Not long ago I had a coffee with a Gen Y friend of mine. She had just attended a workshop where she noticed that when she multi-tasked, laptop open, checking links as the workshop leader mentioned them in real time, she perceived that she was not viewed as credible… in fact she appeared to them to be disengaged. She also noticed that another Gen Y in the room, who operated more like the bulk of participants in an older demographic, was being treated with credibility and respect.
Our conversation went from that to her discussions with her colleagues who were working for companies who didn’t trust their speed. In fact, they (management: co-workers) saw their speed as a reflection of unprofessionalism. Slow was the operative word for competent, which meant that the Gen Y employees had to slow down to appear to be doing the job.
Now who is right and who is wrong is not relevant. The perception is. The belief in what speed says is what is different. This takes me to the book, The Age of Speed written by Vince Poscente and loaned to me by a friend. He documents the limitation around resistance to speed companies have, as recognized by the CEO of Kodak for example.
The profound belief? Speed is not to be trusted. Fifteen years ago when one of my facilitation colleagues worked with a senior executive team they came to a decision to a complex problem after one-day of working it through. Now the whole point behind hiring a facilitator is to make hard multi-party decisions or processes easy and fast. The team non-consciously decided that because it wasn’t painful and because they had completed the task in less time than they expected then the result couldn’t be trusted. So, they spent another day haggling it through until they arrived at the same decision. This time they were happy. It had taken longer to get to the same place but since this met their expectations they accepted both the process and the result.
Back to Gen Y and my colleague: IF Gen Y is slowing down till corporate cultures and the beliefs that underpin them catch up, they won’t stay and if they do it is unlikely that the company will inspire their creative talent to flow. You’ve heard this before in this column but the other simple difference is that Gen Y operate intuitively, like operating in teams, see information as a tool not leverage for advancement, and so can do back flips and still hear what is going on. Maintaining steady eye contact is not a pre-requisite to being engaged. There are specific cues that are traditionally associated with engagement that are not modeled by Gen Y. When company leaders understand this; when the beliefs that relate speed to being ineffective are questioned and replaced, then company cultures can be re-calibrated to function at the speed of change. Meanwhile, creative talent is on hold in all generations pinned down by non-conscious habits. It’s time for an upgrade.
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