A colleague of mine recently attended a presentation by the head of a Fortune 500 company. A solid Baby Boomer, he was speaking to a crowd of mostly recent or soon-to-be college graduates, trying to sell them on his company’s use of cutting-edge technology. They were pretty interested until he turned things inspirational and decided to impart “how-to-make-it” wisdom to this crowd full of Gen Y faces. There—right there—he began to lose them.
His intentions were good, and he spoke passionately from his own experience about “paying dues,” “showing up early and staying late,” and “sacrificing for your career.” The thing is he was, for this audience, largely speaking a foreign language. When he started out on what had obviously been a successful career, rigid organizational hierarchies were the norm—the whole paradigm he described was supported by society, and believed in by his generation, as a natural manifestation of a particular set of cultural values. The problem was, this wasn’t his generation he was talking to.
Baby Boomers were a boom indeed—80 million strong. But Gen Y is also a boom, though largely silent up to this point.—75 million, with only approximately 10% currently part of the workforce. It’s not that Gen Y doesn’t want to work or build successful careers—they most certainly do! But they’re going to do it on their own terms. The world is increasingly fast, networked, social, and non-linear. “Paying your dues” is giving way, more and more, to “Can you do what needs to be done?”, regardless of tenure or traditional education; the idea of working at a single company for 40 years until you retire has almost become an anachronism. This vital, restless population isn’t bemoaning these facts—they’re embracing them. They will change the way we work. Ready or not, they want to be heard.