Generation Y 2.0

It’s Friday and just for fun and to make all those GenX and Baby Boomers feel a bit better about all this talk about Y’ers …. we thought we would make you smile with some famous quotes and perceptions about age (we’ve kept it to the clean ones!):

The older your get, the better you get - unless you are a banana (Ross Noble)

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? (Anon)

You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there (George Burns)

It’s sad to grow old, but nice to ripen (Brigitte Bardot)

You can live to be 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be 100 (Woody Allen)

Growing old is compulsory, growing up is optional (Bob Monkhouse)

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age (Lucille Ball)

The old believe everything, the middle age suspect everything and the young know everything (Oscar Wilde)

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In a week of chaos across Britain as it continued to snow, more in inches than metres, and whilst our Aussie colleagues were literally BBQ’ing on the beach, what were our Y folk up to? Was there some positive light to come out of the week or was it all grey slush and misery?

So ok, getting anywhere on any kind of transport was difficult and well done to all of you who battled through to get to your destinations and to panic buy all those cartons of milk (did you need so many?!). Shame on you who used it as an excuse to stay home! No seriously, was staying home such a bad idea? What about the perils of bad weather and associated safety risk? What about all those important events and practise nights. What of productivity and the effect on industry at a time when businesses need every drop of income right now? More doom and gloom I hear you say.

Perhaps there are other ways to look at this. What about the peace and quiet to get those reports done and catch up on all those emails? Two days in your PJ’s and with your favourite snacks to hand and iTunes to play without headphones, could you breathe a sigh of relief that you didn’t have to go to college or the office and save a bit of time? Well many could see that there was an awful lot of time being spent on Facebook and online chat this week, and a remarkable number of photos of snow filled driveways, gardens and parks! What an industrious lot we are, and yes we still know how to build snowmen and other well known snow loving (?) British characters .
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Following some of our earlier articles, it is clear that cross-generational working is essential in the times ahead. If you think that baby boomers should be leaving the scene, think again, they bring wisdom and real experience of surviving a recession and managing change. Gen Y can bring collaborative spirit and a fresh perspective. But it is predominantly our Generation X middle managers and leaders who have the challenge of bringing all this together.

As managers, it is time to be prepared and open minded about what each of the generations brings. Those seniors may have worked in a different era but the experiences are no less valid and they’re amongst the users of the internet and web 2.0 tools just like everyone else.

Our Gen Y need an encouraging hand, genuine interest in what they have to say and what they want to achieve; it’s not about their managers making assumptions or judgements, or ensuring these newcomers have to go through the same paces they did.

In the article “I’m way more Generation Y than I thought, you too?” by 23 year old Victoria Gutierrez, she looks at the fundamental differences in her Y world and that of her boyfriend’s father who is busy conforming to the traditional hard working career guy image just like many of the others that she perceives follow in similar footsteps. Victoria remains frustrated, trying to bring her unique contribution, finding something exciting and creative that allows her to be herself at work.

So what are these Gen X senior and middle managers going to do to bring these groups together? How are they going to cope with the pressures of change? How are our new Gen Y middle managers going to embrace these strange times? And how are we going to support them?

Of course there are plenty of leadership development programmes and workshops out there, change management guide books and all the rest. In fact we urge you to keep investing in your leadership and think carefully about how you can do that in an imaginative way. The top companies distinguish themselves by the way they develop their leaders and think about the young leaders of tomorrow.

However, we need to think about what is different and not just fall back into our old ways. First, what is similar: Recognition, Leadership, Meaning and Authenticity: Read the rest of this entry »

In these times of survival there are going to be a number of skills, capabilities, characteristics or traits that are going to be needed to rely upon. There appear to be a number of ‘soft skills’ that will distinguish those with not only the survival skills but the ability to help carry their organisation and themselves forward. These may include for example: self awareness, ability to communicate and relate, emotional intelligence, ability to evaluate complex problems, passion, entrepreneurial spirit, positive thinking, and curiosity.

Curiosity can be described as the desire to learn or to know an object that arouses interest, an emotion that causes curious behaviour, or just being inquisitive or nosey!

Without curiosity what would we have missed or would have happened to these guys - Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain James Cook, Richard Branson, Akio Morita, Friends Reunited, YouTube, Dyson, the entrepreneurs of Dragon’s Den, Harry Potter or perhaps this guy:

“The important thing is not to stop questionning”, Albert Einstein

For GenY and those with ‘Y behaviours’ this may be part of what distinguishes them, and something that our baby boomers and Gen X need to encourage. But don’t forget that “curiosity is common to human beings at all ages from infancy to old age”, Wikipedia. So this is something we must share across the generations.

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The UK’s CIPD, in association with Penna, recently produced a comprehensive report based on a survey of over 5,500 individuals across 6 European countries and focus groups within more than 30 major UK employers. Their findings confirmed that there are more similarities than differences between the generations and that it is the preconceptions between generations about each other that is more the problem.

The study shows that the differentiating factors setting Gen Y apart is the influence that the reward deal has, the close connection between socialising and work, their advocacy of the employer brand (nothing new there) and perhaps suprisingly a more common interest in staying with one employer for five years than many would expect. And yet many Gen X, although perhaps seemingly more career driven, will often job-hop to make progress.

The study appears to support the messages of articles we referred to in Part One, that generationalisations of Gen X and Y are becoming blurred, we are seeing Gen Y behaviours in our Gen X’ers, etc.

The report focuses on the need to foster creativity and innovation from generational interaction and that the risk of not managing generational diversity can lead to disengagement or even conflict. One common theme to all generations was the importance of respect and dignity in the workplace. Harnessing capabilities across generations within organisations has never been more important; use of new media, social networking, entrepreneurism, customer service ethos and strong change management skills based on experience and wisdom, are sure surivival skills in the coming year.

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Time and time again we see comments about age sterotypes, whether they be baby boomers (BB), Generation X, Y’ers or the teen youth of today. As we’ve said before these boundaries are becoming blurred. What we see are behaviours not age groups.

People tend to follow cycles or stages throughout their lives, some more than others; adapting, embracing and making changes as they go.

Generation classifications were discussed with author Robert K Critchley in ‘Ageless Wisdom’ (hrmonthly, Australia, June 2006, Chaminade):

“I think the terms are useful for understanding the differences between people. The most important thing is not to run your life by ‘I’m a Gen X and I must live this way’. Understand that people are thinking differently, because so often the generational myopia is such that we think everyone thinks like we do. There is value in understanding the way different generations think and act - understand but don’t try to typecast.”

Another way of looking at classifying talent was outlined in Generation Gap (hrmonthly, October 2005, Chaminade), considering four different categories for talent rather than those of age:

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