Your Millenials

There's a perception out there of Creatives as young 20-somethings with tattoos and piercings, more likely to be carrying an iPod than a Blackberry, and apparently functioning without that little part of the brain that says "oooh, you might want to wait before you say that." Not every Creative is like that, of course. But enough of them are that you should learn how to manage that group known as Millenials.

Whether you call them "Millenials," "Gen Y," or "those kids born between 1977 and 1995 who make me a bunch of money," you need to learn a little about what they're like and how they work. And work they do...they have been called slackers by those who don't know better, but I beg to differ. When I was in grad school at the end of the 90s and early 00s these folks were my undergraduate colleagues. After I graduated and went on to teach college, they were my students. Now, they are, in some ways, my role models.

Fortune magazine last year published a really good article on managing this group of workers. I had picked up the magazine in an airport on my way to Afghanistan and read the article 3 times during the first 2 weeks I was there. What I found useful about the article wasn't just the description of common character traits but more the reasons those traits developed. That helps me adjust my interaction with younger workers. Now of course, I realize these are generalizations and every individual is different, so it's important to tailor your style as needed, but this overview offers a pretty good starting point for understanding your younger Creatives.

So here are a few things to consider, though by no means an exhaustive list, no consider about your Millenials:

They set high standards.
Millenials seem to expect a lot. That's because they do. They are looking for colleagues and a work environment that will challenge them. They expect their company to take care of them. They expect to gain responsibilities concurrent with improving their skills. And they set their highest expectations for...themselves. Since they were kids they have been highly competitive, not just in rough-and-tough, take-no-prisoners world of youth soccer, but also in a world of Advanced Placement courses and high school classmates starting their own businesses. Their heroes aren't Henry Ford but instead Mark Zuckerberg (he founded Facebook while a student at harvard, in case you're too embarrassed to ask who he is). They have seen what is possible and will push themselves, and expect others around them to meet the same standards.

They are info savvy.
They grew up with computers and saw the birth of the Web, unlike the Baby Boomers and Gen-X'ers they are replacing who had to adapt when they were older. They know the answer to every question is out there and they expect it to be available. So if you tell them to do something they may well ask "why?," not to be a smart-ass (well, not only for that reason) but because they are used to knowing more than just the basics. You should expect probing questions during presentations because they think they can find the answer and so they assume others should be doing their homework, too. And they will get answers for you from non-traditional places...in grad school I once heard an undergrad say "this is the first time I've ever been in the library," even though she'd obviously been around campus at least a couple years. She's just used to being able to find what she wants from the desk in her room rather than a study carrell in the library stacks. Watch out for a potential problem here: they may not be as good as they should be at weeding out fact from opinion or good info from bad.

They may still be living at home.
This generation has an interesting tendency to move back home after college, and many stay for a while. Part of this may be due to those pesky student loans they are paying off, while some of it may be due to the protective bubble their parents built around then when they were younger and which never went away. This has a couple implications for them in the workplace. First, they may not have faced many of the real world requirements like finding and maintaining a home, cooking and grocery shopping, paying for utilities, and other things that many of us take for granted in our daily lives. So it is possible they may not have learned as much about individual responsibility as one might expect. Second, just as their parents were probably involved in their education when they were younger, so too might they be involved in their work now that they're older. When they go home and complain about you, you just might get a call from their parents. These are people who never outgrew the whole "yelling at the Little League umpire" thing (and yes, I was a Little League umpire one summer in college, and yes, I'm still bitter) so just as your Creative may have a thing or two to learn, so too might their parents.

Diversity is normal for them.
When I lived in Colorado a few years back a group there produced bumper stickers that read "Celebrate Diversity." Millenials don't necessarily celebrate it because many of them grew up with it as a natural state and have trouble imagining anything different. They think nothing of working with people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds or who are here from other countries. They are more likely to have gay friends and many, even straight people, will look for nondiscrimination policies and domestic partner benefits even if they don't apply to them, just to get a feel for your company's culture. If you have a non-diverse environment they are likely to wonder why, so while you should avoid quotas you might also want to ensure you recruit in a way that attracts skilled people from all backgrounds.

They are not afraid to talk to you.
When I was teaching college I was a little surprised by the change in the professor-student relationship from my days as a student. They were more active in class than we had been and, more importantly, they were more inclined to challenge things I said in class. I thought this was great, assuming they put some thought into their challenges, but it caught me off guard at first. What I realized was that, whereas my peers pretty much accepted our professors' authority in the subject, my students were less inclined to put blind faith in a professor, or any authority figure, and instead were more inclined to engage them. One suggestion for why this is the case is the state of American politics during the 1990s and into the 2000s, which turned incredibly partisan in a public way and which saw many people in authority caught up in scandals or in other behavior that led people to see that just because someone's reached a certain position doesn't automatically mean they deserve reverence. Another possibility is that they've been told how great they are through positive reinforcement their whole lives and they now assume that everyone's as interested in their opinion as they are. You should take advantage of this openness, since many good ideas can come out of this process, while also teaching your Millenials about a little something called "tact" and something else called "keeping your mouth shut sometimes."

They multitask. Constantly.
Seriously. Just because they're on the phone while surfing the Web and listening to their iPod doesn't mean they aren't working. They might be turning out some really incredible work with all that stimulation. Hopefully.

Like I said, these are generalizations and many Millenials won't fit these nice, neat descriptions. But hopefully this gives you some idea how they function and why so you can manage your firm in such a way as to get the best possible work out of them.

IT Should Empower Workers

A recent presentation by Bill Gates, highlighted in a Wall Street Journal blog, suggested that leaders haven't done enough to empower their workers. The point was made that up until now most business software was designed to help managers track information more than to help workers better use information. The Journal blog reported that

Gates said that the next wave of productivity will come from technology aimed at making information available to workers and helping them communicate.

What he's getting at here, to a large degree, is technology to support collaboration. This is obviously useful if you use telework as a business practice, particularly when workers are scattered around the world, but it's also useful even if you're in the same office.

Gates gave a demonstration of Sharepoint, a useful collaboration tool produced, of course, by Microsoft. Now, I've been in an organization using Sharepoint and we had a lot of trouble getting it to work properly. One thing to keep in mind is that a new system like this is likely to require an investment in training...otherwise, you're just buying a bunch of software that will sit there unused.

Google Docs offers another opportunity to make information available for real collaboration, not just review. I've been involved with some non-profit groups using Google Docs to send around proposed bylaws, collect information for a race, and review and submit budget information. We are scattered around the DC area so trying to meet up in person wasn't feasible, and the single point of contact had better things to do than deal with 40 separate e-mail trails.

Getting these tools is easy enough; getting people to use them is another matter. At a recent government offsite, in a discussion about internal communication, I heard a number of older managers (sorry to be ageist, but they've all ben around a while) say that they wanted hard copies passed around the office. When told that they could simply print out an attachment or e-mail if they want a hard copy, one manager said "I don't want to have to hit the print button every time I want something!" Okaaaaayyyyyyyy...how do you deal with that? To some extent, you can train people and allow them to see the benefits emerge during their training. But really, the best way to encourage acceptance of new IT tools is to introduce new ideas one at a time, but consistently, thus helping create a culture where new methods are the norm. Trying to institute a wholesale change at once is typically a non-starter...going from a "read file" full of paper copies of things people should be reading to a Sharepoint system is simply not going to cut it. "IT acceptance" is as much a part of your organization's culture as any other value.

We are starting to see more and more IT tools that encourage, rather than discourage, collaboration. We hope that our Creatives will be open to new ways of doing things but the default response to change is typically "no." The truth is, most workers will say they want to be empowered but when it actually happens it makes them nervous. Addressing that is more of a cultural issue than a technological one, but now that the technology is coming into play, successful firms need to make the cultural shift toward acceptance.

Retaining Creatives

You invest a lot in your employees. You spend money recruiting them, then you integrate them into your business which takes time and often money. There's a sunk cost associated with hiring new employees, and it's helpful to avoid sinking it again.

So, once you've got 'em, how do you keep 'em?

Well, you need to find out what they want. What's important to your Creatives? And once you figure that out, you need to decide if it's something you an offer.

A lot of people are looking to grow in their jobs. Figuring out how to do that in a creative field can be tricky. Bureaucracies often have defined career paths...on a recent episode of American Dad, Stan was thrilled to have moved an eighth of an inch up the CIA's organizational chart. But Creatives tend to have more individualized goals that can't be as easily defined and don't always fit a pattern. That reinforces the need for you to understand not only their skills but also the changes they've gone through -- remember, the person you're retaining isn't the same person you recruited.

Among the popular retention tools are training and education. From the employees' perspective this helps them develop their skills and become more marketable, which doesn't mean they're necessarily going to leave, but it's always nice to have options. This points to a problem, though: you offer development opportunities, they take them, and then they leave. Consider some sort of contract that requires them to stay with the company for a minimum time in exchange for classes. You may not be able to afford to put people through degree programs, but consider individual courses or certification programs.

A lot of people are looking for advancement to convince them to stay. For some, this means moving into new positions with more responsibility and opportunities for leadership. For others, in means the chance to expand into different fields...maybe your interior designer wants to shift from residences to corporate offices. Sometimes advancement can be horizontal rather than vertical. Once again, this requires you to actually talk to people to figure what's important to them, since there's no one-size-fits-all concept of progression.

The old standby, of course, is improving compensation and benefits. This seems like a no-brainer. But remember, by doing this, you're setting new expectations. If you're offering some kind of one-time bonus you need to make sure they understand it's one-time, or they'll be expecting it again. Likewise, be careful that other employees don't get the idea that they're automatically getting the same thing as soon as they have enough time under their belts, because a broken promise (even if only one person thought there was a promise) can lead someone to quit. Permanent changes are probably best. So consider raises and increased vacation time. One thing, though: avoid using flex-time as a retention perk. Flex-time isn't a benefit, it's a way of doing business, but too many people wave that around as an enticement to stay.

Don't get wrapped up in the idea that you have to retain everyone. Some people you don't mind losing, so don't offer them inducements to stay. Unless you've made some contractual obligation, you don't have to offer raises and other benefits to people unless you want to. When you create programs designed to retain employees, make sure you tailor them so you only keep the ones you really want.

Mentoring

Mentoring someone is a lot of fun, very rewarding, something you can be proud of. And if you do it wrong, you can really screw someone up for life.

When we talk about mentoring we mean something more formal than just giving someone advice, but less formal than a manager-employee relationship. In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t mentor the people whose performance reports you write or whose pay you control. This can lead to problems I’ll touch on in a moment. That’s not to say you shouldn’t help develop the people who work directly for you, but if you’re offering guidance on how to deal with problems in the workplace, it’s best if you aren’t one of those problems.

Mentors tend to be someone in a similar field with a bit more experience and a desire to share that experience with someone else. If the person you’re going to mentor is a potential competitor of yours in the workplace, you might want to think twice…mentoring and career sabotage don’t mix well. Instead, find someone with similar interests, maybe someone who reminds you of you when you were “that age” (though they might only be a couple years younger), and who is going to follow behind you on the career track, or maybe on a parallel or somewhat divergent path. Your experience needs to be relevant to be useful.

You should have regular meetings with your mentee. This doesn’t need to be formal, doesn’t need to be documented, and can happen with a regularity of your choosing…some people prefer weekly, others look for monthly chats, but whatever the frequency there should be some consistency. It might be good if afterwards you wrote some notes to yourself so you can follow-up on isssues later or get answers to any questions that arose, but nothing that would be stuck into an employee’s personnel file. If possible, do it away from the workplace…and, if your work doesn’t involve a workplace, try to keep it in a neutral spot to avoid any sense of “employer-employee”-ness creeping in.

Mentoring is a great opportunity to take the lessons you’ve learned and help someone else apply them. One thing to avoid, though, is too much of the “if I knew then what I know now” syndrome. Don’t take someone 10 years junior to you and try to make a clone of who you are now. You got where you are through your collected experiences, and they need to do the same. Explain mistakes you made, discuss opportunities you wish you’d taken advantage of, but don’t try to re-live your life through your mentee. Help them take advantage of the opportunities open to them, help guide them around and over the challenges they face…their life is different from yours and you need to give them the tools, not try to build a replica of your house for them.

Oh…and, don’t try to date your mentee. Seriously. Bad karma.

Developing Your Workers

We mentioned yesterday that Creatives will have unique skills that need developing depending on their particular field. A key function of any creative leader is to keep developing employees' skills and enlarging their understanding of the field.  Not only is this important for your business - you want to keep ahead of the competition, and keep your employees active so they stick around - it's also just the right thing to do.

When creative workers stagnate, creative businesses die.  It's that simple.  The whole essence of a creative firm is based not so much on staying current - though that's important, too - as on coming up with something new.  A graphic design firm that keeps churning out the same style of logos or the hair salon that does only those cuts found in last year's magazines will see their customers run quickly to other providers.  Ideally, your employees shouldn't just stay ahead in the game, they should set the rules of the game.  The only way to do that is to take good employees and keep making them better.

That's not just important for today's bottom line, but for tomorrow's as well.  You need to think about who's going to be running your business in the future.  Whether you expand, or simply need replacements through attrition, there are benefits to filling future leadership positions with employees who've been with you for a while.  In order to do this you'll need to develop not just their technical skills but also their understanding of business and leadership.  And remember, it's quite possible these folks will leave you -- people change jobs pretty often -- but you might want them back at a higher level someday, so make that investment in them now with a view toward the long-term rather than just toward tomorrow.

Another reason for developing your employees is that Creatives tend to want to grow and improve and try new things...they wouldn't be very creative otherwise.  And if you don't support that, they'll find an employer who will.  Sure, you're liable to find yourself some employees who are content to not improve themselves, but is that really who you want working for you in a creative role?  Think about it: if they aren't going to put much effort into themselves, how much effort will they put into YOUR company?  If all you want is a bunch of employees who are content to come in and pick up their paycheck with the minimum effort, you can certainly find that, and if you don't put some investment into your workforce, that's exactly what you'll get.  It just won't lead to a very interesting workplace.  Or a very profitable one.

Finally, workforce development is simply the right thing to do.  There is a social contract between you and your employees that goes beyond whatever paper the two of you signed.  they are giving you their best work and you are giving them the tools they need to succeed.  If you do your part, they should do theirs, and one aspect of "your part" is the opportunity for personal and professional growth.  You may find that your employees don't want to take advantage of that, and that's their right, but if that's the attitude they bring to work, you might want to consider getting some new employees.