Memo to Senior Leadership: Stop Being Afraid of Gen Y – Part 1

Conversations with senior leadership often reveals the same question, “how do I leverage the next generation?” It’s a complex question, because the nature of the answer requires change… on the part of the leadership.

In business, leadership often seeks how to “change” or leverage their employees, but what if the leadership is in need of the change? Well, then we have a whole new ball game. Why? Because change is often viewed only to be required if something is wrong. We don’t mind it so much when the employee has something wrong with them, but it bothers us a hell of a lot more if we, the leadership has something wrong with us.

So lets start there. Change does NOT have to mean something is wrong. No, this isn’t some pluralistic, “everyone is OK” philosophy. What I mean to say is that change should be done when it is beneficial, not just critical.

In the last decade, Apple has laid waste to anyone who wants to compete in the MP3 market. They own it, they know they own it. So, why do they keep creating new versions of the industry leading iPod? Is it because something is wrong with the product? No. In fact, there isn’t a product that remotely rivals the iPod, not in function or marketability.

Apple has a “code” they live by. . . keep creating. It takes a special kind of company that is willing to kill off its own products by creating better products. There is no threat or need to make a better iPod, but they do, nearly every year.

It is this kind of thinking that has re-birthed a company, taking stock prices from $5.00 a share to over $200 before the economy went down the toilet.

So, what does this have to do with Gen Y and leadership?

It denotes that change is profitable. That change is good and that adaptation strengthens us, it doesn’t make us weak, or more important, it doesn’t mean we’re weak.

This next group of workers has been raised through the greatest leap in communication since the printing press. The world is smaller than our parents could ever have grasped it would become. They are socially built, they care about the world and they may be the most resourceful generation to ever live.

The question is, how do we lead this group of people?

Stay tuned. . .

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