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How
companies can attract, train
and motivate the Generation
Xers
By Alvin M. Hattal
(Published in Selling Power magazine)
Earlier this year, 90-year-old management guru Peter
Drucker told The Wall Street Journal, “We grew up with the belief
that the employee needs the company more than the company needs him. Try to
tell that to my grandchildren.” Indeed. In the GenX generation, companies
are scrambling to find talented, creative, intelligent, think-on-their-feet
types who’ll stick with the company longer than a few years to help build
its future. In an age where dot-com fever has put every business on
crunch-time status, GenXers come in looking for a lot more than security. To
some, that notion itself died with the dodo.
To quote Drucker, “Some young workers are very greedy,
very conscious of rapid promotion.” He added that companies need “a new
management model…which is a shock to the older
generation.”
You can forget all the
generalizations you’ve heard about Generation X. The only true statement may
be that it’s full of contradictions. Among the myths: they’re lazy, strictly
entrepreneurial and obsessed with money (or they couldn’t care less); they
also supposedly hate authority, won’t conform and don’t know the meaning of
loyalty.
There’s even
disagreement as to just who its members are. One hard-core definition puts
them at between 25 and 35, but we’ve talked with sales managers who have
21-year-old superstars—and some who are bosses themselves. Some say they
crave independence above all else. Others insist they are great team
players. The nature of the industry or the business itself is a factor, of
course, so the defining characteristics of the generation that is taking
over America’s business world is elusive. Shaping their ascendancy and
sharing in their success may be even more so.
Common wisdom has
written off this crowd as a generation of slackers, and, to be sure, there's
no shortage of these. GenXers are, after all, the latchkey children of
dual-career parents and of parents who divorced in record numbers. They saw
the social, civic and religious structures of their communities erode during
their childhood. They've witnessed their elders' loss of confidence in the
corporations that dumped them after years of loyal work.
The new paradigm
Despite all this,
slackers have become the exception in this new paradigm. That legacy has
motivated the overwhelming majority of this emerging generation to formulate
a radically different view of their world and their place in business and
society.
However you define
them, workers in their 20s and 30s are driving some profound shifts in the
relationship between businesses and their employees. One of the most
important changes is in the respect and rewards they are earning—and
getting—from their bosses, their more senior colleagues, and their
customers. One thing they do seem determined to have is a lifestyle that
combines a rewarding career and the time to enjoy it. It's a question of
control and priorities – even if their priorities call for working 60-hour
weeks.
And they're willing to
put in that kind of time if they get the rewards: the opportunity to work on
things they find interesting and important; immediate compensation that
recognizes their current contributions; and the chance for even more
significant payoffs down the road--in the form, say, of stock options.
A large number of
GenXers prefer to put all this energy into working for themselves. A study
by the National Federation of Independent Business (www.nfibonline.com)
shows that 47 percent of new businesses in 1996 were started by people under
35. Nearly a third of the new entrepreneurs were younger than 30, and
almost 800,000 were under 25. Their workplaces are laid back,
first-names-only are the norm, and dress-down Fridays have been extended to
the entire week. So it's only natural that GenXers feel most comfortable
working with others of their generation.
Armed with the
knowledge, skills, and energy that can help their employers gain and keep
preeminence in their fields, they have convinced a growing proportion of the
world's going concerns that it is in their interest to provide that kind of
environment. Because if they don't, they'll lose them to those that do.
What really offends
employees most—the most promising ones sent to Drucker’s advanced management
program at Claremont College in Claremont, CA, “is that the financial people
think they can make them happy by bribing them…with high salaries and stock
options,” Drucker added. “They feel the financial people treat them like
peons.”
The truth, of course,
is that today, more than ever, knowledge is power, and that power—especially
in this age of technology—is shifting from the established hierarchy to
GenXers and their younger siblings, Generation Y. Success now comes from
working smarter, not harder.
Finding
the GenXer
Mike
Solomon, a Dallas-based vice president of Tradex Technologies, a
business-to-business e-commerce company that pioneered digital marketplaces,
told us, “Their work ethic is very strong. Their shortcoming is they don’t
know what they don’t know.” Will Thomas, for example, one of his outstanding
young salesmen, “has done a tremendous job recognizing the business needs,”
Solomon said. “But what he and others in his age group doesn’t yet
understand is where it takes them in a competitive world—knowing what their
competitors are doing.”
Dot.com
companies like Tradex are usually started by smart, senior executives from
major brick and mortar organizations or by MBAs coming right out of their
graduate programs, Solomon said. (Tradex, a privately held company, will
be/was acquired by Ariba for about $2.5 billion in March.) “They live and
die by the success of their field staffs, which now includes GenXers. We’ve
done a lot of mentoring to show them how to research the entire field
they’re selling to, and I’ve noticed that they’re not necessarily motivated
by money, like traditional, seasoned salespeople. In Will’s case—and I can’t
say it’s true of other GenXers—recognition is more important, acknowledgment
by his peers that he’s at the top of the class. And he knows that, once you
get there, it translates to money as well. He works a tremendous number of
hours to prepare before going in.”
Asked if
Thomas is typical, Solomon said he didn’t know, but added, “I don’t see what
I expected with GenXers. If, when I hire someone, I sense that he or she is
not motivated or is going to be ‘high maintenance,’ I pass. You have to kiss
a lot of frogs, but there are a lot of potentially good producers among that
age group. But even though my recruiters screen the applicants they send me,
I still have to interview 15-20 before I find a Will Thomas.”
Thomas
himself says, “Most successful people in my age group are Walter Mitty
types. I
went to
school to be a doctor, double-majored in chemistry and biology, was actually
accepted by a medical school and wound up horribly in debt, although I
worked my way entirely through college, starting as a waiter and winding up
in management. So I was looking for ways to make money, from Day One. One of
my professors suggested I take my entrepreneurial skills to business. It
turned out that the societies and organizations I became involved with in
school helped me in business more than my education. What I learned about
strategizing and adapting I taught myself.” Thomas, now 30, adds: “I intend
to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company by the time I’m 45.”
How do
GenXers fit in with their older colleagues? “In the hi-tech field there’s
very little concern,” Solomon said, “probably because it’s so new and young
people come with the territory. And for the same reason, there’s little
apprehension by their customers.”
Contrary to
impressions expressed by other sales managers we talked with, Solomon was
surprised to find that GenXers did not place too high a priority on their
personal and family commitments at the expense of their work.
Recruiting the GenXer
Mary Kae
Leaming, a sales manager for Triathlon Broadcasting in Spokane, WA
-----509/459-9800. 300 E. 3rd Ave., Spokane, WA 99202--- a
division of Austin (TX)-based AM-FM Inc., says that, although more
aggressive, members of this group are much more willing to adapt to
change—especially to technology. “They don’t seem as stressed out as their
seniors by the way the market changes—daily and drastically. We’re starting
a procedure to make every piece of paper in our building disappear; we’ll
work completely on the computer, and Generation X has of course grown up
with it.”
Money, says
Leaming, is more of an incentive to younger salespeople. “By the time older
people reach a certain income level, it doesn’t really matter if they make
more, so they’re more willing to work together,” Leaming said.
On the other
hand, the younger ones are “like a bull running through that famous china
shop,” she added. “Their aggressiveness causes problems daily in the office,
with constant turmoil in the staff. We have a sales staff of 15 people,
including 10 GenXers, and there’s an argument or a fight every day over
account ownership. And that requires backtracking to see who had the last
contact with the client, who was closest to the buy, etc. It’s a problem for
the managers, a waste of resources.”
Training
the GenXer
On balance,
says Leaming, “There’s an income gain for the company, because the GenXers
will not leave money on the table. But there’s also a loss in our
resources—the skills of the manager. The purpose for the management staff is
to train and mobilize instead of having to spend a good part of its time to
put out fires.
“About 10
percent of them are focused on training themselves to be prepared to compete
in the future. They see that the world is about performance; if you don’t
perform quickly, you get out.”
Asked how
customers—often more senior people—react to GenX salespeople, Leaming said:
“Usually pretty well, because they’re getting the job done and the customer
cares only about getting their conditions met. But now we have Generation Y.
Based on interviews I’ve had with 20- and 21-year-olds, if I were to
generalize, I’d say they’re lazy. Maybe they don’t like what they see in
Generation’s aggressiveness and focus on money.”
The typical
GenXer at Triathlon stays about 2 ½ years, says Leaming. At 30, she is a
member of that same generation but has been with the company seven years.
“I’m one of those people who are driven to be at the top. I don’t want to be
left behind. But my ambition is to help and lead people, rather than push
them out of the way.”
At 37, Kevin Klossner,
who supervises a group of 25- to 35-year-old zone managers for the Lincoln
Mercury Division of Ford’s Chicago region, is on the cusp of Generation X.
He has been with the company for 16 years. He told us, “GenXers have a
little different set of values. Most can’t imagine spending a lifetime with
the company; by contrast, Ford is my life. They look for quicker
gratification—money, promotion, recognition. They’re very adaptable because
they’ve seen so much change in their lives in, say, the stock market,
computers—with all the things they’ve grown up with.”
Asked how he motivates
and channels his staff, Klossner said, “Traditional means do’t motivate
GenXers. They’re looking for money, sure, but personal interests motivate
them even more. Things like flex time and telecommuting—not your traditional
type of perks.”
Can they be motivated
by outside stimuli? “They can,” says Klossner, “if you lead by example and
show them how to get gratification from things they do, whether it’s a sale
after a really good business meeting with a dealer or a contest they have
won. We set specific objectives. They’re more team-oriented than older
salespeople. For example, I’ve seen them use their superior computer skills
to help others without them, including their competitors on the team.”
This interplay,
Klossner emphasizes, benefits the company. “We view diversity of thought as
an advantage. And by the way, our young employees are also our future
customers.
The paradox of Lincoln
Mercury, of course, is that its customers—the dealers--tend to be a bit
older and more traditional than average. “So, of course, there are more
communication gaps. But their grasp of technology, their ability to accept
change, and their overall willingness to jump in make them adaptable. There
may not be immediate rapport, but any new person would face a learning curve
and initial resentment from their customers. They seem more able than older
colleagues to overcome that kind of first impression.
Managing
the GenXer
“On balance,” says
Klossner, “their youthfulness helps in their approach to the difficult
tasks. It probably hinders their ability to quickly understand where the
dealers are coming from. But they’re willing to learn as they go. Our
in-depth training programs and our team discussions and best-practice
sharing benefits not only the Generation Xers but also the whole team. I’ve
found that you can tell someone how to do something and you’ll get one
result; or you can ask how it should be done and maybe get another. And if
you get
enough minds working
on a task and address it as a team, everybody is happier.”
As a near-GenXer
manager himself, Klossner maintains “a relentless pursuit of the perfect
balance of empowerment and direction.” As a result, two of Klossner’s
GenXers--a 23-year-old woman, fresh out of college, and a 25-year-old
man--ranked first on his team only one year after joining the company. The
automotive industry, a traditionally male-dominated business, is changing,
Klossner noted: half of his team now are women.
“This is a
relationship business,” says Klossner, “and both of those salespeople are
very adept at building relationships.”
But Marilyn Moats
Kennedy, a demographer who heads Career Strategies, in Wilmette, IL, says
GenXers scorn the team system. The “busters,” as she calls them, “prefer to
work alone.” These youngsters are wary of corporations that eliminated the
jobs of 43 million workers, including many long-time employees, between 1979
and 1995. They’re closer to their grandparents than to their boomers
parents. And when diversity in the workplace is mentioned, people think of
race and gender, Kennedy said. “You don’t think of age groups.”
Michael Blackstone, a
27-year-old himself with an MBA, heads a company that specializes in
Generation X research for corporate clients. The company, Gen-X Press, was
founded in 1997 in Towson, MD, to provide business with “solutions from the
Generations X and Y viewpoint.”
Gen-X Press sponsors
seminars to help employers find and keep the kind of employees in both X and
Y—targets they’ve been marketing to with great success. One such seminar,
“Career Development Strategies for Retaining Generation X,” conducted in New
Orleans earlier this year, attracted dozens of major companies, including
Federal Express, Southwest Airlines and General Motors.
“Most
organizations—especially their direct manager—know what these younger
generations want,” says Blackstone. “The problem is that many have no idea
about how to communicate with them, how to get them to work together in a
team. They also don’t know how to address the issues up the chain to get
upper management to buy into them. The top brass won’t accept
generalizations.
“Also, the baby
boomers have been in charge of marketing, and they’ve been doing so in
accord with their own wants and needs. Only just now, after seeing the
fantastic success of companies such as Volkswagen and Mountain Dew in
marketing to this group, are many companies beginning to realize how to
reach them, too.”
His research,
Blackstone says, has found GenYers “less cynical” than the Xers. “They’re
bringing back what we saw three generations ago, the traditionalists, the
ones before the baby boomers.” How come? “It’s cyclical. History shows that
generations go in cycles. The Y generation has seen the boomers were unhappy
in their jobs; they’ve seen the Xers take a complete opposite view, defying
society, etc. They’re searching for a happy medium, family values.”
Money, says
Blackstone, “will only buy you a short time with GenXers. Sure they need to
live, and if you’re in the ballpark, fine, but it won’t motivate them to be
more productive or keep them on your team.”
Kinko’s Mark Little in
Ventura, CA, comes at the question of motivation from a different
perspective. As vice president for sales planning, he heads an internal
group that provides all the company’s information tools, as well as training
and development. And since it also establishes budgets, quotas, marketing
programs and customer segmentation, Little, 42, feels he knows the front
liners pretty well. From what he’s seen, he doubts that you can motivate our
young friends, though “you can create a motivating environment.
“They lead
high-performance lives and bring high-performance expectations to the
workplace,” he says. “They also bring earnestness and an intensity that…put
the baby boomers to shame. From sales preparation and number of sales calls
to their understanding of market customer and product knowledge, GenXers
perform better than their older colleagues. And that even extends to matters
of territory and account planning and, finally, to bringing creativity to
the job and coming up with good solutions for their customers.”
How savvy are they in
dealing with complex sales and marketing problems? “Given the proliferation
of marketing in our society,” says Little, “they’re better at it than any
other generation. Most important, they comprehend integrated marketing
better, including the Internet and Web tools and all that goes with it.”
Unlike others we’ve
talked with, Little finds GenXers are better at teaming and working with a
diverse workforce. “They’re looking more for a collaborative, collegial,
peer-type relationship with a manager rather than a boss-subordinate one,”
Little believes. “They know that customers today buy from experts, so they
cut through the BS of power and hierarchy and value the information more
than its source, whether the source is a CEO or someone on a lower rung.”
Their downside? “Some
are too intense, too focused, too in-your-face to establish a connect with
people,” Little acknowledges. “Consequently, some customers find that type
off-putting.
Motivating the
GenXer
What happens when the
superb ones—the great communicators, the best salespeople—itch to be
promoted? Do you, as the cliché goes, lose a good salesperson and get a poor
sales manager?
You often do, says
Bill Doolittle, Kinko’s sales vice president. A self-described boomer at 50,
Doolittle tries to help his top producers determine where their skills would
be best applied in both their own interests and those of the business. “It’s
a matter of leadership, not management (managing GenXers is an oxymoron),”
he notes. “We try to define the difference between an individual contributor
and a business leader—or manager, if you will—and how both of them are
extremely important to the business. Many might are that there’s not really
a lot of difference in the levels of importance.
But what
if a crack producer really needs to scratch that itch? “It’s a tough call.
If I believe they’re a future contributor in that role, I’ll tell them that.
But I’ll show them how we need to prepare for that.
“There have been
times, however, when we had to explain why that while they weren’t yet ready
to step up to that position, we still cared very much about them and valued
their contribution as salespeople. In such situations, it helps if they hear
that from everybody in other parts of the organization.
“My challenge with
GenXers,” Doolittle emphasized, “is how to attract and train and development
them. If you want to stay ahead of their expectations for fast growth and
self-fulfillment, you need to create an environment that is exciting and
dynamic. If you don’t, you’re going to create frustration, turnover and poor
results.
“As for motivation, we
are only catalysts. When I look to hire anybody, I look for behaviors first.
We can teach GenXers the business; we can’t teach attitude.”
The Wall Street
Journal’s Pittsburgh bureau chief, Clare Ansberry, echoed this point in an
article in the paper earlier this year. “Over time, you can understand what
motivates people,” she wrote. “Having seen more, you can identify more
patterns. After a while, you can pretty much figure what or who will
succeed.” Ansberry is the author of “The Women of Troy Hill,” an account of
a neighborhood of wise, older women to be published this all.
To help managers
adjust to the new workforce, some corporations rely for advice on
32-year-old Bruce Tulgan, founder of Rainmaker Thinking Inc., a consulting
firm in New Haven, CT, that focuses exclusively on Generations X and Y.
Tulgan, whose clients range from Abbott Laboratories and Domino’s Pizza to
J.C. Penney, and Steelcase, told us, “Young people don’t mourn the old
system, the old career paths. What they want is the remote control. And they
want it now, without having to pay the usual dues.
“But young salespeople
and their sometimes equally young supervisors need to realize they cannot
overlook the wisdom and experience of older employees. They know what’s been
tried in the past, what worked, and what didn’t. The smartest managers will
want their sales staffs to use the available technologies in their work—for
example, to spend time with people they might not have access to in a
high-speed, high-tech environment. In other words, work smart.”
In an interview with
CNN, Tulgan said, “People of all ages right now are living through the most
profound changes in the economy since the Industrial Revolution. The only
difference with Generation X is point of reference. If you're 10, 20, 30, 40
years into
your career, all this
stuff that's happening--downsizing, restructuring, re-engineering,
globalization, technology, mergers and acquisitions--it's a workplace
revolution. But not for Generation X, because it was like this when we got
here and most of us kind of like it this way.”
#
SIDEBAR
GenXers may wear their
caps backward, and they may be cynical toward their elders and the
"establishment." They're profoundly optimistic as individuals, not as team
players. But they understand that knowledge is power, and that
power–especially in the Information Age–is shifting from the established
hierarchy to workers whose knowledge improves the world for its
stakeholders, notably including themselves. Organizations that capitalize on
this generation's ability to realize its commitment to that improvement will
be among those stakeholders.
SIDEBAR
Profile of Generation
Y
It’s not Generation X.
They are three times the size of their older siblings. Born between 1979 and
1994, the 60 million “Echo Boomers” make up nearly one-third of the
population, and only the Baby Boomers (77 million) rival this group in size.
Whereas X rejected traditional values and embraced the individualistic and
cynical “cool” attitude, Y has welcomed back an optimistic outlook on
life….Y should not be looked at as kids, but as a growing opportunity for
all companies. Market to them on the Internet, at coffee shops, airports,
snowboarding tournaments, Xtreme sporting events and on cable TV. Use more
targeted marketing and humor to reach this group, as they still look to not
be part of the masses.
--Gen-X Press
SIDEBAR
Global Movers and
Shakers
Hundreds of thousands
of GenXers from Europe and Asia have already migrated to the U.S., but
companies here are seeking more to fill jobs that are waiting for them. Many
more are expected, such as:
• High-achieving
Russians in their twenties who mesh more easily with the West than
the old guard and even
those "newer" Russians in their thirties. The 6.5 million born between 1970
and 1975 are leapfrogging over older workers unskilled in the use of modern
technology and who lack the training and education to run a market-oriented
economy.
• Chinese GenXers, who
are forming a middle class in their own country that did not exist 10 years
ago. But while young real estate developers and other business leaders are
getting rich and moving up in social status, there is a widening gap between
them and the multitudes of older workers laid off from failing state-owned
factories. Many of the country's university-educated leaders reportedly back
ties to the West.
• Young Japanese who,
recent surveys show, are placing less importance on the values of work,
family and society, and focusing more on their own, individual goals. Half
of Japan's 16-to- 19-year-olds are described as self-centered, compared with
a third among those 25 to 29. Only 11 percent of those 18 to 24 said they
get personal satisfaction from doing something on behalf of society.
CONTACTS
Dr. Peter Drucker
Peter F. Drucker
School of Management
Claremont College
Burkle Bldg.
1021 Dartmouth Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711
V.: 909/621-1488,
909/621-8000
F.: 909/626-7366
Mike Solomon
Vice President
Tradex Technologies
15305 Dallas Parkway
Dallas, TX 75001
Phone: 972/455-2805
Fax: 972/715-2000
Will Thomas
Same as above
Mary Kae Leaming
Sales Manager
Triathlon Broadcasting
300 E. Third Ave.
Spokane, WA 99202
V.: 509/459-9800
Kevin Klossner
Chicago General Zone
Manager
Lincoln Mercury
Ford Motor Co.
3025 Downers Grove, IL
60515
V.: 630/725-4485
F.: 630/725-4467
Marilyn Moats Kennedy
Managing Partner
Career Strategies
1150 Wilmette Ave.
Wilmette, IL 60091
V.: 847/251-1661
F.: 847/251-5191
Michael Blackstone
President
Gen-X Press
PMB 149
798 Kenilworth Drive
Towson, MD 21204
V.: 888/799-4369,
410/464-2020
F.: 410/464-2499
Ron Rogers, CEO
Rogers & Associates
1875 Century Park
East, Suite 300
Los Angeles, CA 90067
V.: 310/552-6922
F.: 310/552-9052
Mark Little
Vice President, Sales
Planning
Kinko’s Inc.
255 West Stanley Ave.
Ventura, CA 93002
V.: 805/652-4045
F.: 805/652-4142
William Doolittle
Vice President, Sales
Kinko’s Inc.
Same address and fax
V.: 805/652-4275
Bruce Tulgan
Rainmaker Thinking
Inc.
53 Lawrence Street,
Suite One
New Haven, CT 06511
V.: 203/772-2002
F.: 203/772-0886
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