A few years ago I wrote a blog called “If you think you’ve ‘arrived’ you’re in trouble!”, warning people of the importance of continually reinventing yourself. My point in that blog was that I often see people work very hard their entire careers, and then reach what they see as the pinnacle of success. But, that is the moment at which they stop pushing themselves, stop learning, and just enjoy the view instead of creating something new up there. That’s
A few years ago we were having a debate at the office about how to approach problems. That’s a wide statement, of course. But the conversation was not about how to solve any issue in particular. The discussion focused more on a certain template to our processes, and how that presupposed other things. How we identify problems, whom we assign the resolution to and why we choose one person over another. Like so many things, these decisions are partly determined by our generational perspective. But generations solve problems differently. So do older decision makers need an overall reset?
Millennials have changed the workforce in countless ways. That’s not all bad, of course, and Gen X leaders should embrace Millennial corporate values (some of them, anyway). Millennials have changed the face of companies, literally, with more diverse employees. They’ve changed employee expectations, with more emphasis on things they care about, like CSR efforts and a voice in their career. And they generally have questioned – even rejected — many of the professional norms (read: restraints) around dress codes, organization charts and communication style.
As we discussed in an earlier post on Millennial recruiting, 85% of Millennials in the US said they wanted their company to provide CSR opportunities for them, and 64% said they will not work for a company that doesn’t, according to this study. Companies are quickly shifting how they invest in CSR as a necessary part of business. That’s driven by Millennial prioritisation of employee and consumer decision-making. But it might be Gen X who make CSR relevant to the business model, financially, and not just ideologically. They have the track record, and moment-in-time advantages
Today, the Gen X executive in the digital era faces a lot of challenges, many of which were literally unimaginable when they entered the workforce in the early 1990s. The pressure to manage the ever-expanding suite of social media platforms can itself be overwhelming. But, as daunting as it is, I reassure many who I coach by offering the following perspective. In 1991, I went to Budapest to teach MBA students, senior managers and executive leaders at the first Western business school in what was then Eastern Europe. I worked with leaders from many different countries. The Cold
There are countless articles on the differences in priorities and attitudes across generations, especially in the workforce. Gen Y (or Millennials, as they are often called in the U.S.) is predicted to be 75% of the global workforce by 2025. Whether one finds the conclusions varying, contradictory or cliché is a matter of debate. But what is overwhelmingly true is that these articles are based primarily, if not exclusively, on the US population. But are global generational differences the same as in the United States, which naturally has its own specific cultural and political references?
As the world
You know that Millennials have set themselves apart as having an alluring (maybe) but perplexing (certainly) distinction on almost every dynamic possible. You’d have to be under a rock in a cave on an island not to be aware of the deafening chatter on why – digitalisation, global economies, weather patterns (don’t put it past someone).
In any event, it would be fair to assign a heavy influence to the speed of change – their effortless navigation at a pace in which devices, social media platforms, and even hashtags can become obsolete with startling abruptness. Perhaps they don’t even think of