Broadening the Myopic

The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Simplicity

Simplicity. One thing that will ring true to you if you have ever managed Millennials is they will exhaust themselves looking for an easier way to do something. In preparation for a conference, we asked our program director to call the conference coordinator and ascertain where the podium and computer table would be situated in the auditorium in which we would be presenting. After about an hour, we asked if he had the information. He said he did not have it yet. Another hour went by and still no answer. Finally, we asked, “Did you call them?” He replied, “No. I have been searching the conference website for the room schematics. It is really cool, but I haven't found one for the main auditorium yet.” He did not want to play phone tag and thought it would be easier and more efficient to surf for the information. If the world was run by Millennials, his instinct would have been right. But because they do not run the world yet, we asked him to humor us and make the call.

Though Millennials value simplicity, they are not simplistic. Leonardo da Vinci said it best, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

The Bias of Experience

What has become easy for you may not be easy for Millennials. Experience by nature affords us time to see many different facets of our professions, positions, and organizations. What has become clear to experienced managers seems elementary to them, but in reality can be quite complex to others.

The Harvard Business Review recently presented a case study involving a Millennial named Josh that perfectly fits the myopic orientation.¹ The story goes … Josh has a marketing idea he has been trying to run by his boss, but his boss keeps putting him off. His boss is frustrated that Josh has energy to come up with new ideas but has not satisfactorily attended to what he is supposed to be doing. Josh is getting increasingly frustrated and is thinking about making an appointment with his supervisor's boss to share his idea. What should Josh do?

If you discuss the case study with Millennials, you will see that they share Josh's frustration about the manager who is holding him back. The one piece of advice that is obvious to you does not surface in the Millennial conversation: “Don't do it!” It is because you have both organizational and political awareness. You know that it may be job suicide. Millennials do not.

Your bias can cause you to be so frustrated with their lack of awareness and attention to what really matters that you miss the opportunity to paint the big picture for them.

Learning from Success

Broadening is an informal means of mentoring or coaching. It does not require a curriculum or regular meeting. It only requires awareness on the part of the manager that an opportunity for facilitating learning has presented itself.

One manager considered teaching consequences to be a part of his job description along with preparing his employees for their futures. “I want them to try to not only do their job for me, but to do it for themselves. I try to instill into their brain that the mistakes they make in the here and now are going to stick with them through their lives. If you constantly call in sick or you don't manage your job in the correct way, it's going to affect you down the road. I tell them, ‘If you make this decision, then this is the way it is going to affect you, and here are the repercussions.’” In the vernacular of many managers, they called it “helping Millennials connect the dots.”

Learning from Failures

There is a big difference between helping Millennials connect the dots and connecting the dots for them. The managers who struggled most with broadening understood the need but did not feel that they could commit the time it required of them. Yet, they shared frustration about constantly having to rescue bad decisions and repeatedly explaining the consequences of not thinking about the big picture. The time they spent “teaching” was often confrontational and stress filled. The experience was unpleasant for both the manager and the Millennial. Some managers we worked with felt uncertain whether they possessed the social skills necessary to “Broaden the Myopic.” We suspect many managers used lack of time in their daily schedules to hide their discomfort.

The managers who did prioritize time to participate in their employees' learning considered it to be a valuable investment and an energizing aspect of their job.

Start with Something Easy

It is a good idea to practice your broadening skills in a nonthreatening context. One way is simply sharing the information you get. Letting your employees know what is going on in the company or at your level of responsibility can help them to think beyond their own cubicle or kiosk. Ask them what they think about the information you share. It is a great way to build trust and a sense of partnership. Everybody likes to be “in” when it comes to information and Millennials are no different.

Orienting employees with the organization's culture is also a good practice. Not with bulky manuals, but conversation. Become a storyteller. It helps them interpret symbols, rituals, routines, and informal aspects of working for the company.

Do you know why Starbucks' part-time employees receive 75 percent medical benefits? Howard Schultz says that he had to tenaciously defend the generous benefit while obtaining venture capital for expansion and when taking the company public. The benefit was viewed as being too rich and unheard of for the industry, but Howard considered it to be the soul of Starbucks' commitment to its employees and, therefore, made it off-limits. But there is a deeper reason for his resolve. He tells of growing up in the projects of Schenectady, New York. Not even a teen yet, he remembered his father announcing at the dinner table that he had lost his job. As that was not sobering enough, Howard's mom told the family she was pregnant. What should have been exciting news was muted by the fact that they had no clear way of seeing how they were going to make it financially, and they had no health care insurance. Howard tells of making the promise that if he were ever in the position to prevent someone from feeling the helplessness he felt, he would make a difference. We can only imagine the myriad of financial adjustments and decisions the company has had to make to stay true to its commitment. Why would someone take the risk of losing venture capital or being downgraded by Wall Street? Things that sometimes seem incredulous make a lot of sense when placed into a context.

The Consequential Thinking Model

How many times have you asked someone, “Why did you do that?” Only to hear, “I don't know.” Managers reported that many of the mistakes Millennials make are the result of not thinking through the consequences that result from their actions. Millennials will catch on quickly to what we call the consequential thinking model. We have talked about how they like to problem solve and use their creative thinking skills. Managers enjoy using the consequential thinking model because they are able to integrate their experience in a nonthreatening way. Let us return to the example of Josh and his marketing idea that we mentioned earlier. Josh is trying to decide whether he should do an end run and share his idea with his manager's boss.

We would ask Josh to think of three possible options (see Figure 11.1). Let us say that Josh gives us the following three options: (1) I will share my idea with my manager's boss; (2) I will give my manager two more months to set up the meeting; or (3) I will ask my manager why she has not set up the meeting. We would then ask Josh to select one of the three options he has suggested. (Josh has decided to go to his manager's boss because his idea is hot.) Once Josh has made his choice, we would ask him to list three possible outcomes that could result from his action. Josh listed his three outcomes: (1) My manager's boss, loves the idea, promotes me, and I am on my way; (2) my manager's boss asks me why I didn't share my idea with my boss, and I say I did, but she really does not get me—my manager thinks I threw her under the bus, and now I am never going to be promoted; (3) my manager's boss thinks the idea is stupid and asks me not to waste his time ever again. The next stage of the simulation is to ask Josh if he could accept all of the outcomes he listed. If the answer is yes, then Josh is aware of the consequences of his decision and should be prepared to accept whatever happens. If the answer is no, then we would encourage Josh to go back and select a different option and proceed to list three more outcomes.

The consequential thinking model is great for helping people understand both the impact and rippling effect of their actions.

The Five Whys

Another great exercise for connecting the dots is the “Five Whys.”² It can be used in a team setting or between a manager and an employee. It is designed to look backward for an understanding of what is happening today. The first why is designed to pick the place where you want to begin exploring a particular symptom (we will uses Josh's problem again). The idea is to generate a few possibilities and then use the successive whys (2, 3, 4, and 5) to explore each possibility. Here is how we would help Josh think through his dilemma.

Please, Do Share

We are often asked whether the economic challenges of the recent past will impact the Millennials' attitudes about work. We briefly addressed this question in Chapter 5. Although the full impact on Millennials is yet to be known, the immediate blow to the Baby Boomers and Gen X(ers) is obvious. Baby Boomers have extended their stay in the workforce due to financial setback. They will be working because they have to, not because they want to. To them, younger employees have morphed from a workplace amusement to an economic threat. Gen X(ers) were hit the hardest in the sense that they purchased their homes at the top of the market only to see values significantly drop along with their retirement investments.

Broadening is about giving your knowledge and experience with the goal of developing others. We would be naive to not acknowledge that there are some managers who are afraid to help their underlings connect all of the dots for fear of making themselves expendable, as was the case with the following manager that moved us with his story.

He was at the top of his career before the oil bust in the early 1980s. Cutbacks caused him to be displaced by the emergence of a younger, better educated, and cheaper employee. For years, he was bitter. He steadily rebuilt his career but never to the level he had once experienced. He is now over 70 years old and still working as a regional sales manager. He spent half a day listening to us talk about how to successfully integrate Millennials into the workplace. At the end of the training, he was generous with his remarks but openly skeptical about the value of younger employees. We asked him to suspend his bias and try the competencies of engaging and broadening.

We were surprised to get a phone call from him after a few months. The first words he uttered were, “I get it.” He had been witnessing a steady stream of turnover of Millennials in his office. He started to recognize how he, his boss, and others were making the workplace difficult for his younger coworkers. We asked him whether his motivation for maligning the Millennials was residual from his experience of being replaced by someone younger earlier in his career. He did not think so. It was more a difference between what he and his colleagues had to do to get where they are today versus the expectations of younger workers.

He told us that he has had a change of heart and speaks up for his younger colleagues and considers himself an advocate for them. He is now the go-to-guy when it comes to helping the younger employees. He understands his business better than most, and now his company is truly benefiting from it.

He told us about watching the young guys come and go because they just could not connect the dots. “You can sit at your desk all day making phone calls and e-mailing, but you won't make a sale,” he said. He explained that most sales took place early Fridays at the local coffee shops. “Monday through Thursday the customers are in the field putting out fires, but on Friday people grab coffee, secure their orders face-to-face, and then head to the golf course or fishing hole.” He encourages his direct reports to keep making calls, but he also invites them to jump in the truck for a Friday morning tour of the coffee shops.

We asked him if his peers questioned his behavior. He told us he was accused of growing soft. The fact of the matter, however, is that reaching out to his junior colleagues has resulted in a better work experience for him. He is enjoying work more than ever. He did not say it in as many words, but his self-efficacy had grown.

It is ironic that there was a day when a company thought him to be expendable because of younger employees, and now he is ready to retire, but his company will not let him. He is now indispensable because of his rapport with younger employees.

He said, “Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?” Who says old dogs cannot teach?

In a Nutshell

It has always been true that workers who can share knowledge are disproportionately valuable. But in today's management world, with more than 80 million inexperienced workers entering the ranks, your competitive advantage depends on the ability to share knowledge more than ever before.

Millennials want information shared in simple ways. We are not talking about being simplistic. We are talking about simplicity. We are talking about clarity. Einstein said it well, “Be as simple as possible, but not simpler.”