Been a busy week, I was in L.A. (twice) helped many clients, and now am off to NYC today on Sunday in preparation for tomorrow’s Forrester Finance Forum. Aside from the hectic schedule, there are two major changes in my life: 1) My kid sister enters the workpace, 2) My parents contemplate retirement. Me? I’m in the middle, “Jeremiah-in-the-middle” as a young Gen Xer, experiencing it all unfold.
Gen Y Enter Stage Left
Last weekend, my kid sister (yes, the one who said she only uses email to communicate with old people like me) has graduated from college. 10 years my junior, she starts her first full time job in San Francisco. Already armed with a network connected to her on Facebook, Instant Messaging tools (and probably MySpace too), she enters the workforce connected to her new employers: customers, partners, and even competitors.
What they are on their profiles echos to their networks, and if they indicate they are employed (many do) then they are now representatives of the brand.
Companies have three choices when it comes to understanding this opportunity: 1) Do nothing. Most companies are unaware of these changes, or even if they are, they are unsure of the possibilities. 2) Shut it down. Some companies have locked Facebook, YouTube and other ‘time-wasters’ away from employees, but now with today’s pervasive mobile devices (iPHone, Blackberry, Nokia, Sidekick), there is no blocking it. 3) Make use of the opportunity. Employees, whether they realize it or not are the front line of the company, they can be support, they can be sales, or they can just be brand ambassadors. Check out this interview with me about the future of the outsourced Intranet from ZDnet, and how Serena Software encourages it’s employees to have a Facebook Friday.
These questions remain:
Do the once finite lines of the corporate firewall between work and personal start to fade? Who is really an official spokesperson? Is there an unofficial spokesperson? As Generation Y moves into the workforce, how will their communication habits change? How about ours? (I work with several talented ones) Will Generation Y, who is accustomed to Facebook Applications, Google Docs, Rich internet application interfaces, and advanced web technology (all public) be shocked to find out how bad your enterprise software is? How will companies adapt and changes their corporate policies to meet this change?
Baby Boomers Exit Stage Right
Although still a few years away, my parents are considering retirement. They’ve accomplished a lot in their careers, both have been towards to the top of the food chains in their respective careers in Education and Medicine. These baby boomers (the largest generation America has ever seen) leave their companies and organizations, and often with the know-how, knowledge, and networks that we’ve relied on. In fact, many senior leadership at corporations are members of the large boomer generation.
For example, at a previous company where I managed the intranet, I received stats from HR, in order to complete my user experience research. I found that 40% of the company (more than a third) of the employees were going to retire in the next 5-10 years, many in leadership positions. That was 3 years ago.
These questions remain:
Are companies prepared for this mass exodus of experienced leaders? How will they harvest the knowledge from these professionals? Once they leave, they are under no obligation to return it. How will some companies have ‘soft-retirements’ allowing them to work part time or have access to their networks. Will they leave a gaping hole in upper and mid management giving a gravity well to Gen X to quickly climb to leadership –some with questionable experience?
Solutions? Dennis McDonald left a link to an interesting social network created by Dow that ties retirees to the company.
Comparing both generations, I often have heard from my parents generation about climbing the corporate ladder, getting a pension, and being lifers at companies. When I talk to the younger generation, they are at the stage of wanting to climb vertically, and they know the fastest way up is out –in just a few years. Without a doubt, we’ve changes ahead, it’ll be interesting to see how companies cultures and workstyle change.
All generations attitudes will merge as we learn from each other.
Tree/five years in a starting position seems to be way too much, but at some point you must commit to something to be able to learn beyond the “right here, right now”.
I’ve read recently that every 4 months (of real time), one month is added to life expectancy. And the trend is accellerating. It will get to the point where life expectancy grows faster than real time passes by (is a technological process that is becoming exponential).
This will require that we continue to work past 65, otherwise no retirement plans (personal or state mandated) will be able to keep up. Also must be considered the need of feeling one-self productive for 50 or more years after retirement.
All generations will meet up in the workplace. Those who adapt will progress. “adapt” to be understood as “both ways” (boomers learning from y-ers and y-ers learning from boomers).
be shocked to find out how bad your enterprise software is?
Oh so this ERP thing here can unite Accounting, Factory Production and HR with the Executive command, and kick out reports that help run and forecast the future, and do number crunching on the level that could run a small European country, but geeeee whiz, it can’t do any cool Web 2.0 social software somersault tricks and it has no IM, it, like, totally, like, gag me with a spoon, like, geeesh, like, I mean, like, sucks. Like, pheeeeew.
Gen Y, so far, has yet to prove anything more than missing a few chromosomes. At least it means the Yuppie Hippie Scum are riding off into the sunset or to the nearest Whole Foods, in a Beemer, no doubt.
The Breakdown
Greatest – Ended the War, Remade Modern Society. Give me the 2 story Ranch. But not the greatest parents.
Boomers – Spoiled Brat offspring. Peace, Love and Understanding, well, if you think and act like us, but then never mind, I’ll take a condo, Fleetwood Mac CDs and everything material the world can provide, including Starbucks coupons, even if it means Accounting tricks de-jour, heck I deserve it.
Gen X – Hey, yo, knock knock, this thing on? No anti-establishment bubbles here, all hail Reagan. I want a piece of that American Dream Pie, like yesterday.
Gen Y – Huh? What? Books? Education? What are those? Cell phone, internet is all I need. What? Did you say something? (pops the white headphones out of ears).
Agree with Melanie…
Being “different/creative/interesting” only works if you become vital to the company via “special insights, experience or talents”…but most jobs out there, never let you even stretch out, you are just a warm-body performing a robotic duty, daily churn, the everyday-existence icy-cold futility of it all. Gen Y be just carelessly hopeful and uneducatedly optimistic, that will change soon enough.
famous because they have done or created something that has value to others
In a limited sense, but people have always been famous on account of lineage/pedigree, position, attention-seeking controversy or outrageousness — there be a million reasons, talent is only but one.
Your blog entry is days old, so you probably won’t see my post here, but it’s taken me days to calm down from your post to sputter anything back. (Jerimiah, you made me mad!) I’m a Boomer but in no way ready (or financially able) to exit any stage. When did Boomer (hate that term, btw) become a pseudonym for old fogey anyway? Here’s how Boomers described ourselves to each other in an iconic (for the time) book-cum-manifesto, “The Apartment Book,” dated 1979. Sounds a little bit like the optimistic twenty-something rhetoric of 2008. “Through most of the seventies [we] struggled to invent and interpret a way of life that did not follow the old patterns. For the first time, because of the radical changes of the sixties, young people were not automatically following their parents’ paths to marriage, children and a house in the suburbs. Rather, they were searching, alone or in paris or in groups for a place to live that would express their own values. The community of young people who were, by God, going to live their own brand of life — even if they weren’t so sure what it was yet. Because we come from various persuasions and backgrounds, we approach our subject matter with new eyes. The only discipline is a shared commitment to making real ideas happen, without …hype or the tyranny of status names.”
I still believe that. And I bet if you went back further and checked on contemporaneous advertising and magazines targeting young college graduates of the early 1950’s post-war generation just entering the workplace, you’d again find that same open-eyed wonder at the opportunities before them.
The ready-for-anything attitude you describe can’t be pigeonholed into tired marketing classifications like Gen X or Gen Y. It doesn’t come and go like actors on a stage or styles in fashion. It’s something that, if we’re lucky, attacks us early and stays with us throughout our lives.
Jeremiah,
I am a gen-xer. I *love* the gen y group. They immediately get” what I’m talking about. They are hyper-connected and understand the value of social media tools.
While there are exceptions, my gen x and baby boom colleagues are not nearly as socially savvy. It is challenging to convey the value of social media to someone who has never used RSS, Google docs, and in some cases, even Flickr.
There are definately exceptions in every group, but the vast majority of gen y is already up the learning curve, and they are a pleasure to work with. Give them a few years to build their management wisdom and they will be a force to be reckoned with.
^Erica, as a fellow ‘Generation Y’er’, or whatever, have to say you nailed it!
My generation, aka Generation We, I’d say is more ‘collectivist’. We network, we unite, and through social networking sites, with persons from all over the world, from different classes, races, and so on. No generation before us has done that. We’re smart, and like Erica said, we want a much-needed cultural shift (‘attitude adjustment’), which we’ll hopefully bring about.