Influential Technology

30 years ago we didn’t have: the WWW; Personal Computers; Mobile Phones; Email; Ebay; iPods; Laptops; Online Social Networks; nor 24/7 service companies, says David Smith, CEO of Global Futures and Foresight, (GFF.com: 2008). In a sense, everything has changed: the way we gather information (the ‘Google’ effect); the way we listen to music (the ‘iTunes’ effect); the way we shop (the ‘Amazon’ effect); the way we make friends (the ‘Facebook’ effect); the way we entertain ourselves (the ‘You Tube/ iPlayer’ effect). And, increasingly we are not just seeing the shift to ‘Online’, but the global online ‘knowledge ecosystem’ is being sorted and ranked. Generation Y is growing up with access to information like no-one else before them. With their extensive social networks they have armies of critical analysts examining everything put up for review. Tripadvisor, Expedia and Amazon all employ ranking systems that allow consumers to rate products. This is the power of influence that the web is having in many spheres of life. Web 1.0 allowed one way communication – making promises (or offers of products for sale) on corporate websites. Web 2.0 and beyond is facilitating challenges, opinion and conversation. Logically therefore, a firm’s reputation for anything (product or service, internal or external) can be driven like a virtual share price, by the opinion of those that shout the loudest, online.
And, it’s not just about opinions. Now we have been living with virtual worlds for well over a decade, there has been third shift. Technology started out taking physical things into the virtual (e.g. ‘snail-mail’ to email), but now the reverse is starting to happen: Virtual ideas are becoming real world and ‘physical’ (e.g. prototyping in Second life). Online experiences are encouraging a new method of distribution and source of products. Leadership using these technologies to achieve objectives encourage faster analysis and decision taking in situations with imperfect information. Paul C. Edwards Professor of Communication at Stanford University, Byron Reeves, commented in an IBM case study, that nearly 50% of ‘managers with experience in multiplayer online games said that being a game leader had improved their real-world leadership capabilities’. So, do we see all of this as a Fear or a Benefit? With careful leadership, clear expectations and self management can we use all of this to further the way in which companies continue to evolve? Could organisations harness the characteristic energy of Generation Y to open new distribution channels and validate new product opportunities?

Future Talent in Oil, Gas & Power 2008

Naked Generations has been invited to join the debate around talent in the Oil & Gas industry at the CWC conference in London. If you are there come and say hello! We'd love to see you there. We will be hosting one of the round tables in the afternoon of the 8th October to talk about 'Understanding and Leveraging Generation Y'.

Structural Stimulation

Education systems and Parenting styles which are producing graduate trainees for firms today are very different to those of the Baby Boomer generation (1946-1964). There has been a fundamental shift in the Educational system from the didactic model to a critical analysis model. The Plowden Report (1967) argued that schools must lay special stress on allowing children ‘individual discovery’, such that the individual would look ‘critically at the society of which he forms a part’. Play this out into the work environment: Boomers and Builders who have been used to a didactic style of education expect Generation Y (1979-1996) to adhere to the same. So, they expect Generation Y to accept their truths and work towards their goals, however, the education system has told them to question and critically examine; furthermore, the philosophical environment of (arguably, post [sic]) ‘post-modernity’ is teaching that there is ‘no truth’ – conflicting to the security of taught truths that Boomers accept. This will create conflict as Generation Y is seen to ‘know it all’ and Boomers are seen as backward and slow. Far from accepting the indifference to truth, commercial reality says organisations need now to create new ones, constantly being on the edge of innovation. The challenge is harnessing the abilities of Generation Y to be creative, entrepreneurial and excellent seekers of new information. At the same time, it is essential to allow Boomers and Generation X (1965-78) to provide a context for decision-making for these (relatively) new entrants into the corporate world.

Shifting Environments

Generation Y is comparably different to previous Generations. Their beliefs and behaviours are being driven by a different set of macro and micro socio-economic and philosophical contexts. Take for example the Educational system which has shifted from teacher-centric (‘telling truths’) to pupil-centric models (‘discourse and debate’), according to Nick Pollard (Pollard: 2006). Leadership and follower experiences that they are gaining in online technology environments such as ‘massive multi-player online role-playing games’ (MMORPGs) is teaching them a different form of team structure to the command and control compositions still prevalent in many multinational corporate bodies – the legacy of a military culture derived from the Builder generation (1925-1945). This generation is growing up using ‘mash-up’ leadership structures (fast assimilation of teams, in order to achieve a goal and then dissolving the structure and joining with others to form new teams). They are stimulated through goal-oriented objectives, where they receive ‘immediate compensation for successful completion of a project’ (Reeves, Malone and O’Driscoll: 2008). The increase in the uses for, and speed of, Technology has inevitably been a major factor in driving a shift towards a culture of immediacy and heightened expectations. These are the ‘Generation Y’-ers that are coming into global businesses around the world that are being asked to operate under old paradigms. In these situations there can be a distinct mismatch between expectations and reality.