Along came the Dinosaur!

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Photo courtesy of Daniel Ferenčak 

I like dinosaurs. I find them intriguing to say the least. Probably because they belong to a distant era that we only read about in our science curriculum. Or maybe because they have been the subject of public imagination for so long. To be honest, I mostly like them because I know for a fact that those life threatening creatures (well, most of them anyway) don’t live among us anymore…. Well that’s what I thought until I heard this :

« I’m offered a training in ****** (an IT technology that needn’t be named) along with a to-be signed commitment to stay in the organization for the period of 7 years after the training. Of course if I’m willing to leave, all I need to do is pay back the « whole » amount of the training before leaving »

Ok, so let me get this straight. You’re offered a training that will obviously not only benefit you but benefit your organization as well. And you are to either seal 7 years of your life with the organization or pay back the whole, apparently not subject to depreciation, amount whenever you choose to leave. That, despite the fact that the technology can become obsolete by the time you hit your second year. Hmmm.

So I asked myself the question : who does that ? Who still does that ? … Dinosaurs, exactly ! But since dinosaurs are supposedly extinct, those must be some special kind of dinosaurs with special powers. So here is today’s realization : Super dinosaurs are still living among us. And here is how you can spot one :

  1. Doesn’t know he’s a dinosaur
  2. Horrible at math* (Not sure he knows of the existence of a calculator)
  3. Still thinks that employees are cogs in his machine and that they can only have access to the knowledge he gracefully hands them (Internet? what’s that?)

….And to think that people are discussing Social Capital. Not around here anyway !

On a final note: I stumbled upon this article from Forbes that lists the 10 reasons top talents leave organizations. Something to learn from, I hope!

* A friend made the pertinent remark that he’s not really horrible at math, He just makes all the wrong calculations.

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