Jon Favreau: boY GENius

In the struggle to cut costs and grab what little resources are still available, many businesses are tightening their belts and changing their management strategy, from a ‘looser’ style, as preferred by Generation Y, to a more ‘authoritarian’ approach - thereby exerting maximum control relieving the feelings of fear of wasting precious time and money.  Jobs have also suddenly dried up for Generation Y: 40% of the predicted three million unemployed at the end of 2009 will be under 25[1]. Does this mean that Gen Y needs to both ‘pipe’ and ‘knuckle down’, at least until the storm has blown over?

Well, how does this sound? Working most days till 3am and doing vast amounts of research in personal time, breaking only to spend a few hours gaming;-[2] This is the work pattern of Jon Favreau, the 27-year-old speech writer for President Obama. Hailed as ‘boy genius’[3], Favreau is the youngest Director of Speech writing to the White House on record.  As a Generation Y, by all accounts he should be making ‘unreasonable’ demands of an employer; flexible hours, Facebooking his friends during work, and generally openly questioning the command of authority. Instead, Obama’s ‘mind reader’ works day and night for his ‘master’[4].  Jon organised a team of talented researchers, spending weeks gathering information from which he worked into the early hours crafting Obama’s speeches. And the result? From a little-known politician, Barack Obama succeeded against all odds in winning the Presidential election in November 2008 and is now taking his throne as, essentially, world leader.

This should send a strong message to employers that if their Generation Y really believes in the organisation, and that they feel trusted, they will reveal themselves to be an incredibly loyal, productive and all-round powerful workforce.

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[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/10/graduate-employment-crisis-rescue-package

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/barack-obama-inauguration-us-speech

[3] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/adaf9610-e708-11dd-8407-0000779fd2ac.html

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/barack-obama-inauguration-us-speech

 

Inside the Knowledge Generation Brain

Lifelong learning is a known characteristic of Generation Y, manifested in business as a persistent thirst for a challenge and a demand for continuous training and development.  Surprisingly, the cause of this approach to learning is not often discussed in popular blogs and literature.

Earlier this week I attended one of the RSA’s lectures, which explored the Science of Lifelong Learning. According to speaker Usha Goswami, Director for the Neuroscience in Education at Cambridge University, the brain is like a bank and investment from an early age can significantly increase learning ability later in life. She argued that babies brought up in a supportive environment are positively affected in terms of learning capacity and complexity.

Indeed, Generation Y is known by Strausse & Howe (2000) as the most watched and protected generation[1], where ‘helicopter’ parents packed their children’s lives with a myriad of learning-based hobbies, such as musical instruments, sports and extra-curricular school activities. Technological advances, such as the internet, have further increased this ability and desire for learning.

Now eager Generation Y has entered the workplace, expecting the same level of mental simulation from its employer. This can be highly beneficial to the alert employer, as when provided with a supportive environment, this population of young workers can be highly efficient and creative problems-solvers and aggregators of information in what we call ‘online knowledge ecosystems’ - thereby helping to reduce costs in the downturn and increase participation, ownership and innovation in the next boom.

‘The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled’
- Plutarch 

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[1] Strausse & Howe (2000), Millenials Rising. Pg9

President Barack ‘Hope’ Obama

President Barack Hussein Obama was sworn into office as the 44^th president of the United States of America on Tuesday.  Amongst the buzzing crowd of more than a million faces in the Washington DC Mall there was an air of anticipation and ultimately ‘hope’.

But, as you would imagine, we aren’t here to comment on the political accolades of of Obama, but the motivation of a Generation to support him to get to the position of, arguably, the most powerful man on the face of the earth. 

Grab a hold of these statistics:  the BBC reported that Obama won the votes of those under 30 by 68% to 31 %!  From the US-based CNBC news channel we can further add that this was the highest ever score of the youth vote achieved by any presidential candidate ever (since exit polls began in 1976).  Here’s the crunch... out of the total number of voters 10% were voting for the first time, and in this group 72% voted for Obama, and in the sub-30 (largely Generation Y) category 69% voted for Obama (compared to just 28% in favour of McCain). 

So, Why?  Here’s our analysis.  What caused the best part of a generation to support Barack Obama over McCain?  We see three elements:  Vision, Ownership, and Community.

First, Vision:  Obama created a new vision and was able to communicate it such that he achieved agreement from his supporters.  This inspired a generation to take ownership for communicating this to their peers.  It signalled their backing for the ‘audacity of hope’.  Second, Ownership:  Obama, whilst able to paint the picture, then actively sought the involvement of his supporters. He maintained, throughout his campaign, undertones of ‘You got me here’; ‘This is your doing’; and ‘Thank You’ – creating now almost iconic images of Obama clapping stadiums full of supporters: ‘It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy [and] who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep’ (Obama, Illinois, November 4, 2008).  Thirdly, he used, very effectively, 16 social networking sites – ranging from ‘Facebook’, ‘MySpace’ and ‘Twitter’ to ‘AsianAve’, ‘Faithbase’ and ‘Eons’ – to build a community of supporters aggregated in one place to whom he could blog (well, someone on his behalf we imagine), and importantly with whom he created a two-way dialogue (as opposed to a web-based corporate bill-board of promises summed up in values, behaviours and future projects).  In so-doing he listened to supporters, fence-sitters and cynics and espoused the generation y motto ‘ask, don’t tell’. 

There’s one final thing.  A sub-story perhaps, but one that is worthy of note.  Obama has been using a generation Y speech writer – Jon Favreau.  At 27 years old he has become the youngest ever director of speech writing to the White House.  Significant?  We think so.

Naked Generations addresses leading Energy Industry executives

Get Energy Events, a global conferencing company, providing education and insights into the Energy industry, has invited Naked Generations to run a workshop at their annual Exploration and Production conference in London.  The slot will be delivered by Christopher Lomas (Naked Generations CEO) and will be entitled: ‘Explaining Y: Understanding, Creating and Managing strategic relationships with Generation Y’.  The session will ‘lift the lid’ on Generation Y and take attendees into the mindset of the generation.  We will be explaining why it is critical for company leaders to understand this generation not just as Employees but as Consumers and Competitors too.

The conference will be held from the 23-25 March 2009 at the Business Design Centre in North London, United Kingdom.  For more details see the Get Energy Events website.

Accidental Betrayal

Michaela (a Generation Y) began working in a company after university, with an idealistic view to how she could create a successful career, based on the promises made by the company. She soon discovered that the reality was different to her expectations: espoused corporate values were not adhered to and her eagerly anticipated career opportunities were not as she had imagined. Feeling hurt and betrayed, Michaela left.

In late 2008 Naked Generations worked with a client, who was genuinely upset at their Generation Y turnover rate. They had made both a financial and emotional investment into their graduates, many of whom were leaving. The client felt hurt and betrayed.

From the outset the trust has been accidentally broken on both sides, creating a culture of distrust which is incredibly costly to business. The economic climate is tempestuous and treacherous, meaning that more than ever that employer and employee must unite in order to steer through the storm.

It must begin before graduates join, with employers setting crystal clear expectations about the job and of the employee. They also need to fully understand the expectations of their Generation Y in order to attract, retain, and leverage their skills into the business, thus rebuilding trust between employer and employee and strengthening a company from the inside out.

The Grass is Greener Where you Water it

I recently had coffee with the MD of a significant fine jewellery company and we were discussing the retention of Generation Y and the costs of training this group. Although keen to leverage the skills of Generation Y, he repeated a line which I’ve often heard from older generations: “train them and they’ll leave”. Indeed, if an employee is well trained, they become more valuable and so more employable. And many businesses have suffered the blow of up-skilling graduates on training schemes, only for them to take their skills elsewhere shortly after.

There are two things going on here. Generation Y sees learning as a lifelong process[1], so if training stops, they will seek it somewhere else. Indeed, PwC’s 2008 Generation Y report revealed that training was three times more important to this population than cash bonuses, with 98% believing that mentors were an important part of their development. On top of this, the training will cause Generation Y to seek trust from the company to allow them apply what they have learned to their daily work.

Unfortunately, too often Generation Y is given a whiff of what they can have, such as increased responsibility and the opportunity to make a significant contribution, but are then informed it will be a number of years before this can happen. This is training for the sake of training, which serves no purpose in business. It’s like learning to drive and then being told you will have to wait five years before you can get behind the wheel of a car. What would this motivate you to do? Leave.

The moral of the story: keep them challenged, fulfil expectations created by the training, and in return they will give you loyalty, improved productivity, and a great return on your investment.

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[1] http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=191002&d=pndpr&h=pnhpr&f=pnfpr, http://www.grb.uk.com/generation_y.0.html

Make ‘Flickr’/ MySpace/ Facebook your office!

A recent article in the Financial Times (‘Social Networking sites elevate geeks to online gurus[1]’) illustrated how three young forward thinking and entrepreneurial individuals started making cash by having something as simple as a ‘Flickr’ [sic.] page! “Cant’ have been making much” I hear the pessimist say. Well an extra £9,000 p.a. worked okay for Kevin Meredith (a.k.a ‘Lomokev’). In February 2009 he will also release his first book (‘Hot Shots’) and it’s already on pre-order in Amazon! His clients now include shoe manufacturer Dr Martens.
Let’s try another example: Paul Griffiths (21) sold £500,000 worth of tee-shirts, hooded tops and badges from humble beginnings 24 months ago through a MySpace profile see: Babycakes Clothing (the profile has sound effects when we last checked, try http://www.bbycks.com/ if you’d rather see the site without sound!) and now he has a shop in Manchester, and employs 10 people! From what we can see though, this isn’t just a tee-shirt printing business, it’s a kind of ‘following’. There’s a blog; buyers can upload their photos of them wearing the clothing and they have BabyCakes parties... OK, so it’s not everybody’s ‘cup of tea’ but... for 21 it’s no bad effort.
So what can we learn? First, Naked Generations will be the first to say that we predict a trend: As the cost of higher education increases and the uncertainty of what were ‘permanent jobs’ continues, we predict that a noticeable portion of Generation Y (and Generation Z beneath them) will not enter traditional jobs or training programmes like the generations before them. Instead they will capitalise on the mediums of sites such as facebook, flickr, Ebay, and YouTube to sell home-grown ideas to the masses.
And if you’re still thinking (to quote Boris Johnson) “that’s a load of boulder-dash” and, it will never cross over into the real world listen to this:
Ms Lauren Luke (27) launched a series of video tutorials through YouTube about applying make-up to copy the styles of the likes of Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears and Leona Lewis. They were watched, the styles were copied, she received a whole lot of attention and now writes a column in the (UK’s) Guardian Newspaper weekend magazine. Oh, and just before Christmas she flew to New York to begin designing a make-up range for Barry M. Our guess is the Guardian is attracting the next generation of readers by using the leverage that Ms Luke has created for herself online.

[1] Bradshaw, T., http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/68d9ef4c-d86f-11dd-bcc0-000077b07658.html Financial Times, 2 January 2009 (p.10)

British Government invites Naked Generations to Collaborate

In a recent report, entitled: ‘Collaborative Partnerships’ the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sought to understand in depth how they could improve the relationships between the Government, NGOs and ‘Big Business’. Having been invited to the table Naked Generations was asked to write the Y Generation ‘Point Of View’ (POV). Referenced three times in the document Naked Generations was commended by the FCO in saying: ‘the work done by ...Naked Generations, in support of this report, highlights how big the gap [is] that governments and business have to close in engaging with younger generations... Governments and businesses that seek collaboration must provide a focused context or subject matter around which to base discussion. And should operate in the spirit of “Ask- Don’t Tell”, and should expect push-back.’
Naked Generations’ full submission was also selected to be included in the report which is being sent out to 100 organisations globally, including 20 governments, 9 international institutions, 19 high profile leaders, and distributed within the British Government (including No. 10 Downing St., the MoD and the Department of Health).
Chapters in the study included Understanding Collaboration; Effective Collaboration; Collaboration and its impact on organizations; Social Collaboration; and, a future thinking chapter on ‘Collaboration and its possibilities'.
For more information, or to understand how we could help your business/ organisation on a similar piece of work, please contact Christopher Lomas info@nakedgenerations.com.

Everybody is talking about it

According to the media, the impending recession is here, and it’s likely to get much worse, leaving many employers wondering how Generation Y will handle this phenomenon, as they haven’t seen “hard times” like this before. However, this generation has been coping with a host of dilemmas from a very young age: innumerable school subjects (introduced by the National Curriculum), university courses, career choices, and a cliff-face climb onto the property ladder. Generation Y has suffered from overwhelm prior to this economic period, struggling with the “where-am-I-going?- -what-am-I-supposed-to-do?” syndrome, which has been referred to as their Quarter Life Crisis[1], the predecessor to the better known Mid Life Crisis - although without the Volvo estate to be traded in for the sports car.

In this environment, Generation Y employees will be a true asset for all managers: They have a sense of flexibility, while not “emotionally attached” to any employer, they are very committed employees. They have moved away from the ‘civil service’ attitude and their expectation for their work is for a more meritocratic approach that values talent. Furthermore they take redundancy in their stride, unafraid of change, for some they are facing redundancy for the third time before turning 30.

These younger workers are also said, in what is a back-handed compliment, to seek control of their own career development, which is an empowering state of mind in this present climate. They will also stay with an employer that values their hard work: The notion that they are serially disloyal and constantly at the ready to jump ship for their own career progression is flawed. This is supported by recent research which argues that 50% of Generation Y intends to stay with their employer for the next five years (although some Baby Boomers would still gall at this ‘lack’ of commitment)[2].

The younger workforce may not have lived through world wars or rationing, but they are ready for these uncertain times; they have been prepared by their own challenges and they will grasp with both hands the opportunities arising from the recession.

[1] Originally the term Quarter Life Crisis was coined by two Americans, Alexandra Robbins & Abby Wilner, who interviewed thousands of students for their book(“Quarter Life Crisis – How to get your head round life in your twenties”). They defined Quarter Life Crisis as a response to overwhelming instability, constant change, too many choices and a panicked sense of helplessness
[2] http://www.management-issues.com/2008/9/10/research/why-it-doesnt-pay-to-pigeonhole-gen-y.asp