"If you are a Hotmail user, we will not hire you", said an advertisement. "These baby boomers are now leaders in various organizations and dont understand what the millennial want." I am sure you all have heard this. Personally, I believe that these gaps in generation exist but they have more benefits, if the diversity of the teams are leveraged properly.
It is true that generational gaps exist. This is because each generation is born in to a different context. In to a world that is quite different from the earlier generations. For my grand dad, having a fan in his house was a luxury. For my daughter, this will sound absurd as she was born in a house with fans and air conditioners. Similarly, with gadgets. When I was born, there were no computers in India. Today, children are born in to a world filled with gadgets that network the whole world.
Given the different environments and contexts that generations are born in to, the thought process will be different. How they view a particular situation will be different. How well they collaborate will be different. However, the innate fact that we are all human beings does not change. The same emotions run within all of us - whether a grand dad who was born in 1930s or a millennial.
From an organization perspective, it is essential to note few key things about all its employees:
a) Everyone wants to be treated with respect and as a human being;
b) Everyone wants to be seen as part of team and contributing to the organization;
c) Everyone would like to know how her/his work contributes to the end objectives of the organization; and
d) Everyone wants to be compensated fairly for her/his contribution.
This is true of all employees whether they belong to the baby boomer generation or a millennial. These basic aspects of managing employees have not changed and will probably never change. Every other aspect such as how one leverages technology to approach work, what are some of the drivers at work, etc. change based on the context in to which we are born.
I was sitting through a talk where an elderly lady was speaking to young high school children. She said, "You children have it very easy. You do not understand the value of money. You want your parents to buy you gadgets every year. In our days we needed to walk 5 kilometres to School crossing 2 streams along the way. When I went to college I had a bi-cycle. We lived in small houses that did not even have fans." She had lost the audience as they just could not relate to what she was saying. So what if she had to walk 5 kms to School? Their problems now included someone in class having a cooler gadget or the air-conditioner in the car not working or they having to come by bus because the car has gone for servicing, etc.
Let us bring this to the work place. I have heard people who are baby boomers say that a job is for a life time. You get in to a job and a company and that is it. You should not be looking at any other company. They talk of career being a rat race and dog eat dog but still say, in the same breath, that Collaboration is a must. It seemed to be a rat race because the generation then was focused on building personal financial capital. They saw the job as a means to doing that. It helped them own a new and larger house, pay for better schooling and expenses. So, the more the money, the better the living standards. Therefore, the job was critical and promotions in the job were even more critical. They fought tooth and nail to get promotions and many a time used unfair means. So, this was a rat race for them. Their grandchildren are now in a situation where they live in large houses and have a very good standard of living. Their objective in life is no more capital accumulation. It is more about getting excited at work every day. It is about working with others and doing things differently. The paradigm has shifted but our older friends still keep talking of dog eat dog. This is the generational gap and how it plays out.
As a Leader, I have found it useful to remember the four points that are mentioned above in this article and have used it to lead a team across 58 countries with an age range of 22 to 64. The principles given above worked really well across all age groups and across geographies. I noticed that attention was needed in the way we approached work from a technology perspective and from the perspective of what could motivate a particular age group. Though individual motivation was driven by the circumstances in which that particular individual was, we could come up with some general conclusions for each geography.
I also noticed that where we could combine generations in to projects, we got the best of few worlds. This is best described in the picture given. We not only looked at the baby boomers mentoring the millennials but also reverse mentoring. It worked wonders in driving an organization to move from an output driven one to an outcome driven one.
Yes, generational gaps do exist. They are because we are born and conditioned by the circumstances in which we grow up. This conditioning is very strong and though times change, our ability to change does not keep pace with changing times. The behavioural issues created by these gaps can go out of hand if we are not careful in handling situations. However, if we focus on the 4 aspects mentioned above and use a large dose of common sense, we can derive benefits from these gaps.
