They live on social media where
they have 10,000 friends but only
personally know two. The other
9,998 are online friends on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp,
Snapchat and those other online social
platforms. They like real time feedback,
are disruptive and are a disturbance to
the systems and processes that you’ve
spent years building up.
There are a million of them coming
into the market every year and they
will flood our businesses because we
love cheap labour. This is because we
love the young ones to come in and
replace the more expensive, more
experienced but aging employees.
I hope you are beginning to see why
generational thinking at the workplace
is worlds apart. The chairman
is probably a pre-independence
generation, doesn’t see eye-to-eye
with the CEO who is probably an
independence generation, who does
not even begin to understand what the
generation Y conversation is about.
These generational disparities mean
that you have no choice but to change
your business culture to accommodate
the new generations. The old days of
saying that we’ve always done it like
this are long gone.
Trends for businesses are beginning to
change and if you do not understand
these changing business trends your
business will not survive. When the
retrenchment comes about you will be
the first one to go because while the
CEO is concerned about the bottom
line you are concerned about retaining
the culture.
When restructuring your culture you
need to recall that these people are
extremely and overly ambitious. They
are not only your biggest workforce
but also your biggest consumer and
you need to match their ambition or
else they will run you out of town.
You have to catch up with their
ambitiousness which is big and
audacious. So you also need to measure
up and start dreaming big.
New Ways of Learning
They don’t like rules and standard
operating procedures. M-Pesa for
instance was possible because the
regulation element was withdrawn
from the innovation process.
They love to learn and you need to
enable them to learn. However you
can’t do it in the traditional way
through hotel seminars with expensive
lecturers. You create an application
which they can download and then
they can bother to learn.
They don’t want to learn from their
bosses, parents, or anybody other than
technology. At the workplace they are
constantly challenging you and your
authority because in their world there’s
no boss. They always question the
status quo because for them nothing
should remain as it is because it can
always get better.
This is the mind-set you need to have
when dealing with these people. They
are disconnected from the present
because they do not live in the present
but in the future. Everything they do,
learn, invest in is not about today but
about the future.
They will always hold you accountable
to do whatever you said you will do
because they don’t forget. So always
deliver on your promise to them.
How do you make the relationship work
for you? By becoming more ambitious
to measure up to their own ambition.
You need to use their confidence to
drive your brand and your products.
Give them your business narrative and
allow them to get this and go online to
drive your brand.
They are futuristic, and therefore are
good when put in departments where
there’s planning, strategic thinking,
innovation and design. Don’t send
them memos through staff emails but
rather create a portal that allows them
to collaborate.
Nowadays they call it collaboration
not communication. They like to
collaborate and build and destroy
networks at the speed of light.
Need Instant Feedback
They don’t like annual reviews because
they like scheduled constant instant
feedback not one that comes after 12
months. Make them monthly if not
weekly. They love feedback because
that’s the world they live in but just
don’t call it a review.
The problem with this generation
is that they can be disruptive and
destructive if their energy is not
guided and channelled into producing,
innovating and engineering.
Their reward is money not certificates
of service. The biggest risk as Mark
Zuckerberg of Facebook says is not
taking any risk in a world that is
constantly changing the only strategy
that is guaranteed to fail is to not take
any risks. They form the largest market
in the world and in Kenya they are 20
percent of the market while the global
average is slightly less.
We need to have more people speaking
to them and encouraging them. You
can’t contain them, call them and ask
them what their views of this company
and what we all need to do to make it
work for all of us.
Look at them not as a risk as we have
traditionally done but as an asset
to engage you with the market that
comprises the young which is a large
proportion of the population.
My passion is to work with the young
and to empower them and hope they
achieve more that I have and not make
the same mistakes I made. The reality
of the situation is that the best way to
reach them is online.