Millennials and Generation 2020: My Choice and Generational Preferences (Part 2

This is Part 2 of this title and I’m trying to conclude it and pass it on for publication. I’m past the deadline for turning in my article, my apology. There is so much to be included in discussing these two generations, maybe I would consider a follow-up still. Between the time Part 1 of this article hit the airwaves or the net last week and now, I have received a couple of comments in form of inputs. A senior colleague called in to suggest a shorter title, “Why don’t you just call it ‘leveraging on generational strengths’”, she counselled. I want to say thank you ma’am. I have pencilled down that title as a chapter in the book edition of this article and you’ll be duly acknowledged.

Still on the Millennials, this is a generation shaped by parental excesses, computers and dramatic technological advances. Growing up in an era of global connectivity, technological advancement, networking, inclusion and diversity is a springboard for launching them into a world of boundless exuberance and limitless opportunities. One of the most frequently reported characteristics of the Millennials is their comfort with technology. If you are a parent reading this, you may want to recollect how your Gen Y or Z ‘saved a life’ by navigating your expensive and status-symbol cell phone before you could even know what to do with it.

A few years back during a Premier League match, hoping for the miraculous, I stayed glued to the cable network with the remote control firmly in my grip, screaming myself hoarse for my darling team, Arsenal FC. Yes! I’m a Gunner. #COYG! Suddenly, the channel disappeared. Holy Moses! Insult upon injury. How can this cable network people misbehave like this and it was not even raining? You know what happens when it is raining. Anyway, that was my screaming thought. Then, I saw my wife and the baby of the house leaving the sitting room and rushing into the kitchen in quick steps. I had been too engrossed with the match to notice their presence earlier. I didn’t suspect anything until they came back a little while later to confess their ‘sins’. Our son had used her mum’s smart phone to change the channel with the explanation that they were trying to save me from…you know what. Though my team had now equalized, not being sure of what next, I just put off the TV and went to the library. These guys are ready to bring your gadget and devices to life!

I’m not canvassing a free reign for this generation. They need monitoring and, at times, intense supervision. Watch them that they don’t convert any of your devices to an object of mass distraction away from their studies and important issues of life. For instance, as parents, we do not encourage them to substitute their smart phones for the Bible with the intent of taking it to fellowship because with free data everywhere, the phones are ever connected, and nothing distracts more than a ping! There are other technology-induced absurdities we need to keep them from, especially in their teen years. This generation is something else! The other day, one of them literally walked right into a moving vehicle having had both ears blocked with earphones connected to his cell phone, maybe with the volume at an eardrum-rupturing decibel. They are mostly the ones you see on okada, commercial motorcycles, chatting and texting away on their devices. If not properly mentored, they are accidents waiting to happen.

The Millennials, with the generation following them, are said to be the most educated of all the generations, thanks to their Boomer parents who value education as much as the air they breathe. Generation Y is filling up the workplace and every stratum of life. They started from the entry level and gradually making their ways up the ladder. As boomers retire, they’ll make up the majority of the workforce. These guys value team work and collective action, desiring to work with a group of like-minded, talented and creative people. They embrace diversity. Furthermore, they seek flexibility and they desire a more balanced life. They are exceptional multi-taskers, having done it since childhood. They value training, leadership opportunities and the opportunity to make meaningful contributions. They have also been characterized as demanding and as the most confident generation. This group possesses a positive chameleonic nature of sharing characteristics with each of the previous generations.

For instance, “they have the loyalty, as well as the value for family, that the veterans possess. They inherited optimism, and a willingness to work hard and achieve goals from the Boomers, and they picked up on the ‘Xers’ value for work/life balance, as well as scepticism, which makes them appropriately cautious”. Millennials place great value on interpersonal relationships and because of their upbringing where close adults often act as ‘friends’, they seek to have positive relationship with their bosses, desiring a large dose of feedback on their work, and maybe on their lifestyle, both to help improve their performances and for their own validation. This keeps them motivated and they respond well to positive reinforcements. They are devastated by betrayal and broken relationships. Most of them were getting into their first relationships and they went into such relationships headlong, at times throwing caution to the wind. As a Yoruba adage goes, let the elder come and swear if he wasn’t once a teenager. Because they go into such relationships without any encumbrances, disappointment is often devastating to the extent of affecting academics, hobbies, friendships and future relationships, at times.

This generation’s comfort with technology can be a leveraging strength for any organisation that dares to tap into their strength. Their communication mode is preferably faceless and voiceless emailing and texting. Having grown up in the multimedia era, they seem to have trouble with long meetings, their attention span can easily wane. They prefer to receive the broad strokes of a project and then fill in the rest by themselves. What then should be our attitude toward this generation? I have seen people being impatient with this generation, wondering which school produced them or why they can’t seem to act with the same decorum as the generations before them or how come they don’t fit in automatically into the corporate world, or blaming all problems on the poor quality of education received by this generation.

This is my own response. If you are of this blessed generation and you are out there reading me or you are a parent or you are privileged to be associated in any way to one in the Millennial Generation, all you need do is to look inward and look upward, discover the enormous strength already deposited in this generation by the reason and situation of their birth and appropriate that strength to the fullest, then, go on to excel. I encourage us to watch out for the Millennials or Generation Ys in our midst, invest in them, and grow them because theirs is the future. We have great talents among them. We are privileged to have a few of them working with us at our business and in the church, they lighten the load through the ideation process, power-point slides designs, excel spreadsheet, web design, updating my Linked-In, configuring my Mac, overseeing seamless presentations, etc. They need nurturing, wherever and whenever you come across any of them. Do not talk down on them. This is the generation most primed to bring about the anticipated change. What they need is our support and encouragement. An investment of any kind in any members of the Generations Y and 2020 is a worthy investment in growing people and you will surely reap the benefits in a massive way.

I have not said we should overlook their mistakes. In fact, in relating with these youngsters, we have developed and fine-tuned an approach appropriately named “Commending! Recommending!! And Crucially Confronting!!!” (CRACC). It is a strategy of praise and positive reinforcement with the attendant crucial conversations and confrontations on infractions. We advocate, when infractions are committed, an application of a variation of ‘discipline without punishment’, a penitentiary approach to workplace discipline that has worked for great teams over the years. We teach this in our Comprehensive Entry-Level and Management Trainees’ packages. We run on experience, so these trainings are so experiential. These guys and gals constitute majority of our almost 1000-strong workforce all over the country. We have regular interactions and contact. We have, among them, the white-collar university graduates for entry level positions in the financial services and also the semi-skilled and outright unskilled blue-collar operatives in the manufacturing and auxiliary jobs. Enough for now on the ‘Yers’ generation.

Here comes Gen Z or Gen 2020 or the iGeneration or Gen Zers. “The next generation of workers is upon us: Generation Z has begun to enter the workforce…” This is the generation that comes after the Millennial Generation. They were born between the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, so roughly 1995 to 2010 (oldest being 23 years as we speak). The leading edge of the cohort has already graduated and heading to work. They sat for School certificate at 15, 16 and 17 years old respectively. They didn’t have to break their schooling to go and work briefly to make ends meet and didn’t have to do A-levels. Rather, they, through the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) got into the universities at 16, 17 and 18 years of age. They have graduated, done with the mandatory national service locally. Those of them abroad started work long ago. “Like all generations, Gen Z has its own unique events and conditions that have shaped them, resulting in a different outlook”.

For instance, while the ‘Yers’ were raised by self-esteem-building, optimistic Boomers, Gen Z was raised by tough-love, sceptical ‘Xers’ who implanted in them, right from their impressionable years, that there are winners and losers, and that more often than not, you lose. Growing up during the Great Recession, they are pragmatic, independent and in survival mode when looking at future careers. They regard themselves as the first true ‘digital natives’. They have only known phones that are smart, fortunate generation, they never knew what a Nokia 3310 or a Motorola StarTAC (1996) looks like. Anyway, I’m told 3310 is now rebranded as a smart phone. Courtesy of the internet and a smart phone, this generation was born into the world of information 24/7, and may be information overload. While this makes them very resourceful, it also creates a huge challenge in that they tend to suffer from a ‘disease’ called F.O.M.O (fear of missing out), big time! Gen Zers are true digital natives. 91% of Gen Z respondents said technological sophistication would impact their interest in working at a company. As the workplace continues to figure out how best to incorporate technology, this generation will lead the way. This will not feel natural, as usually it is the older generations’ duty to lead the way. However, this is the first time we have the youngest generation as an authority figure on something really important. This may change the typical corporate hierarchy.

“More than technology, I believe my generation will bring an important entrepreneurial spirit to work. We will constantly look for ways to streamline processes and procedures”. One thing we hear from a lot of Gen Zers is that they think the other generations overcomplicate things. They are willing to take advantage of having grown up in a time where often the middleman has been eliminated and so they are determined to look for ways to do things more efficiently when they show up full time at the office. They tend to be truly a D-I-Y (do it yourself) generation and they tend to bring this mentality with them to work. The jury is still out. A restless bunch, if not calmed down, they tend to worry whether they are moving ahead fast enough in comparison to everyone else and at the same time exuding confidence that they have themselves to beat, as one of them rightly opined “we are definitely not the most patient generation!”

What are the implications of this ‘invasion’ on the future of workplace relationships? What should people managers be looking out for? So far, they have succeeded in managing adults, and not too adults. So, how do we cope, or better still, how do we handle this ‘restless’ dynamic to dynamite generation? I’m going to borrow much from David Stillman and his son, Jonah, in responding to these questions. David opined that we have a golden opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive. These fresh minds are just coming into the workplace, if leaders and people managers would today take it upon themselves to study, research and know what makes Gen Z tick, then, they can be better prepared to recruit and retain them. No quick fixes. It’s not elimination by substitution; it’s not about ‘out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new’ kind of strategy; it’s about anticipatory demographic management. It’s about anticipating where the conflicts might be and how best to prepare. We should not repeat the errors of the past.

“In the 1990s, leaders were not ready for Gen X when they showed up, and they paid a serious price for it. For example, Gen X entered the workplace sceptical and wanted to keep close tabs on their performance. Once-a-year formal feedback that worked for the Boomers was not enough for Gen X. Many Xers left their workplaces in search of companies that would give them more information more often”. Do people managers look at someone young and assume they are all the same? Do we stereotype them by saying things like “all you fresh graduates or young people are…?” Gen Z especially takes exception to this. Even within a family unit, they tend to resist any act of stereotyping more, even more so, it is natural to look at someone from this generation and assume she or he is a Millennial and then we go ahead to treat them like Millennials. That often backfires!

Studies have shown that Gen Z are drastically different from the Millennials. Coming of age during the recession, they are putting money and job security at the top of their wish list. Sure, they want to make a difference, but surviving and thriving are more important. The organisational cultures that can foster that are the ones that will win the war for talent with Gen Z. These cultures will be those that would allow them, albeit guardedly, to showcase their individual talents. Being in survival mode has made them very competitive. About 72% of Gen Z surveyed said they are competitive with those doing the same job. Millennials have more of a collaborative mentality with everyone pitching in and working together; Gen Z are more independent and want to be judged on our own merits.

Acknowledgement/Sources of Resources for this article:

1. Several clip arts and snippets from the Internet to drive home my points
2. A couple of ‘SmartTips’ courtesy, Concentrated Knowledge Corporation. soundview.com
3. Over 25 years practical experience managing people and handling people issues
4. BezaleelConsulting Group Library bezaleelconsultingrw.com
5. A very informative article titled “Move Over Millennials; Generation Z Is Here” by a Gen ‘Xer’ dad, David Stillman and his Gen Zer son, Jonah Stillman.