Millennials Are the New Slackers

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What goes around comes around. Here's another one of those fun HBR blog posts where a blogger from one generation pontificates on the failings of a younger generation, and gets taken to task for it in the comments. In this case, the blogger is Andrew McAfee and his target is the "entitlement mentality" of many Millennials.

A paradox is a seemingly contradictory statement that might nonetheless be true. The deepest one I've come across recently goes something like at a time of high unemployment and persistent joblessness, Millennials are asking for more concessions and perks from their employers. I just came across a CNN story about how new hires at marketing agency Euro RSCG told their CEO that they want to come in at 10 or later, have free food and a Pilates room, and get reimbursed for their personal trainers.

It's horrific, McAfee says, and he goes on to detail out how Millennials should be acting in this dismal economy. His five-point plan sounds like every other piece of advice given by the older generation to the younger generation entering to workplace: play by our rules and you'll get ahead when we decide the time is right.

The comments are a fun read--more fun, in fact, than McAfee's post. There are some impassioned and frustrated young people expressing both of those emotions there. One, mocking McAfee's dismissal of the younger generation's use of "e-speak" in business correspondence, says:

Your organization should stop hiring employees who can't write. Then again, I guess you'd be jobless.

Ouch. But there is a larger point to be made here.

Millennials are the new kids on the block when it comes to the workplace. And like the Xers that preceded them, they are coming of age in a time of massive joblessness and economic uncertainty. They have youthful enthusiasm and a fresh way of seeing things, and we're witnessing what happens when ideals like that collide with the powerful status quo, protected ever more preciously by an older generation not quite ready to let go.

Although McAfee never uses the word, reading what he says about Millennials, it was hard for me not to sympathize with them and see their plight as similar to the one GenX fought and is in some measure still fighting. It's not fair to call us "slackers" anymore--us Xers with our mortgages, college savings accounts and flirtations with the alternative minimum tax--but it is such a tempting description, that I fully expect it will be recycled with abandon for these Millennials. After all, they have no true sense of how the real world works.

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It is probably appropriate to use this post about generations in the workplace to announce that at the end of this year I will no longer be posting here at The Hourglass Blog. I started this adventure almost three years ago with the intention of exploring the impact of generational shift on the leadership of our organizations and, while I have certainly done that, I have explored a number of other topics as well. These topics have been of great interest to me, but they have clearly been outside the scope of the original manifesto.

Because of this, and because of my desire to continue to explore the ideas that interest me most, I have decided to set-up shop at a new blog, one molded around all of my interests rather than one narrow subset of them. The new blog, at www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, is in beta-testing now. If you've enjoyed what you've read here, I would encourage you to read, subscribe or otherwise follow my activities there. From now until the end of the year, I'll be posting jointly in both places, but I expect all the sand will run out of this Hourglass by the end of December.

We're All Millennials Now

It's been a while since I talked about generations on this blog. Isn't that what this blog is supposed to be all about? It's almost as if the themes of leadership and innovation have taken over. I wonder if I'm getting better at either as a result?

But here’s an interesting article Shelly Alcorn pointed me to. It's about the multi-generational workplace, and how some organizations are experimenting with management models based on democracy--giving workers of all generations an equal vote in how things are run--to better balance and leverage the talents of all.

It's a good read. But here’s what gets me, and what’s tempered my enthusiasm for the generations biz. The article defines the generations this way:

Veterans: Workers who preceded the baby boomers tend to be authoritarian and loyal, and they value wisdom gained from experience over technological expertise.

Boomers: Known for their workaholic habits and need for status symbols, they’ve sacrificed a lot for their careers. They often expect their junior staff to do the same.

Generation X: They are generally comfortable working within the systems established by their employers and, like the boomers before them, are more willing to let work cut into their personal lives. They have no problem using technology, having entered the work force just as computers were becoming mainstream.

Millennials: Tech-savvy, entrepreneurial and independent, they tend to value work-life balance and meaningful work more than a large paycheque. They are less likely to be attached to an employer than other generations and tend to stay only a few years before moving on.

Huh? GenX is comfortable working within the systems established by their employers? They're willing to let work cut into their personal lives? What strange alternate universe have I found myself in?

You know, I used to be happy being GenX. Then for a while I decided I wanted to be Generation Jones. Now, with the definitions listed above, I think I'm going to start being a Millennial.

Care to join me?

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Arguing for Generational Superiority

This is another one of those posts challenging the assumption that as Millennials storm their way into the workforce they're going to radically change the landscape and force organizations to adapt to their idiosyncratic ideals in order to harness their power and survive. It's a good post as these posts go, and Andrew McAfee throws in the obligatory pop culture reference to make sure you're paying attention.

But what always fascinates me about these posts is how many comments they get. McAfee got 91 comments with this one. 91! The average on HBR seems to be about 10.

Not that I'm jealous or anything.

If you take time to start reading through those comments, you discover that the majority are from a much smaller group of people--people from different generations--arguing back and forth over whether Millennials are special or not. Here's how it typically goes:

Millennial: I'm a Millennial and I'm different!

Xer: Oh yeah? Well, I'm an Xer, and twenty years ago I was just like you. Millennials aren't any different.

Millennial: Yes we are! We're more experienced and more marketable than previous generations at our age. We deserve rewards for the skills we're bringing to the table. And we're not content with the status quo. We want to shake things up and create new ways of doing things.

Xer: We wanted the same things when we were your age. Ugh! We still want those things! But we learned that those things don't come without making sacrifices to exitsing power structures. You need to learn the same thing.

Millennial: But we shouldn't have to! We're special!

Xer: No you're not. Now wait your turn.

Boomer: I don't know what you two are arguing about. Nobody's getting nothing till I get mine.

And so it goes. Let me sum up with this comment:

Ninety percent of the talk about the new generation changing the way we work is just that--talk. Millennials will have an impact. Just like Xers did and Boomers did before them. But that impact will be evolutionary, not revolutionary. It won't be realized until Millennials are fully integrated into the workforce and hold a significant number leadership positions. And by that time everyone will be talking about a new generation of youngsters coming into the workplace to shake things up.

Generational Herd Mentalities

A little while ago, Neil Howe called attention on his blog to a New York Times feature story about a 24-year-old Millennial who, even amidst the Great Recession, is living at home and turning down $40K job offers until just the right opportunity comes along. As Howe notes:

The story lit up a firestorm of reader responses: no less than 1,487 comments thus far, and much larger echoes on the blogosphere. Many of the commenters lambasted the NYT for suggesting that this privileged young man’s experience (he lives in a nice suburban home and his dad is president of a small manufacturing company) is in any way representative of the employment hardships most youth are facing today.

But here's the part I find interesting:

Even more excoriated the young man for turning down the $40K offer—and the family for letting him live at home while turning down such offers. The most vicious remarks seemed to come from older (Generation X and Boomer) readers, who often cited their own tough, low-salary beginnings. Apparently, they disapprove of this generation’s tendency to hold fast to long-term plans and dreams. Be realistic, they insist. Eat humble pie. It will be good for you (to repeat what older Chinese now tell the rising “Little Emperor” generation) to “taste bitterness.”

Howe is perplexed by this reaction, citing (persuasively, I think) several mitigating factors, statistics and situational realities that make the Millennial's decisions more understandable. It's a good read, and it parallels the perspective of many Millennials in the job market today, wanting to succeed, but not willing to settle for second best.

Howe concludes his post by asking his readers:

Why do the sober-minded, future-oriented career choices of today’s Millennials make so many Boomers and Xers jump up and down in agitated condemnation?

And he gets his own slew of snarky comments from Xers, including this one:

I wonder if Mr. Howe would spewing out the same supportive verbage if it was, say, the late 1980s or early 90s when most early-20 Gen Xers were emerging into the job market, donned with glorious degrees. There was a recession going on then, too, and many of us had to go back home to live until we found a job. But, if I recall, Gen X was looked down upon for not being able to land stellar jobs with fabulous degrees and stuck living at home. As such, I wonder if this clearly Boomer parent would've been quite so supportive of a Gen Xer turning down a $40K a year job while living at home, hmmm? I think we know the answer to that one.

Okay. So why am I going into so much detail on this? Because as I said in my recent Only Xers Care About Work/Life Balance post, I sense an undercurrent of jealousy in a lot of Xer talk about Millennials. After all, we had to pay our dues when we were 20-something, taking any job we could find and clawing our way into leadership positions by compromising our values and learning to play by the rules set by the generation that preceded us. Why should Millennials be spared that difficulty and humiliation? Why should they be able to set their own rules and write their own tickets?

Here's a quick story.

I went to the University of Wisconsin in the late 1980s. Back then, in order to register for your classes at the start of each year, you had to hike all the way out to the Stock Pavilion on the western edge of the campus (the Stock Pavilion where livestock were once housed, shown and judged), stand in line like cattle to get your registation forms, and then march all over campus to the different buildings to get your forms signed by the appropriate departmental paper pushers. Need to take that Physics 201 class? Better get yourself over to the Physics building before all the sections with the good teaching assistants are taken. And what about that foriegn language requirement? Do you know where you need to go for that? Is that in the Humanities building?

In my senior year they introduced a new telephone registration system where students could do all of that by pushing buttons on their dorm room phones rather than hoofing it all over town--and many of the seniors I knew were angry (and jealous) that the new freshmen coming in wouldn't have to suffer the same difficulties and indignities we had all suffered for years. Why shouldn't they have to pay their dues? We did! These young kids--they've got it too easy and expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter.

It's the same thing today. When young people have access to better opportunities than we did, why do we berate them for having the simple sense to take advantage of them? Do we expect them to adopt the same herd mentality we did?

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Who's Going to Make Your Social Media Decisions?

There was an interesting discussion recently on ASAE's Executive Management listserv that started with a link to this article about the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The article is headlined: "Teens Love Facebook, Hate Blogging, Are Always Online, and Don't Use Twitter;" and the original poster wondered what the underlying trends might mean for associations.

Several thoughtful posts followed, some containing advice for associations trying to decide which social media platforms to embrace. Glenn Tecker said (cogently, I thought):

Associations need to watch that they are not building platforms responsive to the opinions of young adults if their preferences as users are not likely to be the same as the larger number of youth (Gen "Y") that will shortly follow. Be careful to avoid the situation where early generations of social media, especially those used by a relatively small portion of members, inadvertently become the legacy systems of your near term future.

And fellow Hourglass blogger Jamie Notter followed up with:

I think the social internet is shaping the Millennials in a way that will have implications for all of us. Remember: the aspect of the internet that I (as Gen X) always thought was amazing (wildly expansive information, accessible via search, instantly) is ho-hum for the youngest generation. Kind of like me getting all excited about being able to pick up the phone and call anyone I wanted. Of course I can do that. I've always been able to do that. Similarly, access to information is not shaping the Millennials. It's their ability to network and create. The Social internet allowed consumers to become producers and creators and it radically shifted trust equations. That will continue to shift, as the Pew study notes and Glen points out, but I think the game has changed. As a generation, I'm guessing the Millennials are going to run with this, not slowed down by their previous experience with the old game. And demographically they are a huge generation, so it would be wise to be actively dealing with this now rather than later.

It got me thinking. Both Glenn and Jamie seem to be advocating for the premise that we should be building our social media platforms for tomorrow, not for today. They seem to be saying that if you build something for the Boomers and Xers in your membership, you may succeed in getting them to interact online, but it's something that won't have any future, because the Millennials will see it as "old media." You'll just take the ossification that's already happening to your association and put it online.

But I question how we (Boomers and Xers who lead associations) can build social media platforms that Millennials will embrace. That also seems to run counter to the ideas that Glenn and Jamie are promoting. In my own observation, many Boomers and Xers who are into social media seem focused on finding a "safe place" to network online. They want a closed community, something with pre-determined rules of conduct and a rigorous screening process to make sure things "stay professional."

Millennials, on the other hand, often reject all of that. In their world, "safe places" are boring, and there isn't any separation between professional and personal. To them, the carefully constructed social media environments favored by the older generations are exactly that--constructed. On the web, they want the freedom to be who they are, to go where they want to go, and to talk with whoever they want.

This seems like a true conundrum to me. If you run an association, which group should you let drive your social media decision-making? Listen to the call of the Boomers and the Xers, and you'll create something you can control, but will it ultimately take your association where it needs to go? Listen to the call of the Millennials, however, and you'll create something that gives them the freedom to do what they want, but will they ultimately recognize your association as one of its essential parts?

It's almost as if both paths might lead you to organizational oblivion.

The New Lost Generation?

I've noted before articles that I've seen that seem to predict an impending leadership takeover by Millennials. They are, as these articles say, more numerous, more entrepreneurial, and (evidently), just plain better than us crusty old Xers.

Imagine my surprise when someone called my attention to the cover story in a recent issue of Business Week, where they're beginning to worry that this economic downturn and the joblessness crisis that has accompanied it is turning those heir apparents into apparently nots.

For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of "lost generation." Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.

But it's not just bad for them. It's bad for us, too.

Equally important, employers are likely to suffer from the scarring of a generation. The freshness and vitality young people bring to the workplace is missing. Tomorrow's would-be star employees are on the sidelines, deprived of experience and losing motivation.

It's an interesting twist in the generational leadership narrative. Perhaps the Millennials are not so unstoppable after all. But then I have to remember, for every Millennial who is kept off the bottom rung of the ladder by the bad economy, there is likely a Boomer who is isn't leaving the top rung for the same reason. And the Xers? Stuck in the middle again.

The Millennial Athlete

I read a recent post on Neil Howe's Lifecourse Blog about a possible shift in the ethics of sports brought on by a generational shift in athletes from Generation X to Millennials. Citing an inspiring story published in the New York Times about Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his focus on charity work instead of lucrative NFL contracts, and citing his own work with executives at sports companies, Howe argues that a change is coming.

In contrast to the young man profiled in this story, I believe that Generation X (born 1961-1981) athletes have celebrated a me-first, winning-is-everything attitude over the tenure of their athletically active years.

Howe credits Generation X with leading sports over the past twenty years into performance enhancing drugs and the innate desire to crush one's opponents. Millennials like Tebow, Howe seems to imply, are motivated by something other than winning, and seek to use their positions of athletic role models to refocus those around them on more altruistic pursuits.

I look forward with great interest to see where Millennial (born 1982-200?) take professional sports.

Okay. First, I have to admit, I don't know much about sports and sports figures. Prior to reading the article Howe pointed me to, I had never even heard of Tim Tebow. But I find Howe's hypothesis (and I think that's all we can fairly call it at this point) fascinating. It almost makes me want to start reading the sports page.

The Hourglass Blog is all about exploring generations and leadership in associations and society. My own area of interest is what I call the "leadership challenge of Generation X"—namely, will GenX step up to fill the oft-predicted leadership void left by retiring Boomers and, if so, how will their starkly different generational perspective reshape the organizations they lead and the society they serve.

If Howe is right, then professional sports teams may prove an interesting case study for what happens when one generation takes over the leadership reins from another—in this case Millennials from Xers instead of Xers from Boomers.

But is Howe right? Millennials will undoubtedly put their unique stamp on professional sports, the same way they'll put their stamp on everything else they decide to get involved with.

But did winning at all costs really start with Generation X? Wasn't it Vince Lombardi (born 1913) who famously told his 1959 Packers that "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing"? And according to this researcher, Lombardi might have gotten that idea from Henry ‘Red’ Sanders (born 1905) football coach at Vanderbilt and UCLA, who might have gotten it from University of Illinois coach Bob Zuppke (born 1879), who might have gotten it from University of Michigan football coach Fielding Yost (born 1871).

We hear a lot of hype (here and here, for example) about how Millennials are destined to take over the world earlier than any previous generation and reshape it in their own image and for the betterment of all humankind. Well, I say if Millennials are capable of making such fundamental changes like taking the pursuit of winning out of sports, then GenX really should just step aside and let them take over.

Millennials are Clueless...and How Can We Attract Them?

I attended another event sponsored by the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives (WSAE) yesterday and today. Click here for a report on my last trip to Madison for a WSAE event.

This time I wasn't part of any panel—just an attendee. Last night was more informal—a gathering of twenty or so members, some of whom had attended the latest ASAE meeting in Toronto, most of which hadn't. The networking topic was "What I Learned at ASAE" and it was a great opportunity to hear what those who could attend the national conference this year thought about it and took away from it.

Today it was a more formal session with an expert panel, an engaging facilitator, and a hundred or so attendees—"Future Trends and Forecasting in Hospitality."

Generations and social media got heavy emphasis in both sessions, and in a lot of the hallway conversation I had with my fellow attendees. (That seems to be the case, lately, doesn't it? Even in sessions not ostensibly about either, generations and social media just keep coming up again and again.)

Anyway, I'm blogging about it because I heard two distinct and I think strangely juxtaposed narratives about Millennials—very few of whom were in attendance. Allow me to paraphrase them:

1. Those Millennials sure are clueless, aren't they? Have they never had a job before? They sure don't act like it. It's like they're doing you the favor—coming to work for you. They expect outrageous compensation, benefits, and flexible hours, and refuse to do any work they consider beneath them. They blog, they Facebook, they tweet—and none of what they're doing online is appropriate for the workplace—or the professional image of my association. And they don't seem to care! You're just supposed to accept them as they are—their online as well as their offline selves. Don't they realize they're supposed to keep those things separate? I wouldn't hire any of them if I didn't have to.

2. Does anyone have any ideas on how we can connect with more Millennials? You know, it's starting to get a little scary. I look around and I see my association membership and my meeting attendees just getting older and older. The younger generation doesn't seem to be engaged and they don't respond when I try to reach out to them. What's wrong with them? Can they not see the value my association offers? Did they not read that brochure I sent them? Did they not get my email? I'm really starting to get worried. We've got to find a way get them engaged or someday I'm afraid we're going to be irrelevant. How are you supposed to get through to these knuckleheads? Don't they know what's at stake?

There was no one person at the WSAE event who actually said all of these words, but I could imagine some of them were thinking them based on the tenor of all the discussions I heard. Here's a quick word of advice to anyone who might be struggling with both these narratives. You're not going to solve the problems inherent in narrative #2 until you give up on narrative #1.

Millennials Are Unstoppable

More on the new narrative front for generations in the workplace. I predicted in a previous post that we'd start seeing more stories about how GenX better get out of the way of those Millennials when it comes to the leadership positions being slowly vacated by Boomers.

Here's another, from the Entrepreneur.com blog, entitled innocently enough, "Are Gen Y Workers Good for Business?" It's a mini review of a new book by Michael S. Malone. After reading the first three paragraphs, you might think the answer is, no, Gen Y workers are not good for business. But wait. Let's take another look at those youngsters:

The caveat, though, in Malone's mind, is that Gen Y's fierce independence will accelerate the nation's evolution from a corporate economy of worker bees to an entrepreneurial one of innovative thinkers and rapid change, one where a majority of the Gen Y workforce is self-employed or even part of an ever-widening proprietary class.

"This cohort, many with parents who have always worked at home, has little interest in ever taking an office job, or working for a business that doesn't change," he writes. The Gen Y group will be fiercely start-up oriented, and "by 2013, perhaps two-thirds of all adult Americans will be classified as entrepreneurial."

Get out of the way GenX. Those Millennials have some serious destiny to fulfill. By 2013—four years from now—they are going to comprise a new entrepreneurial class that is twice as large as all the other adults in the country.

Graduate School for Millennials

I was really inspired by this post on Seth Godin's blog. If you're not following Seth's blog, I would suggest trying it for a few weeks. This one is about things recent college grads can do to bolster their chances of getting hired in this tough employment market. Like a lot of Seth's ideas, they're pretty bold and in your face. He advises:

How about a post-graduate year doing some combination of the following (not just one, how about all):

1. Spend twenty hours a week running a project for a non-profit.
2. Teach yourself Java, HTML, Flash, PHP and SQL. Not a little, but mastery.
3. Volunteer to coach or assistant coach a kids sports team.
4. Start, run and grow an online community.
5. Give a speech a week to local organizations.
6. Write a regular newsletter or blog about an industry you care about.
7. Learn a foreign language fluently.
8. Write three detailed business plans for projects in the industry you care about.
9. Self-publish a book.
10. Run a marathon.

Beats law school.

If you wake up every morning at 6, give up TV and treat this list like a job, you'll have no trouble accomplishing everything on it. Everything! When you do, what happens to your job prospects?

I tried to imagine myself doing these things when I was 22 and fresh out of college. Heck, I tried to imagine myself even having the presence of mind to imagine doing these things when I was 22 and fresh out of college. Some of them were just not possible (did Java even exist in 1990?), and others would have been a whole lot more difficult than they are today (self-publishing a book, etc.). But I certainly could have done some of them and they undoubtedly would have made me more employable.

And that got me thinking about the people graduating from college today. Sure, they've got more tools at their disposal to do some of the things on Seth's list, but I also suspect that they have more presence of mind about promoting themselves and their brand than I did at their age. Am I crazy, or is this one of those things that makes me think the Millennials are going to run over the GenXers when the two groups start competing for the leadership positions vacated by Baby Boomers?