Generations at Work by Ron Zemke

Author:Ron Zemke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMACOM Books
Published: 2013-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Reprinted with permission from Tamara J. Erickson and Timothy Bevins, “Generations and Geography: Understanding the Diversity of Generations Around the Globe,” Moxie Insight, 2011, p. 5

PART 2

Where Mixed Generations Work Well Together

CHAPTER 7

The ACORN Imperatives and Three Companies That Bridge the Gaps

Not all generationally mixed workplaces are awash with strife and tension. More than a few organizations are tapping into the positive potential of their generationally diverse workforces. They are harnessing the power in the convergence of diverse viewpoints, passions, and talents.

There are two keys to creating a successful intergenerational workforce: aggressive communication and difference deployment.

In aggressive communication, potential generational conflicts are anticipated and surfaced. Generational differences are based primarily on assumptions and unconscious criteria; therefore, surfacing them takes a giant step toward resolving them. The energy of behind-the-back complaining, passive–aggressive behavior, and open hostility is rechanneled to projects that can profit from different points of view, particularly the fresh perspectives of the young and the wisdom of experience. In the best and brightest intergenerational companies, overcommunication is the rule. These organizations are rife with ad hoc small group discussions, generationally integrated staff meetings, email messages, and water cooler chats, conversation rich with talk about differing viewpoints and perspectives on vital issues of the day. And there’s as much listening going on as there is talking. Unfortunately, many organizations continue to stagger along amidst the wreckage of intergenerational warfare with constant passive–aggressive verbal attacks and veiled accusations, management just hoping the problems will somehow take care of themselves. But smart companies address generational issues head-on, and validate the differing points of view. They take the time to talk openly about what the different cohorts and the individuals within them are looking for on the job:

• What makes work rewarding?

• Which environments are most productive?

• What types of work load, schedules, and policies contribute to an attractive workplace?

• What will attract and retain people of differing needs, viewpoints, and expectations?

Difference deployment is, simply, the tactical use of employees with different backgrounds, experiences, skills, and viewpoints to strengthen project teams. In generationally “blind” organizations, managers and human resource departments labor mightily to homogenize employees; to fit them to a single template of the “good employee”; to make employees as alike and easily predictable as possible. But as the head of employee selection research at a large computer manufacturer put the problem for us: “We spent years and millions learning to hire people just like the people who were already here. We never bothered to ask whether the people who could best fit in today would be able to help us survive tomorrow… until it was almost too late.” It is an approach, a system, whose time is well past.

Generationally savvy organizations value the differences between people and look at differences as strengths. Generationally balanced workgroups—balanced not in the arithmetic, but in a psychic sense—respect and learn from yesterday’s experiences, understand today’s pressures, dilemmas, and needs, and believe that tomorrow will be different still. They are comfortable with the relative rather than absolute nature of a situation, knowledge, skill, value, and, most of all, solutions to problems.

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