Normally I speak to “adults,” but last week there were a bunch of “youth” in my audience.

I spoke with a Kiwanis club on Wednesday, and though there were certainly “adults” present, the local Key Club showed up as well, and stuck around for the whole session (which I’m told is rare). That day we had a crowd that ranged in age from 14 to 94… literally. Then, on Friday, I did two sessions for the Circle of Change Leadership Conference, designed for student leaders who are in college.

What grand enlightenment did I glean from these strange new experiences, you ask?

I learned that I am a curmudgeonly old man.

OK, that’s not exactly true. But by the end of my last talk on Friday night on The Future Of Work, I looked into the sea of eager faces, full of hope and desire and promise… and I found myself telling them the truth.

I told them the world doesn’t care about them getting to work in their strengths.
I told them most business cultures are too screwed up to absorb their great new ideas.
I told them many managers they will have will focus on the wrong things.

To be fair, I also told them that I still believe we can change the world. “But,” I said, “If we’re going to get ‘there,’ we need to get through what’s ‘here’ first.”

That’s the funny thing about changing the world — we can’t really change anything until we know how it is now.

And how it is now ain’t so great.

So at the end of my talks to these promising young leaders, I realized that if we’re going to treat ourselves to this heaping helping of reality, the most important advice I could give was:

PROTECT YOUR HOPE.

Find a way to guard it.
Find a way to keep your optimism.
Find a way to keep the fire behind your eyes.

It won’t be easy, but if you’re going to make it through the harsh reality and arrive on the far shore with enough resilience to still want to change things, it will be essential.

When I woke up this morning, I realized this isn’t just good advice for students.

I think it’s good for us all.

//

Edwin Catmull is a thin man in his mid-sixties, with a Ph.D., wire-rim glasses, and graying beard. In interviews he comes across as soft-spoken, almost pensive, although one can read years of wisdom behind a kind expression. He is earnest and straightforward, talks patiently, and, in most every way, resembles your favorite college professor.

But Dr. Catmull is not a professor.

He is the President of two of the most powerful and well-respected companies in the world: Disney Animation Studios and Pixar, the company who literally created computer-generated animation.

On September 1, 2008, the Harvard Business Review published an article written by Dr. Catmull entitled How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. In this article, Catmull states some seemingly backward approaches to bringing in new talent to an organization:

“Successful organizations face two challenges when bringing in new people with fresh perspectives. One is well-known—the not-invented-here syndrome. The other—the awe-of-the-institution syndrome (an issue with young new hires)—is often overlooked. 

The bigger issue for us has been getting young new hires to have the confidence to speak up. To try to remedy this, I make it a practice to speak at the orientation sessions for new hires, where I talk about the mistakes we’ve made and the lessons we’ve learned. My intent is to persuade them that we haven’t gotten it all figured out and that we want everyone to question why we’re doing something that doesn’t seem to make sense to them. We do not want people to assume that because we are successful, everything we do is right.”

How many companies do you know who practice this philosophy? Where the President of the company, first of all, shows up at new employee orientations? And then he doesn’t just make an appearance or sit in the back, but stands up and tells stories about company screw-ups, to help reinforce a culture that respects ALL ideas, even if they come from a first-day-on-the-job newbie?

The list of organizations coming to my mind isn’t very long.

I watched the documentary film The Pixar Story this weekend (and highly recommend it). As you’re surely aware, there’s a certain magic about Pixar. What you may not know is that most of the fairy dust resides within their unique culture—and this is something they’ve fought very hard to protect.

There are so many things we can learn from an organization like Pixar, but for today that’s all I want to say: great company culture may emerge through serendipity, but it doesn’t stay great by accident. People—real people who care enough to put some skin in the game—have to get involved, stand up, get a little dirty. People like Ed need to do some “crazy” things.

Don’t kid yourself that a great workplace “just happens.” Like growing a garden, it requires a lot of work and a bit of mess. It takes time and effort—and this means having people who have enough time built in to their jobs to actually focus on it. There’s simply no other way to build an amazing work environment.

How many Dr. Catmull’s does your company have?

Are you one?

//

When I began writing my new book (almost two years ago! how did that happen?) it all began because I noticed a tremendous opportunity for “someone” to help translate between generations in the workplace. After all, even a cursory look at the demographics shows that there’s not even close to enough Gen X’ers to step in for the Boomers when they retire (note the inverted bell curve around Gen X). Furthermore, there seems to be a world of difference between the perspectives of Boomers and the Gen Y’ers who have to replace them.

Like I said: HUGE opportunity.

Once I got into the research, however, it simply wasn’t adding up. The problems being experienced in the workplace weren’t just happening in business, and they weren’t just happening between these generations. The more I read, observed, and talked with smart people I quickly realized that whatever was happening in the world was much, MUCH larger than just a generational problem.

This surprise took my book (and life) in an entirely different direction than what I had anticipated, but it has been an eye-opening and invigorating journey. We’ll have plenty of time in the future to dissect and discuss and debate the direction I take in the book, but today I wanted to talk just a bit about this generational thing because it is a very popular angle in the business world.

The short truth is: generational studies don’t go deep enough.

Leaders (at all levels) like to glom on to a generational problem because it’s relatively familiar. Compared with the fundamental, tectonic shift that is actually happening, a generational conflict is almost passé. We can call in consultants and do training seminars to “fix” the problem. We don’t really have to change the way we think about the world that much. We learn a few new tricks and hope that business will just go back to the way it was.

This is dangerous approach because it’s like putting band-aids on cancer. It’s treating symptoms instead of the disease.

Is there any benefit, then, to studying generational differences? I think so — if it helps us learn how to communicate with each other better, I’m all for it. But we need to make sure we’re using those skills to talk about the right things.

And that’s what scares me about being too consumed with generational problems: it can (and often does) distract us from making the difficult, systemic changes that will actually build healthier organizations.

//

Additional recommended reading: Don’t Manage Me Like a Millennial by Lance Haun.

//

It’s a delightful thing to get to watch someone’s dream come true.

I’ve been fortunate enough to encounter this process a few times in my life thus far — watching friends get married, seeing my sister become a mom, and even being along for the ride when my wife got to traverse Europe by train (which was a dream of mine, too). This fulfilling type of experience never gets old, and I suspect never will.

My friend Jenny Blake just accomplished a lifelong dream of hers and published her first book: Life After College: The Complete Guide To Getting What You Want. Filled with templates to kickstart personal development and plenty of wisdom culled from her own insatiable desire to create more fulfillment in everyday life, Jenny’s created a veritable handbook for the “real world.” (Also, if you happen to be a fan of great quotes from wise people, like I am, the collection scattered throughout is alone worth the price of admission.)

I vividly remember leaving college and the distinct feeling that I had no clue what I was doing. Maybe that sounds familiar to you, too. It’s easy to stumble on a path in our lives, only to look back a decade later and realize that… well, we didn’t quite mean to go that direction!

The great thing about life is that it’s never too late to make a turn.

To be sure, some of the information in this book is aimed squarely at young twentysomethings. But much of it is highly useful for anyone who wants to make sure they’re on the path they want to be on. These pages are filled with great tools — and spirited inspiration — to help us get exactly what we want out of life.

Life After College is officially out tomorrow (Tuesday, March 29). If you’d like to buy it online, you can get a great price at Amazon.

Congrats, Jenny!

//

A few weeks ago, Brazen Careerist Community Leader Ryan Paugh asked me to create a 30-second video about what I thought was the most important thing that could help an individual “rock their career.” Here it is:

The most important thing you can possibly do to have a great career is to know yourself. Research shows that the best leaders in the world don’t have anything in common, with the exception of this one thing — they’ve redefined “success” to mean “self-awareness.” The more we understand ourselves and apply that knowledge in a productive direction the more successful we will be.

But how do we find our area of strength? It boils down to discovering where these three things intersect:

1. Talent
2. Life Experience
3. Passion

Talent is the naturally occurring patterns of behavior we each have, allowing us to effortlessly do some things excellently almost every time. The best way to uncover your innate talent is through an assessment like the Clifton StrengthsFinder™.

Life Experience is made up of the things you know, the skills you’ve gained, and the experiences you’ve had that make you, you. It is the cumulative image of all the formative events in your life, your family background, schooling, etc.

Passion is what makes you get out of bed in the morning. It’s whatever makes your heart beat a bit faster. It’s what you love. These are the things that, when you do them, they never feel like “work” — even if they’re part of your job.

There is also an element of personal Character that encircles all these components, determining whether we focus our unique abilities in a positive or negative way. The whole thing looks something like this:

Feel free to post any questions below.

Also, don’t forget to stop by the terrific social community Brazen Careerist: the kind sponsors of the video above and a community of sincere individuals engaging in meaningful conversations about the world of work. Please consider this your official invitation to join if you’re not already a part!

//

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.
How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins. How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions? Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!

Remarks by Jeff Bezos, as delivered to the Princeton Class of 2010
Baccalaureate, May 30, 2010 (Source Here)

//

Age really doesn’t have much to do with age.

A person’s true age is more about their mentality than anything else.

You’ve no doubt noticed that a twenty-five year old can be more mature than their forty-five year old boss. Or the other way around. Your grandfather can be more technologically adept than a high schooler. Or the other way around.

A person’s actual age doesn’t really matter as much as the individual’s background, personality, interests, and maturity.

This is a real problem for people who like to stereotype individuals based on generational definitions. Generational breakdowns become limiting very quickly.

This is also an issue in most organizations. We think age=experience=wisdom, but what about when it’s not?

Leaders need a better way to measure and assess the capabilities of individuals. Talent assessment is a step in the right direction, and the piece most often overlooked (particularly in recruiting). I believe there are two other pieces; more on this soon.

//

UPDATE: Here are the other two pieces!

//

I came across this interview today, and thought it had some really great things to say (don’t worry, it’s short!).

MANAGING MILLENNIALS: OPENNESS, BALANCE, SPEED
Get with it, baby boomers: A new generation craves information, speedy decisions and yes, an element of play at work, says CEO Brian Fetherstonhaugh

Karl Moore: This is Karl Moore talking management for The Globe and Mail. Today I am speaking to Brian Fetherstonhaugh who is the CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, which is the new media arm of one of the largest advertisement firms in the world. So, good afternoon Brian, it’s nice to have you with us again.

Brian Fetherstonhaugh: Hello Karl, good to see you.

KM: Will it change how we manage people in their 20s and early 30s in this world they live in? How is it different to manage that generation?

BF: It’s a great question. We have done a fair bit of research on the millennial generation as employees; what are they looking for, what’s different from when you and I started in the workplace? And there are a couple of core values, three of which [include] the desire for openness: they have this insatiable appetite to be in the know and to share information in a way that I did not have when I first came into the company. So the implications for leadership are always to put it out there – what the new information is, and the reasons for that information and also to get over the fact that your employees will share their salary information with each other.

I didn’t grow up in that world but it is completely prevalent. Everybody knows when somebody gets a raise; everybody knows who got a bonus and who didn’t. So as a manager of the baby boomer generation, this is a new reality but it’s the truth about the workplace and the millennial workplace.

Another [core value] is the desire for an element of play at work. Even in a recession there is a healthy element of play and social networking. This is one of the reasons people like companies and aren’t in freelance businesses or independent contractors. So the workplace needs to be fun again. There has been a long patch of American business and Canadian business that hasn’t been that fun, it’s been more of an “all work and no play” experience and I think we need to recreate that balance. In our own company we brought back “Thirsty Thursdays” and events and parties, small inexpensive reasons for people in the company to get together, and that’s been really successful.

The final thing that the millennial generation has is an insatiable appetite for speed: speedy decisions, and speed of progression within their own careers. It comes from sort of a “Google reflex” which is if they have a question they go onto Google or their search engine of choice, and they find the answers instantly There have been tremendous short feedback loops and so as a leader in a company with millennial employees you need to understand that. You don’t always need to make a decision in two seconds flat, but you need to know that the millennial employee is expecting it and has grown up with that so at minimum set up expectations.

KM: Do you find they are less hierarchical and really want to have a voice in terms of decision making?

BF: Great point, absolutely I think that there is this extreme desire for early engagement. I often give young people in our company advice on this.

Part of the wisdom I think that baby boomer leaders can pass on is that there are consequences to that. You walk into a business situation, you are 23, 24 or 25 years old, and you want to put your hand out and contribute into big-time business decisions. A lot of millennials don’t understand the consequences of that, which is if you do that once or twice and you do it badly because you don’t have context, you are going to get killed “Big” people will ask you to not be on the team any more.

So I think there is expectation setting on both sides, this very strong desire to contribute, but I think there are ways of channelling it and making it succeed so that the millennial employee finds their voice but also, frankly, does their homework and inoculates their opinion and is really prepared to make that viewpoint because it’s not Facebook, it’s a multimillion-dollar business decision, and it’s different.

As the resident non-spokesperson for Gen Y, I will say just a few things about this.

To be honest, I almost completely agree on his 3 insights — but, naturally, I have a few thoughts:

1) OPENNESS

Openness IS key; as a generalization, we Gen Y’ers hold very few things “sacred,” and are completely baffled as to why a person wouldn’t want to talk about things like money, spirituality, or politics. (What else is there to talk about!?)

In the age of Google/Facebook/Twitter, nothing can be hidden anymore, anyway.

2) BALANCE

Play at work is good, but the paragraph in the interview is missing something pretty crucial — the fact that work isn’t, and never will be, our entire life.

This is a pretty significant shift, as most of the Boomers I know, at least, seem to live to work. We, on the other hand, look at the same issue from the other side — “How can I enjoy and derive meaning from the things that make me money? How do I design a lifestyle to where I can experience everything I want to?”

3) SPEED

Understanding our propensity for speed is very perceptive (well done, Brian). It certainly does impact nearly everything we do, most notably the way we think. We cannot even comprehend why some decisions could take so long. We see a world that is inundated with technology… shouldn’t we be using it? Shouldn’t business be moving with the pace of the world? Makes all the sense in the world (to us).

I hear some derivation of the last section a lot — the part where Gen Y’ers feel entitled to make multimillion dollar decisions within 3 months on the job, or expect some kind of instantaneous promotion after Day 7.

I think most of this is a complete misunderstanding, to tell the truth.

The Gen Y’ers I know don’t expect any of those things. But they do want desperately to be involved and to be appreciated for their talents. (After all, it’s how our beautiful Boomer parents raised us!)

For older leaders, the big hurdle to jump here is the “pay your dues” mentality that threatens to infect any reasonable adult at some point. And I do think this paradigm really does seem reasonable; it seems fair. After all, you had to pay YOUR dues, right?

The problem is that this perspective is simply not in the best interest of your business anymore.

The coming generations of leaders do not occupy the same business world you entered. Therefore, it isn’t fair to expect them to think the same way you did. And because the mentality of the emerging workforce has shifted, the rules have changed.

If we have employees that are craving engagement (which is the productive way to look at Gen Y behavior), why would we even CONSIDER risking their disengagement? If our org has passionate followers, how could we POSSIBLY think that crushing their passion would have a profitable outcome? The goal is redirection and refocusing of that passion. Not always easy, but always worth the effort.

//

OK, well, maybe not ME, exactly, but definitely US Gen Y’ers!

For my new book, I’ve been doing a ridiculous amount of research about generational studies, social media, new technologies, culture shifts, etc. It’s an fascinating field, mostly because it’s in the beginning of its adoption phases. Given, phenomena do seem to “tip” at a much more rapid pace these days (if you need more info on that, watch this from 2:34-2:54), but by my estimation we’ve not yet begun to really see widespread mainstream implications from the social shifts that are occurring.

As you may well imagine, there is a veritable cornucopia of information on these topics all over the internet. Somebody that’s been growing in popularity on my “favorite people I’ve never met” list is Don Tapscott. He’s an author and consultant that specializes in the areas of Gen Y (he calls us the “Net Generation,” for good reason) and societal shifts.

I wanted to introduce you to this gentleman, if you’re not already familiar, because he seems to have a really solid grasp on emerging culture.

Today I came across a particularly great article and video today by Don called “Harnessing the Net Generation,” which explains in a very articulate way why the war for talent is actually just beginning (not ending) and why us Gen Y’ers could actually be some of the most powerful employees your company could add during a time of uncertainty.

Click HERE to see the vid and article.

Thanks for maintaining such a positive outlook, Don! I’m with you — I think we’re going to see some absolutely fantastic shifts towards positive culture change over the next decade.

//

A TIME TO TALK: AN OPEN LETTER TO GEN Y
Brian O’Neill (Guest Columnist, The Peninsula Gateway)
Published: 01:02PM May 13th, 2009

As the spokesperson for Generation X, I would like to formally, if a tad belatedly, welcome Generation Y to the table.

Those of you born between 1980 and 1995 already have lived through quite a few disasters in the past few years, and I’m not just referring to reality TV (hopefully you were napping during disco).

Now that you’ve had a chance to settle in, whether it be the lockers of your high school, the hallowed halls of university, the military or corporate America, it’s time we had a talk.

No doubt you’ve noticed the current status of your hometown and your world and are now mature enough to comprehend what your elders have accomplished: a controversial war or two, an economy in the process of flame-out, global warming and a myriad of other calamities.

You may think our credibility is shot.

No argument.

Some of you already have miles underneath your feet: deployments to Iraq, pink slips, even prison. A good many of you are still awaiting the fruits of life following high school or college, like my own boys are.

All of you are wondering how we screwed things up so badly.

If history is any indication, Generation X did not invent the term “colossal mistake.” The Greatest Generation, which fought WWII and rebuilt a country, also introduced us to a little known country called Vietnam.

The baby boomers, who courageously fought and died in its steaming jungles and rice paddies, in turn introduced my generation, and yours, to war in the ancient lands of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite our generational faux pas, as parents and mentors, we never have tried to bring such heart-breaking challenges to our children. No one person created the financial scandal in which we now sit (though I like Barry Madoff in the role of scapegoat), nor did any one person foment the intensity of hatred toward our country that brought about the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

And we all share responsibility for melting polar ice caps and a disappearing ozone layer.

In truth, we wanted what was best for you. We treasured and fussed over you, and we quietly resolved to improve your life over that of our own.

Take me, for example. My father worked a small Irish farm with 12 brothers and sisters before he and my mother immigrated to America in their 20s. Because he allowed his children daily access to school, my father rightly believed my siblings and I were privileged well beyond his meager education.

But on weekends and summers, he brought us to work on his construction site. Hard, manual labor was the only route to the success of which he knew. My two boys will never know the sinking feeling of 12 hours on the job, watching your friends head past on their way to a game. What they will know is how to mow a lawn.

But maybe we have gone too far. I have watched parents, including myself, hover over you in classrooms and at Little League games. We bought the right car seats and helmets. Then we bought you cell phones. In the words of that great American philosopher Homer Simpson, “D’oh!”

As a result, we have been the unwitting authors of your greatest fault: rude behavior.

How many times have we watched you loudly proclaim your innermost thoughts to random people on the street during an ill-timed cell phone conversation? Or snuff any attempt at human interaction by plugging in your earbuds? Or commit random acts of twitter?

To complete my rant, paste this thought on your Facebook page: Texting is not conversation, and sexting is not love. But wait, you say, we’re just following your example! Really? How did you manage to pick that habit up while ignoring the broccoli on your plate?

My point is that you have a lot of work to do, and we don’t want you getting sidetracked by distractions.

Consider this a very late invitation to take our collective hand, and let us pull you up out of yourselves a bit. Shake off some of that self-absorption and focus on the problem.

You have a world to save.

//

A Time to Talk columnist Brian O’Neill can be reached by e-mail at btoflyer@comcast.net.

(Original post can be found here; download a PDF here, if you like.)

//

Hello, Brian!

I am certainly not the spokesperson of Gen Y, but I, for one, will be more than happy to talk with you.

First, I want to sincerely thank you for your invitation. Frankly, I’ve been waiting for years for a Gen X’er or Boomer to care enough to ask for a dialogue! Please know that it’s appreciated.

We certainly are in a challenging time in history, and there is more than enough blame to go around. But no matter which way we look at it, I suppose we’re all in the same proverbial boat now, so we may as well find a way to float forward!

I will completely agree with you on a few things — as a group, we Gen Y’ers don’t seem to know when to quit with our technology, and sometimes it probably comes across badly. These are boundaries we are still learning, I think. But it’s important to note that what “distracted” means for our group is probably something different than what it means for yours. Perhaps it was our being raised on ADD-inducing-television, new varieties of technology every 6 months, and constant multitasking — whatever the causes, we are a supremely interactive bunch. And I believe there are ways we can actually leverage this connectivity to our collective benefit!

Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that these “distractions” are only going to get worse. Do you think Generation Z is going to be less connected than we are!? I sure don’t.

For me, there’s something deeper happening here than typical generational differences. There is a metamorphosis of mentality afoot that is driving these shifts. It is a silent revolution, and I will give you all the benefit of the doubt: it’s hard to see and difficult to hear, especially if you’re an outsider to the new paradigm. (This is a big topic that I’ll be exploring more on this blog, and in my new book as well.)

In any case, I want you to know that there are a group of us Gen Y’ers who would love to talk. We want nothing more than to help save the world. But as a group, we often feel like X’ers and Boomers have mistaken our disengagement (or distraction) for apathy, and as such, have often written us off before we’ve even begun the dialogue.

And most young people have a period of self-absorption — I’m fairly certain your generations experienced it, too. But from where I’m standing, my cohorts are often leading the way in next-gen philanthropy. In fact, we may even do more than that!

I truly hope the collective Gen X’ers and Boomers are open to the dialogue you’re proposing. We’ve just been promised a conversation many times and then given a lecture instead.

Here’s hoping for a new exchange!

P.S. There’s a really great insightful article providing some background on Gen Y from Fortune Magazine I re-posted here.

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