Real Life Fail: Generational Stereotypes & Power

Yea! It’s 2010! You know what that means? It means nobody’s infatuated with generational differences anymore, so we can actually get to the heart of the matter of what’s happening inside organizations.

Just kidding!

Who wants to learn anything?! We love our oversimplified stereotypes! Please, reduce all my organizational problems down to a few simple charts and astrology-style solutions!

But wait, maybe we can oversimplify things even further? Yes, I’m sure we can…

Here, I’ll go first:

(Ahem)

I believe all generational differences can be reduced down to a single value:
power. At work, power is really the only thing that matters. “Communication style?” No one gives a crap. “Team environment?” Pffft.

It’s all about… power.

Here’s what you need to know about the generations and power. Memorize this, and all your organizational problems will melt away. I promise.

Traditionalists

Reagan, Gorbie, Nelson Mandela, Bing Crosby, Teddy Roosevelt. Traditionalists are old. They lived a long time ago, before cell phones or horses.

This generations amasses power by taking ownership for the obvious. Their power comes from their ability to explain things as if no one but themselves has ever had an original thought in their lives, and to do this with a straight face.

Like when your grandfather says, “See that glowing orb out over the lake? That there’s called ‘the sun.’ And after the sun sets, it’s going to get dark, which is why it’s a good thing I thought to buy a car with headlights.”

Boomers

Think Dylan, Hendrix, Fleagle, and Abbie Hoffman, man. Boomers existed between 1967 and 1972.

Boomers’ power comes from willful ignorance and their willingness to charge for everything. “These chemicals I’m dumping in this pond cause cancer? C’mon. 400,000 showed up for a little concert on a dairy farm in ’69 and that worked out; this will, too. Don’t worry about it. OK, look: I’ll clean up my mess. Here’s my bill.” Until the Beatles/Stones-Who-Is-Better war is settled, this generation is prohibited from leading anything other than campaigns for national bike helmet laws.

Yuppies

An oft-missed generation that includes Charlie Sheen (hair slicked, Gordon Gecko-style), Alex P. Keaton, and the Lehman brothers. These are people born between 19money and 19money-three.

Yuppies amass power by being a bunch of weasels. They caused both the crash of ’87 and the Great Recession of right now. Your sucktastic life is all their fault. Screw ‘em.

Gen X

Kurt Cobain, Ferris Bueller, Bill S. Preston, Esquire. Gen X is the only fictional generation, born between the right frontal cortex and speech center of Douglas Coupland’s brain.

Xers get power from not caring. And from being able to work pop culture references into any situation. You can’t use the fact Mark Cuban is an ass hole against him when he accepts and embraces his glaring personality flaws; all you can do is build a flux capacitor that will let you go back in time and invent broadcast.com before he does.

Millennials

Represented by Miley Cirus. Technically she may be too young to represent this generation, but then again, NO ONE CARES.

Millennials’ power comes from the fact that they’re disposable. There’s just so many of them. And they swarm, like cicadas. This is a flash mob generation. They converge for the occasional election or no-pants subway ride and then disperse. Between swarms, they hibernate in Facebooks and do sexting to one another. You can see them by looking through the YouTubes.

Conclusion

And there you have it: all your worklife problems, solved.

You’re welcome!

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.