Generation Screwed?
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Peter and Tony. It seems they had developed a web page entitled Generation Screwed. Being an inherently curious soul, I took a look to see what they were arguing.
On one hand, they presented some rather interesting statistics on the challenges facing the Millennial generation as it enters the workforce. On the other, there were no sources stated for these statistics, which I knew in some cases were outright wrong. The thing that first got my attention was the obscene icon placed at both the top and bottom of the screen. I’ll be the first to appreciate creative attempts to capture attention, but if the authors felt it necessary to publish an obscenity in order to do so, maybe they should have taken the time to develop a better argument!
In their e-mail, Peter and Tony asked for my reaction to what they had created and suggested that I pass it along to my readers. In a way, I am doing so here, but not with the intent they had in mind.
In this age of the so-called citizen journalist, it is easy to be overcome by the enormous amount of information on any subject that can be generated by a Google search lasting .23 seconds. But all this makes me wonder what’s happening to the quality of information or, better still, data we are creating. The older of us may feel overwhelmed by having to sift through everything that purports to be relevant to a topic. But at least most of us have a built in crap detector based on experience.
What about those who have come of age in the digital world that has proliferated in the past few years? Will they be able to discern between knowledge worthy of learning and information that looks the part but is just plain wrong? Most of us have become increasingly skeptical of everything we see and hear. Today’s digital natives have been skeptical from the beginning. But doesn’t skepticism require a benchmark of knowledge and experiences against which all input is compared? If everything is suspect, then how do you know what’s worth knowing?
I wonder if all this doesn’t contribute the papers that students seem to cobble together with information taken at face value. A few years ago, a high school humanities teacher in New Jersey assigned a research paper on a particular topic. What the students didn’t know was that he had posted a bunch of bogus information on Wikipedia under the same heading. About 24 hours before the paper was due, he replaced the original bogus information with a different bunch of bogus information. As you might suspect, he ended up with two types of submissions, one containing the original nonsense and another containing nonsense 2.0.
The fact that most turned to Wikipedia first is troubling. The fact that most failed to buttress their research with other sources is even more troubling. Sadly, many in the Millennial generation are not learning to decipher what’s worth knowing from what’s not. If this is the case, how will they able to argue persuasively on any issue going forward?
Tech vs. Tradition
The battle of the generations is playing out on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 58th St. in Manhattan. As two retail giants, FAO Schwartz and the Apple Store stand side-by-side, consumers wonder how the 150-year-old seller of wooden blocks and baby dolls will win the battle for young consumers against Apple’s shiny new tech gadgets.
Luxury retail expert Pam Danziger says that the key is to appeal to the Baby Boomer grandparents.
"Certainly parents want to buy special gifts for their children, but it’s really much more the grandparents," said Danzinger, author of Putting the Luxe Back in Luxury. "There’s a need for, and an interest in, these high-end, more distinctive specialty toys."
She states that the FAO brand could be sitting on a potential gold mine if it can reach the wallets of this luxury-toy loving generation.
Case Study
I am 42 and manage a regional office for a large insurance company. Last year, we were instructed to halve the size of our office space and give people permission to go mobile. This includes agents, underwriters, adjusters and administrative personnel. While most have welcomed the opportunity to do this, the technology transition for those 50 and older has become quite the headache. I do not have the budget for a tech support person. We are expected to rely on each other or a couple of people in the corporate office. But a number of the Boomers have come to rely on younger colleagues and those at corporate for every little question. I’ve had a number of younger workers complain that this is time-consuming and annoying. On top of this, I’m getting calls from corporate about the volume of calls to their people as well. What would you suggest?
This comes under the law of unintended consequences. While the decision makers above your pay grade thought they were saving lots of money by reducing leased space, they didn’t factor in this issue and probably several others. Multiple this practice by the number of regional offices and you probably have peers elsewhere facing the same dilemma. So here are three suggestions:
First, check with your peers and find out if they are facing the same challenge. If so, what are they doing to cope? There’s no point in reinventing the wheel. You might even convene a conference call to strategize. A cabal like this will also provide you and your fellow managers with more leverage should it be necessary in persuading corporate to throw more resources at the problem.
Second, survey both your struggling Boomers and those who seem to be consulted the most. Ask each group where the sources of trouble seem to be. You may find considerably different perceptions of what’s happening. Look for patterns. Is there a particular application that’s harder to understand? Are there basic issues around hardware, printers and so on? Perhaps it is simply a resistance to learning new things on the part of a few. This information will inform the way you should respond.
Third, develop and deliver some training on the issues that seem most prevalent. (You’re never going to be able to address them all.) For the use of basic programs consult the web. There are a host of short instructional video clips available, for instance, on Microsoft Office, Excel, and so on. Search platforms such as YouTube.com and Vimeo.com to find segments that you think will provide the most easily understandable instructions. Then send those who are struggling an e-mail with links to these clips. Any time they need to, they can refer back to these instructions.
Providing this kind of instruction for your proprietary or industry-specific software will probably require you to create your own. Once again, however, there are ample resources for doing do. Depending on the situation, you may ask one of those to whom everyone turns to create short instructional videos on typical screens, transactions or procedures. Using software such as Camtasia makes this easy to implement. Then upload these videos to a YouTube or Vimeo channel or on a proprietary website.
The reality is that some of your older colleagues may be defaulting to the easy way out rather than taking the time and energy to embrace the software they find challenging to use. In this case, it will be necessary to make clearer your expectations that they come up to speed within a reasonable period of time. At the same time, it would be a good idea to coach your de-facto tech support people in the art of saying "no" in a diplomatically firm way. This transition will take some time, but doing nothing will result in lost productivity and hard feelings.
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