MILLENNIAL MADNESS

I was at a management conference in Croatia last week in an out-of-season luxury hotel overlooking a sun-drenched sea. There was, predictably, little sleep, some hard work and a few moments of drama. These revolved around debate on the pace of change technologically and socio-demographically.

Those of you who know me will be unsurprised by my enthusiastic support for the young, their attitudes and their behaviour. Equally I prefer looking forwards to backwards. Unlike most of my generation I was born with a defective nostalgia muscle. I just don’t do yearning for the glorious past when our trains were driven by steam and we smoked Sobranie cigarettes.

Today is better and the future will be better still.

But that future is here right now according to a presentation given by a bright, charming millennial about the life of his generation.  It’s all social media, instant messaging and a happy, pastel world of good intentions. In my own past we had Howard Marks, the self-styled Mr Nice, and mind-beautifying drugs. Plus ça change… only the mind altering tools are now online.

A few months ago Simon Sinek spoke provocatively about millennials. He described them as having a huge sense of entitlement and impatience. Their life he said was one of instant gratification, a “me-now” society and is founded on a belief that they can do anything, achieve anything and that this delusion is the result of bad, indulgent parenting.

As my mother used to say to me when I was tiny “life is real and life is earnest” which given V2 super-bombs had shortly before been screaming out of the sky above us was reasonable. Life was not a barrel of laughs for sure.

But it’s still quite tough. Most companies are not like Advertising Agencies, Google or Apple designed to engage the millennial workers. Most companies are quite serious places where getting to the top is like climbing a difficult mountain. There are no quick fixes.  Distraught by their failure to understand the Millennials many companies are asking them what they really want.

Sinek reports:
“They reply ‘to be in a place with purpose, to make an impact and to have ….free food and beanbags.’ But when you give them all that they still aren’t happy.”

The very tools being praised so highly at the conference, various forms of social media, are part of the problem. Research shows the more time spent on Facebook the more likely people are to be depressed. For many mobile phones are an addiction as bad as excessive drinking or gambling.  And as the recent furore at Google shows all is not entirely sunny in this hallowed territory. Indeed the decline in social media is on the verge of seeing off some pillar brands like Twitter.

Millennials are to be taken seriously but not so seriously we allow them primary authorship of the strategies we set and the societies we create.

Above all they need our help and understanding not our blind worship.