Interview with a Modern Elder: Demystifying Wisdom at Work

Innovation and organizational resilience require leaders who can manage across the five generations in the workforce today. Leaders who can reframe generational differences as opportunities for collective learning are building more creative and successful teams. Join Modern Elder Academy’s Chip Conley, for an energizing fireside chat where he will share his insights why “wisdom workers” will take the place of “knowledge workers.” A close mentor to Airbnb founder Brian Chesky, Chip stresses that those in mid-career face both more angst and more opportunity than ever. He stresses that companies who engage in this work flourish by instilling a purpose across their employee base and forging stronger bonds with their customers.

Chip Conley, Founder Modern Elder Academy

Cher Murphy, Managing Director CRA/Admired Leadership

Notes:

Definition of a modern elder: they are as curious as they are wise.

Ask this 5 times: What business are we in?

By asking this question to your leadership it is possible we get a different answer each time. In order to learn a deeper universal value of what the company is, we need to understand how each function sees the company and how we can get to one universal value.

We are all Menterns - Mentors & Interns

Young brains help us work fast and break things and they provide fluid intelligence

Old brains have crystalized intelligence and make decisions slowly, giving the opportunity for less mistakes

Atlassian leans into their trust for diversity

Teams are more successful if they are more diverse.

Ask your team - Beyond your boss, who do you seek out for wisdom & advice?

If we start tracking & putting together a heat map of these connections we can see who are our “wisdom workers” and “invisible partners”

Wisdom management helps provide accessibility to the most people in the org

Ask your team - what is your biggest lesson from the past quarter? Both as an individual and as a team

This helps make the conversation about learning from mistakes fluid. How can we/I learn from these lessons?

Learnings from Proctor & Gamble

A company with employee’s tenure being 18 years

With wisdom workers and their individual “products” they show lessons learned in HQ

Create a Mastery society - what is the institutionalized wisdom for your function?

Pull these people together to talk about how their wisdom on the company can be shared as universal value

We want wisdom to be our strategic differentiator

Provide Phased retirement

How do you bring different generations to the table to learn from each other?

How can we help individuals prepare for retirement, learn from them, and not throw them into the deep end of working on Friday and not working at all Monday?