Intelligent Dialogue: Millennials Summer 2008
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INTELLIGENT DIALOGUE: MILLENNIALS SUMMER 2008 MESSAGE FROM THE CEO IT SEEMS THERE IS a shorthand for every generation. Baby Boomers are idealistic. Generation X was defined by MTV; Generation Y by the Internet. But then you come to the Millennials, and the shorthands fall away. Millennials believe that work should be fun and that dues-paying is for suckers. They are willing to sacrifice confidentiality for social connection. Although they can seem shallow, noble causes motivate them. And despite the fact that some (generally older) people may be tempted to label them the “Slacker Generation,” they have a clear and purposeful sense of how they want to live their lives. Understanding Millennials requires getting comfortable with conundrums and paradoxes, and being willing to accept that opinions Millennials hold may seem initially to be in opposition. If you really want to understand Millennials, you need to allow your mind to freewheel. Be like the inventors of vaccines, whose breakthrough came in the form of a paradoxical concept: The way to prevent an illness is to expose people to it. Or think like the people charged with protecting the homeland, who realize that in order to devise effective safeguards against terrorism, it’s necessary to accept that terrorists are willing to die for their cause. In the case of Millennials, the realization required is equally fundamental, especially for a Baby Boomer like me. And it’s this: Millennials don’t want to be like us. They do not strive for the things we have accepted as gospel. That everyone wants to get ahead at work. That work, in fact, is the means to a better life. That privacy is something to be held dear. It can be very hard, but understanding Millennials requires parking these preconceptions—and many more—at the door. This is a cohort worth getting to know, if for no other reason than the numbers: In Europe alone, some 51 million Millennials are expected to join the workforce in the next ten years, while 48 million Baby Boomers will retire. Beyond the numbers, however, it is the fundamental complexity of Millennials that makes them so interesting. So set your personal worldview aside, temporarily remove the phrase “but of course, everyone wants X” from your vocabulary, and get ready to take a deep dive into a generation that defies a shorthand. —GARY STOCKMAN Contents MILLENNIALSPORTER NOVELLI INTELLIGENT DIALOGUE: BIG QUESTION 3: 20 If being entertained is the norm, what happens to work? INTRODUCTION: 4 Generation what? BIG QUESTION 4: 24 What does the world BIG QUESTION 1: of work and business 6 How different are Millennials? mean to Millennials? 12 24 tips for managing Millennials BIG QUESTION 5: 30 What stories are BIG QUESTION 2: Millennials telling to 14 What happens to make sense of themselves confidentiality in an age of and their generation? radical transparency? 37 In conclusion SPECIAL THANKS TO Chris Bailey Cassie Durand John Hollywood Angie Schneider Jim Barbagallo Ellen Field Amy Inzanti Bill Schreiber Neil Bayley Suzanne Gabriel Albie Jarvis Charlie Simpson Andrea Brancheau Mike Gallagher Sandra Kleinburg Jill Spiritus Trevor Campbell Christine Gerstle Pam Maddalena Betsy Stephenson Sandy Chun Marion E. Glick John Orme Erica Swerdlow Tegwyn Collins Sherry Goldberg Nicole Osuch Balázs Szántó Christelle Coche- Linda Hadley Frank Peters Wendi Taylor Nations Dupeuble Wendy Hagen Keya Rahnemoon Carolyn Tieger Lisa Davidson Jonathan Hemus Michael Ramah Stefan Vadocz Lisa Dieter Peter Hirsch Blair Riley Julie Winskie Ed Dixon Shoshana Hochdorf Shilpa Saul David Zucker INTRODUCTION GENERATION WHAT? 4 INTELLIGENT DIALOGUE: MILLENNIALS Identifying a generation is meant to virtuality. Will make it possible to understand what things return to common influences shaped them and business as how those influences translate into usual as the their attitudes, behaviors and Millennials preferences. So are those seven mature? Is this generations in the United States, or new, casual comparable generations in other attitude toward countries, truly distinct from one formality a passing fad? Or another? Do they have consistent are we on the verge of a paradigm attitudes and behaviors? Or do region, shift? We don’t know—no one does, education level and socioeconomic really. But we do know that we should status blur the differences? be fostering Intelligent Dialogue by asking smart questions. What’s sure is that Millennials are a demographic bulge, not just This white paper poses five central in the U.S. but throughout the questions about these newest entrants West. In Europe, into the Millennials workforce and (defined as people includes between the ages of 14 perspectives and 31) number more from their than 186 million, managers, You’ve heard of Baby Boomers, compared with 160 their Gen X you’ve heard of Generation X, and million in Generation X colleagues and you’ve probably heard of Generation Y, (ages 32 to 43). In the Millennials increasingly known as Millennials. And UK, Gen Y is 16 million, themselves, as if you have a questioning attitude, or compared with 13 well as a list of have tried to dig deeper, you may have million in Gen X. The top tips for wondered: Do these generations really difference is most pronounced in the managing these workers. It explores exist as distinctive cohorts? Or have United States, with more than 75 the factors that have shaped a sociologists, marketers and journalists million in Gen Y and about 40 million in generation of young people, the ways conspired together to create Gen X. What’s also sure is that they’re those people are increasingly making something to talk about? different from their predecessors in their professional marks and what it all significant ways. might mean for workplaces in the In some cases, identifying a years to come. generation is easy. Take U.S. Baby Some of those ways are increasingly Boomers. More than 15 million consistent across national borders. As American servicemen returned from Western culture and values are spreading the Second World War in 1945, and around the world, and as the middle sure enough, there were 399,499 live class grows in countries like births in October 1946, compared to China and India, we’re seeing 222,721 in January of that year, Millennials everywhere adopting according to Wikipedia. By decade’s the same traits. Some young adults in end, about 32 million babies had been these rising economies are starting to born, up from about 24 million in the display a sense of entitlement, 1930s. Annual births surpassed 4 technology savvy/dependency, an million in 1954, and that rate lasted expectation of instant gratification until 1965. By then, 40% of Americans and admirable social activism. were younger than 20. In traditional societies, this is an especially radical change. Although Baby Boomers are typically defined as adults born between 1946 But the full effects this and 1964, generations tend to blur from bulge will have on one to the next. In the post-war United corporate and consumer States alone, people talk of Boomers, culture are yet to be Generation Jones (a.k.a. late Boomers determined. Millennials or Tweeners), Generation X, Generation are blurring the X/Y Cusp (a.k.a. the MTV Generation or boundaries between Boomerang Generation) Generation Y public and private, (a.k.a. Millennials, Echo Boomers or personal and Generation Next), Generation Z and professional, Generation I. That’s seven generations work and play, in just over 60 years. and reality and 5 INTELLIGENT DIALOGUE: MILLENNIALS BIG QUESTION 1 HOW different ARE MILLENNIALS? Millennials are the children They were also the first generation to of Baby Boomers, a generation whose see widespread consumer adoption of attitudes toward life were deeply time-shifting devices—voice mail, SMART TALK influenced by events of the 1960s: Civil VCRs—that splintered the shared Rights, Women’s Lib, the rise of rock- cultural “moments” of the Baby Pearl Harbor, McCarthy, JFK, nuclear and-roll and its rebellious icons, and Boomers and ended the era of shared winter, the Munich Olympics, Watergate, widespread questioning of established adult/child entertainment experiences Berlin in 1989. What seems to set authority. Baby Boomers were going to such as Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In make the world a better place and fix and Hawaii Five-0. Millennials apart is that the events human beings. Their children were part Perhaps more significant, they were coinciding with their coming of age, such of the project, even if Boomers growing up as prosperity was occasionally got distracted by as 9/11 and the Second Gulf War, failed to spreading and globalization was themselves. (Remember: Tom Wolfe’s kicking in. The Berlin Wall came down produce a fundamental philosophical seminal essay “The Me Generation and in 1989, and the Soviet Union was the Third Great Awakening” was divide about the kind of world they want dissolved in 1991—just as Millennials published about them in 1976.) were becoming aware of to live in and how to get there, compared Millennials grew up current events. The to the landmarks for previous surrounded by technology capitalist-communist and entertainment. division of the world generations. In some difficult-to-define Even more than with was disappearing sense, the ramparts for Millennials lie previous generations, fast. This, coupled within, erected to cope with social and screens have been with technology, (and continue to be) meant that personal undercurrents—growing up one of their main products, media, with divorce, redefining personhood and ways of interfacing ideas and money with their world: TV were moving more purpose without the guard rails of and movie screens, freely across gender-based and prescribed but also game borders. Brands and consoles, computers and the multinational relationship structures.