It seems that just about everyone is talking about generations and how to manage the mix of generations in the office these days. I was sent this interesting summary of generational values from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association Office of Diversity (USA).
It’s a bit simplistic, but it’s a nice summary.
I was recently sent this article by email. I tracked it down to a journalism website, The Communicator. It’s a pretty good summary of the Millennial generation, with some insights into how they are changing media newsrooms. Interesting.
Cover Story: The Millennials
Members of the next generation are graduating college and taking jobs in newsrooms. Who are they? How do they think? How do you manage them? How do they manage you?
By Stacey Woelfel
News director J.J. Murray has a battle on his hands. It’s a battle of wills and a battle of wits that he fights constantly with the job seekers and new hires he encounters at KIMT-TV in Mason City, IA, a newsroom that sees a lot of entry-level talent straight out of college.
The young journalists are bringing a great deal of skill to the newsroom but often give the impression they think a diploma proves they’ve learned all they need to know about the craft. He tells the story of one reporter who argued the finer points of copy editing in the middle of his first script review; when Murray told the reporter that he preferred to have people’s titles precede their names, which is common style for script writing, the reporter continued to disagree. “Some—on the first week on the job—have battled me on what they think is right and wrong,” Murray says, “instead of being here to learn.”
These journalists are part of the Millennial Generation, a cohort that thinks and behaves far differently from what Murray has previously seen in his two decades of news management and teaching. It’s not that this group of twenty-somethings makes for better or worse journalists than previous generations, but that they have to be managed differently. Generational researchers say news directors have a lot to learn about what attracts and motivates most of the applicants they will see in the coming decade.
JK Rowling gave the 2008 graduation address at Harvard. You can read and watch it here.
I think it’s excellent, focusing on the benefits of learning from failure and imagination.
This section is the best for me:
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples minds, imagine themselves into other peoples places. Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are….
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I know this is old news for most people, but I figured we should at least log it on our blog.
Got sent this from a colleague, Jude, a while ago. She got it from BizCommunity, but I can’t find any trace of it through their search function.
They have 2060 ‘fans’ as of today. They’re saying, below, that there are 700 000 South African’s on FaceBook. They have a way to go, but it is a start.
Absa joins Facebook
?Social networking sites offer opportunities for us to establish new channels of communication with our customers, and better understand their needs,? says Christo Vrey, managing executive of Absa Digital Channels, and this is why Absa, South Africa’s largest retail bank, has launched its profile on Facebook.
While Absa is known for its dynamic approach to the younger generation, winning Sunday Times/Markinor Coolest Bank Award in 2006 and 2007, its entry into Facebook highlights the growing importance of social networking sites to traditional corporations.
?More and more companies around the world are embracing social media as a way to develop deeper connections with their customers. We’re excited about the possibilities our Facebook profile will bring,? adds Vrey.
South Africa has a surprisingly large Facebook following: various sources confirm there are about 700 000 members, putting it inside the world’s top 10 countries in terms of Facebook members. Absa already has a significant online presence, with 1.25 million individuals visiting its site each month, and nearly one million Internet Banking customers.
Absa’s Facebook profile has launched with a competition to win an Apple MacBook, around the theme of the bank’s ?Put your best foot forward’ campaign. People will be able to view images and TV videos of the campaign; and have their say.
?We are encouraging people to tell us how they ?put their best foot forward’, and tell us about their philosophies towards life, all summed up within a sentence or two,? says Vrey.
Absa’s Facebook profile can be found at www.facebook.com/pages/ABSA/12216188250.
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“Baby Boomer”, “Generation X”, the “Millennial generation”, “Generation Y” – these and other similar terms to describe groups of people of different ages have become fairly well known and well used in recent years. These terms arise from a theory that attempts to explain how different generations develop different value systems, and the impact that this has on how younger and older people interact with the world around them and with each other.
This understanding of different generations and the “gap” between them has many applications in all areas of life, from parents interacting with children, to sales people selling to younger or older clients, to managers who work with teams of people of different ages.
Return to TomorrowToday UK website | Download pdf version | Email this website link to a friend
Since 2002, the accounting profession has been rocked by sensational corporate scandals and subsequent strict regulations. The four largest global accounting firms (the ‘Big Four’) still have more challenges on the horizon. All of them see their talented staff as the best tool to embrace these challenges and add the value demanded by clients. Each of the Big Four believes their people are the source of their future competitive advantage.
But, most graduates who are recruited by these firms write the same exams, are affiliated to the same professional bodies and are overseen by the same external regulators. The structure of an audit, the deadlines, the type of people who are recruited, the pressure and the opportunities are similar at each of the four accounting giants.
If talented people are the key to differentiation for each of the firms, why and how should they change and structure themselves in order to capitalize on this critical resource? How can they each use their people to differentiate from each other?
In spite of the new networked, knowledge economy, increased regulations and changes to the profession, the organisational design and way audits are staffed and performed has generally remained the same.
Is it time for the Big Four to change? … Continue Reading
“It is my contention that in the over 40 years that I have been associated with the JSE, South Africans have always over-reacted emotionally towards the exchange. When there is a bull market people believe it is never going to stop and when there is a bear market everyone believes that the sun will never shine again.” – Humphrey Borkum, Chairman JSE Limited.
This is not another comment on how tough it is out there. There’s plenty of that going around, and then some. This is rather a question on how one should prepare people for the ‘flip side’? And there always is a flip side, whether you’re running a company or flying an Apollo Mission.
There are clearly some difficult decisions to be made when resources are tight, cash flow is under pressure and business isn’t flowing in like it did 12 months ago. Of course it doesn’t help when you don’t know when the cycle is going to turn, how quickly and to what levels the economy will return? Making a bad decision when the pressure is turned up can have far reaching consequences. Containing costs and doing everything to keep sales to an acceptable level are all part of the mechanisms most managers turn to.
What about people in all of this? … Continue Reading
My youngest son Sipho arrived home from school the other day having just negotiated a history exam. “Well, how did it go?” I asked. Without so much as breaking his stride, he replied, “Well Dad, I either got 92% or 60%” and with that disappeared into his room leaving an empty and somewhat stunned silence in his wake.
I was left pondering his answer. Answer? What kind of answer was that anyway? I was left with two thoughts: Firstly, Sipho has a bright future in politics and secondly, he did a masterful job at managing parental expectations!
It was the second conclusion that led me to thinking about two of the most important aspects of leadership, namely the need to manage expectations and the need to manage perceptions. … Continue Reading
I was sent this short email about Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who died on Sunday, aged 89. I thought I’d share it.
His outspoken criticism of communist totalitarianism earned him many years of imprisonment in Stalin’s infamous Gulags and many more years in exile. His rare courage was underpinned by an unshakable commitment to truth and a deep sense of life purpose.
He was, however, also no advocate of the Western model, believing that Western society was eroding due to its whimsical pursuit of material well-being, its valuing of rights over obligations, and its misguided granting of destructive & irresponsible freedoms. Here are the closing words of his famous address “A World Split Apart” at Harvard University, 30 years ago. His questions are hardly less relevant to us today:
“Our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. … Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity? … We shall have to rise to a new height of vision … No-one on earth has any other way left but upward.”
In the last few hours the 10 billionth tweet was tweeted on Twitter. As one would imagine there was all kinds of hype and excitement, as Tweeps with the necesary skills attempted to predict the time it would happen, and I imagine even be ‘the one’?
My last tweet was 9999989724. Wild. Will be at 10 [...]
Download a copy of this article in PDF format – right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how.
Twitter recently hosted it’s billionth Tweet and Facebook had over 500 million users [...]
Miranda Devine is a Sydney Morning Herald columnist, and recently wrote an excellent piece on Australia’s Gen Y (young people now in the teens and early 20s). She had just witnessed a group of 400 of them grilling Kevin Rudd, the Aussie PM – and they had given him a rough time.
It’s well worth [...]
Many years ago, in a South Africa finding it’s way to it’s first democratic election, a friend of mine would often say, “Don’t be a victim of your own words.” He of course was referring to saying things that might come back and bite you down the road. And in an emerging ‘New South Africa’, lots of people [...]
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