Millennial Management in a Baby Boomer world.

This is the second in a series on management styles as they pertain to Millennials.

“Change agent” and “work-life blend” have become nomenclature de rigeur regarding a generation of current employees percolating up through the bases of organizational structures in public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Their hallmarks: overabundant utilization of new technologies, a desire for purpose driven work, and breaking down the entrenched hierarchies of business culture.

If you read that opening statement and considered this not the first time you’ve heard a generation fantasize about reforming their work environment to find a higher purpose, improving office protocols and efficiency through space-aged technology, congratulations! These are modalities inherited from their parents. The flower children and Volkswagen van touring generation birthed a new generation just the same. There is even a movement of 20 - 30 somethings to travel in tricked out, wifi enabled late model vans living the digital nomad lifestyle. The new American Dream includes a life of liberty on the open road according to a new Vice article by David Jagneaux.

However, where the whole of writing on the topic has gone completely awry is in the estimation of Generation Y’s taste for hierarchical work structures. Millennials are quite comfortable and entirely amenable to working inside of these sorts of structures - as long as they were the ones who imputed the structure. Such is the idea behind so much of the post-classroom work in which TFA is involved, as well as NLC, StudentsFirstNY, and a variety of other parallel organizations whose prime objectives are fundraising, and pipe-lining their alumni into key positions in the current political and business structures.

This is the hidden curriculum of the next generation 'leadership training' forums presently in vogue. The ideals behind flattening existing organizational structures and eliminating traditional pathways to leadership positions is to leapfrog trained, experienced, well-rounded - and, admittedly, a bit more seasoned, - individuals already in the leadership pipeline, displacing them entirely. But we have seen this insidiousness in prior versions of both world history, and popular fiction: Joffrey Baratheon, Jiao Long; in myths and legends - Phaeton, Patroclus, and in current business arenas.

Augmented reality. Photo courtesy of Design Boom

With the advent of the all-seeing, all-knowing interweb, IoT, Augmented Reality, and literally the power of the universe in the palm of their hands, now more than ever the generation needs guidance on why it is that they are performing the mechanical operations they’ve learned for their junior roles via YouTube channels.

Upending hierarchies
Photo by @dorania_luo

Fast-tracking untrained, inexperienced individuals into leadership positions is not a successful, long term sustainability plan for any of the three sectors. Thoughtful, reflective, purposeful leadership requires experience, learning, training, certification and degrees. It requires having had mentors so that as a leader they can in turn mentor the next generation. It requires a philosophical basis upon which the leader's daily actions and interactions are founded, and not one that is regurgitated in sound bites that make excellent five second Vines or catchy t-shirts devoid of historical context. We have seen this movie before and it always has a bad ending, always requiring the appropriately trained, highly experienced, and usually, a previously selected leadership figure to arrive and rid the kingdom of its ills (Game of Thrones has not yet arrived at this juncture.)

To quote Ryan and Robert Quinn from Harvard Business Review: Change Management and Leadership Development have to Mesh. This is a crucial concept for, as the saying goes amongst Navy SEALS: "Under pressure...you don't rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. That's why we train so hard." Millennials, in order to be effective, will have to get the very thing that they lack - experience. Here I should echo the sentiments of a recent Forbes article: “Trying To Manage Millennials? Give Up And Lead Them Instead.” They will need leadership in terms of purpose, leadership in terms of habits of mind, leadership in terms of succession planning, and leadership in terms of critical thought. America will have to come to terms with the idea that the mentoring, instruction, and planning will have to be done by a generation older and more trained than the Millenials. The alternative is that while inexperienced, untrained 'leaders' are busy sinking to their level of training, the whole of the organizations around them will sink as well.

Critical Millennial Thinking

This will be the first in a series of articles on leadership, the Millennial generation, and how it relates to business.

I have been spending quite a bit of time recently reading HR articles. Not that I ever haven't, ever since before participating in the National Urban Fellows program, and especially after successfully obtaining the PMP, I read across the curriculum so to speak in order to get a taste of how potential opportunities might view my particular batch of skills. I read a recent one from The Ladders President Marc Cendella about ageism and the American business community, a few things struck me. To begin, Cendella's article stressed strategies to prove the viability of the more seasoned,
more senior employee's mindset in the face of a fanaticism for hiring youth. To quote "it’s important for you to realize that youth is the symptom, not the cause, of age discrimination."

This is faulty in my view for a variety of reasons. While it is true that the business community hires youth more frequently in the current paradigm than seasoned professionals, it is not solely representative of an underlying, hidden mentality in the plans for an increased profit margin of each organization that employs an age gap in it hiring practices. It is inherently flawed because it has been the experience of more seasoned workers that youth carries with it the entitlement of pre-eminence in the office. Indeed, the generation presents a belief that Snapchats inserted into Prezis, the Uberization of everything, and happiness engineering will answer previously unaswered questions. Additionally, there is a steadfast credence in the idea that they will solve problems better simply because it is the new technology.

This too is faulty because for all of the technological literacy that the Millennial generation carries at its fingertips in the latest and greatest Samsung Edge 7 or iPhone 7 or pick your favorite model...none of that literacy represents actual creativity, but rather the current year's reiteration of processes that already existed. Creative optimization of business processes, innovation of future engineering methodologies, and even communication methodologies or pathways are concepts that have to be trained and experienced before they can be evolved. Moreover, in order to properly create some sort of advanced evolution of the process or pathway, a defined period of critical thinking has to be undertaken. The critical thinking deficiency has been the most salient complaint of employers, post-secondary educators, and large swaths of society coming into direct contact with Millennials far and wide, as evidenced by the quotes below:

"A 2012 report on the metro St. Louis workforce cited a Boeing official as saying, "New hires and younger workers certainly have a positive work ethic; however they often have an immature or impatient approach toward career development/progression. They have an expectation that their career development will somehow be on the fast track, without a full understanding of the commitment it takes beyond the 9-to-5 world. At times they seem to lack an understanding that you need to work until the work is done.""(1)

But the fallacy of being able to create a wholesale correction of the entirety of an organization's problems simply by throwing new technology at it was born out in evidence and scientific measurement presented in Jim Collins' seminal work From Good to Great. Those very same sentiments are echoed in a late 2015 'Entrepeneur' article:

"...in a digital-first world, where millennials obtain all their answers to problems at the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger, the reliance on technology to solve every question confuses people's perception of their own knowledge and intelligence. And that reliance may well lead to overconfidence and poor decision-making."(2)

Effectively, if your answer to social, procedural, human resources, time management, document control, or loss prevention issues (to name a few) is the introduction of technology to which the organization is largely unaccustomed and untrained without the root cause analysis of why the problems exist in the first place, the problems will persist, they will just persist in the digital space. This is not a problem resolution methodology. It is also not creativity. Creative solutions to problems happen because creativity has to be taught. Raw talent only accounts for so much until verifiable, accountable technique is required.

Technology, especially technology employed by a generation untrained and inexperienced in critical thinking exercises is not a poultice, or a cure all, or a silver bullet (there are no silver bullets.) It is, to use a forward thinking, visioning exercise, benefits mindset analysis - a strategy guaranteeing business non-continuity. American business has to begin understanding the value of paying for training and/or trained individuals. In a head-to-head matchup, the more highly trained, analytical, experienced problem solver [those with the initials PMP or MPA after their name, for example] is the one who will inevitably carry the strategy and benefit of each and every organization farther forward towards greater results or profitability (while figuring out where to most effectively deploy tech-savvy newcomers.) All three sectors are focused implicitly on benefits realization, and recognizing and monetizing opportunity. These are not intrinsic, genetically inherited traits, they are studied and learned capabilities that are the result of hard won knowledge skills.

In the end, Cendella's claim: "...it appears to me that age discrimination is mindset discrimination first
and foremost..." is indeed true. But if what the American business community seeks is an Agile mindest, there is training, dare I say - a certification for that.

1.) What millennials don't know about the job market, Kelley Holland, 2 May 2014, http://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/02/nials-dont-know-about-the-job-market.html

2.) Why Technology Is Affecting Critical Thought in the Workplace and How to Fix It, Rony Zarom, September 21, 2015 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248925

Power

I've listed The New Teacher Project as this blog's out-link for a purpose; It's been roughly two months since I've posted something here, and in that time, the NUF mid-year conference has happened, at which we heard incessantly about leadership, what it means, precise ways for you to foment that within yourself, and what precisely to do with it after you've managed to get ahold of it. Gina Rudan spoke to us about how she helps others find the intersection of their skills and their passions, and that was an interesting conversation. David Mensah spent a great deal of time talking about finding your personal mission, and I realized at that particular point, that I hadn't really nailed down what mine was. All was not lost, however, as I realized shortly after my triumphant return to the Capital region what precisely that was.

One of my closest friends in New York has a brother-in-law that lives in the area, and inevitably, we've also become fast friends. His children likewise think I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. Once I was back there, interacting with youth, it came to me like a Mack truck to the face - the youth, the future of tomorrow. That is my mission: to make sure that they are raised well, that they are shown the proper way to operate in society, that they learn well how to be valuable members of our culture. To that end, I've begun to refocus my post-fellowship job search to ensure that it has to do with Youth Development or a position as Education Director for an institution.

Amusingly, I recently read about a program in Philadelphia that has to do with interpreting in the school system. At the same time, I found myself wondering if there has been sufficient forethought and planning gone into the program for them to select a director. I know that operating simultaneously in two fields that I hold near and dear to my heart would be closely akin to paradise. We shall have to see how close to that I manage to find myself.

I continually refer back to Collins' scale of Level 5 leadership for a reason. Having participated in martial arts, operated in a school system, studied leadership through this fellowship, performed as an interpreter, written as a citizen journalist, and a whole variety of interesting things during my professional life, I believe I have developed a sense of what the term entails. I know for a fact it is horrifically overused. I also know that a majority of people overusing it have generally done so for the purpose of powerful self ascription of importance. My particular issue is education, youth development, and within that language access. So, when I see like posting a list of nearly 5,000 teachers who will find themselves under the ax due to 'budget constraints' and other efforts meant to unwind collective bargaining are solely to the detriment of or nation, and most specifically the more than 1.1 million students in the NYC Department of Education's care, I know 'leadership,' due to its overusage, is losing any semblance of validity. There is a better way, and there are agreements to be made. Students of history remember that the first thing every cult of personality did in order to rise to power was to decimate the teaching force. TNTP has been complicit in producing proposals to that end, and it is apparent that their objectives are in line with the philosophy.

Leadership is not only in the professional field, however, and this is where I find myself in a quandary. Our capstone experience is potentially one of the most intense pieces of the entire fellowship, but having done one or two dedicated research papers while in my initial Master's degree at NYU, and very similar types of brain intensive work as a teacher for 12 years - curriculum writing, and major projects that I developed to be able to utilize in the classroom, - this was perhaps less of a stressful enterprise for me than it likely should have been. I turned in 51 pages (with 52 references) nearly a week before the due date, and dedicated the remaining time to advising and coaching classmates that might be finding themselves in a difficult place. This week, I also received word from one journal that I had pitched an essay to that they are willing to accept my writing. I'm incredibly pleased about this because, not only does it result in a publication credit, it also results in remuneration! This, I believe, is more the type of leadership - thought leadership - for which we should be aiming.

Next weekend, my sister, my parents, my closest friend from high school whom I have not seen in nearly 20 years, and his wife and children descend upon my small hamlet for the weekend. My sister is also participating in a range of events and conferences with the City Council Chairman of her town, meetings with Congresspeople, and so forth as she climbs the political ladder. There is an evening planned for the DC dozen to meet with her, the City Council Chairman, and several other key players in about a week, and it will be the first time I'm in the same room with so many noteables at once. I think this is the point at which I should feel apprehensive. My main preoccupation for the evening is to make sure that I have enough networking cards available to hand out at the encounter. I can almost guarantee that there will be interesting photos from the affair.

Not necessarily as interesting as a Mariachi band headed by Antonio Banderas, but, you get the idea...

Cogito ergo sum

This past week's election cycle has brought an inordinate amount of commentary, not to mention controversy, and indeed the worst appears yet to come, as one party attempts to functionally reverse the direction in which the other had been taking the country. This pattern is cyclical, and in another couple years, the presidential elections will happen, and there will be a hotly contested battle which I predict, at this early stage, will be a referendum on the current referendum, which was never really a referendum to begin with for the simple fact that noone was call to account for anything, and the - as they've been termed in publications farther out along the political spectrum - 'The Red Scare' was not so scary after all. Indeed, I asked this on my Facebook page the following day: given the fact that there were so many media outlets cheering, rooting, egging on those who would undo all of the good that our president has done over the course of his current mandate, that when the chips fell, and the Blue team still held the Senate, and the Executive branch, and the majority in the House was only by 60 seats (near enough so that a few good compromises could create enough influence to stem the tide) it is to wonder the following (and New Yorkers always get blamed for asking the hard questions,): when 2012 comes around, will there then be references to a vast 'conservative media' conspiracy?

Of course, my mother would say, 'out of the mouths of babes', for, as luck would have it, there was the entire Keith Olberman controversy which blew up Friday morning following election night, and continued through the weekend, with MSNBC eventually recanting their suspension of the anchor, though not before suffering umbrage and the hyper-intellectualized deprecation at the gilded tongue of Rachel Maddow. Her comparison at the very least begs for the practices of her competitors to be looked into, if not fully investigated.

But this continues to bring up the critical teaching point, at least for me, of Collins' Level 5 leadership, which is a persistent theme throughout the Public/Private leadership literature. All of the people who just managed to garner positions in Congress spend the majority of their soundbite time trumpeting their cause to unseat President Obama, to repeal health care, to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, to stand in the face of power and shout defiantly 'NO!' These are the same party constituents that orate fervently claiming to be the ones in favor of 'opportunity.' Harvard Business Review has a different perspective on the matter, in an article entitled 'Is what's good for Corporate America still good for America?' The answer, I will allow you to discern for yourself, but the evidence is compelling. Secondly, in a New York Times Op-Ed piece published today, Nicholas Kristof uses a term that brought to mind terrifying images of inhuman labor conditions, should wrenching poverty, greed, pestilence, and eventually revolution. The difficulty in his utilization, however, is the fact that he makes the claim about the US, which increases the potency of the comparison, but perhaps the time has come to make such a comparison, as borne out in Kristof's column 'Our Banana Republic.' For those of us in the Spanish teaching profession, who have made (or previously had made) a career of learning and researching these exact historical details, and carry around montages of photos, paintings, poetry, and period style films in our memories, we warned of the potential for similar consequences in our classes. We spent inordinate amounts of time preparing lessons, and explaining the hard concepts, and the literature, as demonstrated in La United Fruit Company by Pablo Neruda. I would suggest everyone read it and make a distinct comparison between the current (as of 2010) top 1% of Americans absorbing 24% of the GDP, and the situations in the poem.

There has been, of late, -and perhaps I've only noticed it in the New York Times because I only have time in a day to look through perhaps two publications with the flurry of activity that's going on throughout the program and my mentorship,- a renewed focus on the Civil War era. I imagine that is not without good reason. Today on a day when the Commander-in-Chief finds himself beset on all sides by hysterias both manufactured and real, one other such article surfaced in the Times, and its parity with the current duo-chromatic myopia, entitled 'Lincoln wins, now what?' What the historians seem to be telling us is the following: be conscious of your history, lest you be doomed to repeat it. Though, given my recent visit to the Brookings Institute, and seeing insights into the future of Education policy for the years to come, I must ponder the nation's capacity to successfully perform that task.

Finally, in order to bring this full circle, the following blitzed across my e-mail box Wednesday night, after a long day in the office, and an even longer and more involved online session with professors, from an individual in a similar position to mine, which in reality was the purpose for returning to the question of Level 5 leadership:

"Before we end the night and since I deal with this in this group all the time, I have to take the victories I get and rejoice when I can. So I say this with love and respect to all my Dem friends here, which is almost all of you here, NA NA NA NA EH EH EH GOOD BYE (Pelosi) !!!!!!

BIG LOVE"

If this is the character of the supporters of the team opposing Pelosi, and the President, does that truly represent the type of leadership we need in a climate that, above all else, requires maturity, a willingness to reach out, create coalitions, search for best solutions, and best practices, and continue the progress that's been made?

Milestoning in order to drill down into the information

Over the past few weeks I've been in a flurry of activity. At one particular team meeting, I implored the Contract Specialists with whom I sit to invite me into the process, so that I can begin to actually see what is going on.  For the majority of the time I'd been in the division up to then, I had focused almost singularly on the writing of regulations and a new template for Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Maintain contracts, but had not actually witnessed any of the goings on in action. Since then, I've been on multiple site visits, participated in award meetings bid openings, conference calls, and pre-proposal conferences, meetings with policy analysts, general counsels, and all the time maintaining a breakneck pace with developing the writing projects I've been given, and completing class assignments. I suppose I ought to be tired. But, I'm sticking to my self-made promise of exercising during the week, and going on no less than an hour's walk on the weekends. We'll have to see how I accomplish that once it gets cold. But the agency recently granted me access to the fitness facility in the building, so that should prove interesting.

This past week I attended a presentation at the Brookings Institute, the first time I'd ever been there, which provided me with more than enough material to write a solid article on the matter. In stark contrast, I feel that sitting in a room with so many education experts, including the Special Assistant to the President on Education from the Public Policy Council that I may not necessarily have gone down the wrong path. At one point in history, when, to quote one of my professors: "...and then Western Capitalism collapsed..." everyone - including teachers - were loosing their jobs, it seemed that the decade plus of my life that I had spent in the pursuit of higher understanding of education, its principles, and how to apply them, all of the practice, all of the development, had been entirely in vain. But then, enter my time as an interpreter, and following that, my entree into the National Urban Fellows program, and it seems that everything happens for a reason.

Having been through the entirety of the above, it's an interesting thought experiment to consider what is the significance of 'leadership.' That term can apply to the classroom, the agency, study groups, and of course, the frequently named municipal, state and federal levels. But I have yet to truly find myself a leadership role model after whom I would pattern myself, at least in the Public Administration/Business arena. I carry with me images of leadership styles that come from the dojo, and from Steinhardt, and ready comparisons for what Jim Collins would term Level 5 Leadership.

Interestingly, and speaking of leadership, tomorrow is Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. Amusingly, at the same time, the good folks at GovLoop.com have convened an erstwhile collection of Federal level employees, intent on bringing attention to the fact that they, in direct opposition to the popular belief that they are lackadaisical, unskilled, and poorly trained, are anything but those three adjectives for a parallel rally. Additionally, they hope to present that working for the Federal Government carries with it a distinct collection of benefits unavailable to those in positions outside of its purview.

In any event, stay tuned to my Examiner page for the next amazing adventure, and here for insightful commentary on the commentary.

Facade of the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C.

This, it seems, is a strong argument for story based learning. Every time I hear the word 'rally' this scene kicks on in my head. Never fails:

Ranai

The title of the particular technique above is especially poignant for this entry, given that this week we've had a few major events. From the Japanese, the nearest literal translation is "Order from Chaos" - something that shows direct parity with our current state. On Monday, we finally heard our assignments for the coming year. I will be stationed in Washington, D.C. as a municipal functionary, along with no less than 4 other classmates in the same office. A total of eleven of us from this cohort will populate various Municipal, Non-Profit, and Federal agencies across the metro area, and I daresay that - in and of itself - will be an amusing adventure. That said, in a strange serendipitous twist, a good friend from high school, who's younger brother lives right inside the area, happens to have a place to rent me and so that was worked out with all due haste, and I don't have to worry about the landing pad when I get there. It remains to be seen whether or not I will manage to have time (or money, energy, or all of the above) to get back in the dojo while there. Stay tuned.

Adding to the chaos -> order progression was our reading this week of Jim Collins' book "Good to Great". Prof. Sermier's voice was a constant track in the background of my mind as I went through this book: in regards to executive pay, 'getting the right people on the bus', 'what is essential to the mission of the organization', but then, just last night, he told us this is the management book he would have written had he ever been given the opportunity to write one. My mind is filled with new concepts, and how they relate - connect all the dots - of all the points that we've been learning across the courses: The Hedgehog Concept, The Flywheel versus the Doom Loop. Buildup and Breakthrough, and the 'Stop Doing List'. In a few short hours, the fairly simple language in the book could easily be understood, and re-presented visually, as a road map for take companies from just successful, to industry leaders.

Now is the mad dash to find places to live, hunting for NUF alums from previous classes who are willing to lend a hand while we adjust to the new arrangements, and getting read to leave NYC while still trying to make sure that we finish our PAF 9120 papers due in August. I am almost completely decided on leaving my apartment and finding something else on the other side of the mentorship, unless, of course, they ask me to stay there, which is entirely possible. I'm slightly distraught at being forced to leave my pets with my sister, though, I suppose that's necessary for now. There has been much speculation about whether or not we will all make it through the various odd assignments, the research paper writing, the intense work schedule, etc, during the next twelve months. My personal feelings, following along with my budo training, is that work is work. You do what needs to be done, and reserve your deeper emotions for family life, and those close to you. Understand that statement means nothing at all about having passion for your work. We absolutely should, and it would be futile to enter public service lacking it, however, I hear several of my colleagues already becoming slightly unnerved by the prospect of what needs to be done. Having already been there - twice - perhaps I'm just a bit jaded.

Through all of this, one song has continued to play in the background of my mind for the past week. The Great Satchmo, Louis Armstrong: