Managing across generations
Brett Farmiloe and Zach Hubbell, cofounders of Pursue the Passion and keynoter at the first day of ASAE & The Center's Finance and Business Operations Symposium, took a refreshingly different approach to talk about their chosen topic: What Generation Y Wants.
The pair of Gen Yers traveled across the country interviewing thousands of people who enjoy their work about why they do--from CEOs to shoe designers to park rangers. Rather than talk about generational differences, they talked about the similarities that span generations, and they developed three attributes that are common to all people who go to work and enjoy what they do, doesn't matter their age, experience, level, gender, or anything else. The three are:
1. Significance
2. Trust
3. Measurability
Now, you can't have a keynote on generations without bringing it into the mix in some way. So their take was to go into the three areas and talk about what, specifically, what these three things mean to someone in Generation Y. Personally, I'm an anti-generation guy. I absolutely think the generational stereotypes have some basis in factual research, but these stereotypes break down so seriously at the individual level, that the noise around generational differences is significantly detrimental.
So, there take on Gen Y and the three commonalities sounds to me like there was no need to bring generation into it all.
Significance - Gen Yers want to feel valued and feel that the organization their working for does valuable things. Their advice: make them feel like they are missed when they are out of the room. To me, that's just good management advice.
Trust - Note that some of the best ideas in an organization come from people who have not been institutionalized, but too often these are from lower on the org chart and never get serious consideration. Their advice: give Gen Yers enough rope to swing (and do great things) or hang themselves (a teaching moment). Again, sounds like good management.
Measurability - They made the point that Gen Y is used to instant feedback because of the communication methods they grew up with. My broken record moment -- instant feedback is just smart management.
| | Permalink |
Comments
Scott, you're right on. At the broad level, there are differences among generational cohorts. And they are fascinating to read about. But over and over, the advice for managing any given individual of a generation boils down to good management: Take care of your people, respect them, help them learn, make them feel that they're making a contribution.
Hell, my kids want to feel these things and I don't even know what generation they belong to!
Posted by: Wes Trochlil | May 14, 2009 1:21 PM
I think significance, trust, and measurability are awesome and agree they are not unique to a generation (good book that touches on them by Lencioni, actually).
I also agree that it's ridiculous to apply generational trends to individuals, but I chalk that up more to our unhealthy obsession with being provided simplistic answers, rather than the usefulness of deepening our understanding of generational differences. We want the speaker of book on generations to tell us what to do--to tell us how to handle the 1, 2, 10,or 500 employees we have in that age group. It doesn't work that way. But NOT knowing anything about the generational differences won't help you find those answers either. I view the generational differences as a way to help us ask better questions and have more effective conversations rather than giving us answers.
Posted by: Jamie Notter | May 15, 2009 6:06 AM
Jamie - I'll go along with the conversation angle. The key message I think we both make is don't assume stereotypes -- and that goes for age, culture, race, gender, or anything else.
Posted by: Scott Briscoe | May 15, 2009 3:07 PM
It's nice to see a pendulum swing a bit from the fashion of talking about generational differences as being the critical variable in understanding, managing, communicating with, and manipulating people. Emphasizing it heavily to me means 1) de-emphasizing other key demographic & psychographic characteristics that explain us and our behavior; and 2) implying that each generation retains a rigid set of traits and preferences into the foreseeable future. We are a malleable species and our environment shapes us over time; although I've never done it, it would be fascinating to review socio/cultural anthropological works from 25 years ago to see what they were predicting of the baby boomers over the course of their life in terms of communications styles, family/friendship formation, career paths, work-oriented motivations, etc. None of our pundits are or should be held to a standard of accurately predicting our future, collective personal growth and development, but it's important to bear in mind that these are just analytical frameworks that are easy to measure through observation and research today--far harder to track over the long term and focusing heavily on age as our defining trait means focusing less on equally important factors that also determine how we think & act ...
Posted by: Kevin Whorton | May 21, 2009 4:44 AM