The Truth about Millennials

I prefer truth-telling to lying. It's easier to tell the truth. It doesn't make me queasy the way fibbing does.

I recognize four exceptions to the truth-telling standard. The first is the creative license I give myself to embellish a story for dramatic effect. I'm Irish and theatrical -- it's in my blood to tell colorful stories!

The second exception is compassionate. I always choose a white lie to spare a person's feelings. The third exception is magical. Like most parents I've spun alternate versions of reality to protect my kids' belief in magical things and people. No outright mistruth but a haze of age-appropriate murk surrounds certain things Mom may or may not have done during high school.

Apart from those exceptions, I tell the truth. You have to, or you lose your truth-telling muscles. Even when you speak the truth and people don't want to hear it, your muscles grow. Your body says "No one agrees with me, but this is still how I feel."

When you say what you feel, people can deal with it however they need to. They don't have to agree with you or even like you. You get stronger when you say what you feel, but lots of us are afraid to do that at work.

I speak to groups across the U.S. and abroad. I meet working people, executives, job-seekers, military folks, college students and entrepreneurs. I hear the anguish from Baby Boomers whose career rug has been pulled out from under them. Sometimes it's not just the elimination of a job but the disappearance of an industry and a profession.

I hear from returning military service people about the obstacles they face trying to get hiring managers' attention. How do you help a civilian hiring manager understand that the job you're applying for uses one-tenth the brainpower and maturity that every hour of your military service required? The pain these folks face is excruciating.

There are the new grads, youngsters trying to repay college loans on part-time jobs and find a way through the membrane that separates Real Career People from part-time-aristas.

People ask "What about these Millennials -- aren't they entitled, pie-in-the-sky hothouse flowers?" Conventional wisdom says Millennials want it both ways - they want to make money and keep their flexible lifestyles intact.

Oh my God, you guys - can you imagine the hubris?

How dare you, Millennial ingrates? How dare you want to keep your life whole and earn an income, too?

The problem with Millennials is that their jaundiced-beyond-their-years view of the traditional working world shines a light on what's broken in corporate and institutional America - and start-up America too, for that matter.

Millennials saw their parents' security blanket vanish overnight, when that blanket was the semi-promise of long-term employment with one employer. Anyone still clinging to the idea that he or she will retire from his or her current employer needs to wake up and smell the talent-market coffee. That world is gone.

Millennials see the reality. They're adjusting their career plans accordingly. Who would tell a kid to climb onto the corporate treadmill when so many have been thrust so violently off it without warning? You'd have to be crazy to follow the Mad Men-era Corporate Ladder path when the fabric of full-time employment has frayed so badly, right in front of Millennial babies' eyes.

It's good that they see reality. It's odd that so many parents wail, "Why can't my kid get a steady job?" Steady jobs are the booby prize these days.

A mom asked us to meet her daughter, still without a full-time job three years after college. We met the young woman. She had four income streams. She walked dogs and tutored high-schoolers. She worked part-time doing inside sales for a roofing company. She house-sat. Just before we met she added a fifth revenue stream re-selling her boyfriend's snow-plowing services.

"I made $48,000 last year," she told us, "and I'm not quite twenty-five."

The young woman with five jobs has more income security and stronger muscles than her classmates in traditional career jobs. I understand why Mom was startled by her daughter's choices, but in this millennium they're eminently sensible ones. If one income stream goes away, the young woman will replace it. She makes her own hours, wears what she wants and is master of her own career destiny.

She works her tush off. And people call Millennials entitled!

The problem with Millennials is that their career expectations challenge the rest of us to acknowledge that the emperor of lifetime employment has no clothes.

After that":Aha!" the next question is "So why am I killing myself in this job?"

Millennials are my jam, as a Millennial him- or herself might say if s/he liked to use two-year-old slang ironically. Millennials who set their own boundaries are role models for their calcified elders. We can learn from the kids who say things at work like "I don't understand the logic behind that policy. It doesn't seem to make sense."

A friend told me about her Millennial son, home for the summer before his last year of college. My friend hired her son to work in her office. On his first day, she gave him a list of 35 tasks. When she returned from lunch, she stopped by her son's desk to check in.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"I'm done with that list," said her son.

"Really?" Mom asked. "That's incredible! You got 35 projects completed in one morning?"

"Essentially," said her son. "I got 33 of them done. I saw that two of them were check-in phone calls to customers, but really they're collection calls. You wanted me to ask about unpaid invoices. I'm not comfortable with that. I would stumble. I did the other 33 things on your list. Got more?"

This story illustrates two things I love about the kid's generation. The young man worked hard when he was comfortable. By that standard, he was a stellar employee.

The kid said "I don't feel comfortable" like that is a standard business observation to share with one's boss, because it should be. Baby Boomers were taught that when the boss gave an order, you followed it.That's what years of toxic lemonade consumption did to our brains.

My friend said "I have no doubt my son would say the same thing to any boss: 'I'm not doing these two things on the list. I'm not comfortable.'"

The kid brings himself to work all the way. Why would he change his personality for a paycheck? He wouldn't. That's why I love Millennials.

When people do work that suits them, where they shine and they're connected to their power source, the work is better and the wins are bigger. That's Team Mojo, when people can show up to work as themselves and bring their brilliance to bear on whatever the team is working on, without being thwarted by policies and politics, red tape and fear-fueled organizational sludge..

In a Human Workplace, people of every generation work on things that matter, carried along by their own creative juices and the energy in the room. When people are empowered and mojo-fied, they soar.

That is process improvement that blows away Baldridge, ISO 9000, Six Sigma and the rest of the particle-style Quality dogma. People who understand the grand plan and use their good judgment will win out over cast-in-stone Standard Operating Procedures any day.

Usability is a human issue. People who follow rules because the manual says they must can't rise to innovation. You can't tap a channel to the collective intellect when you're toting up milestones for a quarterly review. Fear-based yardsticks and prohibitions sap the life out of people and teams, and Millennials are more likely than most to call B.S. when that happens.

Sustainability, corporate social responsibility, diversity, work/life balance and employee engagement are all facets of the same idea. When work is human, we behave ethically. We make our environments welcoming to people from whatever background and worldview they come from. We take care of our communities and share the wealth that results from our teammates' sweat and brilliance.

Once we turn the dial from Godzilla's own Standard Operating Procedure back to the Human setting, we can get down to business. We can stop stressing about protocol, politics and pointless, soul-crushing bureaucracy and figure out what we're here on earth to do, individually and together. We can go for the win, then.

Millennials point the way. They test lower on the Godzillafication scale than their older co-workers do, and that's a good thing. The Millennial appetite to reinvent crusty systems for a human-powered era is exactly what our organizations need. Can we build Human Workplaces that will use the powerful fuel Millennials bring? Can we break enough frames to add their young voices to the symphonies we're composing?

Our company is called Human Workplace. Our mission is to reinvent work for people.

We help people get jobs with organizations that deserve their talents, and we help employers re-imagine their recruiting and leadership practices to snag and hang onto amazing people.

Check out Liz Ryan's newest column, How to Bring Yourself to Work!

Here is a question for our readers: our web guru Josh is curious to know what is your favorite Guest Book plug-in for Wordpress? Please write and tell us: michael@humanworkplace.com. Thanks!

Quynh Nguyen

Freelance Sustainability Writer | Climate Communications | Blogs | Web & Mobile Copy | @QuynhThuNguyen

8y

Interesting perspectives on Millennials, and great stories too. Thanks for sharing this.

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Ewa Lewandowska

Strategist & Researcher | Helping startups unlock growth through customer-centric product & revenue strategies

9y

I love this, and not only because I'm a Millennial myself! Human Workplace includes all age groups and background, and probably all of them will need a unique approach. I've summarised some important points about Millennials in 2015 in this recent post over at Engagiant iRevü blog: http://engagiant.com/what-do-you-need-to-know-about-millennials-in-2015/

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Amy Rodriquez, BCBA

Licensed Behavior Analyst

9y

You will see no stones being cast from this Gen X camp. I am ready to ride the Millennial wave! Who wants to work for a corp without soul? We need less coercion and more soul! (and maybe cowbell!)

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