Generational Juxtaposition

Millennials now make up one-quarter of the workforce, and that percentage will double by the end of this decade. Hierarchical designs created before color television make no sense to millennial employees suckled on cyberspace. The differences are not in desire to achieve but the differences we perceive.

A survey of 6,308 job seekers and HR professionals shows a startling disconnect in perceptions. While more than 80% of Millennials see themselves as “hard working” and “loyal to their employers”, the hiring HR departments judge these same employees as self-absorbed fun focused freelancers.

The disparity is not in effort or allegiance but input and opportunity. To someone who has grown up measuring responsiveness in billions per second, annual reviews are more like historic footnotes than relevant feedback. Gen Y employees don’t want to recap the past they want to be a part of creating the future –now.

Vineet Nayar, whom I have talked about in many previous articles, thought he was doing a good thing when he began posting regular progress updates to all 30,000 HCLT employees on their internal U&I communications network, but nobody really cared about news of yesterday – they wanted to be part of designing tomorrow. It wasn’t until Vineet stopped reporting results and started asking tough questions that employees felt respected, appreciated and engaged. In the next four years they grew their customer base five-fold and cut attrition in half.

This trend is not just for the young among us but the youth in all of us. Hierarchies have their place. Command and control systems are highly efficient at replication and irreplaceable when unquestioning compliance is necessary, but layers of approval and manuals of mandates make innovation unlikely. People excited about new ideas encounter so many experts in “no” and doctors of “done that” they soon learn to buy in or get out.

The question is not which leadership style is right but what you expect from those on the front lines. If obedience is essential then control is obligatory. On the other hand if you need all team members to use sound judgment, be enthusiastically engaged and creatively resourceful then subservient systems send the wrong message.

There are environments where compliance is key and innovation is irrelevant. You may be lucky enough to have an endless supply of employees and your competition is complacent. In those settings a hierarchical approach provides the same stability to organizations as that structural design provided the great pyramids.

But if the pressure to improve is high, your customers are increasingly demanding, and employees are expected to adapt then the impetus for continuous improvement must come from those “value adding” employees closest to the challenge.

The ideal solution for both stability and responsiveness is the collaboration of both hierarchy and meritocracy. A process that maintains efficient, predictable hierarchies in tandem with open, transparent meritocratic communities that value “multiple skills, types of knowledge or working styles without privileging one over the other”[i]

Meritocracy is the basis of Peer Powered Performance™. It is a system to be used alongside systems of command and control, creating an opportunity for team members to share resources, ask questions and experience the evolutionary benefits of training not confined to a classroom.

Meritocracy is at the core of creating a culture of inclusion. By creating communities of equals all experiencing the same challenges, equipped with the same resources, you establish an opportunity for future leaders to hone skills, test assumptions and find new solutions. This new breed of leaders is not one promoted by popularity or protected by position but powered by performance. Lacking positional power or coercive control these rising stars become leaders because they inspire followers.

The Apache called these leaders Nant’ans the most famous of which may have been Geronimo. In contrast to our military system of position and rank Geronimo had no “official” authority. He was not a chief, he did not command warriors he inspired followers. (Learn the lessons the allowed the Apache’s system of leadership thwarted the Spanish armies for two hundred years)

My interest in this process evolved not as an approach to management but a system for education and a community for coaching. We designed Peer Powered Performance™ because the traditional short-term approaches to soft skills training don’t work. Sustainable transformation requires Time, Attention and Community. Attempting to change complex behaviors independent of the systems that support them is like trying to extinguish a single tree in the midst of a wildfire.

If you are tired of the Sisyphean approach to organizational improvement, replace the relentless push with the Peer Powered Pull” of a system that combines education, collaboration and illustration to fuel the conversations that create transformation.