Generational Field Study

"Stay Young & Invisible Because You Know That's What You Are" - The Brothers Gallagher

This weekend again I read an article about about how to motivate Millennials written by a Baby Boomer. This article sited young people as entitled, stating that the "trophy kids" were unable to take on any task without being rewarded. The article also sited a sense of entitlement, remarking that young people were unwilling to follow direction.

One resounding thought crossed my mind when reading this piece:
Bullshit!

Here we are again talking about generational stereotyping and it makes me want to puke!

Reality Restated: Organizations should evolve based on what will make their business more profitable & what helps maximize their human resources.

I remember being at an HR Conference 6 years ago where we were investigating the aforementioned stereotypical motivational strategy. It was based on a survey done somewhere, the evidence was inconclusive at best, and yet we've spent nearly a decade trying to validate this nonsense.

I have chosen to deny this trend! I will not read an article written about Generation Y written by anyone other than a member of said generation. Can you image the backlash if a Millennial had written a blog about the stereotypical habits of baby boomers....?

No, dear readers, I am a man of action. So, I will be participating in four different events this week in an effort to dispel the generational divide.

I will be speaking to two different groups of HR Professionals in Northern California. I will also be keynoting a Young Professionals Summit in San Francisco and speaking at a student leadership conference at Miami University.

Here is what I seek to discover:

1. Are young people labeled in an effort to marginalize them to the point that they believe the hype?

 

2. Why does HR seek to categorize everything?

 

3. Why are the stereotypical habits of the exiting side of the workforce not taken into account when succession planning?

None of us can help when we were born. None of us like to be stereotyped. Most of us seek to debunk preformed opinions (not validate them).

So why in God's name do we think it is beneficial to survey a group of people, formulate an outsider's opinion, and spend a bunch of money trying to pretend we understand...?

Being young (or old for that matter) is nothing more than a state of mind.

There are people who are flexible. There are people who are adventurous. There are people who are consistently searching to evolve themselves.

There are people who are grumpy. There are people who are set in their ways. There are people who are too stubborn to change.

...when or where we were born has nothing to do with this!

Grow Up!

My journey to get the facts from the trenches continues. Because surveys never tell the whole story and I never accept anything as the truth until I see it for myself.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave