Dan Erwin

Are There Really Generational Differences in the Workplace?

A lot of people have made a lot of money selling their so-called expertise in generational differences and how to work with younger generations in the workplace. But the supposed generational differences in the workplace are largely hokum.

[Definition: hokum—nonsense, bunk, false or irrelevant material introduced into an essay in order to arouse interest, excitement or amusement. Hokum is an Americanism, probably a blend of hocus-pocus and bunkum.]

Recently, the Center for Evidence-based Management (CEBM) completed a study on the evidence for (assumed) generational or age differences in the workplace. They did a system wide search of more than 80 studies. The studies focused on quantitative, empirical research, not qualitative.

One of the more useful pieces of info for me is that they actually labelled and dated the generations. I’ve added that info for those of you who are curious about the subject.

               Generations                      Born between

               Traditionalists                   1925-1944
               Baby Boomers                  1945-1964
               Generation X                     1965-1979
               Millennials                          1980-2000

Generational differences are supposed to influence work outcomes because of differing values, work ethics or expectations about organizations.

They drew a number of conclusions.  

When Gerson Gets Passionate

Though I’m no great lover of the politics and thought of "W's" speech writer, Michael Gerson, when he gets passionate, my brain says yes, yes. It’s amusingly simple to tell when he’s passionate about something. He departs from his evangelical, Wheaton background and uses mild expletives like “damn” and “hell.” Recently, he’s started using them in his columns, so you can tell he’s really pissed off and wants his evangelical, conservative readers to pay attention.

In the last few months he’s been going after the extreme “rightists” and Donald Trump. I’d be thrilled to...

Robert Reich on David Brooks' Utter Ignorance About Inequality

In my last blog, I wrote about David Brooks' article on "The Inequality Problem." If you read it closely, you noted that I clarified the terminology of "framing" and suggested that the research is highly conflicted. Brooks argued those issues but in typical fashion limits his discussion to the two.

Now, here's the real substance from Robert Reich. Reich takes on nearly all the issues. In contrast, if you go back through Brooks' columns, you'll notice that originally he rejected the notion of inequality. Very slowly, he's coming around. But I'm not certain why it's always a devil of a time for Brooks to admit to the policy problems. This conservative that liberals love seems congenitally unable at that point. Not Robert Reich.

Brooks, you'll remember, argues that we should be focusing on the social problems of the poor, not on inequality. At best, that's a half-truth.

But Reich has the appropriate rejoinders: "Baloney" and "Hogwash!" His knowledge of policy, labor and economics means a better and different analysis of the inequality problem. And Reich gets down to the real stuff...

Racism, Business Diversity and the Ballot Box

In Saturday’s NYTImes, Charles Blow provided his readers with an exceptionally articulate statement on Disrespect, Race and Obama. Blow’s insights are accompanied by fascinating data from the 2012 election revealed by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a Harvard PhD student in behavioral economics. Reflecting on Blows insight and using the data from Stephens-Davidowitz, it strikes me that there is a more significant than usual interpretation of the current political scene—and business diversity. 

In the 1970’s and ‘80’s, Virginia Satir was one of the most respected and revered psychotherapist in the country, and for good reason.  Widely known as “The Mother of Family Therapy,” Satir took a family systems approach to counseling, an approach that was just gaining credibility. Indeed, her change processes are still applied successfully to organizations. But one of Satir's most novel ideas at the time, was that the "presenting issue" or "surface problem" itself was seldom the real problem; rather, how people coped with the issue created the problem. This approach is supportive of systems problem solving in business. Thank you, Peter Senge, et al.

And it’s an insight that applies. . . 

The Changing Demographics of "Real Americans"

Although I know business is paying far more attention to the national changing demographics than politicos or even church leaders, some of the stuff is really fascinating. In a recent article in the New Republic, Timothy Noah referred to a number of fascinating demographic statistics well worth sharing. And, yeah, the statistics are fairly reputable. Of course there's one demographic that really, really needs to change: the face of Republicans. More and more they're just old white men.

Gay Marriage
More Americans now support gay marriage than oppose it.

Guess Who Got the Jobs 1st Quarter 2012

An analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released in March found that the number of people 50-plus unemployed for six months or longer catapulted from 325,000 to 1.8 million between 2007 and 2011. It’s the older folk, we assume, who got the pink slips and are having the most difficult time finding work. Not quite true.

The Bureau of Labor statistics revealed some shocking statistics regarding the first quarter, 2012. Thirty-three percent (33%) of new hires were ages 25-54. That means that sixty-seven percent (67%) of new hires were ages 55-plus. Older folk are convincing employers that they can still be trusted to take on new jobs and perform at top level. According to a report in May AARP Bulletin, Who got the jobs, 788,000 workers older than age 55 got new jobs, and 385,000 younger workers got new jobs. 

When you drill down into the statistics. . .  .

It’s good news that older adults were leading the way in employment growth in the first quarter. But it’s not clear whether the new hires had been out of work for shorter or longer stretches. Furthermore, the types of jobs they ended up with are not known. I hope it’s not as a greeter at WalMart. Ummmm. . . I just remembered. Most WalMart stores have quit using greeters.   

But some disconcerting issues. . . .
There’s a significant possibility that older workers were taking jobs beneath their skill level and pay grade. Just for the opportunity to work.

Even more disconcerting, these statistics mean that younger people who might have filled those positions are still without work.

Think Twice Before You Follow Your Passion

In a critical rejection of the widely accepted notion to follow your passion, Dorie Clark argues in a Harvard Business blog that the strategy can be wrongheaded. As Clark points out, doing what you love can inspire great dedication and a sense of meaning, but it can also blind you to real problems.

She suggests four straight-forward reasons why the strategy can be a serious blunder.

1. You may not have a knack for your objective. Remember, it's always hard to judge yourself, to know what your strengths and weaknesses might be. Indeed, I've learned as an executive coach that though many have a sense of their weaknesses, few have a real sense of their strengths. It's often the case that personal passion may not play to one's strengths.
2. You hate the work surrounding your passion. Though your passion might truly reflect your strengths, it's also true that some really can drop the ball when it comes to the work surrounding their passion, putting them in serious risk. I've known numerous would-be consultants who love the work, but find that the sales processes involved drive them nuts. As a result, their passion goes by the wayside. 
3. You're too emotionally attached. I see this regularly in many well-trained professionals. Writers hate feedback. CPA's despise someone suggesting their financial strategy is limited. Physicians hate being challenged in their diagnoses. And business people have difficulty objectifying their expertise enough to accept criticism. When you care too deeply about a project, it's very difficult to make a rational decision about whether it should live or die.
4. No one will pay for it. You can turn your passion, your hobby into a job--only if someone's willing to pay for it. I've had two careers for which I was passionate, but learned that that both placed serious limitations on my financial future. Neither were financially viable. With three daughters off to college, I needed a more lucrative profession. Thankfully, I was able to leverage my experiences. But if I'd stayed in them, I would have been up the financial creek and our children would have suffered for it. In short, what was once a viable career may go out of existence tomorrow. 

Although Dorie Clark's recommendations are very practical and make a lot of immediate sense, there are two more profound reason's why following your passion can be a clear dead-end.

First, you may not be aware either of your future interests or strengths. It usually takes a significant amount of experience and feedback to draw relevant conclusions about one's own career. What's interesting and inspiring today may be exceedingly dull and boring tomorrow. So rather than being concerned about your dreams and your passion, I'd work on the skills of adaptability and take the opportunities that come across your path. Indeed, the combination of globalized competition and technological development have made rapid change and adaptation an absolute necessity for career survival and success.

But the most important reason not to follow your passion is to understand that the entire midset of "following your passion," the theory, is built upon false premises about us as humans. It's built upon the notion that you and I have one true self and that our task in life is to identify that true self. But you and I do not have one true self or one single identity. Instead we are a lot of selves with a lot of identities. In a previous blog I wrote about the disbelief and suprise of a high school classmate when she finally figured out who I was at a fifty year reunion. For a good laugh, check out my blog, How to change your personality. My career passion never entered into the matter. It was ultimately about family need and the demand for financial survival and success.

The notion of a true self, though exceedingly popular, has been thoroughly dispelled by research. To appreciate this dynamic—that each of us is not one true self but many selves, a whole cast of characters that we might become, think we should become or even fear becoming in the future—consider a study by Stanford’s Hazel Markus. In this study 210 college students were asked to “tell us about what is possible for you.”  With that information, Markus and Paula Nurius created a questionnaire of 150 possibilities.  Broken out into six categories, the questionnaire included general descriptors such as creative and intelligent; life-style possibilities such as being health conscious or alcohol dependent; and occupational alternatives such as business executive, supreme court justice, taxi-driver or police officer.  The categories were then broken down into how they thought about themselves currently and whether they considered an alternative for themselves in the future.  

The study showed that when the context is changed, the possibilities a person faces spur them to find role models they’d like to become.  So think twice before you follow your passion. You're liable to find a lot more out there than you suspect.

 Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius.  Possible Selves. American Psychologist 41(9) (1986), 954-969. 

Women at Risk

Wall Street Journal recently reported research from Wells Fargo and Metlife showing that women have a great deal of anxiety regarding retirement. The research found that women facing retirement start with three marks against them: they typically earn less than men, they are more likely to have spent time away from work caring for a relative, and they have a longer life expectancy than men and will need a bigger nest egg. I'm very skeptical of research from business firms with a clear vested interest in the research, but my experience suggests that the research regarding "concerns" may be quite accurate.

On average, women who reach 65 will live to age 85, while men will live to 82. Only 38% of women believe that Social Security will be available when they retire--in contrast to 42% for men. The average annual income for women age 65 and older is $21,519 versus $37,509 for men. (I seriously doubt that. I'd like to see their sample. Since the article alluded to women execs, that's probably the sample.)

When surveyed women execs were asked about their biggest concerns for the future, the number one issue was fear about retirement funding (62%). Even concerns about health care were less (46%). One of the toughest tasks--juggling work and family responsibilities--remains high on the list of concerns.

Women and the Pay/Career Gap

This is basically an FYI post:  I doubt that I could write an article on women and the pay/career issues conundrum without screwing up, getting accused of chauvinism or making irrelevant statements.  So let me frame the issue with a bit of history, and then suggest a number of articles on the subject.

First, I am husband of a professional woman, and father of three daughters, all professionals.  Although I grew up in a highly male, though not especially macho family, I recognized when my daughters were in grade school that women were getting the short end of the stick and that I needed to help them make wise career/mate choices.  (The father/daughter stuff is very potent.  My daughters more quickly tell me I'm screwing up than my wife.  On numerous occasions, and to my obvious delight, they've told me to "buzz-off," and rightly so.  I've also engaged in some of the most enjoyable conversations in life with my daughters.)  My wife, who's in her seventies, has told me that growing up, she had three choices of profession: teaching, nursing or secretarial.  After two summer stints as part-time assistant to the senior executive for General Motors Overseas (Opel cars, etc.) he offered her the position of his personal assistant, with a pool of a dozen assistants, but she chose to become a teacher.  (She's a very exceptional woman.)   After our first was born, her father offered to pay her way through law school, but she said no.  (I learned much later that she thought I'd have been too intimidated.  Aaaargh!  No comment.)

It was obvious that for me to feel secure about our daughters' future they needed to go to the best schools and get a graduate degree.  (That was more my agenda than my wife's, although she certainly was supportive.)  All three daughters completed graduate school, and they've been highly successful.  My wife and I both have happy smiles about that.  We recognize that that was not possible for the majority of women of that generation, but we were given three daughters and that was our family objective.  I should also say that over the years I've had the good fortune to consult to numerous women.  I'm not certain why, but a number of my clients have been exceptionally capable females at the executive level.  I am certain I gained as much from them as I gave.  When the issue is women in the workplace, I should say that though I've been blessed to meet a number of very enlightened males, I also know an awful lot of dumb-ass ones from mid to executive levels from all the generations.  I count two sons-in-law among the enlightened.

Both men and women of the younger generations should be aware of the current statistics (although some writers are pointing out that these are not really the important issues). 

• Pew research finds 26% of women out-earn their husbands.
• More women than men are starting American companies.
• Women earn 6 out of 10 bachelor's and master's degrees.

So, men and women of the younger generations, here are a set of articles on highly relevant women/workplace issues.

Recognizing the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, Newsweek has a fascinating overview on the gender gap:  Why the gender gap still has not closed. 

Harvard blogs has a series of useful articles on women in the workplace, some challenging the usual stuff: Why the gender pay gap misses the point;  What's in a (last) name? A bigger paycheck, maybe.  Those two articles refer to research from a number of articles, and also reframe much of the gender/workplace issue. 

Shocking Statistics About People Over Age 55: The Encore Career

After reading the this morning's Times discussion of new careers for people over age 55, I have the sense that I may have been living in la-la land for some time.  I had the suspicion that some in that category who lost their jobs in this recession were free-lancing, but I was unaware of how widespread this had become.  Working with execs, I was also aware that some took retirement buy-outs and started looking to either buyout a small company or build their own.  This is a different issue, not executive by-outs.  What's going on today is not short-term, but structural.

Boomers past 55 years-of-age are retraining, going into different businesses and setting up their own.  As the Times article noted, a lot of these people have a lifetime of knowledge, skills and networking they've amassed, and it's very easy to use all of that to start a business. 

The biggest surprise?  More than 5 million Americans run their own business or are otherwise self-employed.

A study by Babson College and Baruch College found that Americans age 55 and above started 18.9% of all businesses created in 2008, compared with 10% in 2001.  The 55-and-overs are playing a larger role in engtrepreneurship partly because the number of Americans in that age category is rising rapidly. 

My Boomer daughter put it to me this way.  "Dad," she said, "Like me, work is your passion and your life.  So, whatever you do, don't quit or retire!"

Here are the facts:  A lot of people are not semi-retired, but semi-working.  Go for it, baby!