Article first published in Belmont Business Talk
Volume 4 Issue 2; Summer, 2003/2004
Annimac, international futurist, presenter, and principal of Perth based Annimac Consultants, welcomes your interaction via and invites you to access all her material via her website www.annimac.com.au
The DotComs and Ferals : Serious Missionaries
The amount of change our Grandmothers experienced in one year, we experience in one day. We are coping with more change than any previous generation.
The really stressful news for some is that the rate of change is accelerating exponentially. Consider: 70 percent of the jobs likely to exist in twenty years is unknown now, because 80 percent of the technology that will drive the creation of those jobs has not yet been invented. In 2020, the job you are doing now may have disappeared and you will likely be doing tasks that no one has even thought about yet.
And as senior Ð in age Ð management knows, the older we are, the greater the challenge in coping with the daily speed of change. The younger we are the more quickly we move and the more we expect others to move just as fast. We think faster, react faster, take on tasks faster, and take on more risks, more quickly. We live more to the max in the moment. And the more serious we are about changing the world inherited from the Baby Boomers.
We have always had a generation gap, experiencing a shared world differently. Today, the younger two generations, the DotComs and the Ferals, are living in a world sufficiently different to the Generation Xers and Baby Boomers that there is no longer really a gap between generations but rather a gap between worlds.
The business world, dominated by the 45-60 year old Baby Boomers, is struggling to understand the world of our best 30-45 yo Gen Xers and 15-30 yo DotComs. The traditional monetary rewards and status entitlements aren't working. Management is asking: What are their goals - what do they want - and how can we keep them from leaving our organisations? Perhaps more scary still: what will motivate the under 15s, the Ferals, as they move into employment? In our post information virtual everything era, we need to look way outside our traditional HR boxes to understand the world of the wired generations.
Consider age and expertise. Chatting recently with the VP for HR in a leading firewall company about the hiring age of their superzot programmers, who are headhunted internationally for their superior hacking skills, he said that 5 years ago these sought after crims were 19 yrs old. Two years ago, they were 15. This year, they are 13. They command US$150K plus salaries and are too young to sign employment contracts.
While these pubescent IT experts can command huge salaries, the workplace factors of greater importance are about creating an atmosphere and providing access to expertise they individually need to get on with their mission to rapidly change our world onto a sustainable path. Personal workplace environments that may include: flexible working the hours 24/7; pizzas and diet Pepsi¨ on call; wearing favourite gear; fav rap or techno background music; access to hot conferences and experts, and the latest programming knowledge and tools. If you don't accommodate them, they must go elsewhere. They have a serious job to do, now.
If you haven't already read and understood the 95 points in the now ancient (1999) Cluetrain Manifesto www.cluetrain.com, then your future is at risk. Take a look and be surprised.
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