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Mohammed Alzubaidi
What will you do when the Millennial zombie apocalypse comes?

How Not to Screwup Managing Millennials: Brief Leadership Guide

We’re a bunch of Fitbit wearing, Snap Chatting, yoga posing, kale eating, debt-ridden generation and there are over 90 million of us. We outnumber Baby Boomers and Gen Xers and if you have not figured what makes us tick then good luck leading in industry without a reliable workforce. Silicon valley’s rise and success is partly attributed to the Googles and Facebooks of the tech world catering to Millennial ambition: unicorns do not make themselves! I hope this helps leaders understand what makes us tick and how your organization can leverage Millennial fervor and ambition into the years to come.

Millennials are the most distinct generation thus far and it’s driving large organizations into a frenzy. Boomers have been the most dependable and reliable generation yet; their goals and aspiration were closely tied to the American Dream: House, 2.5 kids, two cars, and a white picket fence. This reliability of expectations and goals has propelled the United States into an economic behemoth with little competition in sight. Within a span of 30 Boomer years, our economy expanded by more than 250% GDP growth (mind blown).

The contrast in culture between Boomers and Millennials is driven by expression of personal values. Hot ticket jobs for Millennials are as much non-profits such as DoSomething.org as Goldman Sacks. The prestige factor for us tends to be social impact and personal growth tied to happiness. What many of my cohorts crave in life is a sense of adventure; we will pass on the Benz and take a Central American tour, we will choose developing irrigation systems for famine stricken Africa vs. designing a ballistic missile for Raytheon. We hug more trees than the 70’s hippies ever did, and we love the sense of connectedness we gain. While this does not apply to all Millennials, we are a spectrum of personalities that share common traits. Here are 5 things we care about:

  1. Sense of adventure and excitement.

2. Constant Growth: Personal and Professional

3. Health and Wellness are Huge, dude do you lift?

4. Community Impact: Micro and Macro

5. Social Networks

As leaders, managers, and influencers our aim is to understand those we are privileged to lead and this has become far more dynamic now than 10 years ago. Earlier in the year I took a tour of a Google Campus and it quickly became evident what the organization and its leaders care about. It was not ad revenue, android device activations, or search traffic but rather the people. Although the things listed above are apart of Googles DNA, the driving force is allowing Googlers to express their values. Googlers express themselves in a number of ways from an onsite gym (actual gym, not the rusted free weights you find at your companies closet), fresh squeezed juice, free healthy meals, and plenty of opportunity to work cross-functionally. Millennials have strong feelings about what they value and here is the crux of it all. Facilitating expression of personal values will create an incredible positive emotional response and will drive innovation and unprecedented customer service. If the last sentence was a bit much to swallow, I highly recommend taking a few minutes rereading what that means for your organizations growth and value-added proposition. When an organization becomes so driven by what their people care for, it quickly begins to foster a high sense of ownership and accountability amongst all levels. The best organizations are the ones where your talent cares so much about the brand, you find products launching ahead of schedule, unfathomable product innovation (think Apple vs. Nokia), and having cult like customers that rave about the brand (consider customer lines on an iPhone launch day). Here are three key elements to invoke the said positive emotional response from your staff.

  • Incentivize adventure. Kick your employee out of the door, give them a check to pay for an adventure and tell them to comeback with a tan. To get an idea, read Buffer’s blog about their annual retreats.
  • Facilitate health and wellness. Be warned, don’t half ass this. Your people will see right through it and quickly be turned off by the insincere effort. This means providing various tools and avenues paid for by the organization and allowing the individual to choose their health path. This includes having yoga classes, on-site gym, hiking and cycling MeetUps, providing free health trackers (well done Target), onsite nutritional coaches, or Kickboxing classes. If you are a bottom line type of guy/gal then do understand in the long term this will drive down insurance costs, do not be swayed by initial costs. This is so incredibly important, a chapter in my upcoming book will be focused on this.
  • Provide recognition. Your organization may already have recognition programs. I have spoken to multiple organizations some of which have half-baked recognition programs while others have well thought out intentional recognition programs. Recognize your team and ensure they and their colleagues understand the imapct they have on the broader organization. Recognition takes multiple forms, but ultimately it tells your team you genuinely care. In a past leadership role, after my staff left I would write words of affirmation on sticky notes and leave them on their monitors. “Thank you for being you today, your entire team was happy and I know you were a factor in their attitude.” “I am incredibly privileged to have you on the team, you make everyday easier for all that are around you.” “Pick a day next week, and make it a three day weekend. Thank you for coming through.” “The Exec. team thought you were brilliant with your area being the most pristine.”
  • Payoff their student loans. Point blank, this is the holygrail. Take off your accounting P&L and budgeting hat off and remember you want to invoke a positive emotional response. You can develop incentive plans based on tenure (keep it less than 2 years) to payoff large or even modest portions of their loans. Millennials are and will continue to be plagued by student loans unlike any generation before and the thought of the long road to a zero balance makes us queazy. Even if you commit to paying off small portions over the course of a tenure plan, this will create a sense of loyalty amongst your millennial staff and will translate to project ownership, customer satisfaction, and plenty of hidden cost savings (consider a development project being late 3 months).

Here is a simple formula to lead by: TAKE CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE AND THEY WILL TAKE CARE OF YOUR CUSTOMER. This has been tried and true, and takes a different form every succeeding generation. Today’s workforce challenges will be attrition, loyalty, and alignment of personal goals with corporate growth. Organizations who will survive the next decades must facilitate expression of personal values. This will become more and more warranted as Boomers continue to retire while Millennials integrate into more pivotal roles.