Posts tagged boomers who can communicate and motovate all age groups
elephants and leaders
Aug 31st
“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. economist, “The Age of Uncertainty”
So.
I am not sure if this is becoming a characteristic of this generation of business leaders or I never noticed it in the last generation of business leaders. “This” is the inability to deal with the elephant in the room. Or even worse is the ignoring of the “herd of elephants” stalking through the organization.
Yes.
Being a leader of an organization (and size almost becomes irrelevant) is difficult and comes with challenges.
No.
Leaders shouldn’t ignore the elephant in the room or the herds of elephants wandering the hallways.
Elephants?
There are so many to choose from I couldn’t list them all. And no leader in their right mind will do an “employee survey” and expect to uncover the elephants that are seemingly walking invisibly through the hallways and offices of their company. No one trusts internal surveys any more.
Anyway.
Here are the ‘big 3’ elephants I see leaders kind of having their head up there ass on:
- Senior manager flaws.
For some reason leaders are becoming blind to their semi-peer flaws. I don’t know if it’s the “kinder gentler” management of this generation or if they are just focused on what is being done well because it is one less thing to worry about. I don’t care what it is but it is elephant numero uno.
Here’s the deal. People have higher expectations the bigger the title. And they should. A bigger title means a higher standard to live/work by. A leader HAS to set his management team to a higher standard. They cannot be expected to play by the same rules as the rest of the organization. Oddly (having been in so many executive meetings I am surprised I haven’t had a natural lobotomy) leaders want to set up a standard of stricter rules for junior people and more flexible standards for senior.
It’s wacky. Senior people are supposed to be role models. The trickledown effect if you permit senior people with obvious ‘flaws’ is lack of respect, a belief that management is flawed, and a belief that anyone can be a senior manager (which isn’t true) and, well, confusion on how “they” (employees) can see something that should be obvious to a leader.
- Making specialists generalists.
The way today’s business seems to work is no matter what your responsibility is in your ‘growth’ stages you get promoted (assuming you do well) and get rewarded with a generalist management role.
Look. I am not suggesting specialist cannot become generalist nor am I suggesting that a specialist cannot assume some responsibilities as executive leaders, but I do see organization leaders permitting the title/responsibility role reward based on merit not on ability to do the reward.
And the trickle down to those decisions (beyond the obvious that many just don’t deserve that role and mismanage) is that the organization staff see it and get confused (and join the herd of elephants wandering the hallways)
- Inability to deal with younger employee dissatisfaction.
Whew. This one is a humdinger these days. This elephant isn’t even invisible and it gets ignored. In fact, many leaders just stare at the elephant and shake their head and go “oh well, there’s that damn elephant but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
It’s crazy. I have written about this before and, yes, I am going to generalize … but … this doesn’t have anything to do with “this generation’s work ethic” or “young kids just don’t have the same attitude as we did” (gosh, anyone reading that I would hope would feel old if they know they have said it themselves) … this is about leadership.
It’s not about being cool or wearing flip flops to work to show you ‘relate’ to the generation.
In fact, dear leader, they don’t want you to relate … they want you to lead.
A leader doesn’t have to be a ‘giant’ like I have written about before but they have to be a leader. Employees don’t have to like you (although it helps) they have to respect you. And that crosses any generation at any time with any age employee. Being a leader (and however that particular leader utilizes leadership-like charisma) will overcome 90+% generational issues (flip flops in the office should take care of the rest).
Those are just three.
But I would imagine the point here is that I tend to see a diminishing ability in leadership to effectively deal with the elephants within their organizations. They are either oblivious, ignore them or accept them. Any of the three are unacceptable.
Ah. The biggest argument I get from senior people? I have other things more important at the moment, I am simply prioritizing.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ….
I have a tendency to want to point out that an elephant is … well … an elephant. And they are big.
Deal with it.
Anyway.
This is just a trend I seem to be seeing these days.
One last thought (because some of the elephants live outside the office building but come in attached to employees when they come to work every day):
Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca Cola Enterprises from 1959-1994
“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends, and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends, and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.”
Nice way of looking at it if you ask me.
Okay. My advice to leaders? Go elephant hunting.
older experienced people and transformational hires
Jul 28th
So. In the past months I received two things that didn’t seem related but in my warped mind they did:
1. Ralph Cutcher (a nice really smart guy) talked in his newsletter about helping companies hire more transformational people. Here is what he said:
- Transformational Players –During the last year, most of our assignments have been for what I would term “transformational players”. Sounds like an impossible search assignment right? Not really. What these searches represent is an expectation of change and new possibilities, principally tied to establishing new capability, a new leadership approach or new business creation. And they are always entwined with an expectation for revenue lift. Our view may be skewed somewhat by the nature of how our practice has evolved, but I also see this when I talk with connections in every corner of the marketing and advertising world. A great replacement is not really considered a high value staffing move. More often than not these transformational player moves are accomplished by trading out another role(s) to fund this move, making an incremental FTE add or moving a star player into a transformational role. The result over time will be a version of the GE model… every year trade out the bottom 10% of your performers. In this updated model, every person is intricately tied to a higher value role with a constant re-evaluation of the roles and how they fit in. This future view will put a premium on a person’s ability to influence and activate the organization regardless of their current role.
2. I was forwarded an email suggesting about only 4% of employees in advertising (say marketing) agencies are over 50 … so where is the knowledge and experience coming from (and the editorial suggests how can agencies developing communications to boomers do so without boomers guiding the relevance)? Here is the quote from EngageBoomers:
- The PEW Center released a study at the end of last year suggesting that the current generation gap is the largest in the almost 50-year history of the study. Even larger than during the Vietnam war era. Today, an astounding 79% of Americans believe that there is a generation gap in the ways young and old think and believe. And then there’s this … The average age of an advertising agency creative person is 28. The average age of a media planner is 24. And less than 4% of advertising agency personnel in America is over the age of 50. I know why all the ads look and sound the way they do. I know why none of them talk to the 50+ audience. A friend of mine offered up this paraphrased quote from the Greek philosopher Xenophanes: “If horses had gods, they would look like horses.” Thirty-five year old creative people are always going to create messages that look like them, sound like them and act like them. Why? Because they’re 35.
Okay.
I have to tell you.
I think the market place needs more 50 year old+ employees than ever before (and I am gonna tell you why).
Now. I am not suggesting all 50+ people are the same. And this generalization may be translatable to other age groups but let me suggest there are three groups:
- Over 50 and all they know and believe in is what they were taught when they were in their 20’s.
- Over 50 and they have all the knowledge they need to be on their own and like being on their own (I call these builders)
- Over 50 and have accumulated iterative learning over the years and have a unique combination of old and new (and like renovating)
(note: I wrote a post about Builders versus Renovators if you want to check it out)
The first group is lost in the past.
They will struggle because their thinking and ideas and even their vocabulary can be out of date. They will suck at transformation or renovation. Their hope is finding someone who needs to work on their internal construct of how to get shit done because … well … they know how to get shit done within a system. But mostly these are the people when we were young we thought were ‘out-of-touch’ from the real world (or chuckled to ourselves because they would throw out up to date buzzwords acting like they knew what was going on).
The second group has accumulated enough knowledge and expertise and confidence where mentally they have flipped from ‘working for someone’ to ‘working for myself.’
They have recognized their ability to build. And they like building (which is different than transforming). They would suck at transforming because they want to run the place and not simply be an enabler for the organization to shift. (Ralph also talks about this within his newsletter as “fear of flying” and learning about yourself). They could possibly be out of touch or they could be leading edge entrepreneurs. But it doesn’t matter because they are now going forward as their own boss.
And then there is the third group. They are renovators (Ralph calls them Transformation people).
Companies should be fighting over these people.
They are old but not old. They are experienced but still learning. They have a solid thinking construct but flexible in application. They may have their quirks (because I believe all of us older people start feeling more comfortable in our own skin and therefore are a little less worried about ‘fitting in’) but also tend to be more interested in the result than worrying about step by step how they get there. They can actually make the current buzzword understandable by using past functional learnings to explain them. They clearly have one foot in the past (history & knowledge) and one foot in the future (restless & learning). Great at transforming. Great at bridging generation gaps.
So.
When I say “fighting for these people” I don’t mean to suggest that companies should be stockpiling these people at the expense of young energetic fresh thinkers and doers. I am simply suggesting that companies need a good tier of these boomer types to transform themselves when, frankly, a lot of companies need to be ‘transforming.’ (and my definition of transformation is leveraging from solid good older characteristics an injecting some new characteristics).
I am also not going to suggest there should be a direct correlation between % of boomers in population and % of boomers in the makeup of business organizations.
That would seem kind of silly to me.
You don’t need a shitload of these people because they are catalysts (and I think if you have too many catalysts in a room it creates either a black hole or an implosion … I cannot remember which).
But the numbers are pretty compelling that organizations should seek that third group of over 50ers (let’s be nice and call them boomers … hey … I am one … well … officially I think I am a Joneser).
In 2009 The PEW Center released a study outlining the current generation gap is the largest in the almost 50 year history of the study.
Today, an astounding 79% of Americans believe that there is a generation gap in the ways young and old think and believe. 
Truly the only way to bridge that gap within an organization and eliminate generational divisiveness is to have boomers who can effectively communicate with and motivate all age groups.
Look. Just to make a point for all organizations.
I don’t know that I buy the dire extent of the issue the editorial in Media Post suggests with regard to boomers in advertising/communications agencies (The average age of an advertising agency creative person is 28. The average age of a media planner is 24. And less than 4% of advertising agency personnel in America is over the age of 50).
To the facts just stated I frankly say “so what.”
I don’t believe only women have to work on female driven communications, African Americans on African American focused communications or clowns to work on circus communications.
Talented communicators can create links with anyone they desire to communicate with.
This leads me back to the importance of that third group of boomers with the talent I outline.
That group will tend to be generalists.
They will have such a varied experience background that their value will be exponential in that they know how to transfer learnings to different situations. 
They will know how to take company vision (or ‘dream”) and give younger people purpose. And they will be flexible enough to do it in a variety of ways.
Organizations today should be absolutely climbing over each other to find those people.
Why?
Because no 25 or 30 year old can have that ability (that I guarantee).
Why?
Because there is no possible way they would have had time to accumulate the experience and learnings to be fully (they could be partially at that point) capable of what a good third group Boomer type can offer an organization.
But hey. I am biased. I am selling my own age group.
But.
I will also say.
This is one of the few topics I feel pretty confident that I am right on.
