Chris Ferdinandi recently wrote about why you shouldn’t care about a multigenerational workforce. And technically, he’s right.
Yet, there is clearly a problem, and it certainly seems generational in nature. Just within the last week, I have heard about:
- A Gen Y job seeker who became angry at his brother’s girlfriend because she wouldn’t give him the email address of a hiring manager at the company of his dreams. Never mind that she had offered to forward the resume with a personal note.
- Another young job seeker who asked a connection to forward both his and his girlfriend’s resumes to a hiring manager… to be considered for the same job.
- A young man hired into a managers’ program who was late 13 out of his first 16 days at work… and who’s father wrote the company owner a note explaining the tardiness after his son was docked for the time.
- A young woman three months into an entry level job at a major financial firm who asked when she could meet the NYC office’s managing director… apparently her father was surprised she hadn’t yet done so.
- A young man in a functional role who took his boss to task in an All Staff email for not including him in an initial strategic planning session.
- A woman who delegated work to a junior peer and spent the time her peer was working to surf Facebook.
Yes, this was a heavy news week, but these types of stories are par for the course.
So what’s going on? And more importantly, how do you solve it? The answer to the first question is not—repeat, not—straightforward. I’ve written about this before. Blaming an issue on people’s birth years is not strategy, it’s astrology.
There are 5 complicating factors at play here: Demographics, Economics, Politics, Technology, and Career Phase. Quickly:
- Demographics. Immigration will account for roughly 45% of US population growth in 2010 (US Census). The faces of our generational cohorts are changing in real time.
- Economics. Gen Y is a large cohort that started entering the workforce during a labor shortage. For awhile there, they were calling the shots—their “arrogance” was nothing but a reflection of the fact they controlled the supply. Too bad about the utter failure of the economy, huh? In Millennials, we have a generation initially trained to expect to call the shots that suddenly finds itself on the outside looking in. Sort of.
- Politics. By which I mean the prevailing culture of the day, not just a person’s voting patterns. For many, many reasons, we have a large cross-section of the population who seems more interested in gaming the system rather than playing along.
- Technology. Boomers started their careers with 4 friends and worked the phones until they also had 4,000 acquaintances. Millennials hit job #1 with 4,000 social media connections and will spend the next 20 years mining those connections for 4 good friends.
- Career phase. “Strategic thinking” means something different to entry-level workers than to high-level executives. Same words, different meaning. And somehow, the maturation process that helps executives become executives makes them forget how workers view the world…
The last three complicating factors—and in particular, career phase—are actionable. You solve generational issues by focusing on these areas because doing so won’t trigger the defensiveness that often comes with labeling. Of course, the way in which you focus on these areas is important, too, but that’s a topic for another day.
Final notes:
- Common sense continues to be uncommon. Given the sheer numbers of Millennials on the planet, I would expect the number of “unbelievable” stories to be high with this cohort—not because they’re any worse than Boomers or Xers (in fact, research suggests they’re quite similar to Boomers in many ways—see the most recent HBR for more), but because there are just more of them out there doing silly things.
- Unfortunately, there is one area for which there is no easy way out: basic competence. Millennials who cannot calculate percentages, write in coherent sentences, or think critically have a major problem. Unless they saw The Secret. Then they know that all they really need to do is concentrate hard on all the money they want while setting up a homepage for their fledgling coaching business. Just kidding. Personal branding, intention manifestation, and all that stuff is only relevant in the long term if layered atop rock solid abilities. And don’t tell me you’re expertise is personal branding, have that’s like wishing for 3 more wishes from the genie.
- Employers: Dunning Kruger Effect is in full effect. This means… expect your bottom performers to turnover. A lot. They won’t get it, and they’ll fight with you when you tell them they have some growing to do, because they overestimate themselves. Don’t fight it; Just bake it into your forecasting models.
Good luck!
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.
I'm the CEO of Ajax Social Media. We're helping 1 million people shine by making their online stories better. 
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Jason, good article. You cited a few “generational” situations at the beginning of your article. I would challenge the generational nature of those situations. Those are clearly situations in which people did stupid things. That’s not unique to any one generation. If you work in HR, you deal with countless employee relations issues in which you find yourself asking, “Did I really just to have to deal with that?”
I think your 5 factors are on the mark. And again, I challenge people to start thinking about individuals instead of generations when dealing with “generational” issues.
@Chris Stupidity is certainly not unique to any one generation. Re-reading my post, I say the issue is “clearly” generational, and what I intended to convey was that it “certainly seems” generational. [I'll change that as soon as I post this.] Generations have as much to do with attitude as chronological age (in a study I did last summer, 60% defined generational cohorts based on a combo of age + attitude, and over 50% of the respondents—which were split evenly across Boomers/Xers/Ys—couldn’t say for certain what cohort their coworkers would place them in)… which is why I focus on career stages instead of generational norms during training.
Career stages allows me to capture the attitudinal component.
I agree that there’s a big disconnect between “young” workers and their “older employers”, but I don’t think it can be boiled down to just demographics, economics, politics, technology or career phase. The meta-information speaks volumes over the actual data.
For example, it would be highly unlikely that millennials were involved in the economic crash. The “powers that be” consist largely of older generations – whether we’re talking political, economic or career power.
This creates a major trust barrier. We’ve seen older generations systematically screw up our country with one brain-busting stupid move after the next. Fundamentally, we know we can do better. It’s naive and might very well prove a perfect real-world case of the Dunning Kruger Effect, but son-of-a-b*tch. I doubt even one millennial has taken a look at the country as it is today and says, “Well, this is as good as it gets.”
The fact is that employers are just as much to blame for “millennial issues” as millennials are. Between incompetent managers, clueless policies towards social media and an utter lack of trust, the young employee just can’t win. There’s a reason why only 20% of 2009′s college grads who looked for jobs actually got one.
That’s not self-destructing – 80% of an entire college graduating class cannot be incompetent fools. That’s 50% economic factors and 50% ageism.
The old people are quite content to “just go out there and earn that paycheck” – well, we’re fine with it too. Mario Kart in mom and dad’s basement while y’all run the world into the ground is about the only option you’ve left us besides entrepreneurship.
Employers -must- grow up and realize that business as usual is coming to an end. Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers are going to grow old and die sometime, and if you’ve utterly excluded millennials – if you’re not hiring us, and we’re not buying your stupid product, and the only sounds left in your cold, dark, lonely hallowed halls of business are the shuffling cane-aided footsteps of the Gen-X generation… well, I guess we’ll see who self-destructed after all.
Managers need to turn this cockamamie style of thinking around before they turn America into a 3rd world country.
-Nick Armstrong
PsychoticResumes.com
@Nick—Awesome post. 3 quick thoughts:
1. Your complaint about economics is echoed by many olds who did everything right and now have nothing to show for it… they are now in the same shoes as you and just as unhappy about it. The olds did not screw up the economy for the youngs; the short-sighted and selfish screwed it up… and selfishness knows no age limit. Plenty of Millennials were out there selling bad mortgage securities and not asking any questions about how/why the money was flowing so easy, right along with their older peers.
2. Managers need to take responsibility for fixing the problem of not engaging younger workers? You bet your ass you nailed that one. I help managers build and sustain maximum team productivity… and one of my key messages to them is: if you manage to the stereotype in your head, then you will not be able to sustain squat.
3. Millennials might as well pony up to their game console of choice because the rest of the world has boxed them out? I couldn’t agree… less. Look, Nick, you know this, but no one gives anything away. You remember the G’n'R song, “Welcome to the Jungle,” and the lyrics, “You can have anything you want/But you better not take it from me?” That’s life. Ever play sports? What would you think about a ball player saying, “I’m not even going to try on offense anymore… what’s the point, those guys playing defense are just going to box me out from getting a rebound/catch the ball I hit/tackle me!”
Life has an offense and defense too; when you’re young and new at the game, the defense can seem insurmountable, but that doesn’t make it wrong, doesn’t make it bad, and doesn’t make it OK to give up.
Catch my drift?
I’ve lived your frustrations. Still do. My wife and I had socked away a pretty penny by working our butts off for 14 years… and not so much on the pretty penny anymore. Do I get to quit? Blame my parents’ generation for screwing things up? Blame your generation for changing the game? Blame technology for forcing me to adapt? Sure, I could, but what does that buy me, other than heartache? I’d much prefer to skip the blame game, chalk it up to a hard foul that went uncalled (back to the sports analogy), and then keep playing so I can get my mortgage paid. And that’s exactly the same mentality I want to see you have, too. To hell with the problem: focus on what you want, not on the obstacles standing in your way.
(And then thank your lucky stars you didn’t just graduate in 1941 and discover that because of some Austrian meglomaniac’s delusions of grandeur, you have to put your career on hold and go carry a rifle through the muds of Calais… always be grateful for what you have. It’s a lot.)
Nick, I know people are frustrated, but they need to keep looking for a way to turn their anger into something productive… Which means taking more personal responsibility.
They need to become the solution. They need to get out of those basements and go DO.
Interesting post. I agree with you on many points. Your five ‘complicating’ factors are indeed complicated.
I believe things were just too easy for too long, explaining your ‘political’ complication. It’s just as much our fault we’re lazy, unreliable slobs as the Gen X’ers that raised us.
From what I’ve seen in my short span of life – lack of “common sense” transcends ALL generations. As was mentioned in a previous post. However, I do agree there is a fundamental lack of knowing how life “really” works with our generation.
Basic competence: an issue, yes. What are the underlying factors of this? What has our culture been preaching? Education? Or ‘The Secret’? Again – not entirely the fault of the millennials.
I do believe there will only be one remedy – which you touched on in your last comment. We have to go out and DO. But don’t knock someone for TRYING to be a ‘life-coach’ – even with their limited experience, at least they’re trying to do SOMETHING.
Through failure, and mistakes – and a high turnover rate – the millennials will realize what it takes to succeed in the life. The same thing the older generation was raised upon – perseverance, hard work – and yes, more common sense. These values WILL be realized again – as the the next decade rolls around, people will be forced to get more creative (entrepreneurship), enhance their productivity in all areas to be indespensable to whatever entry level position they’ll be getting into.
We need new ideas – fresh ideas – technologically adaptable businesses – and that’s where we come in.
I firmly believe millennials will learn these lessons the hard way – and get tired of the vicious cycle that our contemporary attitude towards the ‘work-force’ leads us to dead end after dead end.
Training is key. Improvement is key – but not ‘forced down the throat do it or else’ improvement – improvement based upon the idea that we must strive for excellence in order to achieve anything worthwhile (positivly) in this life. This generation will come around, and we will succeed.
So I do agree – it’s time to turn off the Xbox and DO something. But so many just aren’t in touch with reality yet. Life was too easy.
Building the fundamentals of strength in character, work ethic and determination to make a positive impact in society are the tools Gen Y needs. And they have to WANT to learn (stubbornness and selfishness are way to prevalent right now).
I could go on, but I’ll spare you and your readers the agony of yet another long-winded, excuse-filled millennial
.
@G—Thank you! You’re prescription are right on, and you’re clearly heading in a good direction. Be prepared for a long slog, though: the distance from one’s head to one’s heart is the furthest distance known to man, and there are clues in your post that your emotional acceptance of your reality yet lags your logical awareness.
Here are the clues I’m using to draw my conclusion: comments about “unreliable” Xer “slob” parents (judgmental); about how Millennials’ value is in their new ideas (doesn’t jibe with an emphasis on ACTION… and assumes that all Boomers and Xers are stuck in the mud, a stereotype that is dispelled PDQ with a quick look at who’s behind most of the technology we swear by); implying that olds are the villains behind crappy ed. systems and overhyped alternatives like The Secret… while Millennials are mere victims (this one’s subtle: I agree with your point, it’s the way you phrase it that gives me the victim vibe… someone truly attuned to personal responsibility would likely reference current struggles or continued political support for the broken systems, instead of damning the system in hindsight).
For every clue that you haven’t totally internalized the message, there are also other clues that suggest you are well on your way. And that’s great. I really like this comment—I think it captures the frustration inherent in seeing the path, knowing it’s right, and not yet fully believing it’ll work.
And boy, I think there are a whole lot of people right now who can relate to that!
There’s a lot more here than I can get into at the moment… I’ll have to devote another post or two to the topic later this week!