Generation Y: an amazing robustness indicator of your managerial World

« Young people are not interested in our company, its business, they are permanently connected to their smartphones ; their friends and their private life are far more important than the rest ; they do not respect hierarchy ; we are not able to motivate them ».

Socrates already said it 2500 years ago : « Our young people have bad manners, they mock authority, and they have no respect for age ».

Several clients asked us to use our Worlds method to help them to go over « the Ys are different » acknowledgement.

Here are some lessons of our missions.

1/ You do not have a choice, you have to learn to integrate the Ys

In 2015, the 20 to 30 years old represent 40% of the active population. Add to it that the Z generation (the less than 20 years old today), they will be majority in your organizations in ten years.

They are the ones that are going to be leading your 2020 company project. They are the ones who will be designing the next project.

2/Yes, the Ys are very different

Their World is specific, slightly different from our « historical » organizations.

·         Their greatness is, first of all, to reveal their potential and to progress…fast. They want to have fun in their professional life, mainly by giving meaning to what they are doing.

·         For them, recognition must be founded on proven skills and not seniority. That recognition must be translated by a transparent and fair remuneration system. They are not attracted by titles and job positions.

·         In their interactions, close relations are essential. Informal and transparent relations allow to accept constraints…from which they liberate themselves if they do not make sense.

·         It may seem that impulsion and reactivity are ruling their decisions, but they perfectly know what they want. If they have nothing to take or to learn, they just leave or they disengage. And you would have not seen it coming.

3/ You are totally responsible when they are disengaged

Compare their World with the one some of our companies propose them:

·         They expect speed, you give them complexity and heaviness

·         They expect autonomy carried by a sense, you let them only limited flexibility

·         They expect to feel themselves immediately useful, you tell them expertise is a matter of years

·         They expect their performance to be recognized and you insert them in collective grids based on seniority

·         They expect interactions, you block Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and you propose them professional social networks they never asked for and conceived by the X generation

·         They expect proximity and you have so much flattened hierarchies that they do not have managers close to them.

4/ You have to change, not them.

The Ys vote with their feet. They do not try to change society as their elders of May 1968, but if your company’s World is not coherent with theirs, at best they quit, in the worst case, they disengage.

Collaborators are like clients, as an advertisement man said : « Everywhere, clients are preoccupied by their life, their future, their World. We have to live in their World as it is sure that they won’t come live in ours”.

5/ Start by rethinking your proximity managerial model

The Ys await from their proximity managers to be more coaches that planners. They have to give:

·         Sense (versus procedures/processes), with detailed explanations of the assigned tasks for example

·         Presence, active listening and transparency

·         Organized challenges

·         Merit recognition leverages (instantaneous leverages included)

   

6/ Rethink your proximity managerial model makes you rethink the robustness of your whole managerial model

Often as an orphan of a strong world, disappeared, the proximity manager is not completely able to fully assume his role anymore.

·         Is there enough of them?

·         Is his role recognized and acknowledged enough?

·         Does the proximity manager have enough margin and time to dedicate to his teams? For example, if he has no recognition leverage to use, no answer about their career or their evolution in the company, the Ys are going to understand very fast that their manager is useless

·         Does the proximity manager have a support from his own managers?

·         Is the engagement of his collaborators, young and less young, a shared and formalized managerial objective?

·         Can you counter the following idea: «  in these times of crisis and unemployment, should young people be happy to have a job » ?

A robust model lies in the coherence of a commonly shared model. If it is not the case, the proximity managers initiatives would be:

·         exceptional and isolated,

·         unsupported, even criticized by his own hierarchy – and the Y perceives it immediately,

·         frankly trespassing a limit (security rules, social norms).

As a conclusion

1.    Do not forget that when your managerial World is fragile, you let place to unions whose key role is to focus on counter-power

2.    When you hear « I have a problem with the Y generation », answer to it that « you have a managerial problem ».

3.    The Ys are like roses at the head of a vine rank, if theses roses are sick, that means that your vineyard is already sick but you just don’t see it yet.

François Varin