I continue to be amazed at the pervasiveness and sheer staying power of the generational framework. We are urged to look at everything, EVERYTHING - from management techniques to employee engagement efforts to reward programs - through the lense of generational differences and needs. And to buy in to the notion that the entire work experience must be re-invented to accomodate each consecutive generation.
And so, I had to smile at Bob Sutton's assertion that, au contraire, things like the hallmarks of great leaders - and the needs of younger workers - are timeless.
From Sutton's post:
...every new generation of bosses faces hurdles that seem to make the job tougher than it ever was. The introduction of the telephone and air travel created many of the same challenges as the computer revolution--as did the introduction of the telegraph and trains. Just as every new generation of teenagers believes they have discovered sex and their parents can’t possibly understand what it feels like to be them, believing that that no prior generation of bosses ever faced anything like this and these crazy times require entirely new ways of thinking and acting are likely soothing to modern managers. These beliefs also help so called experts like me sell our wares. Yet there is little evidence to support the claim that organizations—let alone the humans in them—have changed so drastically that we need to invent a whole new kind of boss.
The key point, as Bob notes, is that we are ignoring a critical distinction between someone's generational group, which will stay constant over time, and someone's age, which changes. Younger workers have always wanted different things than older workers, be they Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y - or whatever. Wharton's Peter Capelli holds a magnifying glass up to this overlooked distinction in his HREOnline article Enough with the Generation Studies, where he notes that most of today's generational studies violate a central principle in demographic research - sorting out "age effects" from true "cohort effects". Capelli says:
Here's the idea: 20-year-olds today seem pretty self-centered. Is that because they are part of a new, "me" generation, a "cohort effect?" Or is simply because 20-year-olds are always self-centered -- "age effects" -- given that the big responsibilities of adult life are often not yet on their shoulders?
And here's why that distinction matters: If the apparent differences are the result of age effects, they are transient. Twenty-year-olds will grow up to be 30-year-olds and will acquire the responsibilities and interests along the way that change how they behave.
Trying to make your organization adjust to the needs and interests of current 20-year-olds is a fool's errand because they are going to change.
We had this conversation during my presentation at last month's Transform conference, where we were debating whether the behaviors and attitudes underlying the challenges being raised by younger employees at an attendee's organization were a function of them being members of Generation Y - or simply a function of them being 24-year-olds. I voted for the latter.
The folly we set ourselves up for here is establishing programs to address generational differences that - in Capelli's words and to his point - are irrelevant for most employers, rather than seeing the tremendous variety that exists within generations, age groups, and any other "category", and understand what it means for our own organization's specific talent needs and challenges.
I could not agree less; I do not think that there are any fundamental generational changes; in fact even technological change is not as rapid as many would think.. I think adaptation of business should be continuous but steady.. there may be fundamental changes in how our society evolves but certainly generational differences are overstated
Posted by: diamond chart | April 08, 2012 at 12:07 PM
DC-
Sounds like you actually "could not agree More"?
Posted by: Ann Bares | April 09, 2012 at 06:18 AM
Right. Even though we have to accommodate all these changes, it should be both for the company and the workers' welfare.
Posted by: Australian Construction Jobs | April 15, 2012 at 11:47 PM
I could not agree more. I took a history class 35 years ago when I was in colege, one of the books we read was about America in the 1830s, there was a passage in it where the adults of the day were lamentng about the new generation and how they had it so good and would never amount to anything. Based on those sentiments from 180 years ago, it seems like it is an age thing, not a generational thing. I guess we would have called them the Jacksonian generation.
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Posted by: http://www.cheapjordansair.com | April 27, 2012 at 09:51 PM
Every serious research report punches great holes in the sound-bite thinking of itinerant slogan pitchmen. This recent WorldatWork blog http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/adimComment?id=60976&from=blog-worldatwork contains more proof of the same "generation generalities don't work" conclusion as other careful studies reveal. Spurious relationships are common when you don't account for confounding variables. That gives lazy thinkers ammunition for silly "truthy" claims like "all winged creatures can fly," and creates work for the rest of us.
My hippie generation is now like what our grandparents were.
Posted by: E. James (Jim) Brennan | April 30, 2012 at 11:35 AM