And the generations are back...

The crisis must be over, at least in mindset. The generation debate "oh my, we have Gen Y entering the workforce" is back from where we left it two years ago. Earlier this week my newspaper ran a hallucinating article of a plumber and his 20 attempts only this year to find a suitable fellow. Some were stealing (never good), some just not showing up either on the first day or after a week (the dog needed care), some overly incompetent (and lying about it), etc. In the weekend edition of the same paper, there's more under the title "Employers don't understand youngsters." It lists some of the value shift in the generation now entering the workforce: more immediate, more attracted by smaller firms where they can make a difference rather than being stuck in the boundaries of a big corporation, driven by challenge, feedback and reward (immediate by the way), valuing short concrete projects over longer jobs, valuing work/life balance (yes, the distance home-work IS important), and then some other shifting values... Skills being more important than looks, for example, if the newspaper is any authority. In short: the generation debate seems back, so let's reflect on what is going on. What's new in this debate, really?

Disclaimer: I'm by the way well aware that you can't and shouldn't make any individual judgment based on the statistical characteristics of an entire group of people. I'm putting no one in a box here. But statistics about groups of people CAN be rightfully used to make predictions about those groups. So while nothing in this debate can be brought to the individual level, group-wise it makes sense.


Question: Is the generation entering the workforce unfit? 
Answer: Not more than our parents thought the same of us, or our grandparents about them.
There is nothing new in the debate 'they don't know work ethics anymore, you can't trust them, they don't know the rewards of hard work, bla bla.' It seems that every major generations thinks that of the next one. There is nothing new there. It won't matter either. Every generation is shaped by the experiences of their youth and growing up: by that technology, mindset, etc. So yes once in a while there's a clash of values, and gradually society and work will find ways to accommodate the values of the new emerging and soon dominant generation. It has happened before.

Question: Will the new generation bring the new technology and fitting lifestyle (social networks, a lot of instant communication etc) to the workplace?
Answer: Yes, most likely. We have a precedent with the Internet.
Yes, the new generation and their preference for social technology and networking, constant and instant communication will impact the workforce. My generation did that before with the Internet. I first went online at my second year in university, because that is where the Internet was in those days. When I entered the workplace four years later, the corporate world was in a big debate if the Internet even had business value and if providing access from the office would not harm productivity as people would be surfing all the live long day. The discussion of those days closely resembles the one we have today about banning social networks at work, and whether LinkedIn is a blessing or a burden on corporate life. Just as with the rise of the Internet in the business world, we will have experimentation and exaggeration or abuse at both sides. In the end the new technology will find its rightful place and the trend will be that abuse of good stuff is not good. This debate isn't new and it's outcome is predictable because we have a precedent. It has happened before.

Question: Does the corporate world need to accommodate or adapt to the new generation an its values?
Answer: Accomodate, but not as before. The workplace is multi-generation now.
We have had new groups/generations entering the office before. Traditionally, there is friction of values until the new generation is powerful enough to influence practice and process according to its world view, and then step by step they become the dominant generation and it starts all over again. This will NOT happen again soon. There are a few trends that make the succession of the 'dominant generation' unlikely: ageing workforce that needs to work longer before they are allowed to retire, at the same time new generations entering the workforce and the one stuck in the middle not wanting to give in. The trend is for a workfloor that successfully and equally integrates multiple generations and their values, rather than converging around the values of the dominant generation. So the balance exercise for the years to come is to integrate multiple expectations and value schemes into the same environment. That is the generation challenge ahead, not just worrying about a particular GenY entering. It has not happened before.

Question: Is there anything different really with the GenY or Milleniums?
Answer: Yes. They seem to have balls.
You can find tables with broad characteristics of semi-arbitrary labels as 'baby boomer', 'gen x', 'gen y', 'milleniums', etc. So they say that the new generations want to make a difference and have a job with impact on the world, with challenges and new stuff to learn all the time. Is that new? Did any other generation ever enter the workforce with the dream of a boring job with no impact on the world whatsoever? This is not so new either. It would be sad to start your career without goals, some healthy ambition and high expectations. And then it happens: promotions are not as fast as you had imagined, there is some boring stuff and lot things you can't do, etc. I spot a difference here with the new generations: crisis or no crisis, having to pay for a mortgage and children or not,  they will not stand for it. We were not necessarily happy, but we understood the context and blabla and we stayed. The new generation seems to have more balls. They will go. They will take matter more in their own hands. They are not patient, and they are not obeying stupid stuff. More than us they will hack systems and ignore stupid rules (like not installing applications on your laptop that help you do your job but IT hasn't approved). How much more balls they will have five years into the workforce, and how much of their values they will not accept any compromise for is unclear. We'll know more when they have families and houses to pay for, and start leading other people instead of just worrying about their own performance. But the trends are there and that is new. Exiting times ahead in the corporate world!

So to conclude my Sunday rant on generations:
- The debate is back.
- There are some shifting values, nothing new about that. That brings some friction, nothing new about that either. The dominant workforce will call them unfit or even lazy, again nothing new.
- But this generation is not going to overtake the position of dominant generation any time soon, the future is for a multi-generational workforce. That is new.
- And the new generation seems to have more balls to stick with their values than generations before them. Let's see what that gives.

What do you make of all this generations talks?

Meet Charlene, a 2.0 learner

Meet Charlene

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Companies say: who's wants a lobotomy?

This is how a lot of companies act lately:

"Hi young graduate, would you like to come and work for us? You get a nice car, a laptop, a challenging environment and lots of growing opportunities. The only thing we ask for in return is you have a lobotomy."

Now honestly, would you consider? And this is in fact how too many are welcoming the new generation in our organizations. I'm talking about all those policies to ban social networking and instant messaging from the workplace "because they hurt productivity". That is not wise. Here's why: people entering the workforce are used to finding the answers they need via their network. Your brain is what is inside your own head PLUS what your contacts know. And in a world of constant change and information overload, that is actually the best you can do. Half of your knowledge or more is in your network. So, cut that off at the office, make sure that you only can rely on the stuff in your own head, and you might as well get a lobotomy. It reminds me of the times companies didn't want to allow Internet access to their employees "because it hurts productivity". It doesn't, and IM or social network sites don't either. In fact, you would do well to implement it within your organisation. Get it or don't get it.

It's not the lack of manpower, but insufficient knowledge transfer.

Nice article on CLO Magazine on upcoming changes in workforce, I quote the first paragraph:

"According to Randstad USA’s just-released “2008 World of Work” survey,
U.S. businesses face a serious talent problem with the coming retirement of baby
boomers. Of course, this isn’t news to most chief learning officers. What they might not realize, though, is the challenge lies not with a
lack of manpower, but with insufficient knowledge transfer."

This means in my humble opinion the learning profession is called upon to make this transfer of expertise happen! The retiring generation has a lot of expertise in its head (knowledge), hands (skills) and heart (behavior), and somehow that has to be extracted, transformed into learning that works for the incoming generation and delivered to them asynchroneously.

The rest of the article is here: http://www.clomedia.com/executive-briefings/2008/June/2247/index.php

Generations and learning

I'm more and more fascinated by this cross-generational learning thing, and how the learning function should play its vital part when in western society tons of people will retire and leave the workforce and need to be replaced by a new generation. It is a historical opportunity for the learning profession to claim its value!

I know, it is a generalization to talk about characteristics of entire generations. But let's do it anyway. The table has characteristics of 4 generations (in western society), as defined by Lancaster, L.C. and Stillman, D. When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational <Puzzle at Work.Wheaton, IL. Harper Business, 2003. Click on it to enlarge.

Do the checking: ask people about their preferred way of communication for example. These generations also have different perspectives on what good learning is and how they prefer to learn. The babyboomers for example are used to more formal classrooms and prefer coaching by an expert to set them on the way. Generation Y likes experience-based learning and games, and connects with all and everyone to find what is needed. The funny thing is that the 3 right generations in the table will be involved in the learning and have quite different approaches and likes and dislikes about it. Organizations need to ensure that learning in the form of a knowledge transfer happens between the leaving babyboom generation and the entering Gen Y workforce, but the learning will be made by the Gen Y people that staff the learning function. That should be fascinating!

To end this article, I leave you with yet another YouTube video trying to tell you what students today are all about. (And education folks, I'm not fingerpointing at you to once again change the whole education system. I'm rather fingerpointing at the enterprise world for largely ignoring what is coming to them in the next few years.)

E-learning for multiple generations

Very nice article on creating online learning for different generations. I know that this divide in typical generations is a generalisation, but it does provide interesting insights.

http://www.managesmarter.com/msg/content_display/training/e3ifd9d309a05210550829851b903c9b630

Clash of the generations

Makes you think. Old recipes don't work anymore. But if you don't know what to prepare for, does it make sense preparing in the best possible way?