The oldest Millennials are now well into their 30s, and they’re increasingly running companies. Inc. and our sister publication, Fast Company, partnered with career-development site the Muse to survey 155 Millennial bosses to see how they manage, what they value, and how they plan to shape the future of business. The top priorities they cited are humanist: creating positive work cultures, forging strong relationships (in person, not through apps), and caring for the whole person, not just the worker. And, unlike some Boomers and Gen-Xers, they’re optimistic about those who will replace them. As Elena Valentine, co-founder and CEO of video company Skill Scout, predicts, “I have a hunch Gen Z is going to make an even bigger impact.”
Of course, the survey focused on CEOs in tech; no one seems to bother doing similar surveys on lower level millennial managers working outside of tech.
So I thought I’d share my own experience over the last 15 years with millennial managers and their workers at my small, local bank branch.
Over those years there have been roughly seven managers, all but one were promoted and are still with the bank.
Unlike large, urban branches, small branches like mine function differently. Tellers remember your name and chat; managers often handle transactions normally done by bankers.
Because I handle the banking, wires, etc., for my Russian business partner I had a lot of interactions with the managers, as well as the staff, and got to know them on a more personal level than you might expect.
The managers all ranged from their late twenties to early thirties.
They managed much the same as the CEOs in the survey. Same concerns and efforts with their peoples’ growth and well-being.
Our conversations often focused on the culture they strove to create and, for a few years, what it took to protect their people from the toxic culture and destructive behavior of a district manager (she created enough stress to put one pregnant manager on doctor-ordered bed rest) who was finally fired.
None of the managers were perfect, although the current one is as close as any manager gets, but they created great micro-cultures, in which their teams thrived.
Impressive, especially when you consider that the bank is Wells Fargo.
A few days ago CB insights shared a link to their collection of quotes about disruption from big name corporate leaders; they called it Foot In Mouth.
I sent it to my “list” with the following comment.
Ignorance? Idiocy? Arrogance?
All of the above?
The replies I received, one from my sister, a retired IT head, and the other from KG, were far more insightful than the queries I sent.
I thought both were worth sharing, so here they are.
From my sister.
Do you know of Joel Barker, the futurist? He’s been around since the mid-70s. I saw a video of his at a conference once, where he talked about paradigm shifts. His example then was Swiss watch makers. When two young kids brought the quartz watch to the Swiss watchmaking community for funding, the Swiss said, “No one will ever want a watch that doesn’t wind.” The kids went to the Japanese and the rest was history. Barker says that when humans have a paradigm, they automatically filter OUT anything that doesn’t support their paradigm. The Japanese had no watch paradigm and so could see the potential. I think those examples from CB are as much paradigm lock-in as stupidity. Or put another way, paradigms lead us to make dumb choices sometimes.
From KG
Upton Sinclair famously stated, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” We may call it stupidity, but it really is vested interests. That’s why innovation comes from those who have little to lose or have no other alternative. No one thinks of vested interests when they work in our favor, only when (usually in hindsight) they are show to have caused loss are they called stupid.
In a time of proven global warming, the US has chosen, as the only nation in the world, to reject the potentially cataclysmic consequences of a warmer globe and have invested $4 trillion to develop the domestic oil & gas industry rather than investing these monies in future technologies that can save the planet. These vested interests are causing an existential crisis, and all the systems we’ve built.
There are so many areas that we are struggling with as a species due to vested interests — things that threaten our survival. These range from the ones that are commonly spoken about, like global warming and environmental destruction. They also include synthetic chemicals and nano materials that are giving us cancer and making us sterile, an economic system that ignores externalities and the tragedy of the commons, and our challenges with making sustainable decisions in an increasingly complex World.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
Most founders love to talk about leadership and there’s little question that they consider themselves leaders.
But leading is a lot more than creating a vision and raising funds.
Leading means modeling the right choice and who better than Wally Bock, my favorite leadership guru, to explain what that really means.
Leadership by Example
“There is no leadership without leadership by example.”
I heard that bit of wisdom from the lips of Captain James Westley Ayers, USMC. But I only remember the quote because of the example he set.
My father said that, “You’re alive as long as they tell stories about you.” Many of us who knew Captain Ayers are still telling stories about him half a century after we experienced his leadership. The big lesson for me was: leaders care for their people.
That’s Marine doctrine. A leader has two jobs. You must accomplish the mission and you must care for the people. But this is more than “leaders eat last.” This is a way of thinking about your responsibility for the people you lead.
One set of Captain Ayers stories revolve around the “meat he couldn’t use.” Our unit had lots of young, married Marines who were living off base, trying to make it on the couple hundred bucks the Marine Corps paid us, and whatever their spouse could bring in. By the middle of the month, it was always hard times. It was time for peanut butter sandwiches and fried baloney for dinner.
And then Captain Ayers would show up at the door. He always asked, “I wonder if you can help me?”
The problem was something like “I’ve got a whole bunch of meat I can’t use, and would you take some off my hands, as a favor?” Sometimes he bought more than he could handle. Sometimes his freezer had broken. Sometimes he bought all that meat for a reunion that got cancelled. Whatever it was, he asked if you would be kind enough to take some meat, say enough for a couple of months of meals, off his hands.
By the time I encountered Captain Ayers, the Marine Corps had drilled into me the idea that a leader‘s goal is to accomplish the mission. Captain Ayers showed me what it means to care for your people. Most of that caring wasn’t dramatic. He encouraged and suggested. He told you the truth.
I experienced that when I wanted to apply for a program that required his recommendation. He spent a half hour telling me that he wouldn’t do it because I wasn’t ready and explaining why. Then he took another half hour to tell me what I had to do to be ready in a year.
I haven’t always lived up to Captain Ayers’ example, but it’s always been there as a shining standard for me. That’s what leadership by example is all about.
When I got out of the Marines, and started in business, I encountered something very different. I won’t give his name, because I hope he’s reformed since I knew him, I call him “My Worst Boss Ever.”
Worst Boss Ever’s example wasn’t so great. He was selfish, haughty, and mean. He relished catching people doing something wrong and belittling them in public.
Leadership by Example Is Like A Superpower
Leadership by example is a superpower. It influences the people you lead and affects the choices they make. Like any superpower, you can use it for good or not.
The people who lead you early in your career have a huge impact on the way you lead. My research in police agencies produced “leadership trees” of good supervisors who had learned their craft working for other good supervisors early in their career.
You’re Going to Set the Example, So Set A Good One
I was fortunate. I experienced Captain Ayers and other effective leaders before I experienced my Worst Boss Ever. When I encountered him, I knew he was a jerk, and how he acted did not model the leader I wanted to become.
You don’t have any choice about setting the example. That’s built into human nature. The only choice you have is whether you will set a good example or a bad one.
Bottom Line
There is no leadership without leadership by example. You don’t have a choice about that. Your only choice is whether you will set a good example or a bad one.
It is said, “Cut off the head, and the body will wither.” During World War II, the Germans made every effort to kill off enemy officers, assuming that without their leadership Allied troops would crumble. But a funny thing happened: Every time a leader was put out of commission, someone else stepped up and assumed the role—whether or not he held rank.
The impromptu replacements didn’t think about it, discuss it, or worry about whether they could successfully do it; in the chaos of battle, they took the initiative, did what was necessary, and became “leaders in the instance.”
Leaders aren’t born, nor are they promoted, appointed, or anointed. Leaders develop by doing; they develop with assistance from their managers and company, without it, and, sometimes, in spite of it.
Once in a management role, they have no choice, because today’s workplace requires an enlightened, demanding, and independent workforce that has no problem voting with its feet when unhappy.
Decades ago, a major disservice was done to business when the idea that managers and leaders were separate and that leaders were “better” than managers was introduced. Sadly, that attitude is still in force today, but look carefully at these distinctions, from Warren Bennis’s On Becoming a Leader, and ask yourself how well any manager or leader can perform in the twenty-first-century workplace without both sets of skills.
The manager maintains; the leader develops.
The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.
The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.
The difference between being labeled a good, mediocre, or bad manager is often the difference between how many of the so-called leadership traits the manager embraces. Leaders are said to have vision and the ability to communicate it to their people, but that is exactly what every manager, even the lowest-level team leader, must do, within the scope of their role, if they want their people to be productive and innovative.
It is good to remember that people do not join companies because of the CEO or a few top executives—they join for the culture and the people, specifically their team and manager.
These two areas are tightly interwoven; there is an overall company culture and a subculture perpetrated by the manager to whom they report, no matter how junior. And each subculture is influenced more by the person directly above than by the person in the corner office.
Therefore, disseminating these skills throughout the organization requires a concerted effort that starts with the CEO and extends across the executive ranks, because it is on the rocky shores of culture that this effort usually sinks.
To lead means to show initiative, which means taking risks and braving the possibility of failure.
In a culture where failure is cause for anything from private sarcasm to public belittling and even dismissal, who in their right mind will show initiative? If the messenger is killed, who will speak up when the news is bad?
In short, senior managers have no choice but to push leadership down through the ranks—just as responsibility was pushed down forty years ago, as organizations flattened and companies stripped away management levels.
Life and work are always about choices, and promoting leadership throughout your part of the organization is a matter of choice, whether or not those above you make the same choice.
This article was first published in the October 2009issue of The Conference Board magazine.
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
I wrote this back in 2014. Obviously, I didn’t mention harassment because the post focused on what was in the news, and it wasn’t talked about all that openly, unlike now.
Sadly, nothing has changed. It’s still news and people are surprised.
I get it. I get what’s going on in terms of women in the workplace is news.
I get it that it is important to remind people that for all the progress that’s been made some things haven’t changed.
It’s still assumed that it’s OK to ask professional women, such as lawyers and marketing execs, to do stuff that would never be asked of the men in the organization.
“…plan parties, order food, take notes in meetings and join thankless committees…bring cupcakes for a colleague’s birthday, order sandwiches for office lunches and answer phones”
By the same token, it’s news that board diversity is moving at glacial speed, primarily because boards only want people with experience and to have experience they need to serve on a board.
“Recruiting women and minorities to boards is being slowed because of boards’ unwillingness to look at candidates who have not yet served on boards,” said Ron Lumbra, co-leader of the CEO and board services practice for Russell Reynolds. “There’s a premium on experience.’’
So while I have no problem with these subjects being presented over and over in the news, there is one thing I don’t understand.
Why are so many people surprised by the information?
Is the general population so naïve that they actually believe women are no longer asked to do tasks that are closer to house work than business work?
Do they really believe that the lack of board diversity is a function of the lack of experience as opposed a desire to spend time with people like themselves who are well within their comfort zones?
The sad part is that while it’s still news, it’s certainly not a surprise.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
If you were sitting in Starbucks and heard the following from a man and a woman you couldn’t see, what would your reaction be?
If we can get every business in the world to adopt a global problem, get slightly smaller businesses to adopt a national problem, get smaller businesses still to adopt local problems, then we can get on top of pretty well every problem in the world.
Snicker at their naiveté? Wonder how they would monetize the idea? Drool a bit over the enormous trove of data they would have? Maybe give some thought on how you could get into the action?
Not that you would admit those thoughts in public.
But in the end, you would probably just shrug and write them off as a couple of idealistic dreamers who were unlikely to get anywhere with ideas like that.
Why?
Because they didn’t sound as if they had the passion, the drive, the pure grit, to pull off a truly world-changing idea.
All these scenarios are predicated on the assumption that the people talking were just people.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
Short post, longer articles, but worth the read.
Not all founders are focused on valuation.
Some think it through, realize their mission is the most important thing and find like-minded investors.
What has made us really successful is this idea that we’re not building a company. What we’re doing is solving a problem. In that sense, we’re not emotional about our solution but, rather, constantly listening to our customers and the market and being able to then adjust alongside that. –Shivani Siroya, founder of Tala.
Others get seduced by the idea of ego-boosting valuations, money to drive growth and a buy-out that lets them retire — or do it again.
Most founders dream of building a product that eventually becomes a household name and sells for a billion dollars, but chasing that goal comes with some downsides. The grow-at-all-costs model inevitably forces you to sacrifice something you care about in service of short-term revenue growth, whether that’s your culture, your employee experience, your products, or your creative approach.
That said, when they find the fun gone some go to great lengths to extricate themselves and their company from the investor attitude of “growth first/last/always!” as opposed to the radical idea of pleasing customers, employees and thinking for the long-term.
The Wistia founders felt so strongly that they preferred debt to selling — a large amount of debt.
We turned down the offer to sell Wistia and instead took on $17.3M in debt. This allowed us to buy out our investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry.
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
I was reminded of this post Friday when KG shared some thoughts about leadership. The standard saying, “there is no ‘I’ in team” is all too true, but changing a lowercase ‘i’ to uppercase can often alter a word’s meaning substantially.
If you truly want a culture of innovation, then you also need to create a culture of leadership.
Last week I commented that if the ‘i’ in leadership is capitalized it changes leadership to leadershIt.
Whereas leadership can be a great motivator, leadershIt is a guaranteed demotivator.
Visions and other leadership functions done with an eye to self-aggrandizement aren’t likely to resonate whether done by positional leaders, leaders in the instance or those who aspire.
Because initiative and leadership are synonymous, leadership needs to be pushed out of the corner office and spread throughout the organization; doing so will encourage growth, creativity and innovation.
If leadership is the fertilizer then culture is the water, without which nothing will grow, and people are the seeds from which ideas come.
By spreading leadership evenly through out your company garden and watering regularly, leaving no unfertilized or dry patches in which a seed will be stunted or die, you assure yourself a bountiful harvest that will be the envy of your competitors.
Two follow-up posts have more on this topic here and here.
This isn’t a new idea, just a new way of phrasing it; Lao Tzu said it best 4000 years ago, “To lead the people walk behind them.”
The one thing that remains constant in all these discussions is that you always have a choice—this time it’s between leadership and leadershIt.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
As a founder I’m identified as a leader, but I don’t believe that any position makes one a leader.
Nor do visions, speeches, brilliant presentations or skilled fundraising.
I believe you recognize a leader by the quality of their team.
That doesn’t mean hiring someone else’s stars, it means hiring good people and providing all of them an environment that helps them become stars.
Over the years, I’ve collected short quotes that inspire me and help me become a leader in fact, not just in name.
Here is one of my favorites.
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
John Buchan,
historian and political leader
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
I’ve always found all the talk about how to learn to be a leader amusing. That’s because all the book learnin’ doesn’t mean squat unless it accurately translates to actions. Even studying real life leaders only takes you so far, since they approach situations based on who they are and their life experiences and you aren’t them and never will be.
That’s why no matter the expert or their success you still need to at least tweak their solutions to fit your situation and your MAP.
And be sure to read the comment’s at both Steve’s site and mine.
Today Steve Roesler wrote a terrific post briefly recapping a Peter Drucker article in the Harvard Business Review called “Managing Oneself” (Steve included a link to the full article).
A part of that article is The Act of Noticing and it really resonated with me.
“While everyone is blogging, Twittering or tweeting, linking in, booking their faces, and coming up with other digital ways to “connect”, it would be good to ask: “Am I too busy to notice?”
I bookmarked an article last week that included solid research about the bulk of the population preferring to buy goods and services through face-to-face contact. Now I can’t find it because I was so darned connected online I didn’t actually pay attention to the title or where I filed it.
This leads into the video below. I was reminded of Emotional Intelligence pioneer Daniel Goleman’s TED talk a couple of years ago. If you want to know the connectedness between emotions, business, and “noticing”, this will be time very well spent. Close your door. Now. Tell you’re boss you are doing professional development. You are.”
I recently wrote that“No one is expecting you to solve the problems, but you can reach out and touch just one life. If everyone over 21 did that we would be well on the way to change.”
All I can add is that we better start noticing before all the lights are turned off for good.
Now go see your friends and tell them; have a ‘noticing’ contest together with a ‘doing’ contest.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
