Introduction
When I started Double Forte, a public relations and digital marketing agency, in 2002 with my friend Dan Stevens (who has now moved on from the business), we were determined to have a better day, every day, than we’d had in our previous jobs. The two mandates: (1) our company would be independent and small, and (2) we’d have no twentysomethings to babysit—I had had it with the younger generation in my previous job, where I’d had hundreds of them in my group.
In 2002, these mandates were easy to realize. Large agency holding companies were still reeling from the 2000 tech bubble burst (for tech centers San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle), and wouldn’t be investing or acquiring smaller companies in my neck of the woods for a while. And in San Francisco you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a great PR/communications person with at least ten years of experience who needed a job. Life was good, in relative terms, as we embarked on our business, and off we were to start the slow and steady process of building a business that would fund our lives.
By 2008 our model was working well, and business has grown every year, to a staff of eighteen. Some of those holding companies were interested in buying our business, but we weren’t interested in changing our lives too much. And then the market changed it for us.
September 15, 2008, I started the day rearranging my workload so I could work three or four days per week, and by the end of the day, thought I’d be lucky to have a ten-hour day seven days a week to manage through the drop in the market and the consequences that would be felt by our clients, and therefore by us.
We managed pretty well through the rest of the year. But as we entered 2009, it was clear to me that we were going to have to change our model. For one thing, we were going to run out of those experienced people who liked to work soon; almost no one had been hired in our industry from late 2000 to 2004, so people with ten years of experience were going to be pretty scarce. And to ensure more flexibility in the business we needed to lower our overhead percentage, which meant hiring people at much lower salaries than those the experienced, older professionals required.
We changed our model to ensure our future, and assimilated younger, less experienced staff. Our model is different from that of most other agencies. As I described it to a dozen peers in San Francisco, New York, and Boston, I got a lot of lightbulbs of appreciation and then, “That sounds great … let me know how it goes, because I’ll never be able to do that.” I knew I was on to something promising, but we were going to have to figure it out without help from others who had done it before, because no one had done it before, as far as I could tell.
Hiring our first Millennial was a watershed moment. This young woman’s work was fantastic. But. She brought her “service” dog, a Chihuahua-pug mix to work without asking, and thus began the parade of everyone else’s newly-minted “service” dogs. She brought lots of new ideas and opportunities into my office, which I loved but didn’t quite know what to do with. And she asked for four weeks off before her wedding, five weeks before the wedding. (To her credit, when her manager explained why the time off wasn’t possible, the lightbulb went on.) This woman is phenomenal, and I’d hire her back in a millisecond (she moved out of the area to be closer to her family), but working with her forced me to realize that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Mostly, she made it clear that what worked for Generation X would not work for Millennials.
I looked for help from colleagues across the country to no avail—everyone was struggling with how to work with Millennials. I read everything I could get my hands on, but was put off by the “bitter Boomers” who wrote or contributed to the conversation. I was determined to have a positive attitude about figuring it out, even when the notion of adjusting drove me crazy.
After challenging ourselves to rethink our assumptions, we tweaked our model a bit to maximize the dynamics that Gen Y brought to the workplace; since then, Double Forte has been successful in closing the gap between the generations in our office.
Our business now has thirty-plus staffers, fully half—but no more than half—of whom are Millennials. We have very low turnover in a hot job market, and are lucky to have many candidates to choose from when we hire. My work, advising clients on external and internal communications, has changed dramatically in the last three years; I now spend a good chunk of time advising companies on how to work with, communicate with, and market to Millennials. I also advise on this topic to the nonprofit organizations on whose boards I sit. My phone seems to ring two or three times a month with people asking for time to talk about these struggles in their own workplaces.
In addition to drawing on my own experience with my clients and associates, I interviewed and surveyed hundreds of working people across the country in a wide range of industries and of many different ages and experience levels. I’ve included many of their stories in the book, and you’ll recognize these personalities in your own work I’m sure. Because about half of the people asked me not to use their names, I have changed all of the names in the book of people who told them their stories and I do not name the companies. What you’ll find in Millennials & Management is a compilation of practices that will help you make the most of your generationally diverse workforce; by reading about a wide range of experiences and ideas, you can take the best nuggets for your situation and apply them to create a cross-generational environment built for success today and tomorrow.
If you’re a Boomer or Gen X leader struggling to understand the Millennials in your office, or if you’re a Millennial trying to get through to your Boomer or Gen X boss, this book is for you. Understanding the perspectives of other generations and putting into practice the techniques I describe will create a smoother-running, more positive workplace for everyone.
Managers, this book will shed light on the Millennial mindset and help you find ways to work more productively with your younger colleagues, as well as appreciate the value they can bring to your business. I encourage you to read this book with your teams and discuss what rings true for your organizations, as well as look at how to apply the simple tenets I discuss to make your workplace work for everyone.
Millennials, read this book! You will get a good sense of why your older colleagues seem frustrated, and you will find easy-to-follow steps that will help you ease yourself onto a team or into the workplace. If you’re a recent college graduate, you will find information that will make it easier for you to get hired and transition smoothly into an office.
Parents of Millennials: this book is for you, too. Within it you will find ways to help your young adult children without hurting their chances and opportunities.
We can all work together well, I promise! The people and companies that figure this out now will have a significant strategic advantage over those that drag their feet. Remember, no one builds a successful company or career by themselves. The need to work with other people is one of the only constants in business. If we can bridge the gap between the generations in the office, and bring our distinct strengths to the table, we will be able to co-create positive, future-proof businesses in which Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials can prosper together