Ever watch hungry people go to the supermarket? With their tummies grumbling and their mouths watering, they are ill-suited to handle the incredible choices all around them. Cruising the aisles, they grab whatever happens to look good: Hotdogs! Humus! Raspberry jam! Chocolate! California rolls!

Then they get home and wonder what in the world they’re supposed to do with a cornucopia of foods that cannot, in any way, be assembled into a meal.

Watching Gen Y try to piece together their careers often looks much the same: they collect the greatest experiences they can at the moment, only to pull back later and realize that they can’t quite work their experiences into a cohesive career.

Gen Y is now being let loose on the corporate scene, too hungry for the success they’ve been promised would be theirs to manage the decisions they’re being asked to make; they’re too ravenous to show anything approaching the patience or discretion needed to navigate the aisles purposefully. They’re sampling a bit of everything that looks good, they’re not enjoying the experience, and they’re starting to blame the supermarket (read: corporate America) for their upset stomachs.

The solution is so simple; all they need is a shopping list to help them manage the mind-numbing selection in front of them. They know this, and they’re asking for it, but… in a tragically ironic twist of fate… no one has it. No one needed a list before; when there was no choice, the shopping list was superfluous.

(Imagine asking an Italian for a shopping list for the ingredients for making pasta; she’d wave you off, telling you that if you need to shop from a list, you may as well buy pre-made pasta, yours in going to be horrible. Or asking a guy for a shopping list for a BBQ? He’d laugh in your face for needing someone to point out that you need to buy “chicken” and “Bar-B-Que sauce” before firing up the grill.)

This is pretty much what’s happening when Gen Y goes to their older counterparts for help: they get waved off in disbelief. “Are you serious? You can’t possibly need help with that!” comes the reply to their requests for help.

Previous generations didn’t have this problem. Previous generations didn’t have the luxury of choice the way we do today. When I interview successful executives, their stories are often the same: they grabbed the first job they could and never let up because they had nothing to fall back on if they did let up. They were successful because they had to be successful. Failure was not an option.

Today’s youth, however, know only options. For 25 years, they’ve ben encouraged to collect more options, to leave their options open, or to do whatever would put them in position to have the best future options. They joined all the clubs to get into the best college, they went to the best college to get the best job, and now… what was that? I’m supposed to make a choice? I’m supposed to start limiting my options? I’m supposed to stop browsing and start putting things in my shopping cart? Stop snacking on the end-of-aisle freebies and pick my one menu to stick with?!

How do you put together a meal when all you know how to do is munch on pre-cooked, pre-sliced, pre-packaged, pre-toothpicked morsels that a nice marketing lady thrusts at you every time you come around a corner? How do you put together a career when all you know how to do is job hop from one solicitous firm to another, when everyone around you is lamenting the death of loyalty?

Older generations need to help Gen Y make their way through the store. They need to show how passion, commitment, and a sense of personal responsibility can be used to create the tunnel vision needed to see through the noise. They need to stop being exasperated, they need to stop slapping labels on Gen Y (lazy! insolent! incorrigible!), and they need to, in a very firm and honest way, show them how to shop for experiences that can be put together into a career.

And they’re going to have to do it from a perspective they don’t have… they’ll have to do it from the perspective of one who is surrounded by too much choice… because that’s the only perspective their audience knows.

Posted under Succession Planning, Gen X & Gen Y, Current Trends