“Don’t call us millennials!”
My colleague and I met her at a dinner which doubled as a networking opportunity for us to meet exciting recruitment prospects. Her name was Heather and she occupied the space on the generational spectrum where one can legitimately claim to have recently graduated from university while describing themselves as being a social “activist” who currently works for a Fortune 500 company. At some point in our conversation she said something that stuck with me since that dinner —
“Please don’t call me a millennial”.
Millennial!
On reflection I understood how this term had become overused to the point of losing the original meaning and provoking a visceral reaction on the part of a purported member of this cohort. The topic of millennials in the workplace receives regular attention in the media, but is the concept really of any practical use in the context of building workplace cultures and designing better organizations?
There are many definitions of Millennial, none of which reflect any substantive grounding to delineate a category of individuals. At best it is based on the year in which someone was born, e.g., “a person born in the 1980s or 1990s” (Merriam-Webster). A package of attributes that describe members of this generation have been developed that include a unique relationship to technology, expectations for work/life balance, a tendency to value experiences (even adventure) over consumption and unpredictable forms of political participation. This package usually comes with the inevitable health warning that “all generalizations are false”.
What is the nature of the challenge?
Let’s start with one very subtle change, executed over an extended period. Before the 1990s, the latest technological advances manifested first in organizations and then migrated to people’s personal lives. However, in the last decade, this has completely flipped and, with it, so has the way people work. Many major multinational companies are lagging behind the personal usage of technology and their IT counterparts often claim they would like the bugs to be worked out first before taking onboard enterprise-wide technology currently available at an individual level. Even the airline industry has adopted “bring your own device” approaches to address the pervasiveness of more cutting edge technology products on an individual level.
The question may NOT be one of the millennials as a demographic, but one of the change in how work is executed, how technology is used, and the problem this has created for the status quo.
We are in a period where our workforce is using more advanced products at home than at work. They often prefer to work on their personal devices because of the delayed deployment timelines associated with enterprise applications — “too slow,”out of date,” “not customized,” etc.
Secondly, the whole notion of structure, teamwork and authority have also changed, and while this may seem to be generational, it represents an ongoing social evolution which cuts to the core of the old business models.
Often we find ourselves in discussions with leaders who want to know how they can better navigate the millennial challenge, when in fact this, like most social groupings, is an artificial construct and does not consider the real people that populate them. The hard conversation about challenging an outdated, or ineffective, business model is avoided in favour of focusing the question on getting them to “shape up”, “fit in” or “get out”.
We see headlines like:
‘Why are Millennials unproductive”
“Why Millennials don’t care.”
“Millennials — the lost generation.”
However, as much as this seems to be a top of mind challenge, this is not the behaviour manifested at our office at the WeWork location in Chelsea — NYC. Given that the age demographic of that office would probably mirror what is being termed Millennials, as an in-situ observer I would be hesitant to conclude that low productivity, lack of motivation or indolence is something endemic to that generation. The buzz you get when you walk into the office, the feeling of almost instantaneous take-off to starting the workday, the palpable sense that people are working on something of great import is almost infectious. Casting a glance at some of these start-ups I sometimes have to ask myself: “Did these people spend the night here?” Furthermore, I doubt the WeWork business as a whole — currently valued at $16 billion — would even be supportable if they weren’t buoyed by the high rates of business creation by these young entrepreneurs willing to work incredibly hard to realize their dreams.
Reframing the conversation
How might we better understand the employee motives in the context of a new organizational dispensation? — the current model is not serving the base, at least not in a way they seem to think is meaningful.
One traditional model for employees on issues of performance articulates three perspectives. Employees don’t perform because they are either, not willing, not able or don’t know, but there may be another reason. Don’t fit! Which has more to do with preconceived notions of how people in organizations should behave and not the current reality which speaks to different needs, motives and a sense of meaningful work.
The opportunity for businesses lies in their ability to suspend judgment and the generalist perspective, to truly understand their employees and wholeheartedly embrace the feedback they receive and not perceive it as a challenge to “correct” human behavior. The idea of millennials is outward looking and sees the performance challenge as that of the workforce versus the system of organization that exists — an artifact of the legacy culture of the business.
Organization design needs to start with empathy and ignore unhelpful groupings, the attributes of which are at best ill-defined.
We need to create safe environments for our workforce to try-on new approaches, to experiment — to intervene in a different way by dismantling traditional frameworks around structure, authority, and execution.
We need to consider organization models which facilitate through a different system of rewards, a redefined understanding of work and have a focus on meaning at an individual level.
