AI – PRODUCTION – CREATIVITY
Across companies worldwide, the same pattern repeats itself: founders and visionaries build a business for decades, creating a stable employee base. Then – with growth and the emergence of new technologies – a breaking point arrives.
The old team: employees who have been working in the same place for decades, knowing the company inside out and carrying invaluable experience. They preserve the memories of its beginnings and safeguard its identity. However, they often struggle to adapt to new technologies, new workflows, and the fast pace of the global market. From their perspective, “change” threatens the security they have built throughout their lives.
The new team: younger employees, specialists, and experts who bring energy, innovation, and modern methods – often supported by artificial intelligence, digital tools, and new approaches to process management. Their strengths lie in speed, creativity, and a desire for continuous improvement. But soon they face barriers: resistance, emotional hurdles, and the unspoken fear of older colleagues that their work will become “obsolete.”
The founder or leader: in this dynamic, the company’s founder or CEO usually plays the most crucial – and most difficult – role. He or she sees the bigger picture and understands the need for change, but also carries loyalty to those who built the company over decades. This creates a vicious circle: the company grows, market demands grow, but the organization’s inner capacity remains trapped in the past.
This phenomenon is not tied to one country or industry. It is found everywhere: from small family businesses to multinational corporations. Organizational development experts recognize it as a “professionalization crisis” – the moment when a company must move from the pioneering growth phase into the phase of professional management of processes, human resources, and knowledge.
If this moment is missed, the consequences can be serious: young professionals leave because they cannot realize their potential, and the company slows down in global competition. On the other hand, if changes are introduced too quickly and without empathy, divisions arise, and valuable experience of older generations is lost.
In the era of artificial intelligence, digitalization, and global competition, companies cannot live off past victories. What is needed is synergy between experience and innovation. Those who achieve it not only secure their future but also create a workplace where different generations collaborate – instead of holding each other back.