Bridging the Generational Divide at Work
Barack Obama is dissing the baby
boomers. But he’s doing it tactfully.
So he’s got a wide range of
people talking about generational issues in politics, and I’m eagerly
anticipating spillover into the workplace, which also needs this frank
discussion.
The Kid Stays
in the Picture
One of the companies I founded
was an online marketplace for city governments. My business partner was a
50-something guy who had been dealing with city governments forever.
Our investors in the first round
were all his friends, most were over 50, and some assumed I was dating my
partner because why else would he start a company with someone so young.
Investors treated me like it was
an impossibility that I could have learned things fast enough to get into a
room with them. And one investor asked me to leave a meeting at such an
inappropriate moment that even my partner was shocked.
Then, about a year later, when I
was looking for a job, the guy I interviewed with said, "Kids now think
they can learn on the job and they don’t need an MBA. What do you think of
that?"
I couldn’t believe it: He was
calling me a kid in a job interview, even though I’d already launched two
companies. He did this because he thinks it’s culturally acceptable to treat
someone like they don’t know anything just because they’re young.
Fight This
Generation
I’ve been holding off writing
about Obama because the first (and last) time I took a leap into politics with
a column was when I campaigned for Howard Dean, the week before he imploded. I
told myself I learned my lesson: Politics is too volatile for a workplace
writer to forge a path through.
But here I am again, writing
about politics — and hoping Obama doesn’t implode next week. I have to write
about him because while this is not an official endorsement, when he talks
about leading a new generation I get giddy over the idea that we
could be wrestling ourselves out from under the clutch of the baby boomers.
Obama talks about teamwork and
community and the end of the me-me-me in-fighting that’s characterized the
recent history of baby boomer politics. A report in Newsday says:
"Obama represents the
transition from the Baby Boom to Generation X. … He spoke of a post-boomer
sensibility, of moving beyond the divisions exacerbated by undue
self-focus."
I have this conversation with my
(baby boomer) agent, and she says, "Everything to you is about
generations." And, OK, there’s truth to that, but there’s also some hot
air, because the baby-boom generation is so huge that everything has been about
them by default.
Y Try
I’m from a generation that had very limited power to do anything, anywhere, except live in the wake of the boomers. Even when it came to the
Internet revolution in the ’90s, most of the people who got rich were the baby
boomers who invested in companies that Gen-Xers operated.
This is why I get excited about
Generation Y. It’s amazing to see this group, with all their demographic power, open up the world to change.
For the most part, I focus on
change in the workplace. There were a lot of things that my generation wanted
at work — for example, flexible hours, personal growth, and the abandonment of
a competitive, ego-focused hierarchy in favor of teamwork. But we had trouble
pushing through these workplace values because there were too few of us. The
baby boomers could always just say no.
But Generation Y wants so many
of those Gen-X things, and Generation Y has the demographic power to make it
real. It excites me to see this happen at work.
Mind the Gap
Obama is the political
corollary. Finally, there are enough voters, maybe, to vote for someone who isn’t a baby
boomer.
I don’t know if it will happen,
but just that we’re talking about it is exciting. Because once we talk about
baby boomers giving up control of politics, the talk of baby boomers giving up
control of corporate life can’t be far behind.
But there’s a workplace lesson
from Obama as well. He’s very tactful as he disses the boomers. He makes it
clear that he’s a bridge builder, and that he’s respectful of the fact that
everyone has a place in history. And he is, above all, someone who has empathy
for diverse backgrounds. These are all the same kinds of skills we need in the
workplace today.
We’re all engaging in a
generational discussion at work, even if it’s not as overt as an interviewer
calling you a kid. We all come to the table with preconceptions and biases, but
we all have to work together.
So, in the near future, at
least, it’s the people who are best at building generational bridges who will succeed.
This is something I personally work on every day, and Obama is a great role
model.
