What Younger Generations Can Teach Us
Take the best, leave the rest.
We know, we know. You walked. To school. Miles and miles. Doesn’t every generation bemoan its arduous upbringing and the number of things that were somuchharder when we were kids? If we’re being real, we can also spot some pitfalls among today’s younger crowd that we blissfully avoided. For one, raise your hand if you would have found gainful employment had your college years coincided with cameras on every phone, ready to capture the moment. Yup, us too. All that aside, one of the joys we’d found in our former corporate lives was the opportunity to develop younger workers and take advantage of some reverse mentorship in turn, too. There are some truly magical qualities among the generations arriving on the adulting scene—many due in no small part to some roads we helped to pave—that we should celebrate. Even, dare we say, emulate.
Balancing actors.
Ah, that mirage of work-life balance—the things no one can ever seem to actually balance. Yet younger generations have gotten good at asking upfront that their jobs provide more of it, and that’s something to be applauded. If anything has laid this bare, it’s COVID WFH life. And when we really give it some thought, isn’t this what more grown grown-ups have wanted too? We assumed it was on us to churn more than 24 hours out of a day and somehow make it work—and my, haven’t we exhausted ourselves trying. Millennials just came right out and asked workplaces to do their part to set the scales straight. That’s something you can ask for? Cool, cool.
Consumerism with a conscience.
Anti-apartheid and early earth days aside, nothing has brought brands to a place of authenticity, transparency and accountability like a bunch of consulting reports telling them they might miss the largest swath of consumers if they don’t change their ways. Let us also be counted officially among those who would prefer to purchase from companies behaving better, thankyouverymuch. This good-for-everyone consumerism is something we should have demanded long ago so this one goes out to these crazy kids for having a heart in their wallet.
Digital dexterity.
Sure we were analog first, and sometimes we forget to just Ask Alexa—but there’s a lot we can pick up from the digital-first cohort. Though mentions of NFTs and Dogecoin may induce heavy eye-rolls, it’s important we at least maintain a healthy curiosity about what all those technological advancements are, and what they mean. What’s to say our early scoffing won’t turn into full-on power user status with a little coaching? Our world is so dynamic and technological change is only speeding up. We will all do well to keep flexing our early adopter muscles and take advantage of a rich pipeline of digital-first teachers.
