If You Boycott The Future, The Future Boycotts You

If your organization is boycotting reality and modernity, you are doomed to get older, grayer and fewer in numbers as the young career-minded people boycott you. 

In yesterday's post about "boycotting reality" I said that if your organization pretends not to know that Google is the new Yellow Pages and Twitter and Facebook and blogs are not going away just because you won't use them. I'm reminded of what megachurch pastor, Leith Anderson, said about dying churches: They go to bed every night praying that tomorrow morning it will be 1950 again.

Organizations get more of what they already have because people flock to similar people. Blacks flock to blacks, young flocks to young, old flocks to old. If you want to save your organization from death and make it relevant to the younger career-oriented people you need to grow it into a new decade you need to literally go out and find some hip, connected, charismatic young professionals and make them leaders in your old and gray, dying, irrelevant organization. If you do this, two things will result: 

1. These charismatic younger folks will attract more young members.
2. These young professionals will tell you how to make your organization more attractive to young professionals.

Put some young professionals - even some college students - on your board. Appoint them to empty offices. If you stop boycotting the future, the future will stop boycotting you.

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