Baby Boomer Exodus & Generation Next Shock Wave
Eve Abbott
October 18, 2007
Industrial Boomers and Digital Generations X & Y
We can identify better ways to work together by examining brain-style differences. Use this comparison of Industrial and Digital Brainwork styles to explain experiences you have had with colleagues or your family, as well as to identify your own work patterns.
Baby Boomers: The Industrial Brainwork Style
Most Industrial thinkers grew up and learned how to work before the computer revolution. Their pre-adult life had little or no computer applications. They are more people-oriented and less technologically savvy.
Overall they find it difficult to learn new technologies and stay with still-functioning computer equipment until they must change. They fall into two camps: those who dislike computers and those who use them as a work/life tool.
They do not often play on computers. The current gaming craze is one obvious exception for some but, not for most of this group.They edit better on paper than onscreen. They plan and sequence work for best results. Their memories are created and accessed in a regularly patterned fashion. They retain more information on paper than digitally.
Corporate Amnesia
Some industries will be negatively affected more than others by the Boomer’s exit, by what is referred to as ‘corporate amnesia’. Lynne Lancaster, co-author of When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work, says too many companies are ignoring the critical loss of wisdom as Boomers depart. “Knowledge can be explicit, such as how you repair a piece of machinery, or implicit, such as how you maneuver a new initiative through the system to get approval.” she explains.
Lancaster cautions, “companies need to start now to find out what they know, what is documented (or not), and how the Boomers can best pass it on to the next generation.
Generation X & Y: The Digital Brainwork Style
Digital thinkers grew up and learned how to work along with or after computers. Their lifestyle is integrated with computers from shopping to working and socializing.
They are technologically savvy and less oriented to direct contact with people. Digital brainwork people value diversity and informality in all aspects of their life, especially work.
They are focused on learning new technology and acquiring computer and digital media advances as soon as possible. Sometimes before it is even publicly released.
Some have a ‘significant other’ relationship with their computers or wireless phone/camera/email/text messaging devices, including sleeping with it on.
Digital people play with computers and socialize through web chat rooms and ‘texting’. They edit well onscreen and have no use for paper. In digital brains, memories are created and accessed in a multiple matrix pattern. Information input, storage and usage is always in digital format. Otherwise, they won’t use it.
Generations in Disconnect
Providers offering solutions to the Boomer/Generation X/Y transition puzzle include The Experts Alliance headed up by Elizabeth Kearney. Liz relates an incident that illustrates the disconnection potential between Boomer and Digital co-workers.
A Very Unmerry Birthday
A national company, with a majority of X and Y generation employees, celebrates employee birthdays with a cake. A Boomer contract employee hired for an IT project suggested that some changes were needed in one of her Digital partners approach to an assignment. The suggestion triggered negative reactions to this perceived challenge to the Digital employee’s expertise.
At the Boomer’s birthday party, no Digital Generation team member would touch the cake and commented on how awful it was. The cake was fine, but because the contractor was not well received, neither was ‘her’ cake. Digital employees see themselves as a team in all aspects; what happens to one is reacted to by all. The Digital viewpoint is “One for all, all for one, and together we stand against all odds”. In this case, even if the person the team is standing against had constructive project ideas.
If these differences can sabotage a company birthday party, just imagine the project disruptions that will occur as the two generations meet (or not) in the workplace over the next five years. If U.S. companies fail to capture the wisdom of the exiting Boomers and to learn how to work with the incoming Digitals, the results will be a business shock wave.
copyright 2007 Eve Abbott All rights reserved.
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