My grandma recently passed away. As our family stood gathered at her funeral, someone mentioned that she was part of what they viewed as the “greatest generation”; a generation that lived through an incredible amount of change. She was born in 1925, the youngest of 5 kids. Her father died when she was 3 years old, just a year before the Great Depression. Her family lived on a small farm. Through all of the tragedy and hardship brought about by those times, they had to learn new and different ways of doing things in order to survive. Then, on the coattail of depression came World War II. She saw her brother and her future husband, my grandfather, leave for war. Again, life as she knew it changed. But she couldn’t sit by and do nothing. When she learned of an opportunity to work for a defense supplier in Portland, Oregon, she seized it. It was a significant move for someone from a small town in Illinois, but she had to adapt to the changing world and go where the jobs were. After the war, she came back home, married my grandpa, and started a family – embracing her new role as a wife and mother. She also continued to work. She was a nurse’s assistant for many years – a field filled with change, requiring her to learn new skills and continuously adapt her methodologies. Before she passed away at 90, she had somewhat mastered the digital camera and the cellular phone, learned how to use a computer sparingly and had a “Magic frame” that allowed for pictures to be sent to it via text message. Although she didn’t always understand the technology or the changes that were happening around her, she appreciated it, and adapted to it; because she knew, in the end, it was for the best.
Adapting to change transcends generations…it is no less important for us than it was for my grandmother…maybe even more so.
No one knows what the future will hold but I’ll bet that the future workforce will need to think and act in new ways relative to computers, phones, and cars as they advance over the next 50 years. Instead of fighting this change, we need to be on the forefront of it and be willing to accept this change, adapt to it and find ways for it to benefit our businesses and our lives.
Adaptability is and will continue to be one of the core values that we embrace here at Sassetti because as it has been said, “The only thing that is constant is change”.
Jessica Freiburg
Senior Audit Manager
