UberNoggin

Today I’m in lovely Cocoa Beach Florida at the Young Professionals Summit. Last night, amongst many drinks, lovely food and with the beach as our background several of us “YP-ers” started talking about the troubles we’ve run into with our older managers, teachers, and even parents. I’ve summed up our discussion here in a letter.

Dear Baby-Boomer,
The economy is in crisis. Retirement is looming (if you can afford it) and as you look around your office at the people whom you will need to trust to take over, you probably wonder whether you’ll ever feel that these thirty-somethings and twenty-somethings are capable of running things.
Beyond acknowledging that each generation has the right to baffle, confuse, and frustrate the generation before just as you may have done twenty years ago, you may want to acknowledge that while you may think you have a thing or two to teach the “kids” in your company, there may be a thing or two that we can teach you if you’re willing to listen.
Here are eight little differences that may pave the path to understanding us a bit better.
1.    We don’t expect to work here forever.
Our parents may have had one career and worked for the same company through their retirement but we may have also observed lay-offs, increasing health-insurance costs, and other signs that companies just can’t care for their long term employees the way they may have thirty years ago.
Additionally, more of us have college degrees than any other generation and yet our broad, mostly liberal arts based educations, are shoe-horned into ever more specific and siloed job functions leaving us dissatisfied, bored, and constantly on the look our for a new challenge somewhere in our lives.
2.    We work to live, not live to work.
Dual-income couples, singles waiting longer to settle down and an ever-shrinking world with increased possibilitites for connectiton all make for a workforce who are unlikely to sacrifice quality of life for higher pay. Money is a perk of working but if you want a Gen X/Y employee to work harder or longer, think flexibility not funds.
Choosing our own hours, working remotely, or in a more casual office setting, putting our minds toward projects we care about and enjoy…these perks are more valuable than a pay increase in many cases.
3.    We don’t confine “work” to 9am – 5pm, to an office, or even to a job function.
In many ways the connected generation is far more capable of longer work ours and increased responsibility than the generations before it. A cell phone in my pocket means I can field calls while out for a walk or watching the kids’ soccer game. My laptop enables me to work well into the evening while relaxing on my couch.
These extended hours are possible but they require change in mentality for employers: TRUST. I may put in a ten hour day from home but I might run errands in the morning or take a nap in the afternoon. I’ll work hard in exchange for that flexibility. But remember: workers who have flexibility can’t be micromanaged. Companies need to learn other ways to ensure accountability if they want Gen X/Y employees to make the most of their days.
4.    We don’t respect titles; we respect people.
The internet has served as a great social equalizer. In most online communities your value (and therefore reputation and power) are based on what you contribute not who you are. A well-read 18 year old who knows his stuff and is constantly active in the editing process of a Wikipedia article may be revered more than the heavily credentialed professor who interjects, corrects, and condescends to the community of the page. These relationships break down entitlements and, instead, center on accomplishment and contribution.
So if you want to respected, simply play your part and contribute. You’ll be known for the actions you take that probably earned you that title in the first place.
5.    We’re used to playing games where the rules are explicit and no one can break them.
Over 80% of Gen X/Y employees are digital game players from Solitaire to Warhammer Online. Games and the mechanics and culture involved with them are a staple of our lives. What this does to our work ethic is profound. We like clearly defined challenges, with established rewards. We don’t like office politics and other systems in which not everyone plays by the same rules or with the same resources. We see failure as an opportunity to learn and try again. And we’re well equipped for turning to resources outside the system if they’ll help us conquer a challenge.
6.    Multitasking does not equal goofing off.
We’ve grown up in a hypermediated world with many channels of information flowing around us and many of us are well-acclimated to paying partial attention to many things in quick succession. In addition, the better acquainted with our own working style we are, the more likely we are to find that juggling several forms of information allows us to take mental breaks, socialize about a problem, or switch between menial tasks so we don’t get bored and can, therefore, work longer hours before mental exhaustion sets in.
7.    We have extensive networks of people whom we share knowledge.
Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace may seem vapid from the outside, but when put to good use, they can help us connect to experts, colleagues, and friends who expand our network of information and collaboration exponentially. Our networking is not limited by face to face meetings or stacks of business cards.
8.    Collaboration isn’t cheating or laziness. It’s how we work.
Crowdsourced projects like Wikipedia and Threadless have taught us that huge projects become easily accomplished if lots of people take on some small tasks tat come easily to them. Instant access to people and information make “reinventing the wheel” more preventable than ever.
Tools like wikis, Google Docs, and searchable discussion forums make collaboration and information access convenient and efficient.

Are you a Gen X or Y employee, employer? Are you a Baby-Boomer baffled by the “new employee”? Leave a comment! Let’s talk!

Any tool intended to facilitate community formation and/or user-generated content must have an eye toward flexible development goals. Youtube may have been created to host a wide variety of video content but if the mass of users slowly shift toward contributing only content on a specific topic Youtube must be willing to tune their own goals for development and growth to suit the purposes that their users hve decided are important. The usage patterns of the majority must trump even the loftiest goal of the tool creator or the tool will be abandoned in favor of one better suited to what users want.

The agility of direction is key to survival in a world where technologies come and go faster than the lastest MTV-driven fashion fads. So rather than marketing to some target demographic, smart UGC companies, ie ones who want to survive the ebb and flow of a fickle user base, must instead market and cater to the users they already have. They, in turn, will utilize the service and become your best advertising. Yes, rather than advertising to new users, I’m suggesting that these companies must instead learn to market to their existing users. But what does a user-driven company look like? How do you function, plan, and grow when your mission statement is simply to continually become whatever your users seem to think you are? Who’s in charge here?

It’s simple: your users are.

If you’re built on a model that relies on content and contribution that sources users then you can’t get lulled into the idea that crowd-sourcing means that they work for you. You work for them. And your job is in flux. You have a fickle, shifting board of directors who are dedicated to your success but only if you do what they want. If you don’t, you’re fired and they swarm toward another tool to suit their needs.

Again, it’s simple: You, your company or service, are there to serve your customers, your creators, your evangelists. Run any differently and you’re screwed.

Forget what you set out to create. Forget your need to be in control. Forget focus groups where you get to ask the questions and set the agenda. Forget talking more than listening. Forget thinking that you some how know better than your users.

Services who try to tell their content-creating customers how to use their product get shut out, bad mouthed, and dismissed as being over-controlling, bossy, and disillusioned. But this is more than reading customer-service requests, more than focus groups, more than being visible in your community. It’s humility in the face of those who have created your success. It’s putting your user’s needs above your own goals. It’s never giving some party-line response to changes in usage. But most of all, it means you never take credit for the success your users have created.

If you give them the tools to create then you have to embrace whatever they create and then grow to help them be even better at what they do.