Millenial Kids at Work

Hat Tip: Joanne Jacobs

When do you know that a point has been reached in work that completely changes the way you think about your work? When you need a therapist because your youngest workers are dominating your daily work. Take this story:

Beverly Hills psychiatrist's office is an unlikely triage center for the mash-up of generations in the workforce. But Dr. Charles Sophy is seeing the casualties firsthand. Last year, when a 24-year-old salesman at a car dealership didn't get his yearly bonus because of poor performance, both of his parents showed up at the company's regional headquarters and sat outside the CEO's office, refusing to leave until they got a meeting. "Security had to come and escort them out," Sophy says.

A 22-year-old pharmaceutical employee learned that he was not getting the promotion he had been eyeing. His boss told him he needed to work on his weaknesses first. The Harvard grad had excelled at everything he had ever done, so he was crushed by the news. He told his parents about the performance review, and they were convinced there was some misunderstanding, some way they could fix it, as they'd been able to fix everything before. His mother called the human-resources department the next day. Seventeen times. She left increasingly frustrated messages: "You're purposely ignoring us"; "you fudged the evaluation"; "you have it in for my son." She demanded a mediation session with her, her son, his boss, and HR--and got it. At one point, the 22-year-old reprimanded the HR rep for being "rude to my mom."

The patients on Sophy's couch aren't the twentysomethings dealing with their first taste of failure. Nor are they the "helicopter parents." They're the traumatized bosses, as well as the 47-year-old woman from HR who has been hassled time and again by her youngest workers and their parents. Now the pharmaceutical company that employs her has her in therapy, and she's on six-month stress leave.

I guess I first started seeing things like this about two years ago. At that time, a woman was temping for my company (temping mind you) and I had given her a data entry assignment and a second assignment to verify information. I explained the purpose behind the work, its importance to the company, etc. The work was mind-numbingly boring, but in a small company it was cheaper to hire a temp that have a full-time staff member doing the work. This young lady didn't even come back from lunch. Upon talking to the temp agency, I learned that this child (and yes, I mean child) felt the work was beneath her talent and education!! My response to the temp agency was that I could now see why she was temping rather than working full-time.

The linked story and my episode reflect what I see is going to be a problem in the coming decades. Younger workers coming into the workforce want to make an impact, an immediate impact and they feel they have the smarts and the know-how to make changes. Younger, millenial kids, workers want to take charge and they may be used to that power.

Millennials aren't interested in the financial success that drove the boomers or the independence that has marked the gen-Xers, but in careers that are personalized. They want educational opportunities in China and a chance to work in their companies' R&D departments for six months. "They have no expectation that the first place they work will at all be related to their career, so they're willing to move around until they find a place that suits them," says Dan Rasmus, who runs a workplace think tank for Microsoft. Thanks to their overinvolved boomer parents, this cohort has been coddled and pumped up to believe they can achieve anything. Immersion in PCs, video games, email, the Internet, and cell phones for most of their lives has changed their thought patterns and may also have actually changed how their brains developed physiologically. These folks want feedback daily, not annually. And in case it's not obvious, millennials are fearless and blunt. If they think they know a better way, they'll tell you, regardless of your title.

The problem with this mindset is that millenials lack any sort of institutional knowledge. Perhaps their solution has been tried and it failed. Perhaps their idea runs counter to the carefully cultivated culture that has grown up in a company.

Why millenials may have the belief that they can accomplish anything, they lack the skills necessary to understand that for every success usually comes a number of failures and that failure is a part of life.

Cindy Pruitt, a professional development and recruiting manager with the national law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, shares with disbelief a recent incident in which one of the firm's summer associates broke down in her office after being told his structure on a recent memo was "a little too loose." "They're simply stunned when they get any kind of negative feedback," Pruitt says. "I practically had to walk him off the ledge."

That right there is the danger we face as we move forward in society. The millenial kids are used to an uninterrupted string of successes, sometimes bought through the influence of their over-involved parents, that will create a different set of incentives for the workplace. Failure was not a commonplace event in their lives and they can see no need to dwell on the skills associated with analyzing failures and learning lessons. But corporate America while certainly successful, has had far more failures that successes and it is only by learning from our failures that we can achieve greater success.

The story from FastCompany concludes with this story.

Although companywide initiatives are encouraging, it's the grassroots practices that reveal how individual leaders can truly energize their youngest employees. Sheila Gallagher, director of the restaurant segment of General Mills' bakeries and food-service division, knew last summer that she'd soon be hiring a batch of fresh college grads. So the 18-year veteran of the company rethought her management style. To address their desire for a lot of feedback, she decided she'd connect them with senior staff, including herself. When she hired Frank Brodie, 22, as a marketing associate, Gallagher made sure to devote time to building a relationship with him, and paired him with a sales manager to act as a mentor. Brodie also joined the company's "newcomers club," where General Mills' youngest employees can socialize with its oldest.

Her team was also prepared last September when Brodie, then a grizzled veteran of four weeks, sprang a surprise.

He'd had an idea to sell Totino's Pizza Rolls (a late-night snack he and his college buddies knew well) to restaurants that were trying to reach folks just like him. Huge opportunity, Brodie figured, and he'd backed it up by researching market data, prices, and emerging restaurant trends on his own time. While sitting in the audience at a four-day marketing and sales meeting, Brodie decided there was no better time to pitch his plan. Between sessions, he took the idea to Gallagher. "Our first reaction was, 'We've tried it before,'" she says.

But because Brodie had facts behind him and a new spin on an old idea, Gallagher opted to bend the rules and let him present the idea to the sales team so they could decide. The following morning, Brodie ran out to the supermarket, whipped up 200 pizza rolls, and made his pitch between tightly scheduled sessions. "General Mills is a fairly hierarchical organization," Gallagher admits. "But being flexible is really key. It ended up inspiring a lot of enthusiasm on the team." The sales managers are now actively pitching pizza rolls to fast-food chains and sub shops, and Brodie, still glowing from his triumph, has learned that when he does his homework, his ideas are respected regardless of his title. "That's what we want from employers," says Brodie. "A chance to learn, to be challenged, to be taken seriously."

But reading this vignette, one may think that Brodie came to success by chance, by just being a brash newcomer. But read carefully, Brodie, while he had a good idea, did his homework, he had facts and figures to back up his point, not simply an idea. My guess is that he succeeded in his opportunity because he did his homework, something the sales team could see. He was not just some brash kid with all idea and no substance. He had demonstrated that he did his homework.

Those are the millenial kids that will be listened to.