Unfortunately, the things that are drummed into our heads growing up continue to harass and control us throughout adulthood.

So it’s no surprise that the parental optimization and monitoring that did so much damage to millennials continues to haunt them as adults resulting in mundane task avoidance and burnout.

BuzzFeed’s Anne Helen Petersen wrote a very personal essay explaining millennial burnout. Interesting because in spite of being raised in Montana where she didn’t suffer the more extreme versions of optimization found in more urban areas, she still suffers from burnout.

Why am I burned out? Because I’ve internalized the idea that I should be working all the time. Why have I internalized that idea? Because everything and everyone in my life has reinforced it — explicitly and implicitly — since I was young. Life has always been hard, but many millennials are unequipped to deal with the particular ways in which it’s become hard for us.

It’s not the big things that affect her, but the little ones.

I realized that the vast majority of these tasks shares a common denominator: Their primary beneficiary is me, but not in a way that would actually drastically improve my life. They are seemingly high-effort, low-reward tasks, and they paralyze me.

72% of Boomers are white, 61% of Gen X is white, but of the 80 million millennials only 56% are white, but a large percentage of that 56% were raised privileged in middle class or better homes.

Many of the behaviors attributed to millennials are the behaviors of a specific subset of mostly white, largely middle-class people born between 1981 and 1996. But even if you’re a millennial who didn’t grow up privileged, you’ve been impacted by the societal and cultural shifts that have shaped the generation. Our parents — a mix of young boomers and old Gen-Xers — reared us during an age of relative economic and political stability. As with previous generations, there was an expectation that the next one would be better off — both in terms of health and finances — than the one that had come before.

But they are not better off, nor is the world they’re inheriting.

A few days later Quartzy’s Jessanne Collins wrote about her own burnout

I related precisely to Petersen when she wrote: “Things that should’ve felt good (leisure, not working) felt bad because I felt guilty for not working; things that should’ve felt “bad” (working all the time) felt good because I was doing what I thought I should and needed to be doing in order to succeed.”

and how having a kid changed her thinking.

The strength to say “no”: to pass on things that aren’t worth your time and energy; to skip events you don’t really want to go to but feel like you “should”; to take Instagram with a grain of salt. To not sweat the small stuff, in other words, or at least to reject the notion that by not sweating the small stuff quite as much, we’re not measuring up to some impossible standard.

Much of Boomer and older Gen X attitudes can be traced back to a saying that always chilled me. It went something like, life is a challenge to be overcome.

I preferred a different version that went like this, life is a mystery to be lived, not a challenge to be overcome.

It dovetails nicely with Peterson’s idea that life should be lived, not optimized.

Image credit: Beck Pitt

As I said yesterday, millennials aren’t what you think.

It’s pretty stupid to think that 80 million people would all think and act identically. Not all Boomers did drugs, not all Gen X were slackers and not all millennials were spoiled and entitled.

Just as an animal reflects how it’s raised, so does a human.

When I’m accosted by an unruly dog I hold the owners responsible.

The deprived generation of the Depression raised the entitled generation of Boomers who raised the much entitled, very special generation of Millennials, so when you look at millennials you should look to their parents — the Boomers.

Time magazine’s 2013 cover story was written with an eye to covering for its Boomer reader base. It did a good job by locking in the millennial myth.

“The Me Me Me Generation—Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents.”

Not that they had much choice.

No generation grows up in a vacuum and economics plays a large role.

The first wave of millennials hit the job market in 2008.

(…) millennials were in the fourth year of the “jobless recovery,” facing high unemployment, mounting debt, and an eroded social safety net. And yet, with breathtaking cluelessness, TIME framed the millennials’ desperate search for stable work as a privileged character flaw—look at the kids too flaky to handle “choosing from a huge array of career options.”

Options maybe; actual jobs, very few.

Worse, the attitudes drummed into our heads growing up are very hard to shake at any age and some are still wreaking havoc.

Join me tomorrow for a look at what’s happening now.

Image credit: speight

Stereotyping is stupid.

It’s stupid because you can’t generalize out the traits of a few to an entire group.

And the larger the group, the stupider the results of stereotyping.

However, the lure of lumping together a large, demographic group for selling purposes is catnip to marketers and also the media.

The problem was well illustrated over the last few years in the depiction of Generation Y — those worthless, entitled Millennials.

80 million of them.

That thinking will go a long way to screwing up your efforts to sell to, hire and manage them.

So think about it.

Don’t you find it a bit ridiculous that 80 million people all think and act identically?

People who come from totally different backgrounds.

Not to mention totally different states; what are the chances of people from California/Maine/Texas/Florida raising their kids so identically that they would think alike?

All 80 million, if you listen to the media.

Jessica Kriegel provides great insight and an in-depth look at the stupidity in her new book, Unfairly Labeled: How Your Workplace Can Benefit from Ditching Generational Stereotypes.

The more you look at generational stereotypes the stupider they become.

The more you buy into them the more money it costs you and your company.

Flickr image credit: Umberto Salvagnin

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over the last decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.  

Eight years have passed since I wrote this, but it still holds true. Gen Y is eight years older and its leading edge are already producing Gen Z, which will continue the disruption, make unimaginable demands on the workplace and eventually become the status quo. That’s just the nature of the beast. Read other Golden Oldies here

I love it. Another article focusing on what companies need to do to hire Gen X and Y—of course they’re a big chunk of the workforce and getting bigger—Gen Y alone is 80 million strong and will compose 44% of workers by 2020.

Not that I disagree with the comments, but that the focus is strictly on doing these things in order to lure younger employees because they demand it, when the same perks [listed at this link–Ed] will attract works of any age.

‘The move often is aimed at attracting the youngest members of the work force — Generations X and Y — who are more outspoken than their baby boomer predecessors about demanding a life outside the office, said Lynne Lancaster, co-author of When Generations Collide.’

What people seem to forget is that the Boomers were plenty disrupting and more demanding than their parents—in fact, historically each generation has disrupted the status quo and demanded more than its predecessor in one way or another.

Just as every generation has focused on various traits of the upcoming generation and deemed them the end of civilization—if not the world.

I’m sure our hunter ancestors looked with horror at their gatherer children and predicted starvation if the herds weren’t followed.

I have no problem when Gen X and Y talk their demands and walk when they aren’t met because most of those demands will improve the workplace for all ages, but they would do well to remember that eventually they will become their parents—maybe not to themselves, but to the newer generations agitating for change.

The other day I was asked the same question by two different managers, one Gen X and the other a leading edge Gen Y.

The subject was improving and strengthening weaknesses.

They both wanted to know if/when enough is enough.

That’s a question I found an answer to a long time ago, so I shared it, with the caveat that just because it worked for me didn’t mean it was right for them.

The short version I shared is that I stop a specific self-improvement effort when the ROI is too low for the energy (mental, physical, psychical) expended; in other words, there is no viable payoff.

Of course, “viable payoff” is strictly subjective, but any self-improvement effort includes certain expectations (your own, not other people’s) that should include a minimum.

Minimum not met means no viable payoff.

That isn’t to say that I fall back on the tired “that’s the way I am;” instead, I always found ways to off-set whatever action or attitude I’d spent energy changing as far as made sense.

Part of this comes from measuring ROI, but it also comes from intelligent prioritizing, which requires the recognition that time is finite and one needs to pick one’s battles.

Perhaps that’s what life, both personally and at work, is really all about—much like the saying that the journey is the best part.

In fact, I hope that when I’m gone those who knew me will say, “From self improvement to self acceptance. A good trip.”

Image credit: JJChandler.com

It’s a holiday weekend, so I thought I’d offer you a variety from which to pick and choose.

First up is a good overview of the business and political crises that are either ignored or denied by the leading players.

Polls show that our business, political and financial systems, and the people who lead them, are seen as lacking in ethics, competence and respect. … We have a crisis of ethical culture in both the public and private sectors.

Chris O’Brien offers a thoughtful look at money, motivation and Silicon Valley, although what he says applies universally.

That money motivates us to do our best is the ultimate expression of faith in the free market. Challenging this orthodoxy is heresy.

Yet research overwhelmingly indicates not only that money is not an effective incentive for creativity and innovation — it actually may make performance worse.

Next is an interesting commentary by Donna Flagg that looks below the typical views of managing Gen X and Y.

But really, I fail to see how this is different from any other good, old-fashioned generation gap where the underlying issue is simply about a need to understand differences.

Next is more insight about your brain and the subject of daydreaming; if you don’t daydream you may find it surprising.

But now that researchers have been analyzing those stray thoughts, they’ve found daydreaming to be remarkably common — and often quite useful. A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals.

Finally, the comments are in on Harvard’s Jim Heskett’s most recent online discussion considering whether strategy, execution or culture had the greatest impact on a company’s success. It’s definitely worth reading, both the initial article and the comments.

Respondents who ventured to place weights on the determinants of success gave the nod to culture by a wide margin.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

See all mY generation posts here.

I’ve written a lot about the problems and difficulties with Gen Y, but I want to make something clear.

Gen Y didn’t raise themselves to feel entitled, require constant praise or expect success for trying their hardest.

Jan left a comment a few weeks ago and I think she speaks for a large number of her generation, “There is a great amount of pressure to earn good grades and gain a GREAT career, as if somehow that is the only way to gain success in our lives. … The present often does not matter, including learning the subject. Students live under this constant pressure to make good grades, with that fear of failure programmed into the back of our minds.” (Please take a moment to read her entire comment.)

Decades ago after my sister had her first child she said, “I know that I’ll do things that mess up my kids, but they damn well won’t be the same things that messed us up,” and they weren’t.

This is normal life, with the previous generation screwing up their kids in some way and the kids eventually sorting it out—or not—and then moving on to the next generation, but it’s changed now.

Greg Jayne is the Sports Editor for my local paper and he summed it up nicely in a column about the people’s attitude towards performance enhancing drugs.

“Last year, Major League Baseball drew 78.6 million spectators to the ballpark… The sport generated about $6 billion in revenue, nearly twice what it generated in 2000 and roughly $20 for every man, woman and child in the United States. … The baseball-watching public simply doesn’t care that much about players who cheat the game. … We live in an era in which style trumps substance, and the superficial is held in such high regard that we all are diminished. Is there any reason to think that baseball should be different? Is there any reason to express moral outrage when somebody is trying to improve his performance and help his team win? That is, after all, the ethos of the time.”

Yet there are still supposed to be areas that are sacrosanct, people we assume will work for the good of our kids; people to whom we don’t give a second thought—until their actions blow up in our faces.

Priests/ministers/rabbis. Teachers. Family. Judges.

It’s terrible when people are driven by their own inner demons, but somehow it’s even worse when they ruin kids’ lives out of plain old fashioned greed.

“…two judges pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud in a scheme that involved sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks. … Virtually all former colleagues and courthouse workers would not allow themselves to be identified because the federal investigation into the kickback scheme was continuing and they feared for their jobs if they alienated former allies of the judges.”

Obviously, it’s not just individuals, but the laissez faire attitude prevalent in a large percentage of all generations that’s driving the problems to levels not seen previously.

Enough is enough. We need change—but where to start?

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Image credit: drinksmachine on flickr

The last half of CandidProf’s post yesterday made me queasy, especially when he said, “In the city where I live, the local suburban school district had a case of a mathematics teacher who was noted for being far tougher than other teachers.  The parents of the students in this teacher’s class complained that their kids were working too hard.  The teacher gave far too much homework.  Too many of her students did not pass.  Eventually she was fired.”

In many cases these are the same parents who babble on about their strong ethical/religious (take your choice of which) principals and moral superiority and are oh-so-quick with their judgments of others.

They are the same ones who scream at the coach for not letting their child play; condemn the teacher when their child’s grades aren’t up to their expectations; complain that the boss is incompetent when their child is fired for poor performance.

Supposedly it’s parents’ responsibility to lead their children by providing a value structure, encouraging/supporting their growth and doing all those other leadership things about which we’re constantly reading.

I say supposedly because based on the very visible results very few are actually doing it.

The bad old times when the assumption was that the child is always wrong have been replaced with the assumption that everybody is wrong except the child—as long as the child is theirs and the family is of an acceptable social level with enough economic power to insist.

I’m not saying the old way was good, but it did produce stronger character than having every bump in the road smoothed out for you.

But, then, the children long ago stopped taking their direction from adults, preferring the advice and ‘wisdom’ of their peers.

The problem is that advice sans judgment; a false belief that whatever they screw up their parents can/will fix; or a strong ‘the rules apply to everybody but me’ attitude can have serious reprecussions.

So where exactly are we headed?

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Image credit: budgetstoc CC license

Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: snackx

Monday TWR Lighting CEO Ken Meador shared information and insights on what works in his company and doing business in general; Tuesday I wrote that satisfying most people’s top four desires was more important than money if you want your people to stay.

Considering the 11 year average tenure, TWR seems to have nailed the retention issue, but I wondered about salaries and the demographic challenge the company faces to grow, so I asked Ken.

Me: Are your salaries comparable to the area? Higher? Lower?

Ken: Geographically we are marginally comparable, market/competitor wise we are a bit lower. Houston is still a tight job market with plenty of jobs and limited amount of educated (legal) talent from which to draw. Those employees who make up the heart and soul of the TWR Lighting stay because they “feel” a part of, rather than apart from the company.

Me: Do have profit sharing?

Ken: No. We have a company wide bonus pool based on performance metrics, revenue, SG&A & EBITDA. Also, 11 key people in the company have been rewarded as shareholders.

me: I ask because I’ve always believed that people don’t stay for money and I think you prove that, but thought I’d better check:)

Ken: We find that those who leave for “tha money” are typically at the lower end of our employee spectrum or Gen Ys.

Me: What’s the median age of your workers?

Ken: 41

Me: What are you doing about hiring and keeping Gen Y workers?

Ken: At the moment, little. They have a different point of view regarding “work ethic”, team participation and adaptation to our culture, which by most counts TWR is progressive in comparison to others. A “take it or leave me alone” attitude surfaced after a period of time.

Me: Your comment that it was your Gen Y workers who left for money seems to be a real world contradiction of what they claim—that they’re more interested in culture and responsible management, etc. than money.

Ken: Yeah , I’ve read the same things and what companies are doing to “accommodate” to the whims of the Gen Yers. Talk about a “tipping point”, paranoia in business, even big business, that geeks will inherit the business by techno-proxy has altered business models, changed HR hiring practices and has created a whole new industry in the “kid-glove” handling of these mercenary newbie’s. The Gen Yers are only interested in responsible management as long as it doesn’t interfere with their personal culture. Down deep they want the money just as much as any generation before them.

Me: What do you think is their real attitude?

Ken: See the answer to the question above. Suffice it to say we are a small player in the Gen Y arena, basically techie CAD types. Even using our interview processes (never said we were perfect) we were prone to give the benefit of the doubt that once they were immersed in our culture, they would adapt. However, our experience has been that they have less than essential people & communication skills (preferring instead great texting acronyms), strictly 8-5ers which doesn’t fit well with a 24/7/365 model and carried an unreal expectation of their “worth” to the business.

Me: Based on your employee longevity you must be facing the problem of replacing retiring workers. How do you plan to retain all their knowledge and pass it on to newer/younger workers?

Ken: Tribal knowledge transfer is probably the most critical aspect of transitioning employees. To date, we accomplish the transfer of knowledge by continuous cross-training in the most critical areas of product manufacturing and assembly, materials logistics and inventory control and sales. Supplemental to this is the participation by so many in the hiring processes, involvement and feedback in the lean manufacturing processes and cross-functional involvements in project prioritization and execution.

Ken says he will respond to your comments and questions himself.

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