Proud To Be a SILVERBACK

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Are you a Silverback? Were you a Silverback?

I am.

A Silverback is an 800-pound gorilla with 1. Training 2. Education and 3. Experience. MUCH experience. And a memory.

I am one of those persons that your organization hates to acknowledge because we stand as testimony to prior times and because we possess the bulk of your Institutional Memory.

We know how to do the job correctly.

We know when you fuck up.

We call you on it.

We know what the organization used to look like when it operated efficiently.

We contrast that as to how it operates now, which is why Silverbacks are mostly despised by upper management.

Unless, of course, the organization continues to function with efficiency and consideration for both customer and employee.

As I wrote in my very prior post in comments:

I am what I call a Silverback. Every agency and industry and entity needs a Silverback. We hold the Institutional Memories for our organizations. We call our organizations on stupid moves. We remind our organizations of their history. We are the Inconvenient Truths of our organizations. Because we have Been There and Done That and, worse yet, we have Memories and Know Where The Bodies Are Buried.

In truth, being a Silverback can be somewhat liberating.

Spread the word. Use the term.

Silverbacks can hold the key to your organization.

You ignore them at your own peril.

Are you a Silverback? Were you a Silverback?

BZ

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8 thoughts on “Proud To Be a SILVERBACK”

  2. 1. Training
    2. Education
    3. Experience. MUCH experience. And a memory.

    4. Guns and Ammo
    5. See #1 and #2
    6. A REALLY bad attitude regarding government, the IRS, RINOs and FAUX Conservatives.

  3. Well I reckon I’m a silverback too…Been there 25 yrs, top of my grade, and I’m the one they call when things are FUBAR.. At which point I go in and unfuk it. Then I get to tell em WHY it went that way. NOW the new regime is starting to ASK first…So far so good, however the cuts are still coming.

  4. The “What’s good for me is what’s good for the organization” were so happy to see me retire. Since then, they have been looking for jobs because they couldn’t keep the business going. Can’t feel good about it because a lot of families were hurt.

  6. NFO: I am what management genius Peter Drucker calls a “knowledge worker.” My department pays me for what I know (and not what I can build) except that, predominantly, it ignores me. I have made numerous predictions over the years with regard to their actions or inactions and they have not only ignored me but insured I’ll never be able to promote further. That’s the primary reason I was the senior Sergeant in the entire Training Division but the first to be axed during budget cuts: I have historically dared to state my mind whereas others with kneepads and open mouths made greater rank. Problem is, the things I forecasted and warned of came to fruition. And I can still sleep at night. I have said two terrible things consistently when breaking in new Lieutenants and when speaking in meetings: 1. You ignore me at your own peril and 2. I can make more money testifying against you than I can working for you — yet here I am, still working for you.

    I have been labeled to my face an “arrogant fuck,” which I may be. But I am an ACCURATE “arrogant fuck.”

    TF: right ON.

    Bush: yes, that’s the diff in an enlightened administration; management comes to the Silverbacks to UNfuck situations.

    WSF: sorry to read of that, but you are a Silverback for a reason. As I wrote above, people ignore Silverbacks to their own personal and administrative detriment.

    Z: Silverbacks are the OLD workers who KNOW how to make each company and agency actually RUN. They are the Senior Master Sergeants of the civilian world. The US Navy could NOT, for example, run without Senior Master Sergeants. Ooops, I mean Master CHIEF. Officers don’t run the navy; NCOs run the Navy.

    BZ

  8. Training – DIY training by and large from computers to firearms to sewing.

    Education – DIY education on the classics, law of nations, warfare, electronics, computers… and practical application of each in their appropriate venues.

    Experience – I do as I learn and teach myself to do.

    I am most dangerous.

    I don’t think there is anything I can’t do until I start doing it, and by then it is far too late to stop me. So far I have found very little I can turn my hand to that I can’t do at least competently: the results may not be pretty but they work.

    The Jack of All Trades bows to none.

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