Work for Change

The Dangerous Effect of Recession on Millennials: Will The Millennials Have a Gen Jones Echo?

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

    The word is out.  The generation that was once referred to with a wide blanket has now got a name of its own.  The Boomers have been divided into Boomers (those born between 1945 and 53) and Generation Jones (1954-1965).  While initially these folks were lumped based on a demographic spike in births, it turns out that there is more to it than that.  In fact, this younger cohort doesn't seem to share the can do, change the world attitude of their older brothers and sisters.   When surveyed by Pontell, some 80% of his survey group said they felt somewhere in between the Boomers and the Xers.  So what does that mean for the Millennials that everyone is so obsessed with?  Is it possible that the second wave of this generation might share more with the Jones than the Boomers?

    While this might seem like a purely academic question, the reality is that the buying patterns, voting behaviors and general lifestyle choices of Generation Jones have been different than the older Boomers.  This question has pretty big implications if your business likes to plan beyond the next year or two.

    Gen Jones was raised in a time of great expectations when the world focused on them.  They were told that they could do anything that they wanted to.  (Okay, white men could do anything they wanted to but everyone else had some expansion of their options.)  For the first wave of Boomers this proved to be true as they took their first jobs during a time of great economic prosperity.  For Gen Jones, they started looking for jobs during the recession of the early 70s, the oil embargo and a dramatic increase in crime rates.

    Starting to see a parallel?  The Millennials, like the Boomers, have had the focus of the world almost since their birth spike in 1981.  They have had unprecedented levels of self-esteem training and positive reinforcement from their parents.   But what will happen when they try to find jobs in an economy that has gone haywire while being strapped with enormous student loans? Even if the economy rights itself soon,  it is likely they will remember the desperation, mass lay offs and the corruption that has become evident on Wallstreet.  This is pretty much where the "cynicism" of the Xers got solidified as we watched corporate downsizing and recession during Bush senior. 

    The Millennials are particularly vulnerable to the disillusionment and potential lack of engagement that could come with a recession.  They have often been told they could do anything and when they don't easily accomplish their goals it can be difficult to take. And, according to the authors of Generations at Work, it is often our first work experience that shapes our views of work for the rest of our lives.   Many studies, including the work that Dr. Cathy Rodgers and I have done, show a particular weakness in resilience among Millennials (which might right itself with age and experience).  This means that if companies want to have strong workforces that are engaged and committed to their work they need to help all employees, and especially the Millenials, build strong resilience skills.  And Millennials will need to take it upon themselves, with the rest of us, to keep finding ways to change the system so that it suits the majority much better.

Scott Mills, Ph.D. is an expert in generational diversity and organizational development.  He offers workshops, presentations, consulting and coaching to nonprofit organizations and businesses.  To find out more or read more articles check out www.workforchange.net

Obama Brings Generation Jones to the White House

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

    Everyone is pretty clear that Barack Obama has ushered in a new era for our country.  Not only is he the first African American president of the U.S., he is also the first President to come from Generation Jones.  Maybe you hadn't heard of Gen Jones, although the recent election coverage used it quite often as a filler, but it makes a pretty big difference in what we might see from him as a leader.

    Gen Jones was born between 1954 and 65.  Obama, born in 1961, is clearly a member of this cohort.  This group doesn't look much like their Boomer and Gen X neighbors but have rarely been discussed as having a separate identity.  Jonathan Pontell, the California based sociologist, first coined this term in 2001.  He writes of Generation Jones. 

"They were given huge expectations in the Sixties, their formative years, but came of age in the unrequited reality of the Seventies. Their attitudes are different, their experience is different, yet just because they were born when the birth rate was high they have been lumped in with the boomers for all their lives. They are a lost generation."

   Perhaps the first yuppies, the Jones have a very different way of viewing the world.  They were a little too late for the great expectations, we can change the world, attitude of the Boomers.  And a little too early for the crushing sense of being completely powerless in a world gone mad that Xers inherited.   So they are the roll of your sleeves folks who have been described as "practical idealists."  This ethic has already confused some people who are watching Obama and wondering why he is picking certain people in his cabinet.  We can look forward to lots of other choices that might have us scratching our heads until he explains his reasoning.  

    As Obama leads our nation, we will also see an expanding conversation of the role of Gen Jones.  They are only now coming into positions of leadership that the Boomers are vacating.  If we are lucky they will maintain all of the hopefulness of the Boomers combined with the pragmatism of the Xers.   What do you think are the characteristics of Jones leadership?  We would love to hear your thoughts!

Scott Mills, Ph.D. is an expert in generational diversity and organizational development.  He offers workshops, presentations, consulting and coaching to nonprofit organizations and businesses.  To find out more or read more articles check out www.workforchange.net.

Nonprofits Get Ready: The Obama New Deal is Coming!

Scott Mills, Ph.D.



During his weekly address on Saturday, President Elect Obama announced his plan to create a new public works program of a scope that hasn't been since the Franklin Roosevelt.  Roosevelt announced his plan saying,

"Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms."

Considering the serious state of disrepair of much of the U.S. infrastructure is in, this sounds like a great idea.   But how much of an impact will this kind of a plan have on people that are loaded with debt and overly skilled for the types of jobs that seem to be offered? And are the necessary structures, particularly from the nonprofit world that will be called on train millions of people, in place?

It seems unlikely that this plan will bring back many of the skilled labor jobs that have been lost across the country since the recession began.  But coupled with a larger economic strategy, the plan holds promise.  The real challenge is how to get millions of people trained and dispatched to do this work?  The nonprofit sector holds the greatest potential for this type of effort.  Many nonprofit organizations have significant relationships with people in need as well all as training programs in place.   But the majority of nonprofits I have been in conversation with lately are not looking ahead to the future but rather reeling from the current economic crisis.

If the nonprofit sector is to be able to play the vital role that is must in Obama's job program, not to mention the national service plan that he has earlier proposed for students, they need to begin to prepare.   With a current leadership deficit, they must plan to train new leaders and support the old.  They must take a serious look at their organizational infrastructures and update to handle greater capacity.  And they must be prepared to offer massive training and support to their already overworked staffs.

This is an amazing time for the nonprofit world to take a place of prominence in our country and offer serious leadership.   But it will take preparation and imagination.   What is your organization doing to get ready for the Obama Revolution?  We want to hear your thoughts!

Millennials Rising: Their Political Power Brought Obama to the White House

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

While many of us are still wondering what happened in 2004, the election of Barack Obama is not as mysterious.  Chief among the factors that ushered in the Obama Revolution was the power of Millennial voters.  According to the Huffington Post,

• About 1/3 of the Millenials voted.  This is impressive considering a substantial number of them are still not old enough to vote.  The clear implication is that their political clout will only continue to grow.
• This continued a youth voting trend that began with the 1996 election and has steadily climbed.  There is no reason to believe this will reverse any time soon.
• They preferred Barack Obama by a 2:1 ratio.  This is not surprising since he spoke to Millennials using their preferred means and a language that was straight forward and direct.  He also connected to the Millennial theme of hope and optimism.
• Their support of the Democratic party began before Obama's nomination and crossed racial lines.

So what does this mean for companies that are stuck in the middle of economic chaos.  Simply put, Millennials are coming into their own and companies will need to respond if they want to survive.   Not easily snowed by PR campaigns, in fact 61% of them "don't trust companies that brag about the good they do" (according to Yankelvich Moniyer 2008), companies are going to have to shift to more socially and ecologically responsible business practices if they want to gain the trust and business of the Millennials.  What has your company done to respond to changing consumers?  What do you believe the biggest challenge will be?  We would love to hear your feedback.

Opening Our Hearts to the Automakers: Partnering for Change

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

The clock seems to be ticking down on the auto industry.  They have come back to Congress humbled after their first attempt to secure help.   Their private jets are on the market, they have agreed to take a pay cut down to $1 dollar a year and they drove to DC in fuel efficient hybrid vehicles.   And while I couldn't see the direct impact on the economy of the Wall Street bailout, I know that several auto dealers here in San Francisco have closed down in the last few weeks.   

But according to the CNN and the Huffington Post, Congress and the President are in a pissing contest over who will help the ailing auto industry.  While I can't say that I'm happy about the way that they auto companies have operated - outsourcing jobs overseas, enjoying insane executive compensation while fighting with workers over salaries and missing the hybrid boat, it doesn't make sense to let them collapse and buy all our cars from overseas.

So here's a thought.  What if this is an incredible opportunity to shift one of our major industries into a whole new way of doing business?  When three companies ask for $35 billion dollars in investment, it seems to me that the American people can ask for a lot in return.   I propose that we fund the automakers and in exchange for our money, ask for the following:

• A solid commitment to not moving one more job overseas and at the same time to bringing back the jobs that they have moved.
• A new direction that focuses on sustainable energy.  We know that electric cars are already pretty functional and the Rocky Mountain Institute has come up with plans for other sustainable vehicles.  Let's use this an opportunity to become technological leaders in auto making again.
• A commitment to socially and ecologically responsible business practices at every level.  Since the American people would be part owners, we could have a say in as well as a right to set the direction of these companies.  Let's open the books and practice transparency at every level of the organization. 

Maybe this sounds like a lot to ask for but I have had stronger conditions when I have asked for a raise in my allowance.   Even if we are not happy with how they have behaved in the past, let's work together with this industry to create change in America.  

The Obama Revolution has been blogged!

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

As a potential candidate for president in 2004, Howard Dean turned the Internet upside down.  No longer was it a tool that could be used just to find a recipe or check movie times but it became a tool for organizing with moveon.org.   This website facilitated volunteers from around the country in setting up meetings, connecting with others like themselves and harnessing their energy for change.  While Dean did come away with the nomination, Barack Obama moved his campaign strategies even further into the realm of Gen X and Millenials with tactics clearly designed to meet us where we are.

For the first time in history, the people found out who the Vice Presidential nominee was before the press.   Barack Obama sent it to the millions who had signed up on to be texted and emailed this information.   On November 4th, before he spoke to the nation, he delivered a thank you note to all of those on his email list.

Obama has shown a mastery in the techniques and communication styles that appeal particularly to Gen X and the Millenials.   Obama has met the people where they are with his web presence, his postings on youtube and his use of texting.  To be sure, the grand maven of blogging, Arianna Huffington, is definitely a Boomer.   Her latest book, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, tells people to create a community around which your blog friends can form.  This is part of the genius of Obama's campaign.

Millenials and Xers are looking for connection.  We know that the social fabric has been stretched to the limit and we are looking for ways to connect to each other.  For employers, this desire for connection and the use of technology to facilitate it are worth paying attention to.  Why not start a blog for your employees to communicate what's going on in their world, discuss important issues that affect them in your organization or gather their thoughts?  Why not find ways for employees to feel connected beyond the company picnic and use the technology that we use in our everyday lives to do it?  It's just these sort of small acts that promote retention and build relationships across organizations.

Are we speaking the same language?

Cathy A. Rodgers

In the CNBC series, The business of innovation: the human element, business thought leaders discuss ways to create an environment that encourages creativity. Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO known for significantly increasing GE’s competitive position, opines that the way to develop a culture of innovation is to recognize and reward people who take risks. He indicates that this was an important part of the five-fold revenue increase during the time he was in command. (Welch was CEO from 1981 to 2001.) But it raises the question of whether the same approach applies today and moving forward.

Silents (born between 1922 and 1945) and baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1960) filled employee and managerial ranks throughout the last half of the 20th century. Many, particularly at GE, came out of the military with its disciplined approach to taking direction. Given that, what Welch accomplished in shifting the culture to support innovation and risk taking is quite remarkable. But is culture created from the top down still applicable in today’s organizations? To get an idea, let’s look at how two successful 21^st century companies are addressing this.

Google encourages innovation by providing employees the opportunity to spend 20% of their time on potential business ideas not necessarily related to their job. The company estimates that this “20% time” has been the genesis of more than half of its new products and services. That’s a powerful payoff for creativity. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com an online shoe retailer, says that his company’s success has come from inspiring employees to help build the business together. They are energized by a common purpose. It appears that in both cases it is less about reward and recognition and more about what excites people, what they are passionate about creating.

Although baby boomers and some silents still fill the ranks of American organizations, there is a growing cadre of Generation Xers and Gen Ys to engage in supporting organizational goals. These are people less likely to respond to reward and recognition unless they are also truly connected to what the organization is trying to accomplish. This is not to say they don’t want bonuses and larger paychecks. They are human, after all. But they are also looking for meaning in how they spend their energy. As meaning becomes increasingly important (as evidenced by the growing interest in spiritual practices among other trends,) ensuring that your organization’s mission is one that engages employees in a way that compels actions will be critical.

To hear more about engaging Gen X and Gen Y employees in your vision, Cathy Rodgers will be talking more about the differences among the generations at her breakfast workshop conducted at the new 92^nd St Y Tribeca facility in New York on November 6, 20078.

Getting to Team Synergy, part 2

Elizabeth Doty, MBA

In the last post on Team Synergy, we explored the fact that teams often waver in deciding whether to invest in real teamwork. We often fail to recognize the ways our work is already interdependent and how we can disrupt each other if we do not actively manage those connections.

 

What do I mean by interdependence?

Basically, I mean the way my actions add to or detract from your ability to create value – unconsciously or not.

 

To be more specific there are multiple ways we each affect our colleagues’ work quality, routinely.

· Common task or goal (obvious, but we think we can go it alone even on these!)

· Shared customers and “brand” for our group

· Shared resources (budget, facilities, technical infrastructure)

· Shared employees (or responsibility for developing, recruiting, advancing them)

· Information-sharing (re downstream problems, upstream changes, opportunities, etc.)

· Shared processes and routines for the group’s work

· Knowledge-sharing & innovation (pushing the envelope, staying at the leading edge)

 

The point is if we inventory these, it is not too hard to make the case for investing in teamwork.

 

For example, the HR team of a high tech firm, who mostly did not view themselves as team, found themselves embroiled in routine and heated conflicts between field staff and home office specialists. When the costs got too high, they convened a task force to look into the causes. Amazingly, after an exercise in which they “walked in the others’ shoes” they discovered that it was actually their attempts to add value individually that were causing the problem. Each HR person, in an attempt to be proactive and support the company’s line leaders, was showing up as if they were the only resource to that line leader. The result was that they undermined each others’ good standing – which of course led them into increasingly heroic and desperate attempts to add value.

 

It was a great relief for them to realize that if they conveyed a coordinated message about roles and value added to their customer, they could actually reinforce each others’ good standing – because an endorsement from a peer is so much more credible than saying it yourself. Now remember, they had not been bad-mouthing each other before – but by recognizing this place where their work naturally overlapped, they could stop inadvertently undermining each other and actually leverage their shared customer relationships.

 

In light of these connections, then, teamwork is not something we “should” do, but a no-brainer to avoid inadvertent erosion of value and hopefully create even more. There may in fact be challenges with individuals’ skills, but it is very hard to distinguish those from the disabling effects of poor coordination – and the team-building process itself is a good way to test and validate your perceptions about capability.

 

This is ultimately why it is worth investing in the foundations of teamwork – the clarity of shared purpose and values, healthy norms, constructive ways to deal with conflict, accountability for results etc. These are what enable us to get to the gold of positive interdependencies, or synergy.

 

But this can be hard to remember when it looks as though it’s all about the so-called “soft stuff”.

 

So, if you are struggling to get your team to invest in the work of laying that foundation, you might start by inventorying the ways your work is already interdependent, and the costs of doing it poorly.

 

I have a hunch that if we did this, we might discover then that there are new levels of synergy we have only barely explored yet.

 

What do you think?

Article by Elizabeth Doty

Getting to Team Synergy, part 1

Elizabeth Doty, MBA

There are certain words that are used so often and so vaguely that they can mean almost anything. “Teamwork” is clearly one of those words… and “synergy” is another.  Some of you may remember the film In Good Company, where cut-throat tycoon Teddy K. (played by Malcolm McDowell), speaking after a series of arbitrary layoffs, folds his hands together almost like a priest and incants the mystical virtues of synergy. No wonder they banned the word in my business school classes! It’s just too easy to lump all the goodness of coordination under that one umbrella term without being clear about it.

So what exactly is team synergy?

Simply put, we can define team synergy as the experience where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Where the members of a team operate in ways that complement and leverage each others’ strengths such that they accomplish results beyond what they could achieve individually, added together. It usually comes with the ‘high” of a high performing team. We might say it look something like this:

 

Sounds good, right? But when we face the amount of up front work it takes to get there, we are not always sure. Will it be worth the effort? Are these the right people? Why haven’t they “gotten it” already? Sometimes it feels as though we could get the same great results if we just had all “A” players on our team.

In my experience consulting with a variety of teams over the past 17 years, I have noticed that leaders and team members spend an awful lot of time negotiating whether to invest in becoming a true team. 

I think this is because we view results as fundamentally individual and that teamwork is largely about “being helpful” with each other’s individual problems.

What this misses is the way our work is inherently interdependent. This is easier to point to if we are part of a work team with shared responsibility – but it is also true of staffs and functional groups. If not managed, we can end up taking a “bite” out of each others’ effectiveness, so the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

For example, in one firm, a project manager and an account manager were assigned to work together for a new client. Both of them had been with the company for some time (though they had not worked together before) so they believed they knew each of their responsibilities. Yet the Project Manager had come from a small office – where a small staff meant that technical staff development defaulted to account managers. The Account Manager had come from a larger office where other leaders took that responsibility. Both were quite embarrassed when they realized their assumptions meant they were caught short without the level of staff skills they needed a year later.

The point is, if we go along mostly believing that we can do our jobs on our own and only need to come together occasionally for planning, then we are likely to feel that investing in teamwork is optional, a nice-to-have if the stars line up right – while blissfully ignoring some very wasteful practices.

In the next post, we will explore more of the specific ways interdependencies affect team performance.

In the meanwhile, have you seen examples where one person’s or group’s actions affected another’s – without necessarily even knowing about it?

Article by Elizabeth Doty

Baby Boomer Strategy #1: Legacy creation

Cathy A. Rodgers, PhD

The worldview of the Boomers (Looking into the Boomer Worldview) provides suggestions for organizations that are undertaking change efforts. You may capture the commitment of Boomers by linking a vision of the future to the creation of a valued legacy. In so doing, you can help Boomers recapture the role we once held—that of passionate change agents who hope to leave behind a world better than the one we found.

As Boomers approach retirement, we are reexamining who we are and how we want to be remembered. If honest, most will discover that many dreams have not been realized; that survival in organizations, no matter how successful an individual has been, is not what we believed life would be. This provides a fertile opportunity for organizations undergoing change.

If the purpose of change is to truly create something of value, enrolling Boomers as champions will serve you well. There is, however, an important caveat: the change must offer more than an improved bottom line. Rather, if what you plan will enhance efficiency and, as such, really provide increased opportunity for employees to focus on creative, innovative, challenging or compelling tasks, great! If the change is socially responsible, not just as a marketing tool but in a genuine way, count us in. If you want to capture our knowledge and/or experience such that it will improve the future for others, ask our help. But be really clear that we are not easily conned into believing there is broad based value when the primary outcome is financial. We’ve been playing that game for the past 30+ years and are discovering that it is not very fulfilling.

Once you have a clear idea of how your change effort can make a real difference for employees, the community, the world, the environment, enroll us in it. Or, better yet, ask a group of influential Boomers from the organization to help expand the original change idea to incorporate valued benefits. This offers the dual benefit of: 1) providing Boomers the opportunity to influence the goal, a valuable onboarding strategy for people whatever generation they are and 2) ensuring that there really is a credible result from the undertaking.

For those of us still inside organizations, some are beginning to see that they are no longer those with the most valued ideas. For those thinking about retirement, some are wondering what we will do when hobbies no longer provide enough. In both cases and the myriad of other permutations, rallying around an exciting vision of the future provides both a meaningful role as well as an opportunity to leave a part of the world a better place.