When I started my career we were debating theory “X” vs theory “Y”, baby boomers and the nature of people. Today we debate about what millennial’s want. Millennials are the people who became adults in the early 21st century, so basically they are 18 to 35 right now. The debate about how to manage them reminds me of the debates we used to have about working with the baby boomer generation.
A great bunch of the stuff written about how to manage millennials is so general it is useless. It is slightly more scientific than astrology. For instance, millennials want meaningful work and work life balance. They want to be listened to, they want to dress casually. I am not sure what workers don’t want those things. Fortune has noted that millennials are not all the same in their November 1st 2016 “Millennials are not Monolithic” edition (see here). Fortune says we are more alike than different but spends a whole magazine repeating the same generalizations.
Being treated as a part of the baby boomer generation never described me and I bet at least some of the millennials out there that are being managed via the latest and greatest theory dislike it too.
I never saw big advantages of being a baby boomer. The era of cheap college ended with advent of tuition inflation in the 1970s (1970-1985 12.4% annually). The era of large protests pretty much ended while I was still a boy scout. There were some small advantages to following the bulk of the baby boomers. By the time I came to high school, we could wear our hair past our collars and the assistant principal couldn’t hit us with a paddle.
One thing they used to say about baby boomers was that they lacked loyalty as employees. I graduated from college in Detroit with a shiny degree in accounting and an MBA (accounting graduate fellow) the same year GM laid off 70,000 workers with an estimated 15,000 people in finance. My main clients at KPMG were the city government and a series of weak and getting weaker manufacturers. I left for better climes after I put my time in for my CPA license. A couple of years after I’d moved to California, my father got laid off from a job he’d been at for 20 years. Lesson learned, loyalty was not a two way street.
Millennials are supposedly quick to quit a job. I think this is due to the confidence that they will find another, and realistically, most will find another. They don’t expect a lot of loyalty from an employer, and they show little.
Managing people via a theory has had a long history of failure. I have never been a huge fan of scientific management and Frederick Taylor. My dislike is how Taylor perceived workers. Treating the worker like a machine, transferring control from worker to management and a general sense of contempt of the work force were his key viewpoints . Yes, work flow improvement is important, and the quality initiatives such as six sigma can be traced back to his research, but for the most part, it is the idea of applying science to work, rather than his specific ideas that he is known for. He was virulently anti-union, while the way scientific management was implemented almost assuredly pushed more workers into joining a union.
Henri Fayol was a contemporary of Mr. Taylor. Unfortunately he wrote his book in 1916, in French in the midst of World War One. His book didn’t get translated until 1949, but if you read about his ideas today, they’d make a good primer on how to be a manager. Fayol had the advantage of actually working with people successfully. Something Frederick Taylor struggled with.
Millennials aren’t a different species of worker. They want what we all want, meaningful work, a laugh now and again, decent pay and a convivial office. We get that taken care of and we can stop worrying about what year our staff was born.
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Dr. John Zott is the principal consultant at Bates Creek Research & Consulting.
I am the chair of the Careers Committee at FEI Silicon Valley, a senior adjunct professor at Golden Gate University and I comment regularly on issues that affect growth businesses. If you are looking for a CFO for your consumer company, or are a former student, colleague or would just like to connect – reach out.