Millennial Myth: What To Do About It?
The subtitle of this article is an introduction to why I’m interested in the discussion around “millennials”. It began with my curiosity about Indonesian society in 2003, when I learned that technology and its limitations shape society, but society also shapes technology. To understand a particular society, we need to study the unique way it has transformed due to its interactions with technology. And as I evolved into a designer, seeing the ever bigger context in any problems has become a second nature.
Therefore, when I got into management with a team whose oldest members were 10 years younger than me, I traversed all layers toward the bigger picture in order to understand them. That took me beyond personalities and work quirks. I tried to understand them as a group, and that’s how I got into the theory of social generation. However, I didn’t find the label (Millennial) particularly meaningful for me to make sense of the team dynamics (or the dynamics among employees in the organization).
The Millennial generation (also known as Generation Y) is defined by the social generation theory, where social scientists try to understand a group of people based on the social era they live in. A social era is a range of years defined by a number of societal influences during that period. And since understanding a social era is not free from the shape the society formed after interacting with technology, labeling a generation cannot be free from the industrial status of the society, such as economic power and access to education. Then, I discovered a bigger context in order to understand the social era, which is cultural. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions got into the mix. If we expand the context further, it leads to parenting style!
Social Generation: a Myth or a Useful Framework?
Howe & Strauss definition of generations, published in Harvard Business Review in 2007, is the reason the generation discussion got into the world of modern management. It’s the reason it got into business consulting worldwide, and has been extensively used without understanding how a generation is defined (like other business buzzwords). It’s based on American society and loosely on the general Western society, but it clearly makes a sociocultural reference to the USA. In their book in 1992, Howe & Strauss did make it about American history.
Since then, we’ve heard a number of efforts on understanding generations across the globe, in order to make sense of the differences, for example by workplace consultant Erickson (2009) and a recent one by INSEAD business school (2017). Erickson conducted her study on top of the definition by Howe & Strauss. I appreciate Erickson’s work because she mentioned Piaget’s theory of child development as one reason of why generations differ globally, which is in line with my idea of including parenting style in this discussion. She did mention that certain countries have different social eras. However, for the purpose of the study, the same eras (age grouping) were used for the purpose of addressing the need of her clients (multinational companies who needed to manage their global workforce). Fair enough.
Meanwhile, INSEAD’s work is more similar to recent global surveys. Such surveys were conducted in order to understand Millennial traits, because businesses are overwhelmed by the rise of young workers who do things differently, leading to the call for a change in management styles. Since they are mere surveys, the results are mostly about sociocultural facts across the globe, but not the source (the Why) of generation definition.
Try the definition of Baby Boomers. Most global surveys like in the table above have a pre-defined range of 1946 to 1964 (American definition), during which there was a demographic jump that happened after the end of World Wars. According to Sociology scientists, the source of Baby Boomers definition only applies to developed world (who participated in World War 1–2). In Indonesia, this definition more likely applies to what the above table shows as Generation Z (25% of the population is under 15 years old). And while the table indicates that Generation Z (in the West? or in USA only?) is experiencing economic downturn, in Indonesia they’re experiencing economic prosperity instead.
Moreover, the age grouping of such global surveys tends to be rigidly applied yet liberally adjusted (e.g. Millennial is defined as a generation born in 1980–1995, although Howe & Strauss used 1984–2005). Another example is the definition of Generation Z based on “born after 1995”. Surveys conducted on millennials entering workplace would exclude people born in 1997 but already in the workplace. What management insights are we trying to get from such surveys? Wouldn’t it be more useful if such a survey is conducted on e.g. people entering workplace in the past 10 years?
I stopped reading popular articles by business consultants and tried to find social science papers about generation theory. Joshi, Dencker, Frank (2011) covered a great variety of generational theories and provided good analysis and criticism. Quoted below:
“An added difficulty with these popular conceptualizations is that researchers are not able to distinguish whether a particular value orientation or generational characteristic is a matter of age, life-stage or period in history. For example, the many popular accounts of ‘Millenials’ being ‘entitled’ may simply be a function entering the workforce during a particularly strong labor market cycle.”
I cannot agree more!
And Biggs (2007) helps me understand three things around this topic:
- We have tried to understand generations because we want to understand inter-generational rivalry
- There are certain periods where generation consciousness becomes important
- The changing consciousness explains the social-historical reasons of why generations are defined
Millennial became such a salient generation, because it has created an inter-generational rivalry that can be explained by the current intense discussions on management style. Millennials transitioning to be the dominant population in the workplace is causing a large-scale change. In short, Howe & Strauss’s social generation might be useful for understanding American society, but the particular salience of Millennial generation speaks more about the social-historical change that affects all of us globally.
The Characteristics of Millennial is not Generational
We have discussed business consulting reports and social science papers. Now let’s discuss papers from industry practitioners: one by a management practitioner Casey (2015), and one by medical doctors Waljee, Chopra, Saint (2018). They specifically discussed millennials.
What I appreciate in both Casey’s and Waljee et al’s is that they’re trying to understand the reasons behind the characteristics instead of merely labeling them and perpetuating the inter-generational rivalry. Based on their experience mentoring medical students, Waljee et al reported their discovery that the labels are myths. See below how they addressed the six myths: Impatient, Entitled, Lazy, Narcissistic, Social, Needy.
Casey, referring to the typical generational labels, noticed that by now some millennials (born 1981–2000 according to her references) have become managers. She described the characteristics of millennial managers, which help us derive the characteristics that would prevent a manager or mentor from complaining about the myths. The characteristics are: Flexible (embracing innovation, autonomy on how work is done), Transparent (clear purpose that breeds trust), Collaborative (member-leader partnership, idea diversity, tighter teams), Casual (“I am who I am”), and Balanced (work-life integration).
If you’re not within the age range defined as Millennial but have those five characteristics, I bet you wouldn’t complain using the six mythical labels. I’m among those who didn’t complain, because my Design practice has trained me to be flexible, transparent, highly collaborative, and casual. What about balance? It’s also in the heart of a designer’s work, because of the need for integrating different perspectives in our work.
Interestingly, the complains using the mythical labels were heard in Indonesia and USA, but not in Netherlands (according to my work experience in those countries). That’s why I’m including Hofstede’s masculinity and power distance in this discussion, because high power distance causes low transparency and high masculinity causes low collaboration. Indonesia has [high (78) power distance & moderate (46) masculinity] that means low transparency, USA has [moderate (40) power distance & high (62) masculinity] that means low collaboration, and Netherlands has [moderate (38) power distance & low (14) masculinity] that means high collaboration.
For the next two paragraphs, I’d like to use “millennials” to define the typical age group (born 1981–2000). To deal with Indonesian millennials, managers need to focus on improving transparency (clear purpose that breeds trust). To deal with American millennials, managers need to focus on improving collaboration (member-leader partnership, idea diversity, tighter teams). To deal with Dutch millennials, managers don’t necessarily have to improve transparency and collaboration.
The Dutch parenting style provides an additional explanation on the lack of complain about millennials. The way the older generation behaves in the workplace seems to represent how they parent their children (collaborative). The way the younger generation behaves in the workplace could be influenced by how they were raised by their parents (autonomy), which tells that their parents are flexible. That could explain why the Dutch workplace, relatively more flexible (embracing innovation, autonomy on how work is done) and collaborative (member-leader partnership, idea diversity, tighter teams), didn’t view the millennials as very different.
Now we can see that the success in dealing with the so-called millennials in the workplace is a matter of understanding behavioral contexts, managers having the appropriate characters, and support by the local culture. It’s irrelevant to perpetuate the inter-generational rivalry by keeping on using the mythical labels.
And let’s stop defining generations so narrowly. After all, everyone at work has the same career goals.
Still, Why is Millennial so Salient?
“Millennialness” is shaped by many things. Technology (increasingly less costly), global education (more and more international students) and global economy (the blurred line between third world and first world), but most importantly the internet that has changed the way we learn and communicate.
Why are we currently in a period of generation consciousness? How come it’s socially and historically relevant? Because we are on an accelerated path toward change, and the change is for us to be one global society.
It’s all because of the internet. From 16 million users in 1995, we reached 1 billion in 2005 and 4 billion today. It took only 20 years to get half the world’s population connected!
What does that say about generations? None. There are only two different groups of people: those who experienced the internet intensely before the age 35 (entering mid-career) and those who didn’t. It differs among individuals — as some people may start early but not intensely — so we cannot specify a generational age group. Let’s just call it the social era defined by the internet, where we do things differently.
What makes us do things differently in the internet age?
- access to abundant information that supports independent learning regardless of age, leading to: a sense of purpose, importance of personal motivation, self-driven characteristic, and dissolved barrier between age and expertise.
- ability to reach so many people in a short period of time, leading to: quick responses, the need for frequent feedback, embracing diversity, and a strong sense of community.
Millennial is an important generation, but we cannot define them by an age group. Many people of Gen X, like I am, are characteristically Millennial. We have also defined Gen Z too quickly for the small difference (yet another marketing buzzword?). Gen Z is actually part of Millennial definition, because they’re continuing the impact “the millennials” have on our society globally. Adapting management styles to Gen Z isn’t a different discussion. It will stop being discussed until all managers embrace Millennial style (flexible, transparent, collaborative, casual, balanced).
Inter-generational rivalry is inevitable, especially facing such a salient generation like Millennial. All systems need to respond productively. Management, education, public policy, government service, etc need to change. And the change itself can be learned from “the millennials” themselves. Be agile, a.k.a. have smaller periodical reflections at which we decide to respond to change.
From Management Style to Individual Growth
I see management as a way to learn how we humans grow. All good managers know that it’s best to understand your team individually, and if you want to understand the team dynamics you can’t just apply a label. Instead, get practical by first finding the behavioral context relevant for the particular team instead of obtaining more theories, let alone an irrelevant one (the mythical labels).
I’d like to reflect on my own experience with the young team. Since my Design training equipped me with skills to do contextual action-based reflective iterative practice, I didn’t try to follow any management theories. Instead, I started with trying to understand context, jumped into action, reflected, and iterated.
There were a couple of things I learned from the HR team, such as setting goals and expectations at the beginning of each review cycle. Before doing those, I tried to understand their context by casually giving and receiving feedback. After some chaotic period of organizational growth, goals and expectations were shifted, so I asked those who stayed despite the shift. It turned out they continued to be challenged by their work, because they still had the itch of fixing things in the company.
They loved having the goals and expectations set, which helped them stay purposeful. Meanwhile, I loved sharing as much organizational context as possible with them. They loved the frequent feedback, because it helped them grow. Meanwhile, I loved doing feedback exchange because it’s like a collaborative effort in communication. They loved the working culture that allowed them to solve problems that itched them personally. Meanwhile, I couldn’t be bothered controlling who had to have which itch. Overall, we had a casual environment.
Therefore, I support Casey’s suggestions (based on her experience as an Agile coach) for managing “millennials”:
- Allow time for relationship building
- Explain the big picture and why their role is important
- Provide an autonomous environment
- Give them space to relax, unwind, or solve problems in an informal setting
- Provide frequent, fair, and open feedback
Finally I can conclude this writing after reading “The End of Generations” by a professor. He proposed a Post-Generational World and explained how digital technology changes everything. He also reflected on his experience as a professor, and how his relationship with his students changed. The writer and I are on the same page on how digital technology is reinventing personal growth.
Thanks for reading! Feedback very welcome.
