Want the truth? Speak to the youth!

“What’s next?”

It’s the question we hear all the time when it comes to Digital Transformation, but the “who” is discussed a lot less.

Instead, there’s the assumption that Millennials will simply change the world.

Personally, I’m not so sure they can, and even if they could, why should they? What’s in it for them?

It’s a question I’ve been toying with for a while and, during my time at the Singularity University in California, I met a successful entrepreneur who stressed the importance of working closely with younger generations to challenge your thinking.

It sounds simple, but it’s sometimes hard to actually make it happen; which is why I followed his advice and found half a day last month (and I’ll be repeating once per quarter) to spend with people half my age – half a day with half my age.

In Vodafone we have a big focus on future talent, which meant I was able to easily reach out to a very intelligent and enthusiastic Graduate/Intern community.

On the day we had 9 volunteers, all within the first 6 months of corporate life, and together we analysed and discussed three important topics; Culture, Talent Attraction and Diversity.

Here are a few things that I learned;

Empower to excite

From the very beginning, everyone was eager to get started and I was really impressed by their willingness to engage and discuss in a non-hierarchical way.

But when it was time to present their assigned topic back to the room, I was pleasantly surprised that most were especially passionate about the great work already being done within Vodafone.

Representing a wide variety of business areas, from HR and Enterprise to Finance, their knowledge and enthusiasm for existing projects taught me as much as their content did.

It was clear that all of these young professionals were already making a difference, encouraged to use their insight and life experiences to make Vodafone a better place for our people and our customers and I think that the opportunity to demonstrate this to someone in my position was an empowering experience for them. It probably doesn’t happen enough.

That’s why it’s up to us, as leaders, to ensure that future talent get our trust and responsibility early, so that they can feel safe to air their ideas and develop at every opportunity.

In return, the freedom to create will provide us with the ideas that will help us to thrive tomorrow.

Be prepared to change

I’ve shared my thoughts on the importance of lifelong learning in the past, and for me this was a perfect opportunity to do that; in just a few hours we gained a huge amount of insight.

It’s a cliché, but working with young people really is energising, and in the right environment, their perspectives challenge you to reassess and question the way things are done.

And as you might already have read in “Five steps to building a culture of Customer Excellence”, I believe that you start by setting out a structure, but then you have to let people get on with it.

It’s not always easy to trust people to have that freedom. However, if you can it allows a team to become more innovative, determined and motivated to succeed.

The more diverse the team is the better, and that includes age.

That’s why I’ll be repeating this exercise once a quarter, as well as encouraging my peers and leadership team to spend more time with the young people in their organisations whenever they can.

It needs to be win/win

Ultimately, for this type of event to work you have to go in with an open mind – you have to believe it’s worthwhile, or else it probably won’t be.

And based on this event, I’ve taken tangible actions back into my team and to Vodafone Group Enterprise, as well as offering my network and knowledge to those who took part.

It has to be an experience that benefits everyone.

We sent out a short survey afterwards for feedback on the day, and the most useful part for many was the feeling of “being listened to and making a difference.”

With so many great ideas, I more than happy to help with that! But my favourite summary of the event was this;

“We need to understand you as much as you need to understand us.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself. Now I’m looking forward to the next one.

Have you done anything similar within your organisation? I would love to hear how you’ve approached it in the comments below, and maybe try it out in my next Half my Age session.