Millennials & Management: The Essential Guide to Making it Work at Work

By Lee Caraher

As management ages and prepares to work longer than previous generations and Millennials join companies at a steady rate, companies are faced with the truth: they can’t just wait for management to age out to fix the dissonance and tension between Boomers and Millennials in the workplace. Finding productive ways to work across the generation gap is essential, and the organizations that do this well will have significant strategic advantages over those that don’t.

Millennials & Management: The Essential Guide to Making It Work at Work addresses a very real concern of large and small businesses nationwide: how to motivate, collaborate with, and manage the millennial generation—who now make up almost 50% of the American workforce. The key is to change our attitude from one of disbelief and derision to acceptance and respect without giving up our work standards. Using real-world examples, author Lee Caraher gives leaders data-driven steps to take to co-create a productive workplace for today and tomorrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bibliomotion, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781629560281

Book preview

Praise for

Millennials & Management

and Lee Caraher

Lee Caraher has captured what the Millennial generation demands from their employers and shows businesses how to harness the power of this new generation to co-create successful, energized businesses of the future, in which everyone will benefit, right now.

—Nilofer Merchant, Thinkers 50 #1 Future Thinker, 2013; author of 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra

"Millennials & Management cuts through the theory and rhetoric and gives managers and employees alike a clear way forward for successful teams and workplaces. A must-read for leaders who want to future-proof their businesses, Lee Caraher’s funny, concise, and practical advice is easy to follow and will make a huge difference in your organization right away."

—Larry Weber, chairman and CEO, Racepoint Global; owner, W2 Group; author of The Digital Marketer: Ten New Skills You Must Learn to Stay Relevant and Customer-Centric

Finally a book that gets beyond the survey data and the myths and provides practical advice for anyone who works with Millennials. Lee Caraher writes from personal experience in a clear, conversational style with real-life examples and a sense of humor. Must reading for anyone who supervises young employees or leads a business or non-profit in twenty-first century America. Enterprising Millennials will also find value in this book.

—John Boland, president & CEO, KQED, San Francisco

"I didn’t think it possible to capture the nuances of all the complex demographic groups now roaming around the workplace. In Millennials & Management, Lee Caraher has done just that in a concise and compelling way. There were times when I said to myself, ‘Hey, I know that person.’ What Lee tells us, is how to deal with that person to create a successful organization. A must-read for all managers."

—Dr. Richard A. Moran, president of Menlo College; author of Navigating Tweets, Feats and Deletes

"It’s been said Millennials are unruly, unmanageable. But after reading Lee Caraher’s Millennials & Management, I wonder how the workforce will manage without them. Boomers brought their daughters and sons to work; Millennials are bringing their dreams. And that’s good for everyone. Incisive, practical, timely—from a been-there, managed-Millennials-well CEO.

—Whitney Johnson, author of Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream

With a mix of research, real-world stories, and easy-to-understand and implement instruction, Lee Caraher provides a refreshing, optimistic way forward that will get everyone working together and keep Boomers and Xers engaged in the workplace as Millennials become the largest generation at work.

—Keith Kitani, CEO, Guidespark employee communications and engagement

"Millennials & Management is a primer on how to skillfully lead this emerging segment of our work population now and into the future. Lee Caraher offers a wealth of tools and techniques to address even the thorniest management dilemmas. Both the experienced supervisor and novice to staff leadership will find immense value in her sage words."

—Mitchell Friedman, EdD, APR, Associate Dean, Student Affairs and Career Development, Presidio Graduate School

Millennials are a pivotal part of today’s working environment and defining culture. Caraher cracks the code on how to create a high-functioning intergenerational workplace built for tomorrow with a funny telling of real-world work experiences that everyone will recognize. Read it with your colleagues and help them grow, engage, and succeed today.

—Jerry Ervin, president & CEO Paragon Strategies, Management Training and Consulting

First published by Bibliomotion, Inc.

39 Harvard Street

Brookline, MA 02445

Tel: [phone]

www.bibliomotion.com

Copyright © 2015 by Lee Caraher

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Caraher, Lee.

    Millennials & management : the essential guide to making it work at work / Lee Caraher.

       pages cm

     Summary: Millennials & Management: The Essential Guide to Making it Work at Work addresses how to motivate, collaborate with, and manage the millennial generation—who now make up almost 50% of the American workforce—Provided by publisher.

   ISBN 978-1-62956-027-4 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-62956-028-1 (ebook) — ISBN 978-1-62956-029-8 (enhanced ebook)

   1. Personnel management. 2. Generation Y—Employment. 3. Diversity in the workplace—Management. 4. Intergenerational relations. 5. Employee motivation. I. Title. II. Title: Millennials and management.

   HF5549.C2897 2014

   658.30084'4—dc23

2014027245

Contents

Introduction

PART 1

Millennials & Management: Today’s Dynamic

1 Boomer Reality

2 Kids These Days

3 The Millennial Mind-Set

PART 2

Making It Work at Work

4 Making Work Meaningful

5 Soliciting Input

6 A Good Fit on a Good Team

7 Meaningful Acknowledgment and Appreciation

8 Give Clear Direction

9 Feedback Is a Gift

10 Be Transparent

11 A Full-Life Approach To Work

12 Access Up the Chain

13 Mutual Mentorship

14 Outline Career Path Options

Conclusion: Putting It All Together: Making It Work at Work

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

When I started Double Forte, a public relations and digital marketing agency, in 2002 with my friend Dan Stevens (who has now moved on from the business), we were determined to have a better day, every day, than we’d had in our previous jobs. The two mandates: (1) our company would be independent and small, and (2) we’d have no twentysomethings to babysit—I had had it with the younger generation in my previous job, where I’d had hundreds of them in my group.

In 2002, these mandates were easy to realize. Large agency holding companies were still reeling from the 2000 tech bubble burst (for tech centers San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle), and wouldn’t be investing or acquiring smaller companies in my neck of the woods for a while. And in San Francisco you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a great PR/communications person with at least ten years of experience who needed a job. Life was good, in relative terms, as we embarked on our business, and off we were to start the slow and steady process of building a business that would fund our lives.

By 2008 our model was working well, and business has grown every year, to a staff of eighteen. Some of those holding companies were interested in buying our business, but we weren’t interested in changing our lives too much. And then the market changed it for us.

September 15, 2008, I started the day rearranging my workload so I could work three or four days per week, and by the end of the day, thought I’d be lucky to have a ten-hour day seven days a week to manage through the drop in the market and the consequences that would be felt by our clients, and therefore by us.

We managed pretty well through the rest of the year. But as we entered 2009, it was clear to me that we were going to have to change our model. For one thing, we were going to run out of those experienced people who liked to work soon; almost no one had been hired in our industry from late 2000 to 2004, so people with ten years of experience were going to be pretty scarce. And to ensure more flexibility in the business we needed to lower our overhead percentage, which meant hiring people at much lower salaries than those the experienced, older professionals required.

We changed our model to ensure our future, and assimilated younger, less experienced staff. Our model is different from that of most other agencies. As I described it to a dozen peers in San Francisco, New York, and Boston, I got a lot of lightbulbs of appreciation and then, That sounds great … let me know how it goes, because I’ll never be able to do that. I knew I was on to something promising, but we were going to have to figure it out without help from others who had done it before, because no one had done it before, as far as I could tell.

Hiring our first Millennial was a watershed moment. This young woman’s work was fantastic. But. She brought her service dog, a Chihuahua-pug mix to work without asking, and thus began the parade of everyone else’s newly-minted service dogs. She brought lots of new ideas and opportunities into my office, which I loved but didn’t quite know what to do with. And she asked for four weeks off before her wedding, five weeks before the wedding. (To her credit, when her manager explained why the time off wasn’t possible, the lightbulb went on.) This woman is phenomenal, and I’d hire her back in a millisecond (she moved out of the area to be closer to her family), but working with her forced me to realize that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Mostly, she made it clear that what worked for Generation X would not work for Millennials.

I looked for help from colleagues across the country to no avail—everyone was struggling with how to work with Millennials. I read everything I could get my hands on, but was put off by the bitter Boomers who wrote or contributed to the conversation. I was determined to have a positive attitude about figuring it out, even when the notion of adjusting drove me crazy.

After challenging ourselves to rethink our assumptions, we tweaked our model a bit to maximize the dynamics that Gen Y brought to the workplace; since then, Double Forte has been successful in closing the gap between the generations in our office.

Our business now has thirty-plus staffers, fully half—but no more than half—of whom are Millennials. We have very low turnover in a hot job market, and are lucky to have many candidates to choose from when we hire. My work, advising clients on external and internal communications, has changed dramatically in the last three years; I now spend a good chunk of time advising companies on how to work with, communicate with, and market to Millennials. I also advise on this topic to the nonprofit organizations on whose boards I sit. My phone seems to ring two or three times a month with people asking for time to talk about these struggles in their own workplaces.

In addition to drawing on my own experience with my clients and associates, I interviewed and surveyed hundreds of working people across the country in a wide range of industries and of many different ages and experience levels. I’ve included many of their stories in the book, and you’ll recognize these personalities in your own work I’m sure. Because about half of the people asked me not to use their names, I have changed all of the names in the book of people who told them their stories and I do not name the companies. What you’ll find in Millennials & Management is a compilation of practices that will help you make the most of your generationally diverse workforce; by reading about a wide range of experiences and ideas, you can take the best nuggets for your situation and apply them to create a cross-generational environment built for success today and tomorrow.

If you’re a Boomer or Gen X leader struggling to understand the Millennials in your office, or if you’re a Millennial trying to get through to your Boomer or Gen X boss, this book is for you. Understanding the perspectives of other generations and putting into practice the techniques I describe will create a smoother-running, more positive workplace for everyone.

Managers, this book will shed light on the Millennial mindset and help you find ways to work more productively with your younger colleagues, as well as appreciate the value they can bring to your business. I encourage you to read this book with your teams and discuss what rings true for your organizations, as well as look at how to apply the simple tenets I discuss to make your workplace work for everyone.

Millennials, read this book! You will get a good sense of why your older colleagues seem frustrated, and you will find easy-to-follow steps that will help you ease yourself onto a team or into the workplace. If you’re a recent college graduate, you will find information that will make it easier for you to get hired and transition smoothly into an office.

Parents of Millennials: this book is for you, too. Within it you will find ways to help your young adult children without hurting their chances and opportunities.

We can all work together well, I promise! The people and companies that figure this out now will have a significant strategic advantage over those that drag their feet. Remember, no one builds a successful company or career by themselves. The need to work with other people is one of the only constants in business. If we can bridge the gap between the generations in the office, and bring our distinct strengths to the table, we will be able to co-create positive, future-proof businesses in which Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials can prosper together

PART 1

Millennials & Management

Today’s Dynamic

1

Boomer Reality

Boomers are so bitter.

—Ted, age twenty-eight

I’ve got nothing good to say." That’s the answer I got when I asked a senior executive in a large Saint Louis marketing firm to talk with me about his experience with Millennials in his workplace, where more than fifty out of the 120-person staff are between twenty-two and thirty years of age. While it’s perhaps a bit extreme, this executive’s attitude sums up the general feeling I’ve encountered from Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) and late Gen Xers (born 1965–1979) as I explored ways to bridge the gap that seems to exist everywhere between older management and Millennials (born 1980–2000), particularly the younger of the cohort.

A quick Internet search on working with Millennials, also known as Generation Y, gives the impression that bitter feelings about the younger generation are a new phenomenon and that Baby Boomers are the first generation to deal with the ungrateful youth around them. Ha!

Thousands of years ago Plato wrote in Socrates’ voice,¹ The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. Sounds pretty current, although I’m not sure I’ve ever had a dainty.

Generational Definitions

²

Millennials: The generation born 1980–2000

Generation X: The generation born 1965–1979

Baby Boomers: The generation born 1946–1964

Silent Generation: The generation born 1925–1945

The Greatest Generation: The generation born before 1901-1924

The Bible is full of stories of generational discontent; the Middle Ages progress from one contentious generation gap to another over a period of five hundred years (finally, my degree in medieval history is applicable!); characters in Jane Austen’s Regency novels comment on young men these days; and, of course, Paul Lynde in Bye Bye Birdie summed it all up when he sang, What’s the matter with kids today? Generational divides are nothing new: but now we’re the ones who have to deal with it, so it feels like a new, heavy, and more important dilemma.

While I generally dislike generalizations, I think many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have talked themselves into bitter discontent about the Millennials in their workplaces based on (1) the reality Boomers and Xers face in their own lives and careers and (2) a set of misappropriated myths that perpetuate complaint. These two dynamics combine to create a