Generationally Speaking

Kids today just don’t want to work.

If you’re over 40, you’ve probably heard statements like this a million times. Perhaps you’ve said them yourself. If you’re over 70, you’ve probably been making statements like these for over 30 years. Every generation is seemingly lazier and less motivated than the previous one. An entire cottage industry has emerged around teaching organizations how to get the most out of the newest generation joining the workforce.

One might think this kind of talk began in the late 1960s with the “Generation Gap” or the 1980s with the labeling of Gen X and the development of generational theory. But in reality, this kind of thinking goes back as long as there have been parents and grandparents.

Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt. – Horace, 20 BCE

The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth… – printed in a French magazine in 1771

Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline… – Granville Stanley Hall, 1904

We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish. – Hull Daily Mail, 1925

It seems to be a right of passage for successful people from one generation to generalize that the generation behind them lacks the grit and determination that they had. Yet century after century, the world gets better. Is there any question that life for most is better than it was 20, 100, 1000 years ago? Yes, some people are hungry, but we have more accessible food than any time in history. Yes, some people live in poverty, but not as many live in the kind of poverty seen in middle ages Europe or even post World War 1 America. Yes, people die from cancers and other diseases that can be linked to industrialization, but a simple cut was life threatening just a few decades ago.

How is it that these economic, technological, health care, political and other advancements have occurred in the past 200 years if each new generation is dumber and lazier than the last? They couldn’t. So, why do curmudgeons always seem to speak that way?

The answer if fairly simple. Productive people of one generation are typically commenting on unproductive people they observe in the younger generation. If I go back and look at my High School yearbook, I can find a couple of doctors, a couple of lawyers, a few successful entrepreneurs, a few folks who took over family businesses and grew them, and a few who went on to university and successful corporate careers. But I can also identify quite a few who never really did much. At worst they went to prison. At best they bounced from one low wage job to another, working paycheck to paycheck and making bad life decisions.

The game we play is to evaluate our own generation against the standard of our best, most successful people. Then we evaluate younger generations by standardizing the behaviors and performance of their worst. It’s a no-lose game. My ’72 Miami Dolphins against your ’85 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Not my ’72 Dolphins against your ’85 Chicago Bears.

This kind of generational disparagement is fine when it is being spouted by grandpa on Thanksgiving, but it’s a terrible construct to accept when building a business. Assuming a recent college grad is going to bring the worst of his generation to your organization is as faulty as assuming that baby-boomer you’d like to hire is going to have a great work ethic because you do (or your father did).

A more logical response to the generations construct popular in the U.S. at this time is to reject that there’s even any such thing as a generation. Yes, families have generations, sort of. Children, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. But in reality, every year a bunch of kids are born. Some to teenagers, some to people over 40. Each child has its own unique DNA sequence and will grow up in a unique environment. Even kids born into the same home have unique DNA (though similar) and each will likely have different friends, different teachers, different influences, different likes and dislikes, etc.

To suggest that just because a kid is born in 1961 she will behave like a stereotypical baby boomer, or someone born in 1981 will fit the mold of a Gen Xer is irrational. Expecting an individual to meet a generational stereotype is no different than expecting someone born March 1 to exhibit the traits associated with the Pisces astrological sign. Or, ascribing racial or gender stereotypes to a job candidate or a person you’ve never met.

When the history books are written about late 20th and early 21st century United States, they’ll likely note that it was a period where group or tribe affiliation was more important than the individual. I’m hoping that we can reverse this trend at some point, and begin to evaluate individuals on how they treat us, how they contribute to our lives and our businesses, or their potential to do so rather than lumping them in with the worst of their peers.