In New Zealand for the PrintNZ centenary conference in October, innovation expert Gus Balbontin talked about the group of young people who will one day take over the world: Generation Y. He offers some advice as to how employers can get the most out of Gen Y
Gus Balbontin, global innovation manager at Lonely Planet, reckons he has the dream job. Lonely Planet may feel it has the dream employee. Some of Balbontin’s achievements at the company include developing a system of centralised scheduling and planning that helped deliver a $1.3m cost saving in its first year; instigating a fast book production model that delivered a 75 per cent reduction in elapsed production time and almost 20 per cent reduction in costs; and achieving a 70 per cent improvement on timely delivery in the company’s trade and reference department.Born in Argentina, he immigrated to Australia in 1996. After gaining residential status in 1998, he settled in Melbourne where he now resides with his wife and two young children. He still finds time to travel and discuss one of his passions: the generation to which he belongs.
From veterans to Gen Y
CHUNKING down human demographics to birth years, Balbontin begins with the baby boomers, born 1946 – 1964; moves through Generation X, born 1965 – 1977; and settles on Generation Y, born 1978 and onward. He also mentions the generation before the baby boomers: the veterans.
He says, “Demographers like to split humans into generations for the sole purpose of understanding and making sense of something that is quite complex to understand otherwise. It’s more of a calculated guess than an exact science. It is also something that you can do in hindsight, when you look back at the last 100 years, you can see behavioural patterns shared by groups of people born in a particular time frame, this is because similar technologies, world events, etc shaped them to behave similarly.”
He reluctantly agrees that people latch on to the horoscope-like aspect of these classifications. Some of us box ourselves into a group that provides us with a ready-made set of character traits. For example, many boomers take pride in identifying with their anti-war stance in relation to Vietnam. But Balbontin concerns himself more with the available hard data than with the inevitable stereotyping. He says, “Some of it is like that, but some behaviours are clearly generational behaviours. The way the internet and social mediums shaped Gen Y did not happen to baby boomers, hence the reason why baby boomers point the finger at Gen Y and say ‘You have virtual social interactions, we have real social interactions’. And Gen Y wonders what the hell are they talking about? I was born with the internet and my social interactions, whichever medium I use, are just as real.”
Demographers define generations
Cut-off dates for the generational classes derive from calculated guessing, for example, using world events and a rough estimate of 15-20 years. Demographers, and Balbotin, attribute traits and commonalities to each generation:
• The boomers, aged 45-60 years, grew up with radio and television; danced and grooved to rock’n’roll, the Beatles and Bob Dylan; experienced sexual freedom, fought and or protested the Vietnam war, and, significantly, watched television shows at a ratio of one show to one million people.
• Generation X, aged from 30-45 years, grew from punk music; saw their world shaped by the end of the cold war and the emergence of US as the major economic power; started interacting with computers as teenagers; were the guinea pigs of internet and mobile technologies; and saw themselves as real entrepreneurs.
• Generation Y, aged 13 to 30 years, inhabit the live, and on-line, social world of facebook, flickr and texting; they employ collective power with wikipedia; as globalists they blog and skype; they share knowledge over the net: they connect through gaming with second life and x-box; they enjoy easy access to information via google; and they’re happy to share their profile with others through linkedin and facebook, watch television shows at a ratio of one million shows to one person.
In the Gen Y universe, freedom for sharing also means receiving things free. They get music via limewire. They watch television shows, lectures, and entertainment from youtube. They obtain software for nothing and free travel information from Lonely Planet, expedia and best flights. Their photographs and email come gratis via flickr, hotmail or gmail.
Harnessing Gen Y in the workplace
We can’t deny that Gen Y possess talent, even though many of us accuse them of idleness, arrogance and ambition beyond their years (can any baby boomers hear their veteran parent’s laughter as they utter these words). And many employers will tell you that they can’t harness that talent. How do we cope with it?
Balbontin suggests employers think laterally when considering Gen Y staff members. He advises bosses that attempting to control these young people won’t work. He says, “They will say to you: ‘Don’t ask me for obedience… you get that from a dog.” He says rules won’t work as well as guidelines with Gen Y, and they are more likely to respect a person for that person’s behaviour over any position held in an organisation. For example, they don’t care that a person is the CEO of the company, but they will respect the CEO if he or she behaves in a manner that demands respect.
Balbontin also advises entering into a partnership with Gen Y as opposed to forcing them into a contract, figuratively speaking. Coaching achieves better results than bossing. In this respect, older boomers or veterans often find greater success with Gen Y than younger boomers or Gen X do.
Trying to impose conditions or change on Gen Y also leads to counter-productive outcomes, according to Balbontin. He says rather than giving Gen Y the content, try giving them a context to place it in. Invariably they will figure it out quicker that way, and in a manner that they understand more effectively. He believes Gen Y aren’t necessarily impressed with claims of greater experience; they see more value in learning, unlearning, and re-learning. He says, “As an employer: liberate Gen Y’s creativity, enthusiasm and initiative…don’t ask them for compliance, diligence and reactive behaviours.”
For Gen Y, everything must happen now. Print on demand and blogs replace books and magazines, mininova replaces movies, youtube replace television, and a host of other technologies like podcasts, rss feeds, trends, and netvibes set Gen Y apart from their elders. And at work, the principle of now replaces the attitude of long service with the ambition to be the CEO at 30 and a board member by 35.
Most businesses have three or four generations in their workforce. Balbontin believes that the more we understand them the more value we get from them. He says, “Veterans and boomers will be retiring over the next 15 years. Gen X and Gen Y will be leading businesses across New Zealand and the world. He sees this paradigm as a tool for employers and employees to provide them with context and help them make sense of what otherwise would be too complex to grasp.
Speculation for a Gen Y future
In our elections, we saw Gen X taking over from the boomers. Now we wonder what happens when Gen Y takes over from Gen X? Balbontin says, “Now you are asking me to pull out my crystal ball and act as a futurologist. I can only guess… remember that most of this work is done in hindsight and as a guess of what may come in the near future.”
He estimates that Gen Y won’t take over Gen X’s leadership positions for another 20-30 years (that’s if we assume that at around 50 your sphere of influence becomes large enough to hold those board seats and influential positions).
He says, “I can speculate about Gen Y wanting to be in those positions earlier and not conforming to the unwritten rule that wisdom comes from years of experience. I can also speculate that, by then, Gen Y and technology would have pushed companies to behave more openly, to partner and survive, so social media skills (facebook, linkedin and so on) will become even more valuable and an everyday part of our lives.”
