The Old and the New

Like many parts of a well-lived life, there is balance needed between the old and the new. Life is out of balance when old people live in the past, and miss all the wonderfulness and discovery of the new, or when young people focus only on the new, and ignore the richness and principle-teaching of the past. Both perspectives are needed to avoid wasting time repeating mistakes from lessons learned from the past and missing the opportunities that come with new developments.

Concerning the old things, I am referring to the great old principles for living life and operating a business. I confess that I use the wisdom contained in the Bible as my guide to old principles, and that is reinforced by many years of applying these principles to experiences in my daily life and seeing them work. If properly applied, these principles work and will keep working. These old principles guide successful living today as much as they did several thousand years ago when they were first written down—they are time-tested. These principles will not be swept away by the new.

Concerning the new things, I believe that, when our Creator made us “in his image,” he gave many of us the gift of discovering and being creators of new things. It is very much in human DNA to be dissatisfied with the way things were done in the past and find ways to do things better—the work of inventors, tinkerers, engineers, scientists and researchers. I marvel at all of the developments that have occurred in my 71 years, and there is no end to the discoveries that will continue to be made to make improvements. We can’t even imagine all of the new that we will see in the future.

As we operate Walker Manufacturing, we are doing our best to balance the old and the new. Our approach is to stay with the principles that have brought us this far. These foundational and timeless principles will need to be passed down from generation to generation of leadership in the company in order to continue being successful. I am a second-generation leader doing my best to pass on principles to the third generation as my father did for me.

For the new, we are a company moving ahead; we are not sitting still. New and improved products, new programs, new developments and new technology are all driven by the curiosity of how to make our lawn mowers and our company better today than the day before. I am excited about the future; I see our best days are ahead.