Managing Millennials

This article is an excerpt from Connecting Generations: The Sourcebook by Claire Raines (2002).

For more about the work that Claire and her colleagues do, go to her website.

I get questions every month from businesspeople looking for something about the newest generation of workers. They’d like an updated version of Twentysomething or Beyond Generation X, books I wrote in 1991 and 1996. Along with Bruce Tulgan’s Managing Generation X, they’re the classics on managing and motivating young employees. The thing is, the young employees we were talking about in those three books are well established in the workplace today, and the next generation is showing up with a whole new perspective, a different set of values, a distinctive work ethic. They’re as different from Generation X as they can be. By and large, it’s the Gen-Xers who are managing them, and who are looking for help in understanding just what the Millennials are all about. Thus this article. I think you’ll find a fairly comprehensive treatment of Millennial employees.

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A lesson from politics…

Politics in America is hotting up and I’ve been curious to note that with all their charisma and pedigree the Clintons have started falling behind and even though Hillary did rally in New Hampshire primary they still trail Obama. Now I’m not into politics but what did interest me was what John Sviokla had to say on a new post in Harvard Business. He has identified that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama treat their supporters differently. Clinton considers her backers as “customers” while Obama sees his supporters as “members”

For example, Sviokla points out that their two web sites differ radically. On Obama’s you received “points” for each activity you do such as creating a profile, making your profile public, logging in, or befriending a link and you can “climb” this social/political ranking by engaging more–hosting events, linking to others, raising money and many other forms of participation. To anyone in the MySpace/Facebook generation this type of functionality is expected. In contrast, joining the Clinton web site gives you an identification tag like TZ3QQ7, so that any donations can be tracked – sounds just like the old style “frequent purchaser” numbers that everyone from CVS to American Airlines uses.

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A car for the people of the world

This is how new markets are made, and how worlds are changed! Today, Tata released their latest car. It was a car that all of their rivals said could not be made. About 5 years ago, Tata announced that were going to build a car that would cost less than 100,000 rupees, or US$ 2,500 (the price of a DVD player in most luxury cars).

Today, they unveiled it in India. See the early news reports here and here.

It is the Tata Nano. And, besides being a 5 door sedan, seating four, with just less than 650CC power, it also has remarkable fuel efficiency (20km/l), top speeds at 100km/h, meets all emissions standards and all safety standards, too. The deluxe model will have aircon. See the Reuters “factbox” for details. At this price, it is bound to be attractive to those who have not been able to enter the car market in the past.

It is no surprise that a car for the people in the “bottom half of the pyramid” should come out of India (see previous post on selling profitably to the world’s poor). For some, it may be a sad truth, but it is true nonetheless: unless companies make money out of supplying goods and services to the world’s poor, they won’t. But Tata shows yet another example of how this can be a win-win for everyone.

With a car like this, Tata will create a new market of car drivers, and are poised to conquer the world. I wish them well!

1968 nostalgia

It’s 40 years later! Prepare yourself for a year (or at least a few weeks) of breathless nostalgia as the Baby Boomers put on their misty eyes and remember back to one of their most defining years as young people (and just when you think it’s over, the 30 year reunion of the “summer of ‘69″ will be upon us next year).

For the record, I wasn’t there. My parents weren’t married yet (although that was becoming less and less of an issue for childbearing in 1968). But, in my studies of generational defining moments, 1968/9 is one of those periods of a few months in which it can be said, “everything changed”. (Probably the most defining such period in recent history was April 1989 to February 1990 – Tiananmen Square, the Berlin Wall comes down, Perestroika and Mandela’s release all within 8 months!).

But back to 1968. Before you look at my list of highlights below, why not take the “do you remember 1968″ online quiz.

Now, here are the highlights:

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