ER and Marcus Welby, M.D. E-mail and CB-radios.
The Phantom Menace and Star Wars. Kid Rock and the
Rolling Stones. Bill Clinton's MonicaGate and Richard
Nixon's Watergate. Columbine High School and Kent State.
Every generation is shaped by its environment, whether it's
from listening to the news or to Huey Lewis and the News. It's
who we are. Just as our grandparents or parents were probably a
little warped by the Great Depression of the 1930s, people in their
early 20s get to live with the idea that O.J. Simpson, in a sense,
had something to do with their upbringings. Like it or not, we are
Tonya Harding, John Wayne Bobbitt, Rick Rockwell and Darva Conger.
But we're also Mr. Rogers, Marie Osmond, Big Bird and Princess
Diana.
Regardless of whether Growing Pains affected your growing
pains, maybe you should start thinking outside your generation.
Baby boomers and Generation Xers, not to mention the parents of
boomers and Generation Y, are all working together-like never
before.
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In fact, according to a recent study sponsored by several
companies and National Small Business United, for the last four
years, the number of 25-to-44-year-olds in the labor force has been
shrinking, and it will continue to shrink for at least the next six
years. If you are anywhere in or near this age group, the odds are
very good that you're going to be teaming up with, or hiring, a
lot of people who are either significantly younger or older than
you.
That can be problematic, says Ron Zemke, who, with Claire Raines
and Bob Filipczak, wrote Generations at Work (American Management
Association). "The boomers say the Generation Xers are
slackers, whiners; they're rude, they lack social skills, they
always want to buck the system, and they don't want to spend
time in the ranks," observes Zemke. "And the Xers say the
boomers are self-righteous; they're workaholics, they're
more interested in politics than results, they talk a good talk but
don't practice what they preach. They demand constant
validation and follow every fad of the week. There are grains of
truth in all of that, on both sides."
But if we can cut each other some slack, the generation gap can
be a good thing.
Sure, you may find that it's lonely being the only one, or
one of the few, in your peer group. Maybe neither your partner nor
anybody else in your company will ever understand your love for
Paul McCartney, Andy Gibb, Debbie Gibson, or whatever heartthrob
was a hit in your time. But America has always thrived on
diversity. And so will your company.
Geoff Williams is a frequent contributor to Entrepreneur
and a features reporter for The Cincinnati Post.
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