Let Them Know You're Working Long and Hard

I blog in my spare time. Like a lot of other people, my professional responsibilities keep me fairly busy, so in the course of my day, if I stumble across something that piques my interest, I often just flag it (or email it to myself) for later reading. This means my blog posts are sometimes inspired by items that hit the blogosphere months ago, and dozens of people have already had a chance to weigh in on it. But I don't view that as a bad thing. Sometimes reading what other people have to say before weighing in yourself helps keep you sane.

Here's a case in point. Michael Fertik posted Managing Older Managers: A Guide for Younger Bosses on the HBR blog back in August 2010. In it, he offers such sage advice as:

Let them know that you are working long and hard. Even accomplished, self-motivated senior colleagues won't work harder than you will for very long. Send emails early and late. Invite meetings on weekends and at odd hours. Be in the office or online all the time. Dial into meetings at insane hours during overseas travel. Understand that managers older than yourself may have families that require them to live by different rhythms from yours — they may need to be offline from 6 to 8, for example. But expect them to be working long and hard, whenever it is, and make sure you are always doing more than they are. Because you have less natural authority when working with older people, reinforce your "moral right" to demand hard work by showing that you demand even more of yourself.

Honestly, my initial reaction upon reading this was that I thought it was insane. Or maybe some kind of joke. I like reading certain authors on the HBR blog in part because I'm interested in exploring the application of for-profit management models in the association environment--but this one struck me as something right out of a Terry Gilliam movie. Remember that scene in Brazil when Sam Lowry and Harvey Lime have a tug-of-war over the single desk that extends into both of their offices? Just the kind of organization you want to work for, right?

And it turns out I wasn't alone. By filing the post away and getting back to it later, I have the pleasure of reading all 54 comments the post generated, many of them taking Fertik to task for the same reasons I would. "Mike" said it first and perhaps most succinctly:

Being inconsiderate of people’s work/life balance is a surefire way of losing any employee, old or young.

Here, here. Isn't that something all the generations can agree on?

A Lost Generation of Leadership?

Okay. You're going to think I'm crazy or paranoid or both on this one. I've been slogging through a backlog of articles I thought I might want to comment on here on Hourglass. One that caught my eye is an interview with Bill George that was published on Forbes.com.

You may remember Bill George from the ASAE Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. He was the featured speaker at the only general session I attended at the meeting. And he's saying the same thing in this interview that he said in Los Angeles--namely that we need a new generation of leaders to take over the organizations built by Boomers.

I'm with you, Bill. My question is--which generation are you talking about?

The interview begins with:

Q: You have said that the younger generation, people under 45 or so, should be taking over in business because they are showing stronger leadership and more focus on their "true north" than their seniors. What do you mean by that?

A: I think we are going through a massive generational change in leadership. We baby boomers were raised in an era coming out of two world wars and the Depression that our parents had experienced. We didn't live through that, but our parents' experience was very real to us. From that we developed a command-and-control mentality of how to run an organization.

The great corporations of the world in the 1950s and '60s were command-and-control organizations. With this new century, that concept of command and control has totally gone out, because employees today are knowledge workers, they have options, and they don't stay around. Most important, they're looking for meaning, not just money. I think today's great leaders will know how to empower people, all of us, to step up and lead. So it's not a command-and-control type situation, and it's not exerting power over the people. It's aligning people to a mission and values and getting them to step up and lead, and getting them to recognize that their job is to serve a certain customer first and not the shareholder.

That's what I think the younger generation, those under 40 or 45, really understands. I think particularly for my students who are in their late twenties this is a great opportunity. The global economic meltdown of 2008 and 2009 was a crucible experience for them in that they recognize that the way we were going until then was headed for sheer destruction. They have a chance to recover, whereas a lot of the older leaders of Wall Street are passing from the scene and have no chance to recover.

Note that the question starts with "people under 45." Well, that includes a piece of GenX, right? Strauss and Howe says GenXers were born 1961-1981, making them 29-49 today, so "people under 45" includes about 75% of Generation X. But then after a fairly lucid analysis, Bill modifies it in his answer to "those under 40 or 45." If he's talking about people under 40, then we're only including roughly 50% of Generation X.

And then there's the real zinger. "I think particularly for my students who are in their late twenties this is a great opportunity." Late twenties? That's so thin a slice of Generation X that it's hardly Generation X at all.

Bill then goes on to describe 2000-2010 as "the lost decade of leadership." He chronicles the collapse of the dot coms that started the decade, then the ethical problems at companies like Enron and WorldCom, and then the financial meltdown of the last two years. He's not explicit about which "generation" of leaders were responsible for all those disasters, but he clearly believes a failure of leadership is to blame.

But not to worry. There is hope. The interview closes with:

Q. Broadly speaking, what makes you most hopeful about today's leaders?

A. I'm very hopeful about the younger leaders who are stepping up and taking over. I hope that the generational change in leadership will come quickly, and I hope it will give younger people an opportunity to step up and lead major organizations as well as start-ups and new organizations. I'm most hopeful about the new leaders who have been appointed in the last three or four years at corporations large and small. I'm hopeful we can get a whole new generation that will step up and lead with a higher sense of ethics and values, not just for its own sake but for recognizing that that's the best way to build an organization and the right way to sustain success.

Sounds good, Bill, but again, which generation of leaders are you talking about? The age ranges you highlight at the top of the interview make me wonder how young you think this new crop of enlightened leaders are, but it only takes one look at the URL that Forbes.com assigned to this article to determine who they think those leaders are.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/19/bill-george-generations-baby-boom-millennial-leadership-citizenship-ethisphere.html?partner=email

"baby-boom-millennial-leadership"? Where's Generation X in this whole leadership discussion? Lost once again.

Photo © Copyright Peter Ward and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License

When Do Future Leaders Become Today's Leaders?

This post I saw on Association Jam about whether nonprofits really want younger members on their Boards got me thinking about the subject. As is sometimes the case, the comments thread is as interesting as the blog post, as members of the different generations chime in to defend their point of view and, sometimes (regrettably), to trash each other.

The report they're discussing cites four "disincentives" for organizations in recruiting Millennials and Xers to serve on their Boards:
1. Skepticism about the need to have younger generations on boards
2. Uncertainty of where to find younger board members
3. Preference for a "C-Suite" or corporate officer type profile on the board
4. Concerns of isolation (of being the only young person on the board)

In my own world, I've seen all four of those disincentives in action, with the biggest emphasis probably on number 3. The trade association I work for has a definite preference for "C-Suite" or other corporate officer types serving on its Board--and with good reasons. These individuals have brought us an advanced level of buy-in, immediate decision-making, and expectation for strategic thinking that has helped us advance many of our objectives.

But my titular question remains, doesn't it? We all know that the landscape is shifting, and that associations have to develop their future leaders today. In concept, younger members bring fresher perspectives and can help the association be more responsive to the needs of younger generations of members--people who will one day be in the driver's seat and who you will want on your C-Suite Board. By not engaging them now, do you run the risk of losing them later?

We're addressing the issue by finding opportunites for younger members to participate in other parts of the association--importantly, in ways that coincide with their self-described development needs and participation preferences. They are, by and large, people who are already very much in control of their own careers, and we want them to see our association as a network that they can leverage to serve those needs. That benefits them and definitely benefits us--both now and, hopefully, in the future.

What are you doing to address this issue?

The World Needs More Social Entrepreneurs

I found this article on Youth Venture interesting. If you're not familiar with it, Youth Venture is a program of Bill Drayton's Ashoka--an organization committed to developing more social entrepreneurs.

Ashoka defines social entrepreneurs as "individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps."

The Youth Venture program targets young people (i.e., teenagers) with drive and innovative ideas and helps them launch social entrepreneurial efforts. "Ashoka believes that youth will gain the skills and innate understanding that they can be powerful long into their adult future. Through this experience, young people will grow up practicing applied empathy, teamwork, and leadership—the underlying skills needed to make change."

It sounds great. It really does. The profiles of their "Youth Ventures"--the young people they're helping to drive social change in their communities--are inspiring. I did some hunting around on the Ashoka website because I wanted to see how new their Youth Venture program was. Ashoka itself started in 1980, but I couldn't fnd a start date for Youth Venture. It sounds like a recent addition, though, and my Gen X cynicism can't help but wonder how much of it is a reaction to the leadership void we keep hearing will be left when Boomers retire and the smaller X generation tries to step in to fill those shoes.

Picture it. From one end of the spectrum we've got Civic Ventures and organizations like them, selling the idea of Encore Careers to for-profit Boomer leaders, helping them transfer to the non-profit sector so society can continue to benefit from their wisdom and experience. And from the other end we've now got programs like Youth Venture, encourgaing and providing resources to get the youngest generation to accept leadership roles in solving today's challenges.

Sometimes it really does seem that Generation X doesn't exist. Or at least that the Boomers who run programs like Civic Ventures and Youth Venture don't believe it has the talent--or the desire? or just the sheer numbers?--to save the world.