GENERATIONS - A SHARED RESOURCE
GENERATIONS: A SHARED RESOURCE
Generations have never carried the same meaning everywhere. In Ghana, elders hold the role of storytellers and keepers of wisdom. In India, age is honored as a sign of respect. In the United States, youth is celebrated as the face of innovation. In Japan, reverence often grows with age. In the United Kingdom, long service is respected, yet age discrimination remains one of the most common workplace claims. Around the globe, societies send mixed messages about age. Some revere it. Others resist it. None have fully solved how to balance the gifts of youth and the gifts of age.
“One generation asks, “What if we try?” Another answers, “Here’s how it can last.””
Workplaces are where these tensions surface most clearly. Younger professionals may feel their education and fresh expertise are overlooked before they have a chance to prove themselves. Older professionals may face the opposite, with assumptions that their best days are behind them. These quiet biases shape who is invited to the table and who is passed by.
What if we saw generations not as divisions but as a shared resource? Every age group carries something another does not. Younger colleagues bring courage to disrupt and a willingness to test what has not been tried. Older colleagues bring perspective, emotional steadiness, and the ability to recognize patterns revealed only over decades. Neither is complete without the other. Together, they expand what is possible.
FIGHTING STEREOTYPES WITH REASON
One of the most common stereotypes is that older professionals cannot keep up with technology. Yet history tells a different story. Every wave of workers has adapted to entirely new systems, tools, and platforms. From typewriters to email, fax machines to mobile apps, ledgers to cloud-based systems, older professionals have been learning, unlearning, and relearning throughout their careers. Adaptability is not new to them. The idea that technological agility belongs only to the young misses the truth.
“Fresh ideas and lived experience are not in competition, but in conversation. And we’re better for that.”
These truths show up in practice. Picture a 33-year-old hiring manager meeting a 60-year-old candidate. At first, hesitation lingers, shaped by cultural messages that favor youth. Then the conversation unfolds. The candidate speaks with clarity about lessons learned from both success and failure. She describes how adapting to new technologies has been part of her entire career, and how leading through change has become second nature. What the hiring manager sees is not someone outdated but someone steady, agile, and capable of strengthening the team’s resilience. The hire is made not despite age, but because of it.
This is not charity. It is sound strategy. Generations as a shared resource is not about politely making room, it is about building stronger systems where different vantage points come together. A twenty-five-year-old product manager and a sixty-five-year-old operations lead may seem far apart, yet their collaboration can spark solutions neither could reach alone. One asks, “What if we try?” Another answers, “Here’s how it can last.”
ARRIVING EARLY + STAYING LATER
The deeper issue is cultural. When workplaces fall into the pattern of seeing only those between 22 and 40 as valid employees, talent is reduced to a narrow window of time. The vitality of early careers and the depth of later ones are set aside. What is lost is creativity, strategy, and mentorship that can span entire decades.
Generations as a shared resource means seeing age as a spectrum we all travel together, not a boundary that divides us. It invites leaders to honor the energy of youth without belittling it, and to celebrate the steadiness of age without stereotyping it. It asks each of us to notice assumptions and consider whether they help us build the culture we want.
Generations as a shared resource is strength in complement. It is recognizing that fresh ideas and lived experience are not in competition, but in conversation. And we are better for that.
Around the globe, generations are understood in many ways. But seen as a shared resource, the truth becomes clear: every stage of life carries something essential. When we create space for all of it, we create cultures where everyone belongs.
