Leadership Caffeine-It’s Time to Get Serious About Learning from Your Twenty-Somethings
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Management Innovation
One of the recurring themes in my writing and teaching activities is the importance of blending the generations in the workplace. I’ve been a cheerleader for this cause for the past few years and I truly believe that good managers everywhere must find opportunities to leverage the unique perspectives of experience, pragmatism and idealism available from this fascinating mix of time travelers.
I’ve now moved beyond my polite encouragement for managers to find ways to adapt and cope with what seem to be the foreign habits and foreign viewpoints emanating from the more youthful in the workforce. It’s time to get serious about learning and benefitting from this younger generation. What has been treated in the media as a mostly fun topic that describes the foibles of “Helicopter Parents” and the endless flood of childhood “Participation Trophies,” is now a critically important issue and opportunity.
Consider:
- We now live and work in a networked, always-on and increasingly virtual world. For those of us with experience, this is new and exciting, yet in many instances, we struggle to make sense of it, particularly as we seek to develop strategies based on yesterday’s thinking in a world that we no longer recognize. Alternatively, the generation that is coming of age right now understands this world as their own. They are comfortable in its complexity and “virtualness” and capable of moving and navigating seamlessly through it, focused on their mission and not awestruck by its complexity and speed of change.
- Experience is a powerful teacher for all of us, and yet, we are tackling tomorrow’s challenges with yesterday’s solutions. And yes, those that don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it, but we face all new problems that demand newly created solutions using technologies and approaches that have no historical equivalent.
- From the school of the obvious, in yesterday’s world, you could choose to ignore much of the globe. Alternatively, today’s world is filled with unimaginable perils and nearly infinite possibilities. Technology brings the people of the world closer together and there is no group of people better prepared to leverage the new tools and work across cultures with others to solve problems, create new offerings and serve customers. Remember, this young generation plays video games with their friends around the globe, understands how to manage complex social networks in real time from the tips of their thumbs and has grown up in an always-on environment. Talk about some great training for success!
- And while I hesitate to offer social commentary, I can’t help but observe after spending a few years in classrooms with both graduate students and undergraduates in several great institutions in Chicago, that the biases and prejudices of our parents and grandparents seem to be melting into the past. One can hope that I’m right in this observation. I see no evidence of the youth that I work with caring about color or creed. It is my observation that they care about people and each other and evaluate each other on merits and insights and skills. This is as it should be.
Challenges and Opportunities:
- We are running today’s business and dealing with tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s management approaches. The science and art of management must advance to both cope with the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities of this new world. As a side-note, ask a twenty-something to design the style of organization that will work best in this emerging world, and I’ll guarantee that it won’t include functional silos.
- Age and experience count, but those fortunate enough to have both don’t necessarily have all of the right answers. However, with age and experience comes wisdom, and this valuable resource when combined with the fresh perspectives of youth should be a dangerous combination for solving problems and creating opportunities.
- In my opinion, much of the training that needs to take place is not for the twenty-somethings, but rather for the tremendous number of 30 to 60-somethings that are fearful of or paralyzed by new technologies and new social conventions. If you are old enough to remember life before e-mail, you are also old enough to have lost your edge in learning to leverage new tools. I’ve written this before, but if you don’t know what twitter is, don’t read or write blogs, think social networking is a cocktail party, and have no idea why anyone would play a video game on-line, then you need help. Stat.
The Bottom Line for Now
It’s time to quit talking about the trophy kids and the oft-repeated stereotypes that are dogging the millennial generation. It’s up to those of us that currently hold the reins of leadership to recognize this opportunity for what it is and to get on with the business of preparing to turn over those reins. Judging by the condition of things in the world today, this group has arrived just in the nick of time.
Leadership and the Young Professional
Every academic quarter for the past few years, a good colleague has invited me to be a guest speaker in her senior-level college management class and talk about leadership. I’m on the schedule tonight and I love this experience.
It’s great to have to stand in front of a group of early-career professionals and go through the humbling experience of recognizing that you are talking based on the road traveled and their view is on the uncharted horizons in front of them. Talk about different perspectives! You have to try and look backwards over their horizon to understand what they are looking at. Fail this and you will fail to relate.
You have to work hard to not come off like some dinosaur pontificating on your incredible body of experience. Remember, all that this audience cares about is “How can this ancient 40-something help me?”
The world that these young professionals are entering is very different than the world that many of us experienced. From technology to time and the nature of work (how, where and what), everything is different. It’s essential and a bit frightening to try and look through the eyes of a twenty-something at a world filled with an incredible array of technologies and opportunities, all cast against the backdrop of a world on watch for terror.
This college speaking experience always serves to remind me of how smart and worldly young professionals truly are. During the session, I provide them with a case that tends to befuddle most experienced managers. The crisp and correct answers that are communicated in this session showcase what its like for people to make decisions completely unbiased by corporate politics and all of the other barriers that we create for ourselves as we gain experience.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
As indicated, my principal topic tonight is leadership and while everything in our world is different than when we were starting out, some things are the same. The attributes and approaches that make a leader great still apply. Credibility, the ability to articulate a vision, ensuring that your words match your actions, delivering timely feedback and offering constant coaching are timeless practices of the best leaders of every generation.
Of course, we all know as well that you cannot teach people how to be leaders in a course or workshop or in a book. The best I can hope for is to plant some seeds on the commitment and hard work that it takes to be an effective leader and how all of us have to take responsibility for our own career and professional development. Come to think of it, these are good lessons for anyone of any age.
I look forward to feeling younger and smarter after my session tonight. I always do.
Living, Learning and Leading in an Increasingly Virtual World
Somewhere between the world I grew up in and the world that we are living in today, everything about working, leading and learning began to change. It’s increasingly a virtual world, and everything about communicating, interacting and developing relationships feels a bit different than it used to. While many/most of us are compliant with the changes in communications (telex to fax to e-mail to IM, web conferencing etc.), I wonder how many of us are truly working to become competent at living and working in this world.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reminded of the changes in how we live, learn, earn and engage, and I’m working hard to adapt.
- A valued colleague sends me a note expressing frustration over the challenges of leading remotely. I can’t believe I haven’t spent more time on this valuable topic. Stay tuned.
- I delivered a webinar and I realized that I have to get better at communicating without interaction. I’ve set a schedule to begin doing some of these blog posts as podcasts as a means of increasing my comfort and competence communicating to an invisible audience.
- I signed up to teach an on-line course expressly for the purpose of discovering what it means to “teach” on-line.
- My kids don’t use their phones for talking. If I want to reach them, I send a text message and get a response practically before I’m done typing. (I saw this coming a few years ago when I asked my youngest son why he never calls friends on the phone. He looked at me kind of funny and said, “Why would I want to talk with one person when I can be on-line with all of my friends at the same time.”)
- An article at Fast Company indicates that in the next few years, technology will obliterate the need to travel. (Hmmm, I’m suspicious of the word obliterate.)
- I am busy working on an on-line content strategy to augment my own face-to-face seminar/workshop activities.
The common thread in all of these items is the shift in how we work, lead and learn. Like it or not, the world is becoming more and more virtual everyday, and those of us that are old enough to remember life before fax machines and e-mail will be well-served to quit fighting the trend and start learning how to become competent and comfortable communicating to no-one and everyone at the same time.
It was just a few years ago that I received my first request to fund an employee’s pursuit of an on-line degree. I am a staunch advocate of the importance of the face-to-face network developed at school, especially for MBA students, and while I approved the request, I recall challenging the value. Since that time, I know of dozens of professionals that have had great experiences earning degrees on-line. I still question whether there is any chance that you can develop a close network in that manner, but hey, this is the era of Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, where it is seemingly more about contacts than close relationships. (I’m still suspicious of that premise.)
One of the critical leadership skills of our time is developing comfort and competence at leading distributed teams. There are still some firms that insist on their managers and leaders being housed within a line of sight, but they are showing their lack of understanding of how the world is changing. The literature on leading remotely seems to offer superficial guidance from people adapting old models to new situations. I suspect that as time moves on, the profession of leadership will evolve to take into account the very distinct skills and approaches needed to lead effectively while never coming into personal contact. (As a side note, I deal with many people on the receiving side of remote leadership. At best, the leader to employee relationships they describe are superficial. We haven’t figured this one out yet. )
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The difference between compliance with new technologies and new styles of communicating and competence at leveraging these tools and styles for results is significant. Deriving value from virtual leader/employee relationships or on-line learning is a very different task for all parties involved than it was in the almost bygone era of face-to-face. It’s time to quit fighting the changes and learn how to master the new opportunities to engage. I still struggle to see how these new methods will replicate the richness of face-to-face communication, but that’s my problem to deal with as the world keeps changing. In the meantime, if you are looking for me, don’t call…I’m busy learning how to communicate all over again.
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.
Improve Managerial Effectiveness by Broadening Span of Control?
There’s a great, thought-provoking article today in the March 24, 2008 Wall Street Journal. by George Anders, entitled: Overseeing More Employees with Fewer Managers. The sub-title of the article identifies the source of this so-called trend: Consultants Are Urging Companies to Loosen Their Supervising Views.
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