In the early years of my business journey, I often made tactical moves when it came to creating a team. This decision to hire was often opportunistic and driven by the demands of a handful of clients. As a young business that was boot strapped by the owners (me included) we didn’t have the capital, nor the experience to think more strategically.

As our experience grew and the stability of the company improved, it became essential to think further ahead, not just what do we need today, but what should the team look like in years to come. What will our clients need? What does the company need? What do I need?

Succession planning is an important part of business planning. We often think of it as being about developing talent to replace the owners or key roles in a business, but it is important to have a succession plan for every role in a company. It means we are thinking about the career pathways for our team, planning for departures and arrivals of new people.

The rise of AI has also caused a rising fear about our future. Headlines exclaiming that AI will replace jobs and now can do the work of graduates and other roles flash across my news feed every day.  It makes me wonder, who (or what) will do our jobs in the future? What should we prepare for? The truth is there is a constant need to adapt and improve. If we don’t someone else will.

It was refreshing to read an article quoting the Amazon Cloud CEO, Matt Garman talking about the issues that we will face if we don’t hire grads and create junior level roles in our businesses. His advice, “don’t ditch your junior employees“. The short-term gain will likely result in long term pain for us, our clients and our existence as a business.

Building a company heavy with older generations of people will give you more experience but also higher costs that having a mix of age groups and experience. Those older people are Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) many of whom are now in their 40’s, as well as Gen-Xer’s like me.  None of those costs will be as high as the day you realise that you have no one new growing up with your business. That is the succession planning failure you don’t want to have.

We must embrace AI, it is with us, like it or not. We should also expect that some of our team won’t get it as quickly as others. We must arm our Gen-Z and soon Gen-Alpha team with AI tools and put them at the heart of the strategy. Challenge them to solve the big problems. Digital natives think differently and bring a different set of experiences and ideas. Listen to them and ask lots of questions!

The best thing I have done in the last few months is ask the young people in my team to show me how they are using AI and what problems they are solving. My boss did the same for me back in the early 90’s, he was a mainframe guy in his 30’s and he hired me (a 21 year old grad) to work with PC’s. Maybe the world hasn’t changed as much as we think it has.

This isn’t saying you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, you can and they are important because they bring a experience to the table. Imagine the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, if it was a group of fresh faced youngsters without test match hardened veterans. The mix is important! Their success over the long term has been in part because they constantly bring in new talent, some of whom over time become the greats of the game!

Invest in the future! Hiring young people is good for your business and the community we live in. We will thank ourselves in years to come.