Stop Complaining About Millennials. Hire the Best Ones and Win Big.
We tested these initiatives at 23 Design and boosted our sales 6X in the process.
Building a team is hard. OK, let me rephrase. Building a great team in the era of millennials is super tough. I mean, really. Building a winning team with people born between 1985 and 1995 is one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried.
I’m a designer by trade and have created half a dozen of teams throughout my career. Team building is a design challenge itself.
So far, I’ve definitely made more mistakes than I can remember, but there are some things I’ve learned in over a decade of trying. This is a small subset of such learnings. Some ideas might sound more novel than others, but overall they work pretty well and I absolutely recommend you try each and every one of them.
Pursue a community of equals
In my experience, it’s very true that millennials don’t like to be told what to be and are wary of bosses. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t want play at the top level.
Actually, I’d argue that millennials are among the most competitive people I’ve worked with. They are passionate about the quality and results of their work, can spend long hours trying to tackle a complex problem and organize well around leaders that inspire them. More so, they prioritize constant learning and ever expanding challenges over personal distractions.
Very early in the game, my partner and I understood that the people we really wanted to recruit didn’t believe in hierarchy and preferred to work on less authoritarian environments. Over months we tested several mechanismS to keep the organization flat. No managers, no performance reviews, no schedules, a simple organizational chart, no corner offices, a friendly environment, and so on.
More important, we decided we are a learning environment first and a productivity shop second. This worked well not only for the team but for our clients as well. We’ve seen a high positive correlation between the money we spend in learning initiatives and the results we drive for our clients.
Having achieved a high level of productivity with these policies, we went farther and eliminated all the language that described our relationship as employment.
We turned the company into a Fellowship and every employee is now a Fellow; a member of a group of people who work together pursuing mutual knowledge or practice.
Focus on your team’s individual needs
Teamwork is less about working towards a common goal than having a common objective that helps individuals achieve their own personal goals.
Last year, my partner and I realized that almost every designer we interviewed mentioned travel as a top priority. However, when we asked about their latest trips, we realized most hadn’t really travelled as much as they would have liked.
This was simply not OK. However, as we inquired more, we realized the problem was completely solvable. No matter how good all these designers were, the majority lacked financial awareness and didn’t enjoy much vacation days at their previous jobs.
The solution was simple. First, we started providing some basic financial coaching to help them think better about saving, credit card use and investing. Besides, we made sure to provide enough vacation days per year to allow for longer trips. After playing with the idea of unlimited vacations, we settled for a policy of minimum 10 days and maximum 25 days per year (versus the 6 days per year designated by Mexican regulation).
However, we didn’t stop there. We designed an initiative now called Expedition that gives each Fellow the opportunity to go on a 2-week exploratory journey every year. Transportation and accommodation expenses are covered by the company and everyone pays for their own meals, drinks and entertainment.
Not only were we able to hire very talented people by focusing on the things they really care about, but the team is increasing its collective wisdom by accumulating a broader view of the world.
At first glance, this initiative might seem too expensive. However, at around $2,000 USD per year per employee, this is one of the best investments we’ve made; definitely one that has differentiated us from competing firms.
Make diversity a strategic priority
I’m all for social justice and civil rights. However, my views on the importance of diversity in the workplace have nothing to do with what’s fair.
I’ve played on many different teams, and so far, it’s been clear that the longterm sustainability of interpersonal relations between team members is highly correlated with diversity.
In the initial days of 23 Design, we ran into our first diversity issue, one related to gender diversity in particular. At the time we were 2 women and 5 men. The problem was that the culture of the team was becoming too centered on execution and very little on understanding. This was really bad, especially because 50% of design consulting consists of empathizing with the end customers’ pains and gains and understanding the clients’ KPIs.
At that point, we decided to introduce what we call the 40/60 Rule. This means that each gender has to represent at least 40% of the team at any point in time.
The rule has been controversial and at times it has been really hard to stick to it. For example, once we had to pass on a great male candidate because we had to wait several weeks to find an even better female candidate to comply with our own rule.
In the short term, this might sound as a mistake. However, through all these policies we’re optimizing for a very special kind of environment, one were we can develop the level of trust, collaboration and performance needed to win big.
César Salazar is a Partner at 23 Design, a studio that solves value creation, distribution, engagement and monetization challenges through design.
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