Generation Y

This is perhaps one of the best response articles I've read in a long long time. Gawker has a response to a piece from the Washington Post. Its about a woman who claims to be a Generation Consultant - whose purpose it is to go into corporate American and teach old school supervisors how to deal with the Millennial Generation.

You may have seen one of these "consultants" interviewed in a remarkably snotty piece that 60 Minutes (for people over 60) did last year.

"All of which has led, as you'd expect, to a whole new industry -- or epidemic -- of consultants, experts they allege, in how to motivate, train and, yes, sometimes nanny the extraterrestrials who've taken over the workplace."

Yes, they call Millennials Extraterrestrials... like the ones in the X-Files. But I digress..

So the Gawker piece basically calls these people out as being BS artists.

"Meet Anne Loehr, a "business coach" who will (for a small fee) explain the mysteries of "Generation Y" to a corporate audience. She knows your soul, kids.

Loehr is 44. She spent the entire decade of the 90s running hotel and safari operations in Kenya. Nevertheless, she has managed to master the subtle nuances of Generation Boomer, Generation X, and Generation Y. She uses her knowledge to educate the olds about "people born in the late 1970s or early 1980s." That's us, and you, creative underclass!

"People say to me, 'Why do they talk like that?' Because they grew up on reality TV. Okay? It's not good, it's not bad. That's what they grew up on. They think it's okay to talk like that."

No idea what the f*$k she is talking about, I watched Nick at Night reruns as a kid, Alfred Hitchcock Presents rocked my world. It continues...

"They saw 9/11," she says. "Connection is vital, they want to be connected all the time. People say, 'Why are they on Facebook all the time? Why are they texting?' They really want balance, too. They saw their parents go crazy in Generation X. They are not having that lifestyle. They are going to do it their way. They're going to go to yoga at 4, and the Red Sox game at 7, and do their work at midnight. It might be a good idea to let them go to yoga at 4!"

Ok... first of all... Millennials are those born between 1980 and 2000. The majority of youth in this category aren't children from Gen X. One of the major reasons we're such a big generation is that the Boomers were such a big generation and were their children. A Gen Y "expert" should know that, right?

Secondly, what does 9-11 have to do with connectivity? And, I'm pretty sure 9-11 didn't just happen to the Millennial Generation, it happened to the whole country, and those at Ground Zero suffered the after-effects regardless of their age or which generational box they fit into.

If you want to look at historical events that probably had a major effect on a generation I would say it was the series of school shootings that began when I was in junior high and has continued well into Virginia Tech. Suddenly, for a whole generation of youth, school wasn't necessarily a safe place anymore. While I'm sure 9-11 had some impact on our generation, I think it had an impact on everyone in the country. School shootings happened to us.

"If you can say you are 'green,' or politically correct or socially correct, whatever, that goes a long way with them. Nike, no way. Gen Y will not buy Nike — that big, ugly globalized company. This generation is very well-educated — both parents probably have MBAs."

What?! This woman needs to get out of the upper east side for like 10 minutes, these generalizations are killing me and I'm pretty sure that my part of the country would have some disagreement here. Primarily, about parents having MBAs. Some Boomers went to college, but I wouldn't say that MBA's are prominent requirements for my parents' generation. Nor do MBA's mandate a shoe choice. Marketing mandates a shoe choice. Market to Millennials and you'll get their money. See: Millennial Marketing.

Our generation is incredibly well educated, but we come from a generation that wasn't required to be as well educated. To get our foot in the door a BA is required, while our parents could do "some college" or at the very least graduate high school and work hard and do very well. We can't do that. That's a major component to Millennials both for jobs and financially. Its one of the major reasons that we have so much debt where our parents didn't. This is Millennial 101, I'm amazed this so-called "expert" doesn't know this.

Via the WaPo piece:

"Cultural markers such as these have become a useful shorthand that Loehr and her colleagues use to explain assumptions about this emerging generation -- their lefty politics, their belief in gaining consensus before taking action, their sense of self-entitlement, their short attention spans. For older bosses feeling resentment and a sense of superiority, such categorizations can be a balm.

With a Web site and blog, one book published and another in the works, an e-mail newsletter, a graduate student helping her with research, corporate seminars and one-on-one sessions that go for $500 to $2,500, Loehr is quite specific about her ambition: "I want to touch 500,000 lives this year. I am going to touch 500,000 lives this year. I do have spreadsheets that mark how many people I am touching."

I'm seriously in the wrong business. This woman is making oodles with a point of view that is not only narrow but ill-informed and based on what these CEOs want to hear rather than things that could actually help in the work place. At least we here at FM are actual youth experts.

Mike wrote the book on the youth movement! Karlo is a celebrated researcher from CIRCLE. And, anyone who wants to give me $2500 to come talk to you about the Millennial Generation, I'm available any time - and I'm sure that goes for the rest of us.

Until then, I highly suggest to the clients of Ms. Loehr, that rather than paying thousands of dollars in an already questionable economy, that you instead invest in spending 5 minutes just talking to your employees about their needs, frustrations, and requirements. This is called, being a good manager and leader. Perhaps, utilize the money you save to give someone health care, or hire one of the 22% of Millennials who are out of work. Just at thought.

As Republicans commence their "rebuilding," we should keep an eye on the tendency for conservatives to explain away their lack of success with youth by citing their failure to use technology.

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) and Steve Moore engaged in some of that talk in Moore's "Weekend Interview" piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

..."We've got young people who voted for Obama by better than a 2-to-1 margin. The data is very clear, that when people vote in their first two presidential elections for the same party, more than 80% of those people are going to stay with that party for the rest of their life, barring some big event that changes it."

This gives the GOP four years to learn to communicate with the iPod generation. The party, he says, must figure out how to tap new media and new messaging to reach out and touch 20-somethings.

We've recently floated a few links on this site about Aaron Schock (R-IL), the youngest member of Congress, who was elected in 2008. In Time's recent interview with the congressman, Shock, a Millennial, reveals he also has a tin ear when it comes to reading the politics of his generation.

[Y]our generation was very active politically last year. But most supported Democrats. Is there something your party doesn't get about younger voters?

I think at times elected officials lose sight of the fact that the younger generation uses different means of communications. They don't necessarily pick up the New York Times to get their news. They may go online, and they may use more things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — things that members of the older generation aren't as accustomed to using to communicate with constituents.

If President-elect Obama's campaign taught us anything, it was how to use new media to reach out to youth. If your source of information is your iPhone and your Facebook page, then hands down, Senator Obama did a much better job than Senator McCain. Job One is just reaching out and communicating.

(h/t Jesse Singal @ pushback)

As Singal notes in his post, the GOP needs to have something worthwhile and appealing to communicate if it wants Millennials to do anything other than recoil in disgust at their advances.

Here's an excerpt from John McCain's speech at the Republican National Convention:

We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench. We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.

We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn’t make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.

I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.

Emphasis added.

The problem is that that's simply not what Millennials want to hear:

If the GOP keeps insisting their ideology is not the problem and opts to work on their Twitter and Facebook skills instead, not only will they lose even more of the youth vote; they'll lose nearly all of their political relevance.

To borrow from a book title, GOP: We're just not that into you.

UPDATE: Jonathan Singer at MyDD has another take on the problem with today's GOP, arguing that the party is in the middle of a dangerous cycle, with its own burgeoning regionalism serving as the nail in the coffin. Good stuff. Check it out.

While this site has carefully examined the overlap between the tendencies and characteristics of the Millennial Generation and the ascent of the Democratic Party (also the fall of the GOP), we've focused less on what impact a surge of youth activism within the GOP might do. What would a Millennial-led Republican Party look like?

The Christian Science Monitor published an article on Wednesday that chronicled the Republican youth's desire to get away from the socially conservative politics that has driven the GOP for many decades now. Millennial party activists interviewed in this article want more pragmatism and diversity -- surprise, surprise -- and they want to see this woven into a narrative that also contains traditional Republican principles: small government and low taxes. The story paints those interviewed as inspired by Obama -- not alienated -- leading to the grand project of saving the Grand Old Party.

More inspired than dejected about the meteoric rise of Barack Obama to the presidency, young Republicans, often working from state capitals in the Democratic heartland, are mounting an ideological and technological insurgency to change the course of the GOP.

Their goal is to use lessons from the historic 2008 drubbing to tie political pragmatism, diversity, and idealism to traditional conservative values like small government and low taxes. Their aim is to broaden the Republican base and ensure its relevancy as a national party. Winning that internal debate over the party’s future, though, won’t be easy.

“I think young people could play a very central role in creating a more moderate and more pragmatic Republican notion of conservatism that is about change, but about change that is more consistent with traditional Republican principles,” says Professor Michael Delli Carpini, an expert on generational differences in politics at the University of Pennsylvania. “The Republican party has to figure out what it’s going to be, and you can see that battle taking place right now … and young people can be very influential in [that debate].”

We know that intra-party battles can be a good thing, given the squabbling that went on in 2005 and 2006 within the Democratic Party and the success that we saw in the 2006 midterms and this past Election Day. And given the demographics, the GOP would certainly be smart to embrace an effort to recapture some technological -- and therefore, political -- relevancy led by youth party activists.

The problem with the GOP, though, is that it can't stand losing. And so to maybe toss the 2010/2012 election cycle to the side in order to get its house in order is unthinkable and unmentionable. As long as there is no long-term adjustment, the Republican Party will continue to pursue the white, old, Southern male -- a shrinking minority in today's political equation. And the longer the GOP remains stubborn, the more time the Democratic Party has to use its technological and demographic advantages to solidify connections to the largest generation in American history.

And let's say the GOP did adjust its strategy, becoming a more calm, mild, pragmatic party focused on doing America better. What might this look like? Well, assuming the Democratic Party has even a little bit of success while in power, the Republicans, should they be willing to make deals and exert a bit of influence on the Democratic agenda, will be largely furthering Democratic policy. Obama and the Democratic Congress would get the credit for the patient deal-making these youth GOP are advocating. Republicans would participate in the hardening of a New Deal-like Coalition that could govern America for the next half century.

What happened? The Republican Party missed the boat. It cast its lot with the Southern Strategy like it was 1968 (and 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994, 2000, 2002, and 2004). What it failed to realize was that the "Silent" Majority in 2008 was actually made up of young, progressive Americans who were already being engaged by a diverse, technologically-advanced Democratic Party. Even if Millennials take the helm of the GOP ship, the Democrats might be too far ahead (providing we continually invest in our own youth movement) for it to make any difference.

On October 10th of last year, Thomas Friedman wrote about The Millennial Generation, showing everyone that his "expertise" on foreign affairs and energy policy doesn't extend to generational discussion.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

...

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Friedman waded into generational waters again this morning, and while the content was slightly better (the overall gist of the column made good points), he showed again that he does not understand the Millennial brand of activism.

The carnage was mostly restricted to the intro:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation,” that classic about our parents and their incredible sacrifices during World War II. What I’ve been thinking about actually is this: What book will our kids write about us? “The Greediest Generation?” “The Complacent Generation?” Or maybe: “The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their Excesses by Charging It All on My Visa Card.”

Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today. I understand why they aren’t. They’re so worried about just getting a job or paying next semester’s tuition. But we must not take their quietism as license to do whatever we want with this bailout cash. They are going to have to pay this money back. And therefore, we have an incredibly weighty obligation to make sure that we not only spend every stimulus dollar wisely but also with an eye to creating new technologies.

Friedman is still on his radical shtick, once again arguing that times are so dire that we need to sit in the streets and chain ourselves to bulldozers. Friedman believes that the only way to act with urgency is to go crazy, like much of the Boomer activists did, marching in streets, braving teargas, screaming chants, and disrupting society. But we know that we can show appreciation for how urgent this moment is in our own way. Today's youth were involved in this election at a rate not seen since 1972. CIRCLE finds that about 23 million young Americans cast a ballot this year, over 3 million more than the number in 2004. How many times do we need to cite data that shows that Millennials volunteer at record rates? Friedman once again equates activism with being "radical," and he's wrong.

Friedman writes about Millennials as if we're still seven years old, too distracted with getting the latest toy that comes with our Happy Meal to understand what's going on. Friedman acts like we're impotent, like we didn't just make history ourselves, uniting behind a candidate, sweeping him through the Democratic primary and into the White House. Yes, Tom, that happened. And we did it.

Boomers do owe us. They got us into this mess. Millennials aren't being "quiet" because we're not aware of what's going on. We're doing our thing, working through the establishment, changing the system from the inside out. And we're also watching to make sure the Baby Boomers stay focused on their "weighty obligation." We've already turned the political world upside down. We're not afraid to do it again.

A small hodgepodge of Saturday reading for you.

• Lauren Yingling from Campus Progress critiques Mark Bauerlein's new book, The Dumbest Generation, in this book review at Campus Progress.
• Neil Howe also pushes back against Bauerlein in a Washington Post op-ed. Good stuff.
• College students want substance over mindless reading. Want proof?
  

  While in some cases the results were predictable, there were a few surprises. Time magazine, for instance, ranked as the No. 1 magazine, unseating perennial favorite Cosmo and jumping ahead of last year's No. 2, People. CNN.com made it into the top 10 websites for the first time, while sites such as Perez Hilton and CollegeHumor dropped off the list.

• It might be tempting for the Republicans to rally around Bobby Jindal come 2012, but as this Huffington Post piece explains, it wouldn't be prudent.
• Winograd and Hais wonder if Millennials might be able to turn around the housing bust.
• Bill Ayers pens a nice smackdown op-ed in the Times.

While the economy is causing some pain in this country, the silver lining may be the injection of even more young energy into government jobs.

A piece in the Washington Post examined the boom in opportunities for college grads to work in the federal government in the face of an economy that is shedding jobs like it's its.. job. Sorry. Bad pun.

Although the private sphere has shed nearly 1.2 million jobs since January, the federal government has added more than 20,000 new employees just in the past three months.

Those numbers have some of this year's approximately 1.5 million college seniors taking a fresh look at the prospects for a career in government.

"It's not your grandfather's federal service; there are opportunities for all students," said Katherine Stahl, director of American University's Career Center. "I don't think there's any major that isn't served by looking at the federal government."

[...]

At a time when local and federal employees are cashing in on what is left of their retirement accounts, the trends make current college seniors the perfect, "moldable" candidates for federal jobs, Koncz said.

In that sense, college seniors and the federal government are, to some degree, mutually dependent, said Zach Golden, a senior at George Mason University. New graduates offer the aging federal government new skill sets, and the government offers graduates some much-needed job security amid a tumultuous labor market, he said.

"We grew up with technology," said Golden, who eventually hopes to work for the federal government. "Everyone in my generation grew up using e-mail and things like that, and we can bring this perspective to our jobs. Hopefully we can help things run a little bit more efficiently."

The fact that so much young blood will be entering the federal workforce excites me, but what's even better to think about is Golden's point. With Obama's progressive energy in office, the new college grads' technological skills can help move the government forward and improve efficiency.

We still need to be vigilant of what non-college grads will do with this economy, but this is still encouraging.

A commentary in this week's issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education by Graham Spanier, President of Penn State University, left me saddened. Once more, someone of the 1960s tries to reconcile their brand of activism in today's political world, and the attempt crashes and burns.

Spanier's first mistake can be found in this passage:

Did something happen to me when I hit 30? Did I change when I went over to the Dark Side of university administration? Or do I have good reason to be disappointed with the state of activism today?

Don't get me wrong. The last thing I need as a university president is to contend with more protests. Yet I've always felt there was something healthy about activism that is well informed, constructive, and aimed in the right direction.

[...]

As one who vividly recalls antiwar marches, the Kent State shootings, protests against apartheid, and the demand for civil rights, I marvel on the one hand at the silence of today's young people on major issues and on the other hand at the inadequate understanding of the issues that some students choose for protest.

Emphasis mine. Spanier here falls into the trap into which most former Boomer activists fall: he fails to understand that activism and protests are not one and the same. Boomers were loud, aggressive, and more emotional in their activism. So yes, activism was protests, sit-ins, and other bolder, obstructive ways of working against the system. Trusting authority was irrelevant to most Boomer activists -- they knew what they wanted, and they weren't going to stop until they got it. Most Boomers are congratulated and treated as heroes for forcing confrontation of contentious issues, and perhaps they should be. Young people forced progress on a variety of cultural issues, yielding the Civil Rights movement, the Sexual Revolution, the Anti-War Movement -- all because of the loud tactics of this generation.

Spanier's unwillingness to understand that activism as a whole does not require protests in order to be genuine is probably linked to an inability to understand that today's political and sociological environments require a strategic approach, not a tactical approach. Howe and Strauss, clear back in 2000, explained in Millennials Rising that the most productive and efficient time in the workplace and society would be right about now, when Millennial order-takers are coming of age, and Boomer order-givers are at the apex of their power. It's quite apparent that some ironic twist comes into play -- Boomers like Thomas Friedman, Sally Kohn, and now Spanier try to argue that today's young people should be more like them when they know full well they're the order-givers. To ask Millennials to fight against things like the war the Boomers got us in in the first place just isn't asking for a productive and forward-moving society. Environments change, and as Howe and Strauss so often point out, the dispositions of generational cohorts change too.

So while turbulent activism was the name of the game in 1968 when Spanier was 20, collaborative activism is in style today, as Spanier celebrates his 60th birthday. While several examples have been supplied on this blog, one example is Penn State's own "Rally at the Rotunda," a student-led initiative to support increased state appropriations to higher education by gathering for a ceremony at the statehouse, and then lobbying individual legislators to appropriate more money to Penn State University and the state system of higher education. Spanier's presence and heavy involvement make me suspect that he doesn't believe this to be a form of activism, or else he would have cited it in his commentary. But it is a form of activism, at least according to the Penn State student in charge of organizing at least one of these annual rallies:

CCSG Vice President George Khoury, one of the principal organizers of the Rally at the Rotunda, said his organization and others are trying to promote student activism everywhere.

"I feel that activism is everywhere, in different aspects," Khoury said. "At the moment, we're having a diversity summit for all 20 [Commonwealth Campus] locations. It's wonderful -- we have a record turnout."

This year, Livingston said CCSG sought to gain more faculty support for the rally by passing a resolution explaining the purpose of the demonstration to university staff, urging faculty to encourage student attendance and to overlook any absences for the day.

Pay attention to the middle paragraph -- Khoury equates a "summit" with activism -- yes, the times have changed.

You see, Millennials have to be collaborative, pragmatic, and conversational activists in order to make any progress, and this is, in part, due to the Baby Boomers' ideological inflexibility. If Millennials were to get into tactical wars with Boomers, the temperamental sensitivities of the elder generation would preclude them from agreeing to relinquish any decision-making power at all, because of hurt feelings. We've seen it all our lives on the national political stage, so we know it's true. Millennials, instead, have to be strategic in how they go about handling conflicts. Khoury himself speaks to this: "'The best thing is to always speak your mind, but always do it in a professional manner,' he said. 'Don't speak just to speak. If you cry wolf, people won't listen to you anymore.'

When it comes down to it, contemporary campus activists aren't misguided, as the title of the commentary suggests. The former Boomer activists, however, are.

There's a blog about Millennials in the workforce that I usually enjoy reading. It's called Employee Evolution. Normally they've got really smart things to say about the economy and good advice for businesses and Millennials on how to navigate the new workforce/ build a career. They also have a lot of good advice about blogging, building a personal brand, etc.

However, occasionally they dip their toes into political waters. When they do, I usually find their analysis to be off the mark. Such was the case earlier this week when blogger Ryan Paugh decided that Millennials were too conservative, trendy, and complacent to accomplish real change. Obviously, I've got some bones to pick here.

There’s no doubt that we’re less radical than the Boomers of the 60’s and 70’s. We don’t even protest. And sure, we can band together on the web to support a cause, but what tangible goal do we accomplish?

Gen Y is an internet culture. We go to freerice.com and think we’re really making a difference.

I think Mr. Paugh's theory of change needs some updating. Ryan appears to be locked in the Boomer mentality that the only way to accomplish change is to protest. Well, we tried that. We protested against the war. It didn't work. Lots of kids continue to protest against the opening of coal-fired and gas-powered plants. That doesn't accomplish a whole lot either. Nicholas Handler wrote an excellent essay about this that was published in the New York Times. Those old tools just straight-up don't work anymore in a lot of situations and are unappealing to Millennials for a variety of very valid reasons.

But protest isn't the only way to accomplish change. Change can happen at the ballot box. Protesting the Iraq war didn't stop it, but electing a Democratic Congress in 2006 moved us closer, and electing a Democratic President in 2008 will probably do the trick. Change can happen through representative democracy and that is a vehicle embraced by Millennials to a degree not seen in young people in many years.

Political action by Millennials may not look like Paugh expects it to, but that does not mean it isn't there or that it isn't effective. Change doesn't need to come from radicalized, outsider activism that rails against institutions. It can happen within existing institutions or through the creation of new institutions. This is the theory of change that we most see among Millennials.

While the environment is one of the top concerns of my generation, there is no real authority figure within our ranks on the topic.

The closest thing we have is Al Gore, who stops by the MTV Music Video Awards to plug The Inconvenient Truth. And while it’s nice to have a Boomer, ex-Vice President who’s trying to reach the next generation of leaders, it’s not earning any points for Gen-Y leadership.

The real movement leaders for most of today’s environmental and social initiatives are Generation X and the Baby Boomers. But they’re marketing to Generation Y. So while many of us are getting involved, nobody has stepped up and led. And that makes me wonder when somebody finally will.

A few responses here because there are multiple causes behind each of Paugh's complaints.

With regard to leadership, perhaps it has occurred to Paugh that Millennials aren't in leadership positions precisely because there are existing groups started by Boomers and Xers working on these issues. Does he expect Millennials to just show up and take on leadership roles, displacing those who created these institutions? That strikes me as a bit unrealistic.

That aside, this viewpoint makes clear that Paugh is only looking at a few examples that are most prominent in the media coverage of the climate movement. Al Gore is not the only game in town - just the most recognizable because of his PR work. There are in fact a number of organizations run by and for Millennials that do work on climate change. I recommend that Paugh go take a look at them and their work. It's Getting Hot in Here is an excellent blog that covers the youth climate movement.

He might also want to take a look at this video. I'm not sure if Billy Parish is an older Millennial or younger Gen Xer - but he's definitely on the cusp and a new leader in the movement:

Third, Paugh's complaint is that there is no leader to this movement (at least of which he is aware), yet the very essence of Millennial activism is that it is decentralized. It doesn't require "leaders" in the same way that the broadcast -media influenced, protest activism of the Boomers did.

One example that disproves all of Paugh's claims is the pro-immigrant marches of 2006. Not only were they radical protests by anyone's standard, but they were decentrally organized by young people using technology. They also helped defeat the horrific Sensenbrenner Immigration bill in the hHouse.

I enjoy reading Employee Evolution. It's a great blog if you want to follow the entry of Millennials/Gen Y into the workforce. But when it comes to politics, the authors seem woefully out of step with their own generation.