2/26/2013–Just read an article describing the situation facing management today. Apparently, my generation–“Millennials” or “Gen Y” is entitled to early advancement and an easy road, in our own eyes.
One author claims it’s our parents who’ve raised us to believe we deserve good things no matter what we do. I agree–parents do that–but I don’t see enough of a correlation between young people and the entitlement mentality to alter my management style. I do believe managing everyone the same is foolish, and I believe managing everyone by the same principles is effective. I’d be sabotaging my young employee by requiring different results from them as opposed to an older worker. And doesn’t that sound a lot like ageism?
Alexandra Levit’s book #Millennial Tweet describes it as a tool to make the 20-something employee “immediately more effective”. Everyone’s looking for a quick fix… the 1st sentence in the summary is “today’s busy manager doesn’t have time to learn how to manage today’s young worker.” BOOOOO! This type of ineffective advice is why I want to be in management consulting.
Another lesson I learned this week was the danger of performance enhancers. JD takes pills, powders, and coffee to get an extra boost of energy throughout the day. To be exact, one supplement gave him 20% more–he was able to run 6 miles instead of 5 on it. The next day he was shaking, crying, and sweating in my passenger seat on the way to the ER. Turns out the fine print says don’t take it with any source of caffeine–even soda. What’s most amazing is this guy is lying in the hospital bed, still shivering, and hooked up to a heart monitor when he asks Erika and me, “so which ones can I take together?” Maybe it’s how you’re raised–not taking pills/medicine, preferring natural food/drink–but I feel like you should be a little more cautious when it puts you in the hospital for the 2nd time. Dude has more common sense than Thomas Paine so this I can’t explain.
QOTW: “As long as I don’t drink coffee after taking that one, I’ll be fine!” -JD
?FNW: Do I roll out O3s? Yes and no; JD wants them announced at the teachback 3/23
10/25/2017 review: Yeah, an early glimpse of the bogus advice to come about managing millennials. While I’m more reserved with criticism these days, I feel the same as I did when I wrote this several years ago–you don’t manage a generation, you manage an individual. It’s similar to advice suggesting a manager should learn their employee’s personality style and manage to that. This is terrible advice because even if we could figure out what someone’s personality is or how millennials are different, in both cases the work it would take to get there is far greater than the work it takes to develop a relationship with the person–namely, discussing what’s important to him or her while also talking about work performance. As discussed in Retiring the Generation Gap, the average millennial is more similar to the average baby boomer than he or she is to the other millennials! What does that suggest managers do? It suggests we should seek effective, timeless management principles like confirming our direct knows what’s expected of them, confirming they are given the tools needed to deliver what’s expected, communicating about what’s important to them, and discussing performance. First Break All the Rules does a fantastic job of calling-out what effective managers enable for their teams. Those factors apply to teams of millennials or any generational mix. There are several aspects of millennial management that I covered in a paper for school in 2015. See the post here: Managing Multiple Generations.