10/04/2010
Managing the Millennials
Managing the Millennials
Firms must deal with their changing expecations
(10/11/2010)
By Stacey Randall
(Page 1 of 2)
The rising emphasis on transparency, accountability and financial reporting, coupled with the globalization of commerce, means more work is on the horizon for accounting firms. That's the good news. But one look around a firm's meeting room will tell you that the profession is graying, and conversations with human resources executives will reveal that turnover rates among young accountants are on the rise.
That combination is not so good.
The Millennial generation, those under the age of 30, is 80 million strong and will be a force in the labor pool for some time. Millennials are well-educated, sophisticated, and don't necessarily see their careers following a traditional path. The recession experience and the resulting unemployment have made Millennials wary, and this may pose additional recruitment problems for accounting firms.
A CLASH OF EXPECTATIONS
A nationwide survey of 167 laid-off Millennials conducted by SBR Consulting last year found that 55 percent of respondents answered "no" or "unsure" when asked if they would work for corporate America for the long term (defined in the survey as more than five years). Their future plans include starting a business, working in the nonprofit or government sector, or focusing on raising a family. This is a pragmatic group, however, since 44 percent saw themselves in the corporate world for the short term (within the next three years).
The implications of these attitudes for the profession as a whole are serious, because they affect the entire talent pipeline. Every firm, large and small, will be competing for workers. Equally important, the specialization model on which firms are built chafes against the Millennials' desire for career and lifestyle options.
My conversations with accountants, accounting professors and young accountants who have left the profession confirm that Millennials worry that selecting a specialty will "pigeonhole" them, locking them into an inflexible career track. I was surprised by how many people I spoke to who used the expression "pigeonhole," an indication of how widespread this perception is.
HOW TO COMPETE BETTER
Accountants and auditors are valued precisely because of their deep knowledge and expertise, so radically altering the business model is unrealistic. Yet the looming demand for accounting services and the shrinking talent pool give urgency to finding ways to accommodate the expectations of young workers.
It's likely that your firm, like many others, has focused on short-term development of Millennials but possibly not yet on their long-range career track. But you're not too late to begin the conversation, and the sooner you start, the stronger your succession plan and competitive market position will be. Here are some steps you can take:
Gather information. Examine the firm's voluntary turnover for the past several years to identify exactly who is leaving. For example, are they primarily people who have been with the firm fewer than three-to-five years? Interviewing Millennials currently on staff may yield invaluable insight into their views on career paths and on how well their job experience thus far has met expectations.
The Role of (generations and) Civility in Democracy « Jessie X
The Role of Civility in Democracy
There are four generational archetypes that appear in a fixed, repeating cycle. They are affected by and affect other generations. They each have their strengths, their value, their weaknesses and their paths. Each generation is approximately 20 years in length, or the equivalent of a phase of life (childhood, young adulthood, midlife, elderhood). Right now, the constellation of generations in America is this:
The Silent Gen are moving into elder-elderhood. Born 1924 – 1942, they are 68-86 years old in 2010, and their numbers, per the U.S. Census, are about 30 million. Their archetype’s principal endowments are in the realm of pluralism, expertise and due process. This is the true Civil Rights generation that fought for rights from a perspective of sensitivity to the weaker among the community.
The Boomer Gen is moving into elderhood. Born 1943-1960, they are 50 -67 years old in 2010, and their numbers are about 62 million.Their archetype’s principal endowments are in the realm of vision, values and religion. They are the “principled moralists, summoners of human sacrifice and wagers of righteous wars.”
The GenX Gen is moving into midlife. Born 1961-1981, they are 29-49 years old in 2010, and their numbers are about 81 million. Their archetype’s principal endowments are in the realm of liberty, survival and honor. They are the get-it-done generation and are “cunning, hard-to-fool realists—taciturn warriors who prefer to meet problems and adversaries one-on-one.”
The Millennial Gen is moving into young adulthood. Born 1982-2004(ish), they are 6-28 years old in 2010, and their numbers are about 80 million. Their archetype’s principal endowments are in the realm of community, affluence and technology. They are a bright, upbeat, team-working generation.
The Homeland Gen is being born now and just entering the K-8 system. They will, assuming the generational cycles repeat, have a life course that is similar to the Silent Gen.
All the quoted text in this post, by the way, is from Strauss and Howe’s work, e.g. Lifecourse Associates.
So, let’s look at “civility and democracy” through this lens … not just that there are generations, but in which phase of life each generation has been, and how it will impact the phase of life it is now moving into and the surrounding generations.
In the past 25 years, Boomers were the primary gen in mid-life. Mid-life is about power. Think about it: it’s the 42-62-years-old people. Families are mostly started and kids, if they are still young, are typically in elementary school or beyond. School is done. Professional capacity and community leadership are realms of directed energy for many in mid-life. Boomers in midlife, per @lifecourse, “preach a downbeat, values-fixated ethic of moral conviction.” In other words, they are argumentative, passionate, focused on their values (one does not negotiate “values”) and more interested in their convictions than they are in solutions. To have even talked of civility in democracy while Boomers were in midlife would have been an argument, in and of itself, about whose values were more civil.
In the past 25 years, GenXers were the primary gen in young adulthood. Young adulthood is about vitality, about serving institutions with energy and the excitement of a life to be experienced. GenXers in young adulthood are “brazen free agents, lending their pragmatism and independence to an era of growing social turmoil.” To have asked GenXers in young adulthood to speak of civility in democracy would have been seen as a joke. GenXers are not trusting of institutions, by and large, to do right by them as individuals or as a generation and, therefore, do not put a lot of faith in democracy and governments to solve problems. Nor would GenXers compete in Boomer turf to gain voice at that phase of life. Boomers were simply too culturally dominant then, both by phase of life and certainty that their values were more relevant and needing to be heard.
In the past 25 years, Millennials were the primary gen in childhood and have been “nurtured with increasing protection by pessimistic adults in an insecure environment.” Millennials in childhood have grown up believing that government is good. All they have to do is turn on the news to hear campaigning politicians proclaim that they are a more child-friendly candidate than their opponent. In their childhood years they experienced a stream of increasing child-focused programs and initiatives being funded. They have no memory of Civil Rights tensions, nor of the contentiousness around the Viet Nam war-skirmish-geopoltical maneuver. They have watched their next-elder GenXers scramble and tumble through McJobs, unreliable contract work and extreme sports-behaviors-attitudes that are a bit too edgy for their tastes.
In the past 25 years, the Silent gen were the primary gen in elderhood. They have lived life by the rules, keeping their heads down in young adulthood, and hitting phases of life at relatively uneventful times to be the age they were. So, in their elderhood, while midlife Boomers slashed society with their moralistic rants, and GenXers rapidly transformed the culture with their take-what-you-can-and-cash-out-quickly approach, the Silent Gen helped “quicken the pace of social change, shunning the old order in favor of complexity and sensitivity.”
OK, “so what,” you might be saying. Well, generations move through time, which is why unless someone is pinging to the archetypes, years and definitions of Strauss and Howe, they are really talking about “demographics” and not “generations.” But I digress. OK, so time has moved along. We are not 25 years back, but 25 years forward. Let’s look at each of these generations and their impact on “civility in democracy.”
Today, Boomers are moving into elderhood where they “push to resolve ever-deepening moral choices, setting the stage for the secular goals of the young.” In other words, Boomers (will) finally have a moment of realizing as a generation that they are the elders and that their legacy as generation is perilously close to being abysmal. And Boomers are about their moral legacy, so this dawning sense that their moralistic rants and red-state-blue-state politics are putting in peril not just the nation, not just the rising generation of young adulthoods (their beloved Millennials), but their l-e-g-a-c-y, as well … this is the wake-up call for Boomers to self-correct and align in a more civil, go-forward direction that is — while not-less-moral — less polarizing. Or perhaps I should say, the Boomers who wish to have their voices included in the coming dialogue about where our nation is going will do so. Those who continue to polarize will be marginalized, which will be a system-shocker for those Boomers who’ve come to believe that polarizing is how to get attention/focus/dollars.
Today, GenXers are moving into midlife with the first POTUS of this generation currently in power. GenXers in midlife “apply toughness and resolution to defend society while safeguarding the interests of the young.” The challenge for GenXers in midlife — long at the edge, the extremes, the fringes — is to come in to power structures, bring their capacities to solve problems without all the bantering around moral direction and vision that Boomers have done, and to force change toward fixing broken systems, businesses, governments and more. GenXers in young adulthood have been a cranky generation, a grunge-y generation, a leave-me-alone generation. To be included in the public conversation about what needs to be changed and how it will be done, GenXers need to release much of their crankiness and instead lead and make things happen.
Today, Millennials are moving into young adulthood with a trust of government, institutions and corporations do not only do right by them, but do right by their generation, and — by their thinking and the cycle of generations — do right by the nation. Millennials in young adulthood “challenge the political failure of elder-led crusades, fueling a society-wide secular crisis.” Millennials don’t understand (don’t have any personal experience with) moralistic, values-based battles to which many Boomers still cling. Millennials don’t understand GenXers’ crankiness, as they have received the opposite treatment as GenXers got in childhood; they were precious to adults, while GenXers were forgotten. They are being exalted and talked about and supported while they are moving into young adulthood and new careers, while GenXers were met with temp jobs, contract work and a “no vacancy” job market in their young adulthood. More to the point, Millennials like team work. They are bright-eyed and upbeat. They believe their generation to be very capable of solving large-scale problems and don’t need experience to prove this: they already know it to be true about themselves and their generation. Heck, they’ve been getting awards, gold stars and adulation since they’ve been in kindergarten! In other words, Millennials don’t understand Boomers’ nastiness and GenXers’ crankiness. (Was I just cranky in my explanation here?)
Now, are generations the only influence making “civility and democracy” a timely issue? No, of course not. But generational theory does provide some clues as to why “civility” is becoming a more a desired and important value at this point and time. It is time to be civil once again in democracy and politics. Or at least for civility to start to have a stronger toehold in the conversations. Nobody except Boomers cares about Boomer values wars anymore, and, I’d add, some Boomers are growing tired of the same-ol-same-ol from their generation. Nobody cares about GenX crankiness anymore, except equally cranky GenXers. And Millennials are showing up in jobs, in politics, in communities and in organizations, believing that life and work and community and governance can all be balanced and good. It won’t change overnight, for sure, but — and perhaps — a bit more civility will get us there faster.
Rock on.
2 Comments
Initial reaction — have long been curious about this kind of analysis & would like to learn more about it. Coming from a visual arts background, the world to me has always been filled with all styles of thinking, imagery, sub-cultures, religions, liberation movements, major & minor parties, etc. When I was a teenager I thought the phrase ‘free love’ (e.g.) came out of the 1960s. Many years later I was shocked to learn that the term goes back to the 19th century — at least.
In any given culture, what is evident or measurable is what is allowed to be observed. In other words, it’s that which is not being suppressed. Today we are radically correcting our views on women, native peoples, gays, people with disabilities, & other oppressed minorities — all having played ‘immeasurable’ roles in the evolution of consciousness all along. (Interesting developments in feminist theory in the late 1970s, when historians began re-reading & re-evaluating the cultural record, to uncover past contributions of women).
To me, a dominant culture consists largely of who the spotlight happens to be trained on, or perhaps, who large populations choose to obey or emulate, in any particular time.
– I’m looking fwd to participating more in #theHoCo blog discussions. But my life is going through huge changes over the next few months.
Thx 4 listening,
Richard- Reply
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Women, Entrepreneurship, Visibility & Recognition | Mediaite
Women, Entrepreneurship, Visibility & Recognition
» 1 commentby Farrah Bostic | 9:53 am, October 4th, 2010
When we talk about women entrepreneurs (damn that modifier is getting tired), the metric seems to be about VC dollars and the list of speakers at tech events.
What we are really talking about is recognition.
You can argue that women don’t approach VCs, and you can argue about why that is and what the results are when they do. I tend to believe that if you flood the zone, you overwhelm the defense, and then they have to change their play. How’s that for a sports metaphor, Anil Dash?
But the question that just shut my brain off at the recent Startup Weekend presentations was something like, “Well, since everyone knows it’s really hard to find women-run start-ups…” and that was it, I tuned out.
Women start tons of businesses. They get SBA loans or they bootstrap. They hustle. They build slowly and organically. They make money, and they don’t default on their loans. They’re great bets for investment. We can talk about the causes of this approach all day (hint: none are biological).
But we’re not really talking about whether they exist or whether they are good risks. We’re talking about the press they get, their visibility – in other words, we’re talking about recognition.
Recognition is about seeing something and knowing what it is when you see it. It’s about understanding and familiarity. Women entrepreneurs and business leaders are often neither seen nor heard outside their companies or industries.
But suggesting that because they are invisible, they are scarce, is a fallacy. Want to find a women-run business, just look around. Huffington Post, Flickr and Hunch, LifeHacker, Blogger, Net-a-Porter and BoingBoing are all women founded tech/media companies. The Body Shop, Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Baby Einstein are all women-founded businesses. Sara Lee, Yahoo!, Xerox, WellPoint, RiteAid, Sunoco, Reynolds, DuPont, Avon, PepsiCo and Kraft have female CEOs.
So why so little recognition (seriously internets, you want to keep offering me Mrs. Fields and Coco Chanel as your examples of women-run businesses?) for the women who are every day starting and running multi-million or multi-billion dollar businesses?
There’s really only two reasons:
(1) Women have convinced themselves that fame is an unnecessary form of credit because it is an unlikely form of credit. It’s a modeling problem that sounds tautological: if there were more women on the dais or named in the press release, there’d be more women on the dais or on the press release. Women would think it was more likely, more necessary.
(2) Investors and reporters aren’t actually bothering to look out for the women. Without a coach calling up the scout and saying, “you gotta see this kid play,” and then hounding the scout with video and local press clippings, the scout doesn’t come to see the kid play, doesn’t sign him, he never plays in the major leagues. Doesn’t make a very good Costner vehicle, does it?
So, two provocations:
(1) Ladies, stop using the “reality-based paradigm.” Follow the Bush administration’s model and make reality. Show up, en masse, and make a new normal. No more 80/20. Flood the zone. Don’t think there are only so many seats at the table for women; all the seats are available. Which means, ladies, you’re going to have to compete with men. The nice story you tell yourselves about “competing our way” … Well, if you want recognition, then that strategy ain’t working. If you want to be successful and run a business your own way and bootstrap and never appear in Inc or Fast Company or Wired or the Journal, then do it your way. There’s honor in that. But you can’t then claim that you’re not getting recognition; recognition won’t be a result of your business strategy, if it isn’t the objective of your business strategy.
(2) Organizations like Women Who Tech and Girls in Tech and Girls in Tech and Change the Ratio: raising awareness is great, educating women is great, increasing turnout is great. But you’ve got to do one better. You’ve got to make your members famous. You’ve got to shout from the rooftops and murmur over cocktails and flog until it gets old how amazing your members are. You have to promote: self-promote, mutually promote, just promote the hell out of what these women (who rely on you for access to the tech and entrepreneurialism scenes) are doing. You have to brag. Being demure, apologizing, speaking in soft, low tones? Maybe that catches you a husband, I wouldn’t know. But it sure as hell ain’t getting you investors and press clippings.
If you don’t want those things, that’s great too. But clearly many of you do, otherwise this wouldn’t be such a hot topic. So, want to obviate that insipid observation (“it’s too hard to find women-run start-ups”)? Get in their faces.
P.S. Reporters and analysts? When you get invited to Women Who Tech, Girls in Tech, Women 2.0 or Change the Ratio events, go. If nobody shows up but you, then you can say there aren’t any women entrepreneurs.
Related:
Mechanisms of Exclusion [Anil Dash]
High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High Tech – Summary [Illuminate Ventures]
Addressing The Lack Of Women Leading Tech Start-Ups [WSJ]Farrah Bostic is a strategist, entrepreneur and the co-founder of Near Future Media. She blogs at Pretty Little Head, where this post was originally published. Photo by Bryan Thatcher.
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filed underAnil Dash, Change the Ratio, Farrah Bostic, Girls In Tech, women, Women 2.0, Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Business, Women in Media, Women In Techshare this post
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Entrepreneurship – Business is the Way to Go | The Twitter Blogger
You are here: Home / Twittblogger Posts / Entrepreneurship – Business is the Way to GoEntrepreneurship – Business is the Way to Go
Posted by admin on October 4, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Entrepreneurship – Business is the Way to Go
If you desire to make money and realize financial freedom then starting a small business would be a legitimate way out. Many of us are not happy at our work places but keep up to put food on our tables. If given an option, most of us would definitely opt out of our regular jobs. As much as the risks are high once a business starts generating profits, the entrepreneur can then begin the journey towards financial freedom.
Statistics show that most businesses fail within their first five years. But this should not be a reason for us not to try out either offline or online business. Entrepreneurship is more about taking risks, conducting thorough market research, being innovative and most importantly having passion to succeed.
The other thing that needs to be looked at seriously is management of business accounts. Poor financial management has brought down many businesses. Thanks to the internet one can now outsource affordable accounting services.
Link up with people who have already succeeded in business and allow them to mentor you. You can also attend lectures on entrepreneurship and learn guidelines to follow that will ensure your business survives. Reading business related books, journals and magazines will also keep you informed on current business trends and marketing tips.
Yes, there are possibilities that your business may not work but it all comes down to what scares you more; your business collapsing one day or waking up one morning and discovering you never took a shot at your dreams.
Stephen is an business management expert. He researches and studies on big and small business strategies . Website: Business Management Secrets for efficient business operations.
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A Strategy For Successful Black Entrepreneurship | The Atlanta Post
A Strategy For Successful Black Entrepreneurship
October 04, 2010 03:58 PM
(theLoop21) — As discussed in last week’s post, there are special characteristics that are unique but common amongst people who have been successful at working for themselves. The following brief list outlines several particular groups of African American who have the greatest potential to acquire these traits or put them to good use. As a [...]
-->(theLoop21) — As discussed in last week’s post, there are special characteristics that are unique but common amongst people who have been successful at working for themselves. The following brief list outlines several particular groups of African American who have the greatest potential to acquire these traits or put them to good use. As a community, these are the people who we should encourage to create a foundation in which they could one day look into working for themselves.
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Leadership and Chaos; Liverpool FC and Entrepreneurship | Entrepreneur Solo
For my sins (this year at least) I am a Liverpool fan and I am seeing first hand what a lack of leadership, or just plain wrong leadership, can do to an organisation. I am seeing this along with millions of other Liverpool fans who are suffering both on and off the pitch as a cancer eats at the club and that cancer is leadership.
Spirit of Shankly Logo
Now you could say what has this got to do with Entrepreneurship and especially from a solo Entrepreneur but you cannot do everything alone and there will be a stage at some time when you need to lead and that leadership needs to be correct, not necessarily strong but pulling in the right direction, rather than tearing the fledgling organisation apart. Liverpool is not a fledgling organisation of course, it has a history of 118 years, but the chaos engulfing the club just shows what a lack of correct leadership can do in a short period of time.
So what are the issues at Liverpool and how can this be reflected in your decisions as an entrepreneur?
1) The Owners: They are trying to sell the club very publicly and at the same time asking for a huge profit on their investment (sic!!) when all they really have done is pile debt into the club. The credit crunch has hit them as they cannot refinance (Hopefully) meaning they are running out of time fast. As an owner of a business and therefore its leader you should always be doing what is best for the business rather than just trying to line your own pocket. Remember this for example when trying to outsource work. The cheapest is not necessarily the best.
2) The Manager: Is a self anointed “highly respected manager with 35 years of experience”. Erm right! If you keep telling everyone how good you are how many of them will believe you? As I have pointed out on this blog before you get others to install the perception that you are good (Third party installed perceptions) you do not do it yourself as you really shouldn’t need to. When you are in a business environment this means networking, doing a whole lot of brilliant jobs and getting people to refer you by word of mouth. Don’t go around shouting about how brilliant you are because you are just cruising for a fall.
3) The Players: Earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a week but unable to beat a fourth division team at home. Too fearful to do anything that may upset the apple cart or try anything creative due to the tensions from inside and outside the club. If you have a business you are a player in it, really it is up to you to provide the creative spark that will make that business stand out from others. If you are fearful of the consequences then you may well find yourself in a very stagnant business
4) The Plan: The last Liverpool boss, Rafael Benitez, always had a plan. Even when the plan didn’t work you could see what he was trying to do even if you didn’t agree with it. The club now doesn’t have a plan, the youth system is being destroyed, kids are being sent out to other clubs in part exchange for short term journeyman professionals and there doesn’t seem to be a coherent plan. Your business is the same in that it needs a strategy and a vision of where it is going. Without the strategy you are adrift on the whims of the market with no way to measure your success or otherwise and without measuring you cannot win because you don’t know where the goal is.
I could go on about the finance, the motivation and even some of the fans who wanted the last manager out, be careful what you wish for, but I don’t want to stretch the metaphor too far. Suffice to say if you get yourself into the hole that Liverpool have over the years since the American vipers Tom Hicks and George Gillett took over there comes a time when you have to stop digging. If your business is ever heading in the same direction then take a long, hard look at it and make a very quick turnaround after all if you carry on doing the same things you have been doing you shouldn’t really expect any different results.
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Technorati Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, George N. Gillett Jr., Lack of leadership, Leadership, Liverpool, Liverpool FC, Rafael Benitez, Solo Entrepreneur, Spirit Of Shankly, Tom Hicks
October 4, 2010 at 1:19 pm