The problem is the question itself. A better question would be to start with trying to understand if Millennials are really all that different and if so, what that means for how we think about the modern workplace.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sense of what we really know about generations and here are the three things I’ve found:

1. Most “Millennials Are Different” Storylines Are Myths (but there are some differences)
2. The work context has changed, everyone’s expectations have shifted (Millennials want purpose, but so doesn’t every other generation)
3. Principles of motivation & building culture remain the same (people still ignore what works just more brazenly)

Theme #1: Most Millennial Headlines Are Myths, But What Is Different?

Invariably ask anyone above the age of 50 will tell you that young people just don’t understand how the world works.

These ungrateful bastards are ruining work, expecting everything and have no idea how to behave.

The problem many people make is that they are not comparing current millennials to previous generations at the same age. When you do so you find things like:

“young people are actually less professionally itinerant than previous generations.”

and while google will try to convince you that millennials are different:

…the research finds that Millennial’s have similar consumption habits to previous generations.

The differences are not as much how they behave at work, but broader economic and demographics trends. Millennials are more “racially diverse, more educated, and more likely to have deferred marriage” while having lower earnings, fewer assets, and less wealth than previous generations. Finally, since most of the people in journalism now have college degrees and work in cities, you rarely ever hear about how millennials without college degrees are unable to find solid jobs and don’t end up moving to cities.

Theme #2: Millennials Want Purpose, But So Doesn’t Everyone

Those ungrateful millennials also want to be inspired at work…how selfish of them!

Unfortunately, this is bunk too.

A meta-review of all of the generational research had a damning finding:

The findings suggest that meaningful differences among generations probably do not exist on the work-related variables we examined and that the differences that appear to exist are likely attributable to factors other than generational membership. Given these results, targeted organizational interventions addressing generational differences may not be effective.

We want to believe that generational differences exist, so when we hear surveys that “30% of millennials are purpose oriented” we assume that they are asking for too damn much.

But when LinkedIn looked at all the generations, they found that the boomers were the greedy bastards:

48% of them want their work to be purpose-oriented. Haven’t they gotten enough already?!

Theme #3: So How Do You “Manage Millennials”?

The framing of managing different types of people and generations forces most of the working world to waste enormous amount of energy ignoring the basic research on human motivation that has existed for decades.

While research can have its flaws, basing your actions at work on things like “self-determination theory” is going to be a lot more effective than running your organization by myths and google search advice.

This theory is based on three simple concepts and your motivation increases when these things align:

• Competence: We want to work on things slightly beyond, but not too far, out of our current level of competence. We want to grow
• Relatedness: We want to work on things that connect us to other people and relate to the values we care about most
• Autonomy: We want to feel that we have some level of control over the decisions and actions we make in our life and work.

While it is not easy to get this right in an organizational context, HR and business leaders might arrive at a better starting point if they started with better questions. “How do you motivate someone at work?” or “How do people learn?” seems like a better way to start than “how do you manage a millennial?”

Deck Diving Into This Deeper

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post Managing Millennials & Other Misinformation On Generations at Work appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

Millenials and Gen Xers are hitting a wall at work. 

Thirty years ago they would have been promoted, perhaps even before they were ready. But now they are told that they need to wait their time. 

They were raised with the belief that if they worked hard, found a good job and put in their time, it would pay off. Not just financially, but with the status of having senior level roles and responsibilities. 

Instead, many are stuck in an endless lateral career loop, moving from position to position, clinging to a fictional story of a “career trajectory” and hoping to find an opening. All while trying to convince the people who have the coveted senior positions that they are not in fact “job hoppers.” Many are able to negotiate good raises with their new jobs, but find that the work they do today is eerily similar to the work they were doing a few years after they graduated. 

This stagnation is leading many to put off buying houses, committing to long-term partners, or investing in their communities. References to “burnout” are skyrocketing as people are feeling disconnected from their work at a time when work is more central to life than it was for previous generations.

Our modern institutions and the jobs and career paths associated with them are the central pillar of a narrative about what success was and should be in modern society.

However, people have lost faith in this narrative. The erosion of trust in company loyalty is certainty to blame, but I believe there is a deeper and more convincing explanation which I am tentatively calling the “boomer blockade.”

This explanation is the combination of three trends which together have had a profound effect on the modern workforce: 

1. A baby boomer demographic that emerge into a healthy and growing workforce in the 1980’s and 1990’s and were able to succeed through high rates of growth and limited competition from older members of the workforce for good jobs
2. A baby-boomer demographic that is choosing to stay in the workforce longer than previous generations
3. A resulting emergence of bad jobs and pseudo career paths due to lower rates of organic growth throughout the economy and boomers deciding to work later in their careers

This blockade is both a literal blockade, stopping people from reaching the senior-most levels of organizations and institutions, and a figurative blockade, holding people back from finding meaning from new narratives and myths of success in life and at work.

Trend #1 —Boomers reshape the working world

Before we dive in, this is not a hit piece on the baby boomer generation. I’m not here to go “okay, boomer,” but instead I’m genuinely curious about how a single generation was able to succeed so remarkably while following generations, most notably Gen X and Millennials, have failed to follow in their footsteps.

Let’s first start with the demographics. The story starts with a literal “baby boom” that coincided with the end of World War II.

Using cohort data from the BLS, we can see how the baby boomer generation has continually reshaped the workforce. By1980 we see their effect in full force, leading to a large influx of workers under 34 years old. 

We can see this more clearly if we roughly code each of the generations by color. As they move through the workforce, we see the slope of the age demographics shift. 

For the first time in the last 60 years, the 55+ cohort is bigger than any other ten year age cohort. 

For millennials and gen X workers in today’s workforce, it is common to have colleagues, managers and executives who are much older than you. When the baby boomers were at the height of their early working career it was less common and from 1979 to 1999 when the median baby boomer was 24 to 44 years old, the percentage of workers under 45 never dipped below 60% of the workforce

In addition to this massive opportunity to progress in the workforce, the boomer generation was backed by the tailwind of economic growth, which in the 1980’s and 1990s were consistently above 3% annualized growth, something that has not happened since.

While this may not seem to be a big deal, lets look at an example of how a small shift in a growth rate can lead to a dramatic increase, using a $100,000 investment over a twenty year period with those same growth rates.

Except instead of money, the thing being created were jobs.

To recap: The boomers entered the workforce during the last consistent period of 3%+ economic growth and had limited competition for jobs during the prime working years of their career. 

Trend #2 —The boomers reached power at younger ages and then have stayed in power

A fascinating study was done by Professors Cappelli and Hamori comparing executives of the Fortune 100 in 1980 to their peers in 2001 which they shared in an article in “The New Road to the Top” in HBR.

They found that from 1980 to 2001, the average age of executives dropped four years from 56 years old to 52 years old. In addition, they found that these executives were reaching the top faster than in 1980:

The journey from first job to executive suite is shorter — by four years, on average — than it was a generation ago, and it involves fewer stops along the way. Though executives stay on each rung nearly as long as they used to, today’s career ladder seems to have fewer rungs, and they’re spaced farther apart. That is, the average promotion entails a greater leap in responsibility. This trend is consistent with the widespread perception that corporate hierarchies are flattening.

Moving into the 2000’s the average of of F100 corporate executuve was 52, meaning a baby boomer born in 1949. They reached the top faster than previous generations and with less jobs to get there. 

So did the trend of younger company leaders continue?

Short answer? No. 

Crist Kolder recently shared this incredible chart:

This is a profound trend. The average age of incoming CEOs for S&P 500 companies has increased about 14 years over the last 14 years.

From 1980 to 2001 the average age of a CEO dropped four years and then from 2005 to 2019 the averare incoming age of new CEOs increased 14 years!

This means that the average birth year of a CEO has not budged since 2005. The best predictor of becoming a CEO of our most successful modern institutions? 

Being a baby boomer.

Let’s reconfigure the graph to make this clear. Using the raw data, we can graph instead the average birth year of an incoming CEO:

In Academia, there has been a similar dramatic jump in age of senior leaders. The American Council of Education shows that the share of 60+ University Presidents increased from 30% to almost 60% in 15 years

The baby boomer generation not only reached the executive levels earlier than other generations, they have also added another entire chapter to their careers. 

To recap: In addition to entering the workforce during a very advantageous time, they have also redefined what it means to work, pushing their tenures well beyond previous generations, staying in power and holding back the following generations from reaching senior roles at the ages they did in their own careers.

Trend #3— Atomization of work and increase of pseudo career paths

In 1967, HBR shared a reflection on middle managers and their career paths:

…most men, attainment of executive rank coincides with the onset of middle age, that vast gulf which begins about 35 and endures until a man has come to terms with himself and his human fate (for no man matures until he has done so).

Putting aside the awkward sexism and enlightenment musings, its shocking to realize that in the late 1960s 35 years old was once considered “middle age” and a reasonable time to be promoted executive of a company.

As we saw earlier, the baby boomers didn’t reach executive positions until their early fifties, but they had already chipped a few years away from their predecessors. 

However, as they became the executives, they were overseeing organizations that were about to dip below 2% annual growth and because they were just kicking off another chapter of their career, the positions that were available to them were not available to Generation X and more recently, millennials.

However, the underlying work beliefs, that working hard, putting in your time and then becoming successful was still deeply tied to many of our modern institutions. 

This is where the story gets interesting and I think might resonate with people trying to find a good path for themselves at work.

Over the past thirty years, there has been a consistent atomization of the workforce, turning many good jobs into bad jobs along with a proliferation of pseudo career paths for good jobs that hide the fact that there just aren’t that many leadership and other jobs that one might paid with having “made it” to go around.

The atomization of work

In Academia, the atomization of work has been extensively covered as a shift from tenure-track roles to adjunct positions. Starting in 1975, tenure and tenure track roles shrunk from 45% to about a quarter of jobs today

While Academia is an example of this happening in the professional world, it is also happening across the economy, especially with blue-collar work. 

Last year, the BLS quietly launched that they call the “Job Quality Index” which measures the ratio of good jobs to bad jobs. This is a simple ration of the percentage of jobs that pay above the average wage to the percentage of jobs that pay below the average wage.

In 1990, the proportion of good jobs to bad jobs was about 1:1. Another way to think about this is that there were about 90 “bad” jobs for every good job. Since 1990, for every 100 new jobs, 63 of them were of the low-wage,low-quality variety.

What’s behind this trend? 

A big driver is the shift away from goods-producing work and a shift towards lower-wage service jobs with less predictable hours such as cashiers, home-health workers and retail workers.

These are not only lower-wage jobs, but often are contract or part-time jobs with less hours. Many want to work more hours, but can’t.

Emergence Of pseudo career paths

Many people in the working world buy into the idea of a career. This is an idea built around the belief that you should always be progressing, learning and growing.

Not able to deliver on some of the opportunities for literal growth, many institutions have created pseudo career paths.

These are paths that don’t give you a real opportunity to move into a leadership role in your firm, but give you the appearance of progress. 

In law firms we see this with the emergence of the non-equity partner track or even the staff attorney path. 

As the odds of being promoted to a real equity partner have diminished, it has coincided with added levels to the pyramid.

This has also happened in consulting firms. If you read the history of consulting firms, you realize that fifty years ago you were a consultant for a few years before being promoted to partner. Now the formal track looks like this:

In addition to this elongated standard path, consulting firms also have alternative paths in research and as “experts” that roughly look like this:

Although rare, neither end in partnership and many people in these roles stay at a certain level for years. In one of my non-consulting roles at a top consulting firms I was told that in my role I couldn’t get a raise or promotion for four years. And this was at a firm growing more than 10% per year. 

I left to another firm after two years. Keep moving or give up.

The proliferation of levels is a necessary step for organizations to keep talented gen Xers and millennials who be able to land senior positions as early in their career but were raised with the belief that they need to have a steady career trajectory nonetheless. 

We could be more honest about the fact that growth has slowed, boomers are staying at work longer, and the myth of the American dream, the one that says anyone who works hard would be taken care of is probably not something that works for most people anymore.

But that would be hard.

Wealth is not shifting to the next generation

The boomers were able to rise to senior-level positions at the peak of their careers and were able to succeed in prosperous times. They’ve continued to lead these organizations well into their sixties. This has enabled them to continue to built wealth well into old age.

If you compare the boomers to the silent generations, the silent generation’s share of wealth shrunk 26% from a median cohort age of 54 to 63 years old. During the same comparable period, the baby boomers increased their share of wealth by 5%. The baby boomers are growing their share of the pie into their sixties.

I’m not against anyone amassing wealth, but something has clearly changed. If boomers are increasing their share of wealth, it is clearly at the expense of the following generations. If they aren’t going to give up their positions in the workplace, I’m not sure when this shift will finally happen.

I’ve stumbled on this explanation because I’ve been mystified by a paradox in the workplace, especially within the “creative class” as Richard Florida calls them. Many knowledge workers are making good money, but are frustrated and burning out at increasing rates. At the same time, most people would agree that the modern workplace is a much better place to spend time than it was thirty years ago. I plot the paradox like this:

I believe that the “boomer blockade” might be the best explanation of the frustration and disconnection that people are experiencing. 

They don’t just want to get paid. They also want the associated status and responsibility that comes with a leading position in our modern institutions.

We can turn to Congress to see proof of this hunger bubbling beneath the surface. With Trump being elected in 2016, peoples beliefs in any sort of career path for a politician have evaporated. 

In the 2019 congressional elections, the average age of Congress dropped 10 years due to a wave of elected Millennials. 

People want to lead if given the chance.

For many of our modern institutions, it might be a good thing that older leaders are staying in the workforce longer. Companies are more complex than ever and their experience probably does matter.

But if we are going to adjust to this new paradigm, we’ll need new narratives of what success means for the generations held back by the boomer blockade. 

Surely its not going to be muddling along as a senior manager for 15 years.

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41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post The Boomer Blockade: How One Generation Reshaped the Workforce and Left Everyone Behind appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

Millennials are the greatest scapegoat available to the business world right now.

• Have problems at work? Blame it on a millennial.
• Have too many people leaving your company? Blame it on millennials.
• Have people not listening to bosses? Blame it on a millennial

Focusing on the traits of a group of people makes for great complaints and headlines, but is a waste of time. Boomers may have a tendency for autocratic leadership, but I’ve met some aspiring autocrats among my peers just as I’ve worked for inspiring and collaborative X’ers and Boomers.

As a Millennial, we are a product of our time. We grew up comfortable with technology, questioning authority and skeptical of any employer telling us they are committed to us. Despite this, we are also incredibly optimistic about the future: 80% of us think we will be better off than our parents.

Despite the fact that millennials likely are not going to be better off than their parents, companies should thinking about harnessing the energy of this group rather than blaming them for not following the same paths as their predecessors.

Technology is transforming our organizations and Millennials are ready to harness that power to shape the future of organizations. While they may not hold most leadership positions, but they are already the largest percentage of the working world as of 2015.

The future of companies depends on keeping this vital portion of the workforce engaged, but it is much more than that. I would urge instead that we take what we know about Millennials and use it as an excuse to create a more vibrant workforce that is more engaging (and profitable) for all generations.

So what is the answer?

Free Food!

(Just kidding)

Everyone looks at google and thinks that free food and bouncy balls are the key to happy workers and an engaged workforce. Anyone who has worked there or read about their culture (Work Rules! or How Google Works are great) understand that everything they do starts with a deep respect for people and not sashimi and chocolate.

Fortunately Millennials are more similar to other generations than different. The things they want will benefit everyone: It all comes down to opportunity, respect and voice.

I offer three examples of what this could look like in the modern organization. I don’t promise to have perfect answers, but I promise to continue to put my ideas out there.

Hopefully you can help me improve on them…

OPPORTUNITY: Give people places to play & experiment

It’s no secret that companies are struggling with growth. McKinsey recently did a study and found that 90% of the companies that exceeded GPD growth rates happened to bein only four sectors: finance, high tech, healthcare and retail.

Companies are desperate for growth.

Luckily, companies need look no further than to their own people. Many people have the desire to start their own business — including 66% of Millennials. The fact is, many will not take the leap to starting their own company — but companies can harness that energy.

66% of Millennials ( and 39% of all employees ) have a desire to create their own business

Companies should think about two things:

First, creating environments where people from all levels of the organization can engage on new and powerful business ideas. It doesn’t have to be a full-blow startup accelerator in your company (though companies like GE and MasterCard are doing exactly this). Just involving a junior team member in a new strategy, new product or new service is a step in the right direction.

Second, soliciting ideas more actively throughout the organization. Managers and leaders at all levels need to ask “what do you think?” and have a safe space where people can offer their ideas — even if they are bad. The quickest way to kill motivation is to consistently shut down someones ideas or perspective. Toyota has built a culture around unlocking creative ideas from front line workers. It has a term, genchi genbutsu, meaning leaders ‘go and see.’ They go to the front line to understand problems, but also involve the front line workers in solving those problems and engaging them in continuous improvement. This is a model companies can borrow to unlock ideas, growth and opportunity in their companies.

RESPECT: Find good people and trust them

Find good people and trust them. That’s Warren Buffett’s philosophy. Of his 50+ portfolio companies he manages as part of Berkshire Hathaway, he only requires a monthly submission of financial results. He trusts them to take care of everything else. Google has a similar value. Laszlo Bock (their Chief People Officer) said the key to google’s success has been to “hire amazing people…” and “…give them more freedom than you’re comfortable with…”

This type of trust is still rare for obvious reasons — but it can be applied in many places, especially work-life balance.

I’ve been lucky to work for some great companies and great leaders that cared much more about the work I did rather than where or how I got it done. They supplied the tools (easy remote access, laptops etc…) and let us make the decisions. This sense of freedom was powerful and made me feel incredibly motivated and valued. The Gen X moms and dads I worked with seemed to deeply appreciate it as well.

This type of thing cannot be implemented as a policy (though a policy helps) — it is born out of culture, one that values performance over face-time and control. This type of culture can be built in two ways. First, you have to share stories and celebrate people who take advantage of the opportunities — not pretend they are an exception. Second, leaders and managers have to role model the change. No one will ever work remotely if they see their manager in the office 24/7.

Managers can also go a step further and ask their team questions like:

What is one thing we can do to make your work-life less stressful?

Or…

What is a small thing we can do that would have a big impact on your performance and success here?

Millennials are the least compensated, most indebted and have the least vacation of any employees in your company. Often the responses you will get will be simple — working remotely on a Friday to start a summer weekend, being able to take an early call from home in the morning or maybe just working from home so you can make some healthy meals for yourself. Who knows, but why not ask?

VOICE: Loosen up the top-down control of information and power

Everyone in your organization is thinking things that they do not feel safe sharing. This is true at google as much as it is anywhere else.

The way to overcome this is to re-think how information flows in your organization. Instead of top-down, you have to create the opportunity for information to flow bottom-up and peer to peer.

I’ve worked at companies where the CEO or office leader would have open Q&A and also allow anonymous questions in front of the entire office. This is incredibly powerful as it gives everyone in the organization the sense that they have a voice. Most people never submit a question, they just like knowing they can.

Another way to give people a voice is to encourage teaching. I’m sure there is a Millennial that could teach some of your executives how to use technology to make their lives and work more efficient. I’m also sure there is a senior executive that could teach your Millennials about financial planning or just sharing learnings from their career. These types of interactions can break down barriers and give people a voice.

Another area is feedback. This is a sensitive topic. When I first started at McKinsey early in my career I was blown away by how open the feedback culture was. Sure, some of the feedback may have been tough to stomach, but what made it genuine was there was a two way street for sharing feedback with more senior people. In fact, I had an experience in my first week where a senior consultant asked me for feedback on what he could improve on. The experience made me realize that everyone wanted to improve and having the culture to support that was powerful.

Giving people a voice is important. Otherwise, Millennials are likely to blindly follow your orders. Surprisingly, they are more likely to follow managers’ orders than their contemporaries:

41% of Millennials “agree” or “strongly agree” that employees should do what their manager tells them vs. 30% of Boomers and Xers (link)

This is not a good dynamic. Today’s business world is changing faster than ever and it requires dynamic teams who can constantly question the status quo and continually improve. Giving people a voice will help you move the needle.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post Blame it on a Millennial! appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.