I’ve been reading a sneak preview of a new book by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant called “What Happens When the Millenials Take Over?” Maddie shared it with me and asked me to take alook.
Yes, we’ve heard a lot, mostly from marketers, about the Millenials, that up-and-coming, some-say-optimist, some-say-narcissist, some-say-both generation who reached young adulthood somewhere around the year 2000, and is just now starting to transform the economy and the workplace. This group includes a lot of my friends by the way (you know who you are!).
Millenials are global, diverse, multicultural, socially conscious, ambitious and confident. They got Obama elected. They brought us Facebook. They extended Lesbian and Gay to LGBTQIA (and surely there will be more letters to come!).
I am, I suppose, Generation X, and we usually don’t talk about these kinds of things. Stereotyping a whole generation seems kind of silly, doesn’t it. I mean, after all, we are all individuals who make up our own minds and have our own tastes. We do our own thing. But there’s been a lot of recent research that seems to indicate that we tend to become like those we associate with. And who doesn’t like to hang out with people their own age? So maybe there’s something to it.
Anyway I like Maddie, I think she is pretty smart, so if she thinks something is important enough to write a book, I have to take a look.
The book focuses on how Millenials stand to transform the workforce in the coming decades. In the next few years, Millenials will become the majority of the workforce, and they are entering at a kind of tipping-point time, a historical moment when globalization, technology, social networks and digitization are on the verge of transforming just about everything. So it makes sense to have a bit of a think about the generational and cultural attitudes and trends that will probably have a significant impact on the next generation of business.
The authors have distilled their research into four key trends or dynamics that they predict will characterize the emerging workplaces of the future.
Digital: This is about the proliferation of the Facebook-and-Googley mindsets and practices that characterize the digital world. Part of this is about internal collaboration and connection, the long-awaited “Facebook for the Enterprise.” It also includes personalization and customization for users and customers, more or less continuous innovation, cheap or free software-as-a-service, and everybody pretty much working from wherever they want, whenever they want, using any device they want (but probably that means iPads and iPhones).
Clear: This is a kind of transparency your grandfather never dreamed about. It means everyone is connected and aware of what each other is doing and why. This has a kind of flattening effect on organizations and requires a relinquishing of control by those at the top. But if you’re at the top, don’t worry too much. If you don’t give up control, they will take it from you sooner or later, because digital! More shared information means more people able to use it productively, which means more stuff happens, including yes, some chaos, but overall it’s inevitable because those organizations that share information more widely will be able to do more, faster and better than competitors, so even with the extra chaos they are likely to win.
Fluid: This is about distributing power and control in a fluid and flexible way, so more decisions can be made closer to the action. We can expect blurred lines of accountability, less top-down and more bottom-up, shifting power and authority based on the situation and the needs. The transparency of information and the digital stuff makes this easier and more possible, and maybe, as I said earlier, inevitable. This is going to mean soft skills and social skills are going to only become more important.
Fast: Okay, not a surprise. All this stuff about digital, transparent, and fluid is necessary because everything is moving faster than before and companies will have to move just as fast to keep up, and even faster to get ahead. It’s enough to make you dizzy. As Maddie and Jamie put it (I’m paraphrasing here), what seems super-fast to mere mortals like us, just seems normal to Millenials. They are just simply frustrated with the glacially slow way the world is changing. So that’s going to change the pace. Going fast also means getting better at letting go of the last thing so you can quickly move on to the next thing.
So get ready and fasten your seat belts. The Millenials are coming!
This is my quick-and-dirty summary. The book goes into a lot more detail with examples, quotes from interviews and case studies. So if you found my overview interesting, why not buy the book?
Dave Gray is the Founder of XPLANE and author of Selling to the VP of NO, The Connected Company and Gamestorming.
