The 2000s are a unique time in history, from the technology explosion to the Boomer exit, the down economy, and the massive Gen Y entering the workforce. This is not just about a ripple in the workplace because our leaders are leaving. It is much bigger than that. In the economic ocean, this is a tsunami!
It’s like we are all leisurely working, playing, and resting near the beach and on the horizon we see something coming—something big. The closer the tsunami gets to the shore, the wider our eyes get, and a million things run through our mind, but the loudest thought of all is RUN! But we can’t run from this tidal wave of demographic and economic shifts.
We are all just beginning to figure out what it means, and we can be certain that there are even more massive shifts in the mix. Medicare is draining America’s pocket books faster than the current workforce population can replenish it. Gen Yers are going to have to continue to pay for this elderly care benefit, but they are not likely to reap any of the rewards, and the new government healthcare can only add to this deficit.
Our generations must rally together and stop thinking only of ourselves. In a recent interview that John Stossel conducted for ABC’s 20/20, he interviewed a group of wealthy senior citizens about Medicare. They, of course, love Medicare. They paid in for 40 years and now they are reaping the benefits of “free” health-care, but Stossel pointed out that the average senior citizen is costing three times what they paid into Medicare. There is no way that Medicare can still be available for Gen Y at the current pace. In effect, the elderly are reaping rewards that the younger generations are paying for, and yet the payment plan is unsustainable. As the interview progressed, the wealthy senior citizens did begin to see the problem and ponder what this means for their grandchildren and great grandchildren. This is what we must do now. We must start to see the bigger picture. We must think of our children and grandchildren. We must look up from our own day-to-day living and prepare for the future.
It’s a shift in our thinking. Americans are independent by nature. Remember, we are the ones who left our home countries and migrated to America. We are the brave, the adventurous, and the independent. We have the Declaration of Independence, and we all want to be able to live independently. It is a part of who we are. It’s in our blood. But this is not the time to exercise our independence. This is the time to work together, as a community—a community of people who cares more about the long-term survival of the community than self-preservation.
In order to thrive as a nation, we have to figure it out. Regardless of how many shifts we have to deal with, it will be helpful if we deal with them as a community, pulling together, helping each other through, lending a helping hand. If war came to American soil, we believe that the American people would rally. Former competitors and political foes would pull together and face the common enemy in order to survive as a people and a nation. That is exactly what we need to do now. The war we face is not missiles and bombs, but economy and demographics. It’s math. We have a math problem and we have to solve it.
In the workplace, we have to prepare and make the shifts necessary to ensure that future generations are not left with problems beyond repair. We still have time—not a lot of time, but a little time—to put systems in place, to wake up the workforce, and to prepare for the biggest impact of the workplace shifts and that is the loss of leadership coming as the Boomers march forward in the generational parade.
Since people have made this situation, perhaps we should look to nature for examples of how we can collectively prepare for and defend our workplace stability. In nature, if we look for an excellent example of community, we can search high and low and not find a better example than honeybees. They are a colony. They work together. They are gentle unless they are threatened. But when they are threatened, they are willing to make great sacrifices in order to ensure that the colony stays secure. Let’s take a look at how they do it and think about how we can apply their historic success to our situation.
Beehives consist of three types of bees: the Queen (leader), the female worker bees, and the male drones. Each one has a job to do, but the job is never independent of the rest of the hive (workplace). Every worker bee (employee) is born (hired) with her role and tasks clearly defined. Young bees take care of and feed the newborns (new hires). As the newborn emerges, she has a narrow range of tasks within the hive because she is young and inexperienced. But as she ages, gaining both experience and wisdom, she is given increased responsibility. “As they get older, their duties involve work outside of the hive and she performs more and more complex and demanding tasks. Although these various duties usually follow a set pattern and timeline, they sometimes overlap. A worker bee may change occupations sometimes within minutes, if there is an urgent need within the colony for a particular task. They represent teamwork and empowerment at their best!”1
Imagine if Gen Yers were more concerned about the health of the workplace than about their own careers? Imagine if the elder generations were feeding the younger generations with the knowledge and wisdom that they will need to survive and create profitable organizations and doing so as fast as the younger generations could receive the information. Imagine if we were all willing to move quickly from one role to another as the workplace required rather than focusing on our own career.
Honeybees also have an extremely clean environment. Not only do they not allow it to get contaminated with dirt, they also do not keep around anything that is dead. The worker bees remove anything dead or diseased and take it as far away from the hive as possible.
We have a lot of still-working but non-producing employees in our workplaces, and the survival of the workplace will require us to move out this dead weight as fast and as far away as possible. In our companies, we also have some dead ideas, divisions, and products. All of these need to be pruned in order for the core to survive at its best.
Bees shift quickly as needed. For example, the young worker bees take care of the brood (babies), but the amount of time they spend on this task depends on how many there are and what other tasks may be necessary and take precedent. Sometimes the brood has to do more on its own quicker. They also share information. They do not locate a field of clover and try to keep that to themselves so that they can be the hero. As soon as they get back to the hive, they lay out the map for the other worker bees to go and get more supply so that other workers can turn it around to meet the needs of the hive and establish a warehouse of provision for future use and reserve. This supply is their profits.
Bees are very much into profitability. They first take care of their overhead by making sure that there is ample supply to meet the basic demand of the hive. This is an ongoing endeavor of maintenance, repair, and supply, but once the supply is established, the bees can move on to what bees are known best for and that is creating a profitable supply of honey. This is their gold/cash. Bees’ nature is to create excess honey above and beyond what is required. In fact, the more room you give bees to store excess honey, the more they will make. Alternatively, if you do not give them room to expand, the queen (leader) will take half the hive and go start over somewhere else.
Likewise, if a company is growing fast or under financial or competitor attack, new hires may be required to jump in and do more faster than they would during less strenuous times, but that is just part of operating as a community instead of a bunch of independents. More seasoned workers must also be willing to shift quickly, locate supply, and map out the strategy for others to bring in supply to meet the organization’s overhead needs and establish a warehouse of provision for sale and reserves.
Worker bees control the temperature and humidity of the hive. If the temperature isn’t kept, the brood will not develop, and the hive’s survival will be in danger. There is no way that one bee could maintain the temperature of the hive. It takes a massive, collective, and well-coordinated effort to run this air conditioning and heating system.
This is the same as the culture and climate within an organization. One person cannot maintain the culture. The culture has to be maintained by the collective whole. Employees must first understand what the temperature (culture) is supposed to be, learn how to keep it at that temperature, and then work in unison with the other employees to keep the culture and climate inside the organization just right for both growth and profitability.
Worker bees also send out messages to other worker bees to help them locate the hive when they have gone out to search for provision and supply. They let them know where they belong.
In our organizations, we’ve often been so independent that we have forgotten to encourage each other and let our fellow employees know that as long as they are productive, they belong here. But make no mistake, unproductive employees will not be tolerated. In a united effort, we will stop focusing on our own careers and start looking around at who needs some encouragement, help, or direction.
Finally, as worker bees mature, they apply their experience and wisdom to expanded areas of responsibility. They always orient themselves to the hive before stepping out and then go out in progressively widening circles, always going out to find what is good for the hive and bringing it back to the hive. This part of their lives is difficult and dangerous, but they do it bravely and protect the hive with their lives. And they work diligently right until the end. Every member contributes his/her own set of skills, giving 100 percent every day for the good of the hive.
Our workplace cannot be a place for the Dilbert’s of the world to hide, and it can’t be up to leaders to find them. The employees (worker bees) are the ones to expose and push out unproductive employees. Not contributing in a profit-and-loss, supply-and-demand workplace environment just can’t be tolerated. Yes, leadership needs to take a stand, but employees also need to have the courage to speak up when fellow workers aren’t contributing or are acting selfishly. How can any company be successful at all when employees inside the organization are watching out for themselves, stealing time and ideas from the workplace? People think their small part or lack of small part is insignificant, but it isn’t. Each person’s contribution or lack of it impacts us all in a butterfly effect type of way.
And then there’s the leadership. In a hive, the queen is the leader. Not the potential leader or the lame duck leader or the figure head leader: she is truly the leader. She works as hard or harder than the worker bees. Every basic need that she has is taken care of so that she can focus on her job 100 percent. No one tries to make her into a worker bee or a male drone. She has a job. Her job is to orient/lead the hive. She sets the atmosphere and decides where the hive will be located. She is not lazy or spoiled. She works incredibly hard producing more than her body weight in new larvae each day. She inspects cells and lays eggs. Unlike most organizations where leadership is either revered or hated, the queen bee is encouraged by the worker bees to lay more eggs.
Imagine a workplace where employees encourage the leaders instead of fighting them or demanding that they give them more rights, time off, etc. It’s highly unlikely that the queen bee is as lonely as our organizational leaders are because she is tended to and encouraged instead of killed and eaten like many of our political and organizational leaders. Of course we don’t speak bee, but we doubt that her every decision is questioned by Gen Y or treated with irreverence by Gen X, we mean young worker bees.
Without a queen in a beehive, the worker bees do not know what to do with themselves. They lose sight of the goal, and productivity wanes. They mope around like they are depressed— totally lost without direction only to become happy again when a new queen is introduced or they grow their own.
In companies, leadership is imperative. Even if we are able to move to more collaborative, results-based models, we still need leaders to establish the vision, create the strategy, and map out the goals so that we can pull together to achieve them. In one of our Gen Y interviews, we discussed the fact that Gen X and Boomers often look to Gen Y when it comes to technology. Our Gen Y interviewee gasped a little and said, “that’s frightening!” She went on to tell us that Gen Y doesn’t want that. They want to be led and they want to be pushed. That is when they are at their best.
So the vision is creating a more united, collaborative, and community-oriented workplace to preserve the welfare of organizations and ultimately our country and to establish a foundation for the success of generations to come.
The strategy is to educate Americans on the coming demographic and economic shifts and how they impact the workplace.
The goal is to work collectively and share liberally better ways to
• communicate across the diverse generations;
• bridge value differences; and
• ultimately create new, innovative, and viable economic solutions.
Throughout this book, we have endeavored to lay out the shifting demographics in the workplace and the situation it presents along with the many other impacting factors. We have offered solutions to the communication and values gaps and what companies can do to prepare, but our ultimate goal is to wake up America. The economic and demographic war is already here, but we have not rallied the troops and attacked the enemy as one people yet. We are still divided into many factions and parties. We can’t win this way. We must be a united people and we must have adequate numbers of prepared leaders, because a community without leadership is lost. We need generals to lead the war. Remember the Top 5 Competencies Most Lacking in Next Generation Leaders:
1. strategic thinking
2. leading change
3. ability to create a vision and engage others around it
4. ability to inspire
5. understand the total enterprise and how parts work together
It’s our job to make sure that we bridge this leadership gap before it’s too late. America has a situation, and we are giving you a view inside the Situation Room.
While creating a more collaborative and united workplace environment may seem idealistic—even Pollyannaish—but the alternative isn’t pretty. Hard times inevitably pull people together or tear them apart. We have a choice. We can successfully address and prepare for the demographic shift or we can fail to prepare for the tsunami on the horizon.
Failure, unfortunately, is easy. Organizations can fail to meet the demographic challenge by
1. doing nothing. If an organization’s leaders are so busy with the day to day that they fail to see the storm brewing on the horizon, they will be hard hit when it arrives.
2. failing to educate the diverse generations about each other.
3. failing to provide the diverse generations with tools to bridge their communication and values gaps.
4. neglecting the development of the next generation leader. Development dollars and talent pools need to be adjusted to ensure that the next generation leaders are ready to lead.
5. failing to move out poor performing workers including executive-seat–hoarding Boomers. Listen, if they are making the big bucks and they have the big title and the organization isn’t holding them accountable, even the most noble of the Boomers may be tempted to do less and cost more. Just because Boomers are at the top doesn’t mean they should stay. If they are not producing, their performance needs to be managed just as emphatically as that of Gen X and Gen Y.
6. failing to see the big picture of how all of this ultimately impacts the success and even survival of our nation as we know it.
Winston Churchill once said “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” We have an opportunity to make changes and decisions now that will be written down in the history books for generations to come. What are they going to say about us? Did we wake up out of our slumber and band together to fight the economic war and face the demographic shifts with courage? Did we look out for them? Did we make a way?
What will they say?
Note
1. Blackiston, Howland. Beekeeping for Dummies. New York: Hungry Minds, 2002. p. 26. Print.