Millennial Misconceptions

We spend a lot of time at FM trying to debunk misconceptions about the Millennial Generation. The news is filled with negative comments and Thomas Friedman alone has made a name for himself among young people as being not just a negative-nancy but pretty much a total hater.

Philip Schwartz wrote an interesting piece in the Business Review where he reviews Bruce Tulgan's new book Not Everyone Gets a Trophy.

"He chalks up many of the supposed problems with Gen Y to youth, normal generational clashes and a general resistance to the change that twentysomethings are bringing to the work force.

Aiming to help managers better understand their youngest employees, Tulgan bases his conclusions on years of research, and at times almost takes a sociologist’s approach to his subject."

Schwartz says these are the same old, tired, exhausted, narratives about Millennial demands in the work-place and says that this book is no different. Tulgan claims Millennials are over-educated and over-idealistic. They make high demands in a corporate atmosphere without having "paid their dues." (I assumed the over-educated and the paycheck to prove it was dues enough... but I digress)

Even so, Tulgan wants to go deeper than these oft-heard complaints. "Generation Y has been much analyzed," he writes, "but, I believe, largely misunderstood. ... Nearly everyone I know is simply reinforcing prevailing misconceptions about Generation Y."

Ok... now we're talking..

"Early in the book, he debunks the millennial myths. Contrary to the popular consensus, Tulgan writes, they’re not disloyal; their loyalty has to be earned. They’re willing to do grunt work; they just want recognition for it, and they won’t do it for vague, long-term promises. And work doesn’t have to be fun; “They want work to be engaging. They want to learn, to be challenged, and to understand the relationship between their work and the overall mission of the organization."

Schwartz does make a complaint that for a book published just a few months ago, there is nothing in it about the troubling economic situations that Millennials in the workforce face today.

Either way, its nice to have a book that, for once, doesn't completely play into the stereo-type that so many before him seem so infatuated with.