....


Me: And that was really one of the key points I guess I hope Hip and Sage makes - you cannot be a leader and not keep up. You might be able to be a pontificating sage, but most of our organizations need active leaders. I have a friend who is in marketing and she is also strident in her resistance to not learning Web 2.0 technologies. For her, I fear, this will be a career breaker because she is out looking for a job and she will not be able to compete with the candidates who care enough to stay current and understand how to use new technologies to build marketing campaigns.

Comments

[Micki Voelkel]

I think this is so important. By avoiding technology we can pull ourselves out of the loop.

[lisa haneberg]

Yes, and it is an always moving goal. We cannot rest if we want to lead.