Managers and their companies will have to deal with the 76 million children of baby boomers, born between 1978 and 2000, who have started pouring into offices across the land. Four generations are being asked to coexist at once: traditionalists (born before 1945), boomers (born 1946-1964), generation X (1965-1977), and millennials (alternately known as gen-Y, echo boomers, Net gen, and even "generation why," because they never stop questioning the status quo). Managers will be challenged to minimize the friction and maximize the assets of four distinct sets of work values and styles simultaneously.
The more I teach (a variety of traditional and non-traditional students), I'm more and more aware of the "Culture Clash" as written about in Fast Company Magazine (which I heartily recommend to all business students).
The article goes on to say that
Millennials aren't interested in the financial success that drove the boomers or the independence that has marked the gen-Xers, but in careers that are personalized.
But I also realize that I and many of my teaching colleagues (apologies for pointing this out, folks) are quickly becoming dinosaurs, thinking and teaching "old" methods and skills to students who rapidly discount anything that isn't personally profitable. And no (as the Fast Company articles explains) this won't "wash away with time." These attitudes are here to stay.
My challenge will be to find the right approach to Personal Knowledge Management that will stress the Personal part, make it immediately relevant, but also allowing students to grasp the importance of those skills to the larger organization.
Of course, the humbling possibility is that they will not only catch up, but surpass me--and that they will then teach me how to manage one's own "personal" knowledge.
It's not being kept on my toes that I mind; it's the fear that if I stop to catch my breath, I'll be run over . . . . .
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