Preparing for Generation M
Posted By Rob Millard - 2 Comments -
JP Rangaswami has a post titled More on Preparing for Generation M that discusses some of the implications of these highly wired, techno-savvy people who are currently teenagers but who will be entering the workplace over the next few years.
It seems that the generation gap between 'Baby Boomers' and 'Gen X's' is going to be nothing compared to that which is likely between 'Gen X's' and 'Gen M's.' A 'sound-byte' :
"I think it is safe to say that those reared in this Information Age, those doing the work of learning and those who need to learn at work are likely to be:
- More self-directed and less dependent on top-down instructions
- Better arrayed to capture new information inputs
- More reliant on feedback and response
- More tied to group outreach and group knowledge
- More open to cross-discipline insights, especially those that form during the creation of "tagged" taxonomies
- More oriented towards people being their own individual nodes of production"
According to the recent Kaiser Family Foundation Study of Entertainment Media & Health:
"Young people [8-18] today live media-saturated lives, spending an average of nearly 6.5 hours a day with media. Across the seven days of the week, that amount is the equivalent of a full-time job, with a few extra hours thrown in for overtime (44.25 hours a week). Over 28% of this time is devoted to the computer, not including schoolwork, and videogames. That is the equivalent to ONE THIRD of a regular workweek!"
The implications for how work will be done, once a critical mass of Gen M's has entered the professions, are profound. The expectation that the Gen M's will have that their adult working lives be at least as media- and technology-driven as their childhoods will almost certainly lead to tools that are as inconceivable today as the internet was in the era of typewriters!
I'm convinced that opportunities abound, for those that firms that keep ahead of the curve on this one.
Can you imagine the extent of the strategic opportunities that emerge from the fact that within just a year or three we will have technology that fits in our pocket, with the computing power at least of today's high-end desktop computers, that completely untethers us from our desks/offices, our computers as we currently understand them and the groups with whom we work?
At the very least, the end of corporate offices, as we know them. Why endure hours of commuting every day when that time could be used productively, once remote work is no longer just 'possible with a bit of effort' as it is today, but so effortless as to become the complete norm? Edifice-like head offices may well become 'white elephants' within the next decade.
Can't see it? Take a look at my posting 21st Century Thinking. It's not important to know the precise detail of the future or the changes that it will entail. Far more important to be able to conceive of the likely magnitude of the likely changes and their probable directions, to that you can build the resilience and adaptability into your organization to be able to capitalize on them as they unfold.
Comments, as always, are most welcome and may be posted below.
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Generation X will have trouble relating to Gen. M. How do I know? Because as a member of the Baby Boomer generation, it seems to me that we had and have a lot in common with Generation M. And we had and have little to nothing in common with Gen. X. Maybe the gaps just needed some time to close a bit.
Lewis Green's insight is a fascinating one. I've been mulling for a while over convergences between the emerging aspirations of Gen Y's / Gen M's and the "pre-Gen X's" by which I include "baby-boomers," the so-called "silent generation" and before. Bottom line: perhaps what we are seeing is a re-emergence of the human values that have prevailed over most of the 5 million years that the species has been on the planet, the difference being that the kids today are wired and connected in a way that is totally unprecedented. If so, then this is good!