When I grew up in the Netherlands in the sixties the world was small and organized. Life carried on along the lines of the so called “columns”, the confessional political groups. The Catholics had their own schools, universities, and radio and television stations. So did the Protestants, Liberals and Socialists. You were supposed to think, communicate and behave within the confines of the column. Holland had two television channels, later expanded to three with tightly regulated content. We were all synchronized: watching the same program (a horrible quiz show) on Friday night. The coverage was primarily local. There were rigid behavioral forms. Phone calls were kept restricted to avoid the astronomical charges. Our world was simple, formal and manageable.
Today we have a couple of thousand TV channels with the additional option to take an Extreme Sports, Latvian or Korean package. I can read the Dutch newspaper online in the morning and get the New York Times on my phone on the way to work. This has dramatically increased the exposure to information, available from a myriad of broadcasting sources, at any time of the day. But broadcasting is one-way traffic. Just consuming information is not nearly as interesting and engaging as interacting. Nowadays most kids define themselves online and express their thoughts within their social network or the bigger world. They exchange blogs, comments, videos and pictures with friends around the globe. They communicate ad hoc and continuously: if you’re online we chat, if not I’ll post a message. They upload as much as they download.
My 18-year old daughter Kim lives in London. She has 700-odd friends, who communicate with her on a daily basis, from LA to NY to Amsterdam and Bucharest. They write on her Facebook wall, they text (yes this is a verb) or Skype (also a verb). Marlene and I see her every day, on video, at $0 cost. My son, Aki, is friends on Facebook with Akina Tashiro, a girl from Japan, who happens to have his name embedded in hers. Recently he posted a brief video that he made while on vacation and within days he had hundreds of people watching it. These days he works on projects with his class mates by messaging his contributions on Facebook. My kids are just like all the other kids that age (and social class), whether they are in Brooklyn, NY; Breukelen, Holland or Brasilia, Brazil.
Don Tapscott just released a great book, “Grown Up Digital”, about this generation, the first one to grow up digitally. He calls them the Net Generation, or Net Geners. According to Tapscott “They are smarter, quicker and more tolerant of diversity than their predecessors. These empowered young people are beginning to transform every institution of modern life. They care strongly about justice, and are actively trying to improve society—witness their role in the recent Obama campaign, in which they organized themselves through the internet and mobile phones and campaigned on YouTube.”
The Net Generation is now joining the labor market. And what they find at work does not fit their world view. For starters, most companies block social networking sites because of "productivity" and security concerns. Only a few forward thinking companies are effectively using Web 2.0 technologies to their advantage and promote communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing. Net Geners are more interested in the opinions of their peers than those of their managers. For instance, when they buy a PC online, they don’t care what the experts say, they base their decision on the reports of people like them. They have grown up to collaborate, not to be directed in some formal structure with rigid hierarchies. They like to participate in the design and evaluation of products; they want to be prosumers, not just consumers.
Most white collar jobs these days require more and more processing of information from the world outside the walls of the company. Yet the structure, culture and systems of most companies don’t promote this. Net Geners like to work in an open environment. For them the borders between work and play, personal and public life have blurred. In many ways they are better suited to deal with highly dynamic, global markets than professionals from our generation.
You can ignore this at your own peril. John McCain did, while Barack Obama cleverly tapped into to the huge potential of NetGeners.
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Nice post.
ReplyDeleteYou shouldn’t forget the protest movements of the early sixties and seventies, also present in Holland (political and flower power). Beginning in the seventies, these traditional columns started to collaps, people invented the ‘I-generation’ which focussed on personal psychosocial development (ending up somewhere in the late eighties with this terrible new age idea...).
I agree that nowadays we have an much more open community, however not all young people have access to the digitized world. In the Netherlands companies are struggling with this new customer, (consumer 2.0) that most often is better informed than the average callcenteragent. Companies are facing the increasing activity of their employees on social networking sites (in Europe, LinkedIn has 7 million users, of which in Holland one million) without having an answer on privacy and information safety policies. In Holland we are step by step asked to accept that lots of personal medical information (electronic patient files, for adults and a second one for kids). Data about cellphone and internet use are kept for one year and copyright legislation is under severe pressure because of the power of these, in favor of “free flow of information”.
Our information environment is changing quickly. Not only in terms of increasing opportunities. We need to educate our children how to evaluate the information they absorb (“If you can’t find it on Google, it doesn’t exist” – “If Wikipedia says so, it’s true” – “My boyfriend on MSN is telling me that I’m pregnant, what should I do?”). But despite many questions, it’s fascinating.
Erik's comment appeals to me.
ReplyDeleteThe net gen concept doesn't, really. Your ideas, e.g. regarding "information processing outside the walls of the company is more and more required, but it is not promoted by the companies themselves", I find more interesting than those of Don Tapscott. What's intriguing is how companies should actually BE organized nowadays. You seem to have a lot of experience there, a real story to tell. I would like to read it in detail!
My personal opinion is that the contemporary dynamics don't really make all the difference. I think it's more the lack of innovation that enterprise design & -culture itself has been suffering. Since the industrial revolution nothing whatsoever happened there! Isn't that amazing? How is that possible, that is a question to argue on!
This article appeared in the Jan 3 2009 Economist: Generation Y goes to work
ReplyDeleteDec 30th 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
Reality bites for young workers
JESSICA BUCHSBAUM first noticed that something had changed in May 2008. The head of recruitment for a law firm in Florida, Ms Buchsbaum was used to interviewing young candidates for summer internships who seemed to think that the world owed them a living. Many applicants expected the firm to promote itself to them rather than the other way around. However, last May’s crop were far more humble. “The tone had changed from ‘What can you do for me?’ to ‘Here’s what I can do for you’,” she says.
The global downturn has been a brutal awakening for the youngest members of the workforce—variously dubbed “the Millennials”, “Generation Y” or “the Net Generation” by social researchers. “Net Geners” are, roughly, people born in the 1980s and 1990s. Those old enough to have passed from school and university into work had got used to a world in which jobs were plentiful and firms fell over one another to recruit them. Now their prospects are grimmer. According to America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics, the unemployment rate among people in their 20s increased significantly in the two most recent recessions in the United States. It is likely to do so again as industries such as finance and technology, which employ lots of young people, axe thousands of jobs.
This is creating new problems for managers. Because of the downturn, Net Geners are finding it harder to hop to new jobs. At the same time, their dissatisfaction is growing as crisis-hit firms adopt more of a command-and-control approach to management—the antithesis of the open, collaborative style that young workers prefer. Less autonomy and more directives have sparked complaints among Net Geners that offices and factories have become “pressure cookers” and “boiler rooms”. “The recession is creating lower turnover, but also higher frustration among young people stuck in jobs,” warns Cam Marston, a consultant who advises companies on inter-generational matters.
Such griping may reinforce the stereotype of young workers as being afraid of hard work—more American Idle than American Idol. Yet a survey of 4,200 young graduates from 44 countries published in December by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, found that they want many of the same things from work as previous generations, including long tenure with a small number of employers. And they are willing to put in the hours to get them, if they are treated well.
Indeed, Net Geners may be just the kind of employees that companies need to help them deal with the recession’s hazards. For one thing, they are accomplished at juggling many tasks at once. For another, they are often eager to move to new roles or countries at the drop of a hat—which older workers with families and other commitments may find harder to do. Such flexibility can be a boon in difficult times. “In the economic downturn what we are really looking for is hungry 25- to 35-year-olds who are willing to travel,” says Frank Meehan, the boss of a fast-growing mobile-phone applications business that is part of Hutchison Whampoa, a conglomerate based in Hong Kong.
Net Geners’ knowledge of internet technology can also help companies save money. Consider the case of Best Buy, a big American consumer-electronics retailer. Keen to create a new employee portal, the firm contacted an external consultancy that quoted it a price of several million dollars. Shocked by this, a group of young Best Buy employees put together a small team of developers from their own networks who produced a new portal for about $250,000. Another Net Gener at the company cobbled together a mobile-phone version of Best Buy’s website for fun in seven days in his spare time.
Best Buy, which announced in December that its third-quarter profit had fallen by 77% compared with the same period a year earlier, is also betting that its Net Geners can come up with new ways of boosting sales using the web and other means. “We’ll weather the storm and be stronger because of the Net Generation,” says Michele Azar, Best Buy’s head of internet strategy. Estée Lauder, a cosmetics firm, is also encouraging Net Geners to help it innovate. It has launched an initiative called iForce which brings together young staff to dream up ways of marketing products using emerging technologies.
Programmes such as iForce are based on the notion that Net Geners are well placed to encourage their peers to dip into their pockets. According to a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, Net Geners place more emphasis on personal recommendations than on brands when deciding which products and services to buy. Hence the importance of hanging on to clever youngsters who have grown up with Facebook, MySpace and so forth, and who know how best to create buzz among their peers.
Net Geners who find themselves out of a job are likely to use the same know-how to create a buzz about themselves so they can find another one. Charlotte Gardner, a 25-year-old Californian who was made redundant by a financial-services firm in November, has since been using online job and social-networking sites, as well as micro-blogging services such as Twitter, to promote her skills to potential employers. Ms Gardner, who is optimistic she will find another job soon, describes herself as “a glue kid”—someone who can get different kinds of people to work well together.
Firms battling through the recession will need plenty of “glue managers” who can persuade Net Geners to stick around and work with their colleagues on important projects. They will need to provide regular feedback to young staff on what is happening in the workplace and why—as well as plenty of coaching on their performance (see article). Companies that keep Net Geners in the dark will find themselves the targets of unflattering criticism both inside the firm and online. “These kids will scrutinise companies like never before,” explains Don Tapscott, the author of several books on the Net Generation.
In the end, compromises will have to be made on both sides. Younger workers will have to accept that in difficult times decisions will be taken more crisply and workloads will increase. Their managers, meanwhile, will have to make an extra effort to keep Net Geners engaged and motivated. Firms that cannot pull off this balancing act could see an exodus of young talent once the economy improves. That, to borrow from Net Geners’ text-message shorthand, would be a huge WOMBAT: a waste of money, brains and time.
Managing the Facebookers
ReplyDeleteDec 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition
The balance of power between old-school managers and young talent is changing—a bit
THEIR defenders say they are motivated, versatile workers who are just what companies need in these difficult times. To others, however, the members of “Generation Y”—those born in the 1980s and 1990s, otherwise known as Millennials or the Net Generation—are spoiled, narcissistic layabouts who cannot spell and waste too much time on instant messaging and Facebook. Ah, reply the Net Geners, but all that messing around online proves that we are computer-literate multitaskers who are adept users of online collaborative tools, and natural team players. And, while you are on the subject of me, I need a month’s sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals.
This culture clash has been going on in many organisations and has lately seeped into management books. The Net Geners have grown up with computers; they are brimming with self-confidence; and they have been encouraged to challenge received wisdom, to find their own solutions to problems and to treat work as a route to personal fulfilment rather than merely a way of putting food on the table. Not all of this makes them easy to manage. Bosses complain that after a childhood of being coddled and praised, Net Geners demand far more frequent feedback and an over-precise set of objectives on the path to promotion (rather like the missions that must be completed in a video game). In a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, 61% of chief executives say they have trouble recruiting and integrating younger employees.
For the more curmudgeonly sort of older manager, the current recession is the joyful equivalent of hiding an alarm clock in a sleeping teenager’s bedroom (see article). Once again, the touchy-feely management fads that always spring up in years of plenty (remember the guff about “the search for meaning” and “the importance of brand me”) are being ditched in favour of more brutal command-and-control methods. Having grown up in good times, Net Geners have laboured under the illusion that the world owed them a living. But hopping between jobs to find one that meets your inner spiritual needs is not so easy when there are no jobs to hop to. And as for that sabbatical: here’s a permanent one, sunshine.
Today’s narcissistic layabout is tomorrow’s talent
In fact, compromise will be necessary on both sides. Net Geners will certainly have to temper some of their expectations and take the world as it is, not as they would like it to be. But their older bosses should also be prepared to make concessions. The economy will eventually recover—and demographic trends in most rich countries will make clever young workers even more valuable. Besides, many of the things that keep Net Geners happy—such as providing more coaching to young employees or embracing cheaper online ways to communicate—are worth doing anyway. But for the moment at least, the Facebookers are under the cosh.
Cyber-hedonism
ReplyDeleteVirtual pleasures
Feb 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Many young people prefer pleasure-seeking to politics—but for how long?
ONE of the reasons for Barack Obama’s electoral success was his campaign’s brilliantly effective deployment of young e-communicators. Their tireless use of blogs and social-networking sites helped to generate excitement, collect money, get the vote out and raise political consciousness in America as a whole.
All that was a landmark in the political history of the internet. But the transforming—and at best, liberating—effects of modern communications have been even more dramatic in societies that are poorer and harsher than America: countries where authoritarian regimes and rigid mores had until recently given youngsters little room for manoeuvre.
The question in many internet-watchers’ minds is this: as young surfers are exposed to facts, sights, sounds and a range of interlocutors that are far beyond their parents’ ken, how will they use that access? Will they try to change the world, or simply settle for enjoying themselves?
There is so much evidence of the latter choice that pundits have invented a new word—cyber-hedonism—to describe it. To the dismay of idealists, young people in many countries seem to be giving up the political struggles of previous generations and opting instead for a sort of digital nirvana, revelling in a vast supply of movies, music, instant communication and of course, sexual opportunity. One appealing thing about cyber-hedonism is that, compared with politics, it’s less likely to attract the authorities’ attention.
Electronic pastimes for the young range from the innocent to the deadly dangerous. In Nigeria, a best-selling book provides youngsters with tips on “touching the heart through unforgettable text messages”. Young Indians have a penchant for browsing marriage sites in search of a good match. Newly weds who would like to celebrate by visiting a famous site, such as the Taj Mahal, can make virtual tours instead. In richer Asian countries—like South Korea or Singapore—there is a passion among the young for online gambling that often becomes addictive. Cyber-hedonism does not, of course, replace real-life flirtation and sex; it merely seems to remove some of the obstacles. Chile has spawned a youth culture known as the Pokémon movement, in which teenagers with odd hairstyles gather to engage in kissing or more. All this—as well as the activity of conservative youth groups that disapprove—is co-ordinated electronically.
In China, two-thirds of the respondents to one opinion poll agreed with the proposition that “It’s possible to have real relationships purely online,” compared with one-fifth of Americans who felt the same way. But clearly, not all Chinese are content with keeping things virtual: a doctor who runs a pregnancy helpline in Shanghai has said that half the calls she receives come from girls who met boys through the net.
In many countries, the truth is that access to pornography is the biggest factor that draws young men online. First-time visitors to internet cafés in the Middle East or South-East Asia are often surprised to see a male-only clientele, awkwardly protecting their screens from public view. The owners of such cafés know what is happening, but they also realise that cracking down in the name of morality could drive them out of business. In ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, most of the material passed between teenagers’ mobile phones is pornographic.
Political leaders and religious establishments are placed in a dilemma by the rise of cyber-hedonism: do they follow their youngsters onto the net, or try vainly to lure them away from the computer?
In Asia, some politicians have tried to profit from online hedonism by presenting themselves as devotees. In last year’s elections in Taiwan, candidates vied to appear internet- and youth-friendly. One hired a spokesman from a heavy-metal band and posted a series of ads on YouTube, the video-sharing site; he was unfazed by explicit exchanges about a popular erotic film, “Lust, Caution”.
In authoritarian countries with rising living standards—such as Russia and China, until recently—official tolerance of cyber-hedonism has been a sort of Faustian pact offered by the authorities: we will let you enjoy yourselves, in new and unconventional ways, if you keep off politics. But now that economies have turned sour, will the young go on keeping their side of that bargain?