Can You Manage A Millennial?

A few weeks ago a friend asked if I had done any research on “how to manage millennials in the workforce.” This type of framing is something I am naturally skeptical of and immediately ask, “well is that a real problem?”

I spent a few hours researching this question and found three key themes:

1. Most “Millennials Are Different” Storylines Are Myths (but there are some differences)
2. The work context has changed, everyone’s expectations have shifted(Millennials want purpose, but so doesn’t every other generation)
3. Principles of motivation & building culture remain the same (people still ignore what works just more brazenly)

Theme #1: Most Millennial Headlines Are Myths, But What Is Different?

Invariably ask anyone above the age of 50 and they will tell you that yes, this is the problem and it is the worst problem. These ungrateful bastards are ruining work, expecting everything and have no idea how to behave.

The problem many people make is that they are not comparing current millennials to previous generations at the same age. When you do so you find things like:

“young people are actually less professionally itinerant than previous generations.”

and while google will try to convince you that millennials are different:

…the research finds that Millennial’s have similar consumption habits to previous generations.

The differences are not as much how they behave at work, but broader economic and demographics trends. Millennials are more “racially diverse, more educated, and more likely to have deferred marriage” while having lower earnings, fewer assets, and less wealth than previous generations. Finally, since most of the people in journalism now have college degrees and work in cities, you rarely ever hear about how millennials without college degrees are unable to find solid jobs and don’t end up moving to cities.

Theme #2: Millennials Want Purpose, But So Doesn’t Everyone:

A meta-review of all of the generational research had a damning finding:

The findings suggest that  meaningful differences among generations probably do not exist on the work-related variables we examined and that the differences that appear to exist are likely attributable to factors other than generational membership. Given these results, targeted organizational interventions addressing generational differences may not be effective.

We want to believe that generational differences exist, so when we hear surveys that “30% of millennials are purpose oriented” we assume that they are asking for too damn much. But when LinkedIn looked at all the generations, they found that the boomers were the greedy bastards:

Theme #3: So How Do You “Manage Millennials”?

The framing of managing different types of people and generations forces most of the working world to waste enormous amount of energy ignoring the basic research on human motivation that has existed for decades.

While research can have its flaws, basing your actions at work on things like “self-determination theory” is going to be a lot more effective than running your organization by myths and google search advice. This theory is based on three simple concepts:

While it is not easy to get this right in an organizational context, HR and business leaders might arrive at a better starting point if they started with better questions. “How do you motivate someone at work?” or “How do people learn?” seems like a better way to start than “how do you manage a millennial?”

Google search is incredible for some things, but I’m afraid that it enables us to be ignorant of the deeper, less-sexy ideas that might give us more of a chance of making a real impact in the world and our organizations.

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