The Emerging and Strange Alliance Between Boomers and Millennials
If you are leading a team today, chances are you are dealing with one of the fascinating experiences of our time: how to manage teams increasingly comprised of aging Boomers and newly graduated Millennials. Your first thought might be that you couldn’t find two groups farther apart in terms of values, priorities, interests and capabilities. Well, your first thought is wrong.
On the surface, the evidence seems to support your case that Boomers and Millennials are polar opposites. Consider:
- Millennials were practically born with a cell phone in one hand and a computer mouse in the other. They are the most technologically sophisticated generation ever. While some aging Boomers have embraced technology, for a large number, many of the latest advancements are truly foreign. Ask a Boomer to contact someone and they pick up a phone. While the Boomer is dialing, the Millennial has texted and received an answer, scheduled a social engagement and made small talk about last night’s game, all with their thumbs.
- Boomers have the benefits that accrue from age and experience. They’ve forgotten more than the Millennials know about the big bad world, with much of this experience developed during some tumultuous times.
- Boomers have one eye on retirement and Millennials have both eyes on a bright future.
- Millennials are used to getting trophies just for participating and Boomers are used to working hard at thankless tasks. Boomers have put in hard time in organizations that showed them the door without hesitation. Millennials expect to start a job and be promoted within the first few months.
- Millennials want to work where and when they want and they are adamant that the conditions are right, the work interesting and that it not interfere with their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Boomers want….
It’s at exactly this last point that the differences between these two generations begin to melt away with a unique and perhaps surprising alignment developing. Millennials and Boomers share many of the same life and career priorities. Your understanding of this emerging alliance may prove critical as you increasingly deal with managing the generations in the years ahead.
For all of the reasons described above: long years in thankless jobs, falling victim to the lack of corporate loyalty and gaining experience through tough times and hard work, the Boomers can now afford to begin looking at life and career through different lenses. As the tidal wave of demographic change starts to hit the workforce over the next few years, Boomers will increasingly require:
- Opportunities that allow them to work when and where they want
- Interesting assignment that leverage their vast experience
- Engagements that provide psychic and social rewards
- Flexibility driven by a high priority on social time.
- Varying experiences and short-term engagements where they can learn and grow while contributing.
Boomers and Millennials are almost in complete agreement on the above priorities, and while the cynics among us might be quick with “that’s nice, but it’s not reality,” comment, it is most definitely going to be the new reality. The demographic numbers don’t lie and the world is not growing less complex.
Over the next decade, organizations will increasingly struggle to bring the right talent to bear on executing complex and ever-changing strategies in this global world, and both the Boomers and Millennials are the source of that talent. Enlightened organizations get this situation and are already creating systems and approaches to meet the needs of these critical groups. Less enlightened organizations will be clubbed over the head by this issue in the not too distant future.
In the interim (between now and the exodus of the boomers), what’s a manager to do?
Some Suggestions for Leveraging the Strange Boomer/Millennial Alliance:
- Create opportunities to leverage the experience of age and the energy of youth by blending project teams where the respective skills and energies spell success.
- Use judo on the age differences by openly encouraging Boomers to provide mentoring and guidance on career development and any of the broad areas in business that Boomers are experienced at.
- Encourage Millennials to educate Boomers on technology, current trends and social issues, and all of those issues that have changed so radically over the past few years.
- Create and celebrate victories regularly. The Millennials expect the celebrations and the Boomers are overdue for a few trophies.
- Embrace this new project-driven world, and provide Boomers with the flexibility to work when they want on projects that truly interest them. Boomers as contract knowledge workers may be your secret weapon to success in the years ahead.
- Get rid of the last vestiges of “I have to see someone to know that they are working.” There’s still some of this running around and it is silly.
- Challenge the HR functions in organizations to enable this new alliance and to provide the systems and support necessary for virtual teams and projects and contract knowledge workers. Most of this doesn’t fit the old HR model…and the model has to change.
- Quit giving lip service to “people are our most important asset” and start living it. (This is one of the most abused phrases in all of business…stop the abuse.)
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The great news is that for forward thinking managers and organizations, the availability of experienced talent has and will never be better. The trick of course will be how to capture and benefit from all of that talent. In my book, recognizing and leveraging the strengths of Boomers and Millennials is essential for success. The Millennials will moderate over time (as happens with every generation) and the Boomers will ultimately fade into history. However, for the here and now and for the next decade, managing the generations is one key to success.
Don’t Misread the Millennials…Or A Coping Strategy for Managers
A broadcast titled: “The Millennials Are Coming” on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago has sparked a fair amount of water cooler conversation. The theme of this excellent piece is that as these well coddled, got a trophy just for showing up, computer-literate and text happy young adults (born after 1980) enter the workforce, they bring with them an attitude that emphasizes lifestyle and friends over punching a clock, and working hard at a nine to five job. At least some in older generations are crying “foul” and suggesting that this generation is lazy, impossible to manage and have their priorities all wrong.
Are they and do they?
While every generation is distinct, this one definitely sees things through the eyes of an upbringing that is unique in our history and maybe in human history. Hovered over by well meaning but often over-bearing “Helicopter Parents” since birth, many in this generation (certainly not all) have been sheltered from some of the more difficult realities of life. They’ve been praised for just showing up at everything from soccer to school, and at the same time have had access to money, merchandise and technology at radically different levels than any generation prior. The parents have fought most of the battles, holding teachers and coaches everywhere accountable to being grateful that little Johnny or Suzie decided to show up in their class or play on their team.
The impact of this upbringing is now manifesting itself in the workplace, as more buttoned down Generation Xers or younger Boomers are dealing with a wave of people that seemingly don’t have the work ethic and willingness to pay dues that allegedly we all must bring to our professional lives. Looked at through the eyes of those that are not so far away in age, but miles away in work philosophy, it’s easy to start applying labels like lazy and spoiled. However, before we indict this group of leaders that the demographic numbers indicate that we surely will hand over the reins of power to, it’s important to try and understand what makes them tick.
Just a Few Millennial Priorities and Characteristics:
- I want to work at something that I enjoy and if I don’t, I will go somewhere else.
- I want to work when I want to, and I don’t need to punch a clock to do that. I value schedule flexibility very much.
- I want to work in an environment that I like and one that offers ample activity and stimulation.
- I want to work surrounded by the technology that has been with me forever. Don’t touch my iPod, and yes, I text constantly. Restrict my access to the Internet. Hardly!
- Don’t expect me to punch a clock and sit around if you don’t have something for me to do. I’m going to workout.
- I have tattoos and piercings and I might cover them up if I have to, but they reflect who I am, so get over it.
Interestingly, minus the bullets on piercings and technology, you could substitute Baby Boomers, and almost to a letter, the priorities fit. Pity those poor Generation X mangers that are struggling to keep things moving while all around them are more interested in flexibility, freedom and their 8:30 a.m. Yoga Class.
What’s a Manager to Do?
1. First, get over it. Adjust your attitude. Lose the thought that these individuals are lazy. That is a gross misinterpretation. Don’t confuse having a philosophy that espouses and strives for lifestyle and flexibility over indentured servitude for the characteristic of laziness.
2. Get over it, part 2. You will not undo something that took the parents the better part of two decades to create.
3. Use judo on the situation. Not literally (although it may be tempting!)…just metaphorically. If you want to tap into the remarkable creativity, passion and technological know-how of this generation, you are going to have to embrace and accommodate elements of their lifestyle. Offering flexibility doesn’t mean that work won’t get done, and in fact it may get done better. It will just happen in a different way and at a different pace.
4. Judo part 2 and more on flexibility. It’s only been a decade or so since tightly wound organizations and managers experimented with and finally accepted that people would work even if they weren’t in a cubicle every day suffering with their counterparts under our watchful and omniscient eyes. We will have to adapt, because we need the know-how and capabilities of this generation.
5. Become a coach. Recognize that this is the most coached and coach-able generation in history. They’ve had coaches since soccer at the age of 5. If you cannot figure out how to leverage their coach-ability, you are in the wrong job.
6. Coaching, part 2: Stock up on trophies and dispense them with a lot of praise. This generation runs on excitement and feedback.
The bottom-line for now:
My own experience has been that in spite of looking at the world through different eyes, the millennials are smart, capable of hard-work (on their terms) and a few years wiser than most of us. Frankly, I think they have the priorities in the right order and the rest of us need to learn from them. It doesn’t mean we don’t compete to win, that we don’t put our all into what we believe in. But it does mean we are going to do it on our terms. If this sound like anarchy or even selfishness, well maybe it is just a bit. Frankly, I’m younger everyday thanks to the wise beyond their years perspectives on life that my millennials bring into our home.
For some additional support of this generation, take a look at Wally Bock’s recent posting: “Don’t Worry About the Young People.”
Now, I’ve got to quit typing. The gym is waiting. And hmmm, I wonder if my wife would like me with a tattoo?
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