Why Y?

Although I love books, I find, often, that books are situational. Like people, all books are created equally, but all books are not equal at all times. Sometimes, even a reading junkie like me makes a bad decision. Such was the case with Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y.

There's a phenomenon I refer to in my classes as "The Michael Moore Effect." In short, we must learn to evaluate separately the message and the messenger. I call it TMME because I find Michael Moore to be, usually, a ridiculous self-promoting blowhard, as do most of my students. Still, pomposity aside, that doesn't mean he's always wrong. This actually provides a very concrete lesson to my students in voice and tone. Does being right matter if you have offended your audience before they even get to your thesis? Like the tree in the forest with no one to hear it fall, does your genius and brilliance change the world if it's on paper in the bottom of Mr. X's wastebasket?

This is the effect I feel now. Bruce Tulgan, author of Not Everybody Gets a Trophy, may actually have some valid points, but the book has been sitting on my coffee table and has been picked up by many people, first chapter read, and tossed down in disgust. And I think the tosses might have some merit.

First, to the positive praise (because to talk to Gen Yers, apparently you always have to say something nice, even if they are currently setting you on fire, lest you hurt their feelings). I actually did get some good ideas about approaches to take in my classroom from his advice on self-explanation of managers in the workplace. I do get, from my days of bouncing around from manager to manager, that there are no concrete ways of being managed by anyone. Different people want different things from those they manage, so making a more clear list of what works for each manager was a delineation of something we all probably knew but had never seen worded that way before. Perhaps my generation should stop insisting that there is a stone-carved set of behaviors that those of us born in the seventies and before just "knew" encompassing every aspect of work life. So, Bruce, kudos. One point on your scorecard.

That said.... why did I just read one hundred and 170 pages without ever seeing the words "competence" or "solid knowledge base?" Tulgan points out, ad nausea, that Generation Yers were born into an age when all knowledge was at their fingertips and technology was becoming obsolete as it left its factory packaging. He advises us to allow them their blackberries, ipods, and wikipedia in the workplace or classroom because they are exceptional at multi-tasking and being able to "get the gist" of a situation in a few fingerstrokes on a keyboard.

Here's where the problem comes in -- he leaves out a very important problem he never acknowledges or even alludes to. ""The gist" or the soundbyte IS the story for many of my students. It's like reading the headlines in The Times to know what is going on in the world. Yes, it works if your goal is dinner party conversation, but I often find my students are satisfied with "the gist" and never see the crucial importance of extended in-depth, repeated study of a situation.

Tulgan argues that information changes so rapidly that Generation Yers feel no compulsion to seek out anything in depth because, in their eyes, it will be obsolete soon enough to not warrant their extended attention. Once something new comes along, the old stuff is inconsequential, so why bother even looking at it?

This is where Tulgan and I part in fundamental ways because this thinking highlights why so many of my students never grasp the concept of the courses I teach. Every semester, I ask for in-depth and researched articles on topics of importance or relevance to my students' career paths and what I get is extended headline and bibliography. When I broach this subject to my students, they say that they have provided the source so if their reader wants to know more, they know where to look. They see over explanation as a waste of time to their reader and the writing of said explanation as a waste of theirs. The important thing is to know where to look should that piece of information ever be in a position to push them forward towards a future goal. Tulgan calls this a "transactional relationship mindset" and actually praises it.

I have always advocated that the most important part of the academy is inspiring students to want to know more and giving them a solid foundation in research methodology so they CAN. I think we DO complete the latter well, but it seems to be at the expense of the former.

Generation Yers seem to see the internet as a place where all the knowledge in the world is stored (and, to an extent it is), but they don't see the fact that someone researched and wrote all that information. Who do they think compiles these wonderful soundbytes and 10 second newsreels which keep them anchored, if slightly, to the happenings of the world?

And who will do it when my generation are gone?

I do agree that, in the workplace, sometimes managers need to let go of things that aren't all that important. In a lot of jobs, it actually would be OK for an employee to work 8-4, 9-5, or 10-6 depending on their preference. I do think some small-minded managers use these tiny little matters as cudgels to make themselves feel important by being able to deny something to their employees because denying makes them feel in control.

Case in point: When I worked 8-4 at John Hancock, I wanted a later lunch and was told no. I went so far as to find a person who had a later lunch hour and desperately wanted to switch with me because they got cranky if they didn't eat right at 11. I don't get hungry until at least one. This co-worker wound up eating shit at his desk, not being hungry when lunch came around, gaining weight from the shit, and doing nothing during their lunch hour. Likewise, I would do nothing during my lunch hour and then snack at my desk later when I did get hungry. We petitioned to switch and were told no because that wasn't how things ran at John Hancock. We had found a solution that worked, offered no downside, and were told we couldn't.

Note to my former manager: Nobody likes a bitchy princess, honey.

So, yes, perhaps we do need to change sometimes. Protocol for protocol's sake isn't good. We've all read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," and it scared the shit out of us.

That said, I see Generation Yers often thinking that my example is the rule of the road -- no rules apply to them and five minutes late is always the same as on time, and this is also not the case. If I schedule library research time in a class, I schedule it at a particular time, because I also see many of my students consistently following the path of least resistance. If I don't supervise them, they won't do it.

They want trust and responsibility, but they have never been asked to do anything that didn't involve getting a tangible "trophy" for their effort. No trophy, no work.

I teach 114 students a semester. I'm trying to give them power and responsibility by asking them to choose their own topics and do their own research. I give them what they say they want, what Tulgran says we should give them, and they evaluate me by saying "She wouldn't tell me exactly what she wanted (for me to get an easy A)."

Tulgran advocates lots of checklists and a lot of micromanagement. Didn't my whole generation spend the last twenty years screaming at the top of our lungs how damned frustrating that is? Isn't it still? Simply put, you cannot have it both ways. I can give you a specific checklist OR I can give you power and responsibility. I can outline what you need to get a very specific kind of "A" OR I can let you express your creativity.

It takes working mothers years to be able (if they ever do) to "have it all." Generation Yers want us to hand them "it all" and they seem to want it yesterday. And Tulgran says we should be able to provide that.

But ask anyone who's been in business a while how many kids' games they have had to miss when something came up. Ask them how many vacations had to start a say later or how many days the work day ran beyond 8 hours.

It just seems to me that Tulgran is expecting the American Businessplace to adapt to this Headline only, someone else will do the legwork mentality.

My question is who, exactly, is supposed to actually make something or do something or be something while the rest of us hold hands of Generation Yers while they grab the soundbyte and wave for the camera?

Buy stock in a trophy-making company.