1.
Generation X in the
Workplace

Who is Generation X?

Generation X is the post-baby-boomer generation of Americans. Born between 1963 and 1977, they account for 33.6% of the 125 million people in the United States’ workforce (as of 1996).

In what jobs and industries do they work?

Generation Xers occupy a broad spectrum of jobs, as the following list illustrates.

Where did the term Generation X come from?

Generation X started as a term among advertising executives, to serve as a code word for those 52 million young Americans they considered difficult to pin down as a target market. The term achieved mainstream notoriety in 1991 with the publication of

Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, a novel about a group of cynical twenty-somethings who have dropped out of the rat race because the baby boomers have devoured all the good jobs, leaving Xers with a future of “McJobs” and “Lessness.” By 1993, it was official: the successors to the baby boom were being called “X” by every major news organization and most cultural critics.

Are Generation Xers mostly “slackers” as we are told in the media?

The reason why so many people cringe when they think of Generation X is that they are thinking of a media stereotype that portrays Xers as slackers, dropping out of the rat race to live off their parents or barely surviving in low-pay, low-status, short-term jobs. Since the term Generation X first appeared, Xers have been described in the mainstream media as “cynical mopes,” “sullen and contemptuous,” “impetuous,” “naive,” “arrogant,” “short on attention,” “materialistic,” and other equally unflattering variations. Surveys of the media’s coverage of Generation X have concluded that the vast majority of the portrayals of Generation X have been unduly negative.

Surveys of baby boomers who are managing Xers in a variety of white-collar fields reveal that boomermanagers find Xers to be disloyal, insufficiently deferential to authority, short on attention, uncommitted to work, arrogant, unwilling to go the extra mile, and unwilling to pay their dues. These misconceptions—the slacker myth—undermine the ability of managers to maximize the potential value of Xers in the workplace.

How can we begin to understand the real Generation X?

Since childhood, Xers have been proving themselves to themselves by defining and solving for themselves the problems of everyday life, from making breakfast for themselves when their parents were getting ready for work, to making dinner for themselves when their parents had to work late. For most Xers, coming home from school meant letting themselves in with a latchkey and keeping themselves company during the afternoon—with a microwave snack on one knee, their homework on another knee, the remote control in one hand, and the telephone in the other hand, creating a market for call waiting. As their everyday problems became more complex, they learned new problem-solving skills, their repertoires developing in sync with the information revolution. To this day, Xers’ resourcefulness and comfort with information and new technologies remain critical in their efforts to cope in an uncertain world.

For Xers, opportunities for creative expression provide the psychologically important, and very practical, reassurance that they will be able to fend for themselves tomorrow just as they have during much of their childhood. Working for a living, therefore, is for Xers the most natural venue for staking out a position of safety in a dangerous world.

1. Misconception: Xers are disloyal.

Reality: Xers grew up in the aftermath of the baby boomers’ discrediting of institutions. As Xers grew up, all of society’s most important institutions were faltering—schools, cities, government, big business, religious institutions. As Xers enter the workforce, big business is going through downsizing and reengineering. Xers know that the old fashioned workplace bargain—dues-paying and loyalty for security—is obsolete.

2. Misconception: Xers are arrogant.

Reality: Most Xers spent a lot of time alone as children. But just because you are alone doesn’t mean you face any fewer problems—it just means you face them alone. When you face problems alone, you learn to fend for yourself. Xers’ intense self–confidence is not that of arrogant children, but rather that of children who learned over and over again that, if they had to, they could fend for themselves.

3. Misconception: Xers have short attention spans.

Reality: While all of us have been living through the information revolution, the information revolution shaped the way Xers think, learn, and communicate. Of course, Xers think, learn, and communicate differently than those who grew up prior to the information revolution. But Xers’ natural inclination to multiple focus (homework, remote control, telephone) and selective elimination (“Is this going to be on the test?’’) makes Xers’ minds well suited to the tidal wave of information and technology in which we all live.

4. Misconception: Xers are not willing to pay dues.

Reality: The concept of paying one’s dues depends on a notion of long-term investment. Xers are used to a short-term world in which nothing is certain. They saw people break their backs in the 1980s only to land in the downsizing of the 1990s. That is why Xers are always looking for the day–to–day dividends on any investment of their only career capital—their time, labor, and creativity.

5. Misconception: Xers cannot stand deferred gratification.

Reality: Since they can remember, Xers have lived in a world where everything is changing faster than anyone can keep track. The only thing they can count on is that nothing will stay the same. So, Xers have learned to check carefully feedback from the world around them to see what is changing and what is staying the same, what is working and what is no longer working.

From Reality to Impact

The key to understanding Xers is understanding the key historical forces that have shaped this generation, what I call the four “I”s: institutions, independence, information, and immediacy. Each of these elements has a cause-and-effect pattern: the Reality and the Impact.

Generation X Is the Workforce of the Future

Looking through the lens of Generation Xers’ life experiences, one starts to see a more complex picture of this generation. Of course Xers are cautious about investing in relationships with established organizations—they have no reason to expect that such relationships will pay long–term dividends. To some, this makes Xers seem disloyal, but this is also what makes Xers so amenable to the kind of short–term, day–to–day value adding that employers need from workers. It’s easy to see why Xers would think, learn, and communicate differently from those of other generations. This is what makes Xers so comfortable with information and technology. Xers may be fiercely independent, but this is what makes them so entrepreneurial and such independent problem solvers. Xers are always trying to monitor the world around them for fast feedback. This is what makes them so adaptable to change.

Think about this more complex picture of Generation X: This is a familiar profile, but it is not a familiar profile of Generation X. It is a profile of the kind of worker that every management expert and every business leader has been saying organizations are going to need to compete and succeed in the changing economy. It is a profile of the kind of worker every individual is going to have to become in order to survive in the workplace of the future. Maybe the punch line is: “Be careful what you wish for.” The workforce of the future has arrived, and it’s Generation X.

While it is probably true that every new generation of workers clashes with the generations in power, Xers’ clash coincides with the most profound changes in the economy since the industrial revolution. Xers are shaped by the very same forces shaping the workplace of the future, and Xers are uniquely well suited to lead organizations into that economy.