WHAT MILLENNIALS ARE MADE OF

I’ve been thinking about the future and present of Millennials all week — all year, actually – but lately spurred by news of a just-published business book.

This book seeks to advise employers of all stripes about the seven trends “essential for understanding and managing the Millennials” in the workplace. The trends are: “the role of the parents; entitlement; the search for meaning; great expectations; the need for speed; social networking; and collaboration.”

Seems to me, if you shift that jargon just a tad, you’re talking about the way society saw Boomers back when that generation was coming of age in the 1960s. As in: “search for meaning” turns into “idealism;” “collaboration” translates into “communal;” and “entitlement” equals “anti-establishment.”

Every generation in power looks back (down?) at the young’uns and appears to quickly lose sight of his or her younger self. Human nature, I guess. But this dishing up of the Millennials is getting a bit much for me.

Don’t get me wrong. Every generation is uniquely forged by its own zeitgeist. Gen Y is no exception. We now have a cohort coming of age that’s been shaped by, of course, the 24/7 wireless bytes, not to mention the Columbine massacre, the O.J. Simpson circus, the presidential election that couldn’t (and which then ossified the DC divide that’s deepened to a chasm), the first, second and surge of Mideast wars, and, oh yeah, let’s not forget 9/11. So, yes, absolutely: Nothing in American history has ever spawned a group like Gen Y. But isn’t that the case for every generation. Let’s think about the assassinations of JFK and MLK and RFK. Every young cohort feels special and raw and fresh and know-it-all. It’s not smart or helpful to conflate socio-politico-economic influences with the extravagant utterances of youth. Let us define which is which as we embrace Millennials into the world of work and tradeoffs. Young people always are gonna be young people. And in this horrific climate, the group born between 1980 – 2000 clearly only wants to work hard, do well in addition to doing good and get on with having fun and falling in love and looking for purpose. Not such a crazy, unheralded sociological experiment, after all, is it?

I continue to watch the first, second & third sectors turning somersaults trying to figure out how to harness Gen Y’s “special” attributes. Instead, I’d like to advise everyone to just relax and dive in. Stop analyzing and researching and start having, you know, conversations. Talk about how Gen Y folks can help your efforts, whether for-profit or nonprofit goals. In the third sector, that includes donor outreach, fundraising, communications and mission-oriented programs and grant-making finetuned to younger aspirations and vocabulary.

It means telling and harnessing stories that are not all about you but all about them. Talking to a target always is so much more revealing than talking about one, don’t you think?