Generations@Work

I’m challenging my memory but I believe that eons ago this question often opened the stage act of comedienne Joan Rivers. Implied in the question was often the answer, no, we can’t talk. I seem to recall that this response was especially true when talking to or about a guy.

Anyway, I want to call your attention to the blog Brazen Careerist, especially the post of February 19th, What Obama Means to the Workplace. An interesting post. Of more interest to me, though, are the scores of comments the post produced. The comments, taken as a thread, represent one of the clearest examples, unfettered and unedited, of an inter-generational discussion about work that I have ever read. If the topic of generations in the workplace appeals to you at all, you need to check out this discussion, which is mediated very well by the blog’s author Penelope Trunk.

What’s there? Drama. Passion. Pathos. Boomers staking out the territory of mythic heroes saving our economy from ruin. X’ers offering perspective of what it has been like to live so long in the shadow of the sons and daughters of the Greatest Generation, especially in the workplace. And of course there are numerous comments from Millennials eager to offer their prescient insights on what work means to them. The premise of the post is an interesting one: young people like Barack Obama because he is perceived to be a “bridger,” dismissive of the politics of division. Penelope suggests that this is exactly what we need in the workplace, and that Gen Yers are going to see that the workplace changes — for the better.

All of this leaves me in a position to wonder if I have been wrong. The comment thread following the post could be seen as a remarkable example of at least two if not three generations talking past each other. For the past few years I have NOT embraced the popular myth of generational conflict (some have even called it warfare) in the workplace. Part of my skepticism has been and remains my own primary research coupled with my long-held suspicion that many of the proponents of the “warfare” school were OD consultants with a vested interest in propagating yet one more “crisis” that only they could resolve. They remind me of serial arsonists who turn out to be firefighters concerned about their job security. But some of the language in these comments is pretty sharp. Penelope does a nice job of mediating the discussion, but even she in the end did not move off of her position that the sooner the Gen Yers arrive en masse, the better.

Could it be that the folks who I once thought of as alarmists on the question of generational fratricide are right? Perhaps. In any case one thing is for certain: there is now a very important debate going on in our society about the nature and meaning of work. It is framed as a generational debate and perhaps it is just that. But something tells me that even without the apparent leverage of the soon-to-be dominant Millennial Generation, we would be having this cultural debate in any case, albeit at a lower volume. The workplace has always been somewhat contested terrain, and the combination of globalization along with the emergence of the post-industrial information economy, just to name two factors, has spawned a new round in the long-running debate about the role of work in the lives of individuals and societies.

If you are an employer or someone responsible for leading/managing lots of people, you really should read this blog thread. And then you should talk. The questions raised in these comments about the meaning of work should inform a serious dialogue in our workplaces. These discussions are going on every day anyway, we might as well get them out in the open and hosted in a constructive way.

Here are a few suggestions/guidelines for such a discussion:

1. These are IMPORTANT questions. Every young person leaving the office at 5 is not a slacker, just as every worker who spends nights at the office isn’t a loser who doesn’t have a life.

2. Global competition is not a myth. Our trade deficit with the rest of the world suggests that there are few “safe” places left in our economy. The question is how do we respond to this new reality.

3. Healthy economies and healthy businesses are no longer built on the backs of a few heroes or heroines.

Can we talk? We are. But if the comment thread inspired by Penelope’s post is any indication, a lot of us are talking past each other about some very important stuff that can’t be dismissed and shouldn’t be swept under a rug of smugness. So, tone down the judgmental rhetoric, scale back the hyperbole, and bring a little historical perspective to the debate. It’s time to talk.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Generational Savvy, Human Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.