May 6, 2005
Getting Them To Give a Damn - Part VI
THE SHIFT AWAY FROM THE TRADITIONAL WORK ETHIC
I first heard my mom use the term workaholic to explain why my dad couldn’t come watch my football game. He had a tenth-grade education and was the breadwinner for a family of seven, so he was tirelessly trying to make a buck and get ahead. I never saw him take it easy. My father did not have an off switch. By contrast, I wonder if my 20-year-old son even has an on switch.
While I was taught to work by a dad who made sure I’d always pull my weight and learn to survive, I became a dad who wanted his kids to enjoy their childhoods. I took them to places I only dreamed of going when I was a kid and gave them things I wished I had had. Although I never intended to spoil them, they certainly got a lot in exchange for a little.
Not Defined by Work
My hunch (supported by research) tells me that a lot of Baby Boomer/ Generation X parents raised their children like I did. Today, a ton of kidployees like Zac and Whitney (my 19-year-old daughter) can be found in the workplace. They don’t despise the notion of work; they just aren’t as enamored with it as you and I have been taught to be. While we feel a sense of pride after putting in “full day’s work for a full day’s pay,” they simply feel tired.
Unlike you and me, they don’t see any correlation between what they do and who they are. They refuse to be defined by their job title or by the quality of their work. To them, work is simply a thing they have to do to get the stuff they want. If they can put in a minimal effort and still get that stuff, then doing more than the minimum is a waste.
I graduated from a suburban, middle-class high school in the 1970s. About half of my closest friends decided not to go on to college but instead jumped right into the workforce and learned a trade. I’ll never forget hearing my locker partner describe his plans after graduation. “I just want to get on with a good company that has benefits and rise through the ranks, maybe get into management someday,” Ronny said. Thirty years later, he’s still working with the post office. Another classmate took a job as a driver with Pepsi. Today, he’s a route supervisor in the Denver bottling plant of PepsiCo.
Free Agent Mentality
Today’s youth have no such illusions. Many of their parents have been outsourced, rightsized, and downsized by companies they spent their lives trying to build. Consequently, they’ve been cautioned about falling into the same trap. They don’t buy into “work here 40 years and retire with a gold watch,” so you won’t hear many talking about long-term employment. Instead, the free agent mentality is practically encoded in their DNA: they want to get as much as they can in exchange for as little as possible. Well, that’s an effective way to come out on top—at a garage sale. It certainly doesn’t play well on the front lines of your business.
Tap into This Talent
More than anything else, the new work ethic drives managers absolutely bonkers. You think, “They don’t give a damn!” and complain to friends and colleagues about their lack of effort and commitment. You wonder why they aren’t as motivated or drivenas you were at their age. You see their amazing potential, envy their ability to absorb new information so quickly, and know they have the technosavvy to create awesome results—but you might have no idea how to tap into all of this talent. An operations manager for a chain of video stores described it to me this way: “It’s like driving a Ferrari on the Autobahn and being stuck in first gear.”
May 5, 2005
Getting Them To Give a Damn - Part V
THE SHIFT IN THE WAY THE GAME IS PLAYED
In the summer of 2004, Spiderman 2 broke all box office records when its opening day took in $116 million in ticket sales. Compare that to Halo 2, the video game that came out four months later, which took in $125 million in sales in the first 24 hours. You can see how big video games have become in America.
When I played video games in college, I first conquered Pong, then Space Invaders, and then I was on to eat dots in the phenomenon of Pac Man. It’s easy to see how addictive these electronic games can become. Doing well at the video games of my era took fast reflexes, a quick trigger thumb, and a lot of quarters. Today’s games are most typically played on in-home game systems. Although they also require fast reflexes, they also require strategy and sophisticated problem-solving skills to win.
Until my son Zac called from college, ecstatic that he had waited in line four hours to be one of the first to buy Halo 2, I had never even heard of it. “What makes this game so special?” I wondered. I discovered that it’s not just the player against the game, but rather that up to 16 players, located anywhere in the world, can connect online to play the same game simultaneously. This complex war game involves an endless variety of scenarios and possibilities.
Life on the Other Side
As Kevin Maney observed in a USA Today article, “The tables have turned, and the axis is videogames. We Boomers have become like those Woodstock town folk we once laughed at. We’re on the tragically un-hip side of a generation gap, and the gamers are on the other side.” The kidployees in your workforce are the gamers Maney refers to. When it comes to how we each face challenges and solve problems, these kidployees certainly live on the “other side.”
Today’s video games turn players into stars and feed their egos by heaping praise and rewards on them when they excel. The hero in these games isn’t always the honorable character but rather the one who shows the most machismo and bravado. Therefore, players advance only when they act daringly and assume great risk. Strategy and forethought are required to reach the highest levels.
This is the mindset your young workers carry to the front lines. Remember, they won’t remain engaged if the job is mundane and boring; you can’t get them to invest themselves if they’re not challenged to think, react, and affect the outcome of the game. If they can’t emerge as stars in your organization, you might as well say, “Tilt—game over.”
Getting Them To Give a Damn - Part IV
A SHIFT IN THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-EXPRESSION
Teenage rebellion is nothing new. You and I rebelled against our parents; our parents rebelled against theirs. Even Cain and Abel rebelled against Adam and Eve. The expression Don’t trust anyone over 30 was coined in the 1960s. You can expect a certain degree of rebellion from the16to 24-year-olds you employ, right?
But it’s the degree of their outspokenness, their refusal to play by the rules, their utter disrespect for authority that prompts you to shake your head and think, “I could never have gotten away with that when I was their age!”
Evidence Abounds
When was the last time a kid stood up to give you a seat on the bus or addressed you as Mr. or Ms. instead of by your first name or, even worse, “Hey you!” How often do you catch a kid doing something they shouldn’t be doing but feel deathly afraid of confronting the behavior?
Your front-line digital thinkers have seen how being outrageous leads to fame and fortune. They’ve also watched nice guys get steamrolled. Further, they’ve been told that if they want something or if they have an opinion, they’d better speak up and not hold anything back. The new breed of television talk shows has shown them that those who might feel slandered, cheated, or disrespected have the right to confront the perpetrators and give them a piece of their mind. Being rude, crude, obnoxious, and insulting in modern-day America draws laughter, attention, applause, and sometimes even a fat endorsement contract.
Sadly, the virtues of courtesy, tact, and diplomacy are on the endangered species list. Today’s 16- to 24-year-olds have their own thoughts, ideas, and opinions—and you are going to hear them, like it or not. They won’t stand by passively if they feel they’re being disrespected in any way. If a coworker, supervisor, or customer does something to ruffle their feathers, you can bet the conflict goes public. The feedback, which is often personal and negative, can come out at the worst times and in the worst places.
Treated Like Equals
I often hear businesspeople complain that their young talent has no regard for experience and that they arrive on Day One wanting to be treated on a par with senior management. Perhaps because their interests and desires have always been catered to by advertisers, media conglomerates, and even parents, they’re used to being sought after. Focus groups seek their opinions, and marketers especially listen very, very carefully to what they think is cool or lame.
And don’t think for a moment that your kidployees don’t value respect themselves. On the contrary, they know all too well what respect is and, more importantly, the power it holds. They live by the creed: “They who have the respect have the power.” To them, respect is a prize that must be won.
Kidployees who crave respect will go to great lengths to get it, but when it comes to giving respect, you might find them stingy. They won’t automatically respect you simply because of your age, position, or title. They don’t want to yield their power or put you in a position of control over them. In a strange reversal of the traditional dynamic between youth and age, they believe that they’re owed respect automatically—but that you have to prove that you’re worthy of their consideration. In most situations, respect is bartered. “You respect me first,” they seem to be saying, “then maybe I’ll respect you.”
Obviously, this issue affects your workplace. Perhaps you feel like you’ve hired a kid who acted very respectfully during the interview and early stages of training, but is actually a Mr. Hyde under the façade, ready to jump out the first time they feel embarrassed, disrespected, or unfairly disciplined.
Dress Code Conflicts
Image is, by far, the largest part of the self-expression equation. Rarely do I speak to a group of managers without the subject of dress code quickly entering the discussion. The prevailing sentiment is this: “We can deal with the hair and the clothes, but how are we supposed to put up with the piercings and the tattoos?” It quite often seems like a staredown contest requiring one of the two sides to lose big by sacrificing their own appearance for the sake of the other.
What they say, who they respect, and how they dress certainly influences the way you communicate with them and how they interact with your customers. When you have a kidployee who values self-expression over self-control, you could have more than you can handle, regardless of their skill set.
May 3, 2005
Getting Them To Give a Damn - Part III
A SHIFT TOWARD DIGITAL THINKING
A profound difference between you and the new breed of kidployee is the way they think and process information. While your mind operates more like a VCR, theirs functions more like a DVD player. Although both devices process complex sights and sounds, one accesses information in a sequential order, while the other can access and process it sequentially, in reverse, or in random order with no loss of time.
You’re probably reading this book much like you do the morning paper—from the front to the back. I bet you eat your salad before your steak and your steak before dessert. Similarly, when you accepted your first job with your organization, you expected to begin low and work your way up through the ranks. With any new recreational pursuit, you fully expected to start out as a beginner, pay your dues as an intermediate, and consistently practice and move to the next level.
As linear, or analog, thinkers and doers, you and I tend to move sequentially from left to right, from top to bottom, from front to back. We’ve been taught to learn, earn, save, then spend. Our parents ingrained into our psyches the need to work before we could play. You and I believe in a natural order of things, the law of the farm: cultivate, plant, fertilize, then harvest.
Your front-liners don’t see life that way. For them, life is an all-youcan-eat buffet offering unlimited choice, few rules, and a pay-as-you-go system. They see absolutely no reason to stick with our “analog” logic in this “digital” world—not when they believe in their ability to leapfrog over the painstaking cultivate, plant, and fertilize steps and go directly to the harvest.
Wired for Choices
How could any manager expect employees who were value programmed over the past 20 years to be remotely the same as we were? How could we expect them to think sequentially when they’re wired for a pull-down menu of choices and immediate results? If they don’t think like us, they aren’t automatically in sync with our logic, rules, practices, and procedures.
As an analog thinker (us), you understand the actual flow of life— everything you do at this moment yields a future result. You and I grew up in a time that reinforced the dynamic of choice and consequence, cause and effect. Do your homework and get a good grade. Commit a crime and go to jail. Work hard and get ahead. Our decisions were, and still are, made with future considerations in mind.
However, to a digital thinker (them), the principle of choice followed by consequence has lost its power. They know that the good guy often gets the short end of the stick; they’ve seen the bad guy get away with it too many times. Even though they’ve been cautioned to consider the logical outcome of their actions, they look for ways to avoid the consequences of their behavior—a loophole. For them, hard work and sacrifice don’t always return a high yield. Doing a bad deed doesn’t always lead to disciplinary action. Any mistake is wiped over by simply pressing control-alt-delete.
This basic difference in how they are wired gives you reason to completely rethink your managerial philosophies. What choice do you have?
Failing to understand the way a digital mind functions and adjust for it will lead to frustration and an automatic disconnect.
May 2, 2005
Getting Them To Give a Damn - Part II
Chapter 3
Valuesquake: The Shift in Work Ethic
Us versus Them. Now versus Then. I can just imagine what you’re thinking: “Hey! I’ve got a business to run! When I entered the workforce as a teen, I wasn’t exactly like my parents, either. I may not have been an Opie, but I knew how to get ahead. I had to clean up, listen up, and suck up. It was sink or swim. And if I wanted to keep my job and keep my parents off my back, I had to learn to do what I was told, work hard, and not miss a day, or I’d be out on my ear. Now that I’m a manager, you’re telling me to throw out my rulebook and reinvent my entire business, just to cater to a bunch of whiney, spoiled-rotten prima donnas? Forget it!”
Slow down, Speed Racer. No one’s suggesting that you throw out anything. All we have to agree on at this point are the following three assertions:
- The employment picture for 16- to 24-year-olds has changed since you were in this age range.
- The 16- to 24-year-olds you encounter in the workplace today have a different set of attitudes, values, and beliefs than young people of days gone by.
- Today’s kidployees can’t be recruited, trained, managed, and motivated the same way you were as a kidployee.
In theory, statement three is easy to agree with but very hard to act on. It could make you feel even more conflicted. To take a different course of action would mean accepting that a better one exists—or worse, that you’re doing something wrong in your present course. Because you’re used to doing things a certain way, to change goes against the grain. Nobody likes change—except for a wet baby.
When I accepted my first teaching assignment back in 1979, the principal began the school year by having the teachers arrive a day before the students. After coffee and donuts, we went to the band room to listen to a motivational speaker. This first exposure to a professional speaker impressed me. His clever one-liners and stories were designed to “rally the troops” and get our hearts ready for the challenge of a new year. Looking back, I forget most of what he said, but I do remember one powerful axiom he left with us that day. He said:
“If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always gotten.”
That sounded so cool and seemed so logical that I wrote it down on my lesson plan book and internalized it. It became a basic tenant in the way I led my life and approached my daily activities. Twenty-five years later, I still believe it’s true . . . for plumbers and tree surgeons, that is.
You see, over time, pipes and trees haven’t changed much—but people have. Just as an earthquake occurs due to a shift in the ground beneath us, there a “valuesquake” has happened because of a major shift in societal values and norm’s beneath us. There is no arguing that those shifts are clearly reflected in the attitudes and beliefs of our children. So the axiom I wrote on my lesson plan book in 1979 has been proven false. In fact, today I believe the following axiom is much more accurate:
If you do what you’ve always done, you are out of business.
You simply can’t successfully manage today’s kidployees using yesterday’s management methodologies. The employment picture has changed, and so have they. The emerging workforce isn’t motivated by the same things; they cannot be communicated with, compensated, motivated, and disciplined with old-school techniques.
Platinum Rule
Business strategist and bestselling author Dr. Tony Alessandra has said that the Golden Rule—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—has been trumped by the Platinum Rule—“Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.” The Golden Rule implies that other people would like to be treated the way that you would like to be treated. The Platinum Rule encourages us to treat others the way they want to be treated.
Leading managers realize that, to get the most out of their workforce, they must first determine who the workers are and what they want done unto them. For kidployees, it’s important to understand what their attitudes and beliefs really are. How are they wired?
This chapter examines four primary differences between you and your front-line workforce. You know these differences exist, but perhaps you’ve never understood why. Nothing happens overnight, yet in the past decade, a monumental shift—or valuesquake—has occurred, dramatically impacting the mindset of the new workforce. Let’s dissect four of these shifts to see how they have quaked the attitudes and beliefs that kidployees bring to the job, forming a base for addressing strategies and tactics in future chapters. They are:
- A shift toward digital thinking
- A shift in the importance of self-expression
- A shift in the way the game is played
- A shift from a traditional work ethic
Getting Them To Give a Damn - Part I
Getting Them To Give A Damn: How To Get Your Front Line To Care About Your Botttom Line
by Eric Chester
Dearborn Trade - May 2005
224 Pages - ISBN 1419504584
I thought this was a pretty interesting book. It is really a book on how to relate to today's youth. I actually came away a little disturbed by this chapter. I clearly don't understand today's youth. I recommend the whole excerpt to get a better handle on what Gen Y is thinking.