introduction

I suspect you already know this: you carry with you a wealth of talent, enthusiasm, and new ideas as you enter the workplace. As a Gen Y, the varied experiences you’ve had so far, your comfort with technology, the global and multicultural perspective that has permeated much of your education, the way you collaborate and communicate with your peers—all combine to provide you with strong work-related advantages. The truth is, without even trying, you will bring fresh perspectives to work because many of the ways you approach problems are different from the way “it has always been done.” The world of work—whether in business, education, nonprofit, or government service—needs, and ultimately will welcome, the contributions you will make.

But chances are good that you will not find today’s workplace immediately well matched to your preferences and style, and not quite ready to absorb all that you have to give. Much of this stems from generational gaps—different ways of viewing the world, and work in particular. Most organizations are still based on ideas and values that ran strong throughout your grandparents’ generation. The role work plays in the lives of many older colleagues and bosses is probably different from the role you want it to play in yours—perhaps more all-consuming and financially motivated. Older bosses will often assume that you will respond to the incentives that motivated them at your age, when in fact such incentives hold far less appeal for you. The ways in which work gets done may seem counter to your natural instincts. The likelihood of misunderstanding is high, and the possibility that you may feel frustrated and boxed in is real. Without doubt, the way today’s corporate world operates is not exactly the way you’d like to work.

The number of choices you face can also, for some of you, seem overwhelming at times. Unlimited options are not necessarily easy to navigate.¹ The decisions you face—about a career path, a place to live, a company, a role, compensation and benefit plans, additional education, life partners, and others—can be bewildering. It’s not unusual to feel a sense of isolation and even sadness as you make these tough calls.

I hope this book will help you find your way forward—to create a work experience that is what you want. I hope it will help you not just survive, but thrive, through the choices you make. I know the world needs the energy you offer, the spark of new ideas you will bring. This book is about helping you plug in—connect effectively with diverse people of all ages and backgrounds and influence what’s going on. It’s about drawing insight from the world around you, at work and beyond—knowing what’s going on. Plugging in means channeling your energy in ways that get your ideas heard and your plans put into action. For many of you who are already at work, this connection is something you may feel you are lacking in the workplace. This book will help you change that.

Although a lot of what you’ll initially find at work may not suit you very well, you do have the opportunity to make significant changes. Sheer numbers are on your side. You are a large group, as big as—in the United States, even slightly bigger than—the Boomers, who have dominated U.S. culture for the past fifty years. Your generation will do the same going forward. Your tastes and preferences will influence not only available products and services but also the way things get done—the way work gets done. Your collective size ensures that you will have a significant voice in business and in the broader world.

Ironically, the numbers also work the other way in your favor. In some ways, your generation is not big enough. The economy has grown over the four decades since the Boomers first entered the workforce. Although you’re a huge group, you’re not big enough to take the places of the soon-to-be-retiring Boomers and provide much upside for growth. The economy needs each and every one of you. Most companies are beginning to be concerned about attracting and retaining talent. You will have the leverage to request arrangements that work best for you. You have the power to push for change.

You are Generation Y. You represent nearly a quarter of the world’s population, and more than 20 percent—nearly 70 million strong—of all Americans living today. At such numbers, you will reshape the world, now and for decades to come.

And you have more than just numbers on your side. You also have time. Blessed with an astonishingly long life expectancy, you have a horizon that will allow you to develop multiple careers, make and lose fortunes, head in multiple directions, and start over many times—if you choose to do so.

For many of you, your ability and willingness to take risks will be strengthened by a safety net that previous generations have lacked. The strong relationships you have with your family, and particularly the confidence you have that your parents will be there for you in a pinch, allow you to view your career choices with a greater sense of experimentation than past generations have done.

Your connection with the forces that will reshape the ways we work over the coming decades is undeniable. You are the first generation to be plugged in to technology from birth, to be at home in the wired world, to be unafraid of the lightning-fast advances in communication. For you it’s natural to have virtual relationships, participate in online communities, and explore ideas in a global context. Although the workplace you are entering is beginning to change—driven by new technologies, new economies, and forward-thinking colleagues, including those of you who have already arrived in the world of work—you will play an important part in propelling change forward. At the same time, these shifts are fundamentally recasting the options you face and increasing the number of choices you can make.

This book is about figuring out what you want from work. And it’s about going after your choices in ways that are likely to be most effective—that will plug in to the people and practices you’ll find in the workplace. It’s about placing your commitment to work within the context of other priorities in your life.

For the past five years, I’ve been conducting research specifically on the changing role that work plays in people’s lives and the reasons different generations often appear to think and act in conflicting ways. Much of my work has looked at how work and the workforce are changing. I have had the opportunity to talk with many of you, and the perspectives you’ve shared about your goals and preferences are reflected in this book. Your voices appear throughout. My colleagues and I have conducted large surveys and focus groups with Y’s who have been in corporate environments for several years.² And I’ve had your help in shaping the conclusions from this research, through your comments during workshops and speeches and your thoughtful responses to my weekly blog.³

I have also worked with senior executives and major global corporations for thirty years, helping them improve their business strategies and operational approaches. I draw on this experience to discuss how organizations work, how they are evolving, and how you—Generation Y—can succeed in these environments. Some of what I share reflects a core set of skills and behaviors that are as essential today in the workplace as they have been throughout the past thirty or more years; others tap in to the new requirements of the evolving business world.

I also discuss the colleagues you’ll meet in the workplace and explore why, at times, their approach or reactions may seem so different from what yours would be. I explain why you’ll occasionally ask yourself, “What are they thinking?!” Your success will depend, in part, on understanding how other generations think and work—and how you can plug in to work effectively with them.

This is a book that is first and foremost for and about you, so I begin there. In part I, I look at the common characteristics of Generation Y, those that are likely to influence your career, and the perspectives—right and wrong—that other generations may have of you. My focus in this book is primarily on Western, college-educated Y’s going into business or professional careers.⁴ My intent is not to paint you all with too broad a brush or to minimize important elements of your individuality; in part II, I talk more about personal preferences and needs. But first, I share some important data and factual context about Generation Y.

To succeed in any work environment, it helps to understand all you can about who you are and how you are perceived—both the myths and the truths. Patterns often provide valuable insights, and to that end, looking at the shared experiences of your generation gives you a valuable starting point for your individual career considerations. What are you up against? I talk about how Gen Xers often see you, what you do that drives some Boomers crazy, and why your grandfather’s corporation runs the way it does.

Most important, I talk about what has shaped your generation’s unique perspectives—the lens through which many of you view the world. Drawing on my research into generational patterns and preferences, I trace the evolution and underlying rationale of assumptions you may hold today and examine how they are likely to affect the way you see your options and interact with others. I hope you’ll find that this perspective will help you understand why the world looks the way it does to you and why it looks very different to many others: why, for example, older generations may currently view you primarily as high maintenance and overlook your high performance; why they often mistake your intent to live your life fully today for an impatience that you’ll soon outgrow; or why some may view your close ties to your family as a lack of confidence rather than a strong foundation of values.

From that baseline, I turn to you as an individual. Part II is about your personal career strategy. A strategy is, in essence, a choice; determining a career strategy is about choosing a path and selecting where to invest your energy and time. The trick with any strategy is determining how to make the choices: what criteria to use in separating good ideas—the ones that are best for you—from all the rest.

The criteria that your parents might have used as they planned their careers are not likely to work well for you. Your immediate path is likely to seem less clear; you have many more options. Part of your strategy will almost certainly involve choosing the best mix of activities—commercial work, social change, family and friends—and determining what level of investment of your time and energy in each area will be right for you. In part, your thinking will need to be about drawing limits and setting priorities, deciding when enough is enough. You need new ways to think about work that are suited to your generation and this point in time.

In this second part of the book, I give you some frameworks and questions to consider as you look for the right career, to personalize the search to your needs. These approaches build on my research into why people who enjoy their work do so and reflect the needs of Generation Y in particular. The discussion is organized around six steps:

• ✓ Find your passion: Doing work that you love makes a huge difference in your life. Although it isn’t always possible, you owe it to yourself to understand the type of work you would love and the clues you can use to seek it out.
• ✓ Identify your preferences: Your day-to-day enjoyment of work is affected by four key elements in the work environment, what I term content, compensation, connection, and communication. You’ll explore the options available in each of these categories and learn how you can look for work that will be the best fit with your personal preferences.
• ✓ Target your place: Where are you most likely to find the work that matches your passions and preferences? Many of you are not planning a career within corporations—at least not in other people’s corporations. Yours is a generation of entrepreneurs and independent adventurers. I discuss careers in a range of environments, including education, nonprofits, and entrepreneurial start-ups, as well as corporations, focusing on how each is changing.
• ✓ Align the practical realities: There are practical trade-offs you need to recognize and balance against your passion and preferences—what you are willing and able to invest in time, energy, and money as you pursue your goals. I discuss how to factor in these considerations, and I share examples of how other Y’s are making choices.
• ✓ Find the perfect job: You know what you want; now, how can you find it? What has worked for others, and where are the pitfalls? I discuss the clues you should look for that are embedded in company characteristics, potential colleagues’ comments, and proffered assignments, and I describe how to evaluate each one.
• ✓ Leverage your advantages: What do you bring to the table? I review the wonderful advantages your generation brings to the workplace and explain why I believe you will make an important contribution to any organization you join.

These six steps and the frameworks and questions that accompany them are designed to help you sort through your life choices—the options that are both desirable and possible, now and in the years ahead as you continue to make new choices.

Finally, in part III, I offer some approaches for success after you’ve landed the job—what I think you need to keep in mind in order to work effectively in a multigenerational environment. I look at the key skills, both hard and soft, that are critical for your generation’s success at work.

Understanding how—and, most important, why—other generations think the way they do will help you anticipate how and when their views might conflict with yours. In chapter 10, I show you how this insight can help you plug in with older colleagues more effectively—for example, how appreciating an older boss’s view of the typical situations you’ll encounter in the workplace will help you position your ideas in ways that are more likely to be heard and accepted.

Your ability to get what you want in the workplace—to be persuasive and make the type of impact you hope to make—will also be enhanced by ten practical tips. These ten lessons, although in some ways timeless and broadly useful, are ones I’ve selected as particularly important for your generation. They either reinforce and capitalize on your generation’s strengths or, in some cases, address some of your perceived weaknesses.

Chapter 11 tackles two indispensable skills for Gen Y’s to relate to the language of business and how you express it:

• ✓ Remember, I’m not a mind reader: The necessity of clear communication
• ✓ Reason, reason is my middle name: The influence of financial logic

In chapter 12, I consider eight soft skills that round out the practices that will increase your connections in the workplace:

• ✓ Think positively: The power of optimism and confidence
• ✓ Why not do it yourself? The excitement of initiative
• ✓ Make the most of it: The ability to turn learning into luck
• ✓ It has to work for the other guy: The benefits of pragmatism
• ✓ Walk fast, carry a stack of papers, and drink coffee: The importance of being perceived as purposeful
• ✓ Clear the air and move on: The satisfaction of direct discussion—and letting go
• ✓ Do the hula: The role of grace under pressure
• ✓ Keep three months’ salary in the bank: The freedom to walk away

Unlike many other authors, I have a point of view that is fundamentally optimistic. You are a terrific generation, with enormous potential for both personal happiness and positive contributions to the world. Of course there are challenges—but other authors cover these in depth. There are also great opportunities ahead.

I hope this book will help you find ways to work on the issues that you care deeply about. Just as you have the ability to influence the work world, you have the power to make a significant change in the broader world. Whether your concerns focus on corporate competitiveness, the environment, education, poverty, or any of the other serious issues facing us, your generation can help bring about important change. If you want fame and glory, I hope this book helps you find that, as well. More than anything else, I hope this book will help you find the life balance that you want and one that will work for you and your family. I hope it will help you get plugged in—to work that fits you, to valuable relationships with family and friends, to your sense of self in the world.

This is a book for you.