Getting a promotion is so last century

, , , , ,

Can we all just stop talking about promotions like they matter? A promotion has meaning when someone is moving up the corporate ladder at such a slow pace that every small step is grounds for celebration.

But there are no more ladders because no one stays long enough at a company to get up the whole ladder. And even if someone did try to climb, they’d probably be laid-off outsourced or off-shored before they got to the top.

So what is the point of a promotion? Titles do not matter because they are accoutrements of hierarchy in a nonhierarchical workforce. And no one cares about getting MORE responsibly that implicitly comes with a promotion, they want the RIGHT kind of responsibility — which means interesting work and a chance to expand one’s skills set.

So all that’s left to justify continuing to talk about promotions is getting a raise, which is hardly a notable event. Here is a headline from Salary.com: “Raise Outlook Better than Employees Expected”. The article goes on to say that the average raise was something just above three percent. Let’s say four percent. This means if you were making $100,000 a year, you’ll get $4,000 a year more. SO WHAT? After cost of living and tax adjustments you are looking at a little over a thousand dollars. That will not change your life in any significant way, that’s for sure.

When someone tries to give you a promotion or insult you with a $1000 a year raise, tell them you want someone that really matters. Here are some suggestions:

1. Growth opportunities

Learning new skills is worth a lot more to you than some ridiculous 4% raise. Ask to get on a team that will teach you how to do something you think is important. Ask to work with the clients who are doing the most innovative projects. Request a training budget and send yourself to a bunch of seminars. The best way to learn is to role-play, which everyone hates to do, so go to a seminar where someone is forces you to do it.

2. Mentor opportunities

Ask to be matched with a mentor in the company. This is not a revolutionary request. Human resource executives have been studying this process for more than a decade and they know how to pick someone good for you. They just need to spend a little time doing it.

3. Flex-time opportunities

If you are so great at your job that you have earned a promotion, suggest that you keep your current job but do it from home or do it four days a week. After all, you’ve already shown you perform well. Heck, ask to work from Tahiti; you should be able to do the job however you want as long as you maintain that stellar level of performance.

4. Entrepreneurial opportunities

Just say no. To the promotion, that is. Now that you have a sense of how much time and energy your current job requires, now that you’ve mastered the scope, you can try something on the side. The safest way to experiment with running your own business is to do it while you still have a regular paycheck. Who cares if it doesn’t include that 4% raise? Think of that paycheck as a research grant for your ideas for a side business.

Instead of letting last century’s carrots dictate your workplace rewards, think about what is right for you, right now. What do you really need? You don’t need a promotion. It’s something else. Think about what would really make a difference in your life and then make it happen. While the rest of your organization is focusing on titles and money you can slip under the radar and get something truly meaningful.

/238 Comments

A job does not give life meaning

, ,

People would be a lot happier with the job they had if they were happier with themselves outside of their job. We have seen steady decline in job satisfaction, no matter if the employment rate is very high or very low, and even when most people have control over their time and their workload, they still report that they are unhappy in their jobs, according to the Harvard Business Review.

People do not like work because they don’t like their personal life. And the key to being happy at work is not so much finding the perfect career as it is finding yourself. The more self-knowledge you have the happier you will be. So stop looking at your job to solve your problems and instead look inside yourself. Make friends with yourself and with other people, and your job, whatever it is, might start looking better because you’re not asking so much from it.

If you are looking to your job for the meaning of life, forget it. Even people who feed starving children with the Peace Corps have crisis of meaning. (For example, What is the point of feeding one child when six will die?) The meaning of life is elusive and you must put in a lot of time and energy to find meaning in your life.

The job hunt is separate. The job is something you have to do to support yourself. Since you’re going to be doing it for a good portion of your life, you should look for some basics: People who respect you and your personal life. A company that is honest. A job that uses your skills and experience. A job that challenges your abilities without overwhelming you.

Work does not need to give your life a grand purpose in order to be a good experience. The most pleasurable work provides a perfect balance between too much and too little — in terms of both amount and difficulty, according to Diane Fassel, the chief executive of workplace survey firm Newmeasures and author of the book Working Ourselves to Death.

A career is like a mate. The relationship is limited by what you bring to the table. If you are not happy with yourself, you won’t be happy with the match-up. Here’s an analogy a friend once told me: You have to have the cake, and then the relationship is the icing. It doesn’t matter how good the icing is if there’s no cake to put it on. Who eats icing by itself? Gross.

The part about you is the most important. What do you do when you’re alone? How do you feel about yourself? What are your core values and do you lead your life according to them each day? Do you numb yourself with food or TV or alcohol? It’s very hard to be honest about this stuff. Yet amazingly, people spend lots of time on locating a job and a mate and very little time locating themselves.

“Employees should not demand that companies imbue their lives with meaning,” writes E.L. Kersten in the Harvard Business Review. “Employers and employees have something the other needs. One of the keys to a mutually beneficial relationship is a realistic understanding of what that something is.” A job is not a life.

In fact, online dating is not a bad model for evaluating a job. For one thing, you should never write that you want a mate to make you feel fulfilled — that’s asking much too much from a single person. Yet we complain all the time that our jobs are not fulfilling.

Dating services ask that you be as specific as possible in your desires. So try that for a job. Here’s what I would ask for in a job, and it’s the same thing I looked for in a spouse:

Fair

Fun

Mind-expanding

Interesting

Consistent with my values

Leaves space for the other parts of my life

And here’s another thing about those lists: You are probably going to have to be your list to get your list. That’s why interesting people are at interesting companies. So be who you want to be instead of looking for a mate or a company to make you who you wish you were.

/26 Comments

Introducing the caffeine nap

,

I’ve been doing a little research on sleep. I have found that the more I understand about nutrition, the better I eat. And I thought the same would hold true for sleep. In fact, though on my way to convincing myself to sleep more, I found mostly research to help me sleep less.

But first, here is the research that will make you want to sleep: If you don’t sleep, you’re more likely to be obese and dumb, both of which are bad for your career.

People who get fewer than six hours of sleep function like drunk people at work. For example people who missed just one night of sleep scored 20% lower on math tests than they did when they had eight hours of sleep. And, people who get significantly fewer than eight hours a night of sleep are more likely to be obese, according to a study at the University of British Columbia.

Here’s some research I didn’t expect to see:

Humans need only six or seven hours of sleep. In fact, if you get more than that, you are likely to die earlier, according to researchers from the University of California at San Diego.

And here's more good news for the chronic night-owl who suffers with a day job: If you miss out on sleep, you don’t need to make it all up. Only about a third of this lost sleep needs to be regained. The people who spend all weekend in bed catching up don’t need that much sleep. They just like lying around in bed.

You don’t even have to wait for the weekend to make up the sleeping time: Power naps are in fashion — at least among elite athletes and soldiers in Iraq, both of whom are required to take power naps before a major effort. The power nap should be exactly twenty minutes, according to sleep researcher Sara Mednick, at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Your sleep cycles run in 90 or 120 minute cycles, but after twenty minutes you’ve done the most important part of your sleeping.

I am an easy convert to the idea of a power nap, but I never seem to wake up at that magical twenty minute mark when researchers say that I won’t be groggy. I am, in fact, routinely groggy after my supposed power nap. And that groggy feeling when you wake up is the equivalent of you after four beers, according to Kenneth Wright at the University of Colorado. So the power nap is not for me.

But here’s my favorite study, the one that really pulls everything together: The caffeine nap. This is a nap that allows me to compensate for not quite getting my seven hours of sleep a night, but I don’t feel groggy after the nap.

Researchers at Loughborough University in England found that coffee can clear your body of the sleep-inducing chemical adenosine. The best way to handle the caffeine is to chug a cup of coffee and then immediately take a nap, before the caffeine kicks in and makes for jittery napping. The nap should last exactly fifteen minutes, which is the point at which the caffeine starts to gain traction in your brain.

I did it today, head on the table, next to the computer, when I was sure that I could not keep my eyes open another second: Fifteen minutes and boom! I was writing again with perk and verve.

Of course the caffeine nap will not save the world from having to sleep. For one thing, there’s no research to show that caffeine nap can help you beat the correlation between lack of sleep and obesity. But I’ll tell you, I’ll never aim for eight hours of sleep again.

/8 Comments

Money does grow on trees… sort of

,

It might shock you to hear that it’s easier to find money to fund your business idea than it is to find an idea. A good idea, that is. There are two kinds of good ideas. The first one is for a small business that will not grow but will sustain the lifestyle you want for yourself: Opening a gift shop on a Hawaiian beach, for example. The second kind of idea is one that will be big. Big in that you can grow into a big player or you can sell to a big player.

A lot of people have ideas, but they don’t dwell on them because people assume startup money is hard to come by. But it’s not. So don’t be shy about moving forward with an idea.

The fastest source for money when you have no money is, of course, your credit card. Almost forty percent of small businesses owners started their company with credit cards. If you can get one of those 0% interest offers, the credit card option starts looking particularly good. But if you lose the money, it’s your money. So don't use credit if you can’t afford to pay it back.

Angel investors are constantly looking to invest in companies that will grow big. If you have this kind of idea there are plenty of angels to choose from. A good place to start is online, looking for people who invest in early stage companies in your market.

The important issues will be finding someone smart and experienced who can help you grow the company to the next stage. In exchange for giving up a percentage of the ownership of your company, you should get solid mentoring as well as money. The network and advice that an angel offers is what separates the amazing ones from the mediocre.

If your business will not be big, then your pool of angels is pretty much limited to people who know you well and want to do you a favor. But there are ways you can structure a deal so that your friends and family feel like it's a decent investment. First, offer to pay an interest rate a little higher than a bank would pay. If that doesn’t work, offer to give equity in the company. Paying a percentage of profits is very cumbersome since you’ll likely have to produce detailed financial statements. So make that an offer of last resort.

By all means, put together a professional presentation for the angels. But keep in mind that on some level, these people come to the table based on their trust and respect for you. And that’s what you are trading on when it comes to early-stage funding. This is especially true if you’ve never started a company before and can’t sell yourself based on your track record.

This is not such bad news, though, because most of you can come up with a list of fifty people who trust you. The list of people who trust you and have money to invest is probably shorter. So divide the list into As, Bs and Cs. The As are people who have a lot of money and a lot of investments. The Bs are financially stable people who would think very, very hard before forking over $25,000. The Cs are people who don't really have the financial resources to invest in your operation, but they might vouch for you to someone they know who does have money. Practice your pitch on your Cs and Bs so that by the time you get to your As you really know what you’re doing.

The most important thing, no matter what kind of business you are pitching, is to not give up early. If there are no investors, you might have a clunker of an idea on your hands. But a little rejection happens to a lot of good ideas. So brace yourself as you look for funding and keep going right past the rejections. You might be a star as an entrepreneur and you’ll never know until you try.

The ladder isn’t the only way up

, ,

Many twentysomethings talk about feeling undervalued by corporate America. Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman are doing what many others are doing to solve this problem: starting their own company. At universities like Harvard and Carnegie Mellon 30-40% of graduates end up starting their own business after five years, and the trend is poised to go up.

The entry-level job inherently undervalues someone who is bright and driven, according to Paul Graham, partner at Y Combinator, a Cambridge-based venture capital firm that funds startups almost exclusively from very young people. He sees entrepreneurship as the great escape.

“For the most ambitious young people, the corporate ladder is obsolete,” says Graham. For the last hundred years everyone started out at the bottom. Even if the candidate held extreme promise, corporations put the candidate as a trainee on the bottom rung so he didn’t get a big head. Graham writes, “The most productive young people will always be undervalued by large organizations, because the young have no performance to measure yet, and any error in guessing their ability will tend toward the mean.”

So, if you are smart and energetic, you might be better off working for yourself. Ohanian and Huffman started their own company before they even graduated from University of Virginia. Today they are twenty-two, and running their company, Reddit, out of their Cambridge apartment. Huffman turned down a job offer at a software company in Virginia so that he could write the software for Reddit, which is a little like social book marking and a little like RSS feed: Think “the five most emailed Boston Globe stories” only not just the newspaper but the whole wide web.

The value of people in their twenties is touted fervently at Google, a company always on the lookout to buy companies from young entrepreneurs. On a blog entry about a conference for entrepreneurs in their early twenties, Chris Sacca, principal for new business development at Google wrote, “I was instantly struck by the sheer energy of the crowd. No one was running off to check in with their assistant or jump onto a mindless conference call with sales finance.”

Graham estimates that a top programmer can work for $80,000 a year in a large company, but he can be 36 more times productive without corporate trappings (e.g. a boss, killed projects, interruptions) and will generate something worth three million dollars in that same year if he is working on his own. Before you balk at those figures, consider that Ohanian and Huffman started their company in June 2005 and by November 2005 they received a buyout offer from Google, (which they declined in favor of continuing to build the company on their own.)

But not everyone is sitting on a great idea for a company. For those who eventually want to start your own business — once your find an idea — use the time beforehand to learn the right skills. Jennifer Floren, CEO of Experience and an entrepreneur herself, recommends going to a small company “where you will usually be able to see first hand what each part of the company does. At a big company you won’t get such wide exposure.” Also, “look for opportunities to be creative or take a leadership role, two good types of experience for an entrepreneur to have.”

If you have spent some time in the workforce, consider becoming a consultant, which essentially is making a business out of yourself. “You should have at least five years of workplace experience before you go on your own,” says Laurie Young, co-principle of Flexible Resources, “because you are offering your experience.” Also, you need marketing skills to sell yourself.” It takes a certain kind of talent “to show people you have skills they can use.”

Alexandra Levit worked in public relations for Computer Associates and then struck out on her own, as a consultant in publicity and marketing communications. In terms of making the transition, Levit advises that you “try lining up a few jobs that you can have before you take the leap,” and be prepared to spend “about 30% of your time marketing yourself.”

Levit provides a snapshot of reality for all entrepreneurs when she says, “Don’t expect the drawbacks to be only financial. You need a lot of self-discipline to sit down in your home office and work without any external pressure. Working for yourself means you’re responsible for every aspect of the business,” and this means, ironically, even the boring, entry-level job that you would have done in a big company.

Ohanim can attest to this, too: “I am spending a lot of time right now doing our taxes. We merged with a company and they kept terrible records.” But, he says, “I really like the notion of not having to look to a superior, to have independence and be doing the entrepreneurial thing.”

/20 Comments

Advice for new managers: Be nice

, , ,

The best advice anyone will give you as a manager is to be kind and caring and make the world a better place. This does not mean that you should be a pushover or a flower child. You still need to get your work done, be a star performer, etc. But serious kindness gets you serious results.

It’s not always easy to be kind. Here are some ways it’s hard: You need to tell people with no talent for what they are doing that they are in the wrong field. Then you need to fire them and tell them this will help them find what they are good at. And you have to tell people who have lots of talent but unbearable personalities that their co-workers don’t like them and they need to be more likeable to get anywhere in life. This is difficult news to pass on, and managers who don’t care ignore the problem or shuffle the person off to a new, unsuspecting manager. A kind boss helps a person find a new path, and sometimes that means termination.

At McKinsey there is a strict “up or out” policy. The consulting company promotes its top performers and counsels the others to leave. The important word here is counsels. McKinsey helps people to see why their current job is not a good one for them. As a manager, you are a counselor, helping people to see their highest potential be it with you or at another type of position at another type of company.

As a manager you are in a position to make peoples’ lives better. You can give them more interesting work, better coaching, more flexibility, all the things that you have always wanted in a job, you can give to other people. You should do that.

Just don’t go overboard. The first time I got a management position I tried to overhaul all of corporate America from my new-manager cubicle. I surreptitiously implemented affirmative action, and though I hate to admit this, I hired people who were not totally qualified. I gave people with scattered track records the chances of their lifetimes, and when they failed I compensated for them. I mentored people at all hours of the day and my work suffered. I snuffed out sexual harassment at a speed that only someone looking too hard for it could manage. Finally, I got a reputation for caring more about making peoples’ lives better than making my boss’s life better. It was a deserved reputation, and I was fired.

It hurts me even now to say it was a deserved firing. But it taught me a good lesson: The company comes first. And my job was to please my boss. Which is everyone’s job. You get an opportunity to manage people because you are going to make things better for the company. The company wants happy workers, but not at the expense of effective workers.

So here’s another piece of advice for new managers: Success is about balance. A good manager balances the needs of her company and the needs of her employees, and after that, a good manager uses her power over peoples’ lives to make the world a better place.

The cynics of the world will say, “That’s not realistic. I never got that.” But don’t ask yourself if you ever got that. Ask yourself if you ever gave it. It is possible to go through your life doing good deeds and just trusting that they’ll come back to you, in some way. Management is the power to make a difference. Do that, without wondering what you’ll get in return.

That said, you could do more great things if you managed really well and got more power. Don’t forget that.

/14 Comments

Is it time to quit your job?

, ,

How to tell when you should leave your job is actually very simple: If your boss loves you, stay. If your boss does not love you, assess where you went wrong, and decide if you can fix it. If not, it’s quitting time.

The problem is that most people take very little responsibility for making their boss love them. Which, in turn complicates the decision about staying or leaving. Your number one task in a job is to get your boss to love you.

This means that you find out what your boss cares about, how your boss likes to communicate, what scares your boss, and how you can help. Of course, your career goal is not to help your boss. But if you boss loves you then he or she will help you to meet your career goals.

Here are common problems people have at work: Boring assignments, inflexible schedules, no recognition, too much red tape, no upward mobility. But these are all problems that disappear when your boss loves you. When your boss loves you she helps you figure out how to get around this stuff. When your boss loves you she’s like a teammate, trying to help you get what you want for your career.

But this should come as no surprise because the way to get your boss to love you is to worry about your boss’ career. See your boss’ roadblocks and get them out of the way. Understand your boss’ dreams and make it your job to facilitate them. Put aside your idea of your job description and just focus on what will help your boss.

How do you do this? Here are six steps:

1. Attend to detail. The details of your boss. You should be sure to learn something about your boss from every exchange you have. If you do not learn from the exchanges then there is probably little depth to your conversations, and that is the first step to a vacuous relationship.

2. Make each conversation meaningful. You can infuse meaning into your conversations with your boss by probing a little bit each time about what your boss cares about. Why is he or she rushed today? Or, by the way, what is the big deadline that consumed all of last week? Even something as basic as “How was your weekend?” is a fine way to learn something about the boss.

3. Listen to gossip. You can learn about your boss from watching him deal with other employees. Listen carefully to what co-workers say about your boss. Whether it’s true or not is secondary to how your boss is perceived in the ranks. The more you know about your boss the more you can cater to her.

4. Express gratitude. If you let your boss know what you appreciate about her, she’ll open up to you more because you will feel safe. For example, you can thank her for steering you away from a mine field in the marketing department. Or you can tell her you appreciate how well she did during a difficult moment in a meeting. Be specific and she will be flattered and touched. That will create a connection you need to understand your boss better.

5. Get over your shyness. Because if you are too timid to initiate conversation then you will not get to know your boss enough to make your boss love you. To get yourself talking, remind yourself that everyone wants to feel cared about. It’s hard to manage people because it means caring a lot about other people and it’s pretty one-sided. A manager will be thrilled to hear that a direct report cares about him.

6. Identify the culprit. Take a look at your track record. Have most of your bosses loved you but one doesn’t? Then it’s probably not all your fault. But most people who are not loved by their bosses were never loved by their bosses. And most people who are a pain are a pain in similar ways in all of their jobs.

So instead of focusing on why your boss is difficult, focus on what is keeping you from being loveable. It’ll be worth it. But you will find that the rewards of being loved by a boss are almost endless. Most importantly, you will like yourself better and you will love your job.

/16 Comments

Bad situations breed creativity

, ,

The time I am the most creative is when I feel the most trapped and desperate. These are the times when I see no model for solving my problem, and I have to come up with an all-new solution that will, invariably surprise even me.

I have found that bad situations get creative juices flowing. And I have come to have an appreciation for the bad times; they give us unique opportunities to find our best ideas. Here are some situations to keep an eye out for — they are invitations to creativity:

Bad situation #1: Nagging dissatisfaction. I'm not advocating depression; believe me, I've been there, and it's mostly about hiding in bed not about being a creative genius. But an inherent part of creativity is never being satisfied with what is there, always striving for something better. After all, if everything is going great, why think of a way to change it? People who are creative never think everything is great. So you don't have to be depressed to be creative, but you can't be jubilant.

Bad situation #2: Low budgets. No one ever came up with a grand idea when they had more than enough money. You would be stupid to think of new ideas when you have enough money to pay for what is already tried and true: Best practices, most outstanding performer, top-tier firms, these are all great places to spend a big budget. Why take a risk when you don't have to? The good news about a small budget is that you can't pay for the paths that have already lead to success. So you have to come up with a new path.

Bad situation #3: Feeling lost. The least creative people I know are those who knew exactly what they wanted to do after college, and did it, and never turned back. No existential crisis. No begging parents for dinner money. Just pure focus. The reason feeling lost is good is that it's the time you figure out what you're passionate about. Passion sweeps you off your feet when you're meandering. You can't get swept off your feet when you're moving fast, when you have a plan, when you're already going somewhere. You need a foggy focus to find passion. Most people who are creative will tell you that they didn't pick their form; it picked them. The form your creativity will take will show itself during a time you are lost.

Bad situation #4: Being wrong. Creativity requires knowing what you like. You can't depend on other people to guide you or else you are not being creative but rather responding to market research. Being certain of what you like means that you're going to be wrong a lot. Not wrong about what you like, but wrong about what will work. The market researchers will tell you. But much worse than being wrong is never being wrong, because then you are a research drone, a fact-gatherer, not a creative person. So strive for being wrong sometimes, as a way to gauge your level of creativity.

Bad situation #5: Nonproductivity. Thank goodness for times when you cannot seem to follow the rules, cannot meet deadlines. The people who do good work all the time don't leave room for ideas — for genius sprung from passion and blank stares. Sit at your desk and do nothing. Ditch work and go to a cafe. Empty time is the when creativity flows.

Take a second look at the disappointing situations of your life. You might find your creative genius has been suffocated by overwhelming focus on good times.

/9 Comments

If you’re stuck, take an adventure

, , ,

If you're out of work, or your job is so annoying that you wish you were out of work, then it's time to take an adventure. Some might say that an adventures is an expensive, childish way to avoid reality. This is partly true. But who cares?

The reality of adulthood is hard. There are no teachers stroking your ego with A's, there are no parents making sure you're doing fun and challenging activities every afternoon. So it is no surprise that putting off adulthood looks appealing. In fact, taking an adventure to see how other people do their lives is a good first step into adulthood because there is no better way to choose your life than to see how other people live.

There are some great things you can accomplish while you're adventuring:

You can use an adventure as a way out of a bad job. It's very hard to quit a job when you have nothing else lined up. But it's very hard to line up a new job while you're working at your current job. So a good way to ease yourself out of your job is to go on an adventure. You can tell yourself that you must quit now — now is the time for adventure.

You can sort out personal problems. A lot of career issues are actually personal issues. Do I want to be a doctor or do I want to please my parents? Do I want to settle down or do I feel pressure from my boyfriend? These are issues that dictate your career choices, but cannot be solved by changing jobs or rewriting your resume. Putting yourself in a new situation, away from the outside influencers you are used to — is will help you get a more clear perspective.

You can learn what you don't want. When I worked on a family chicken farm in rural France, one day, when we spent three hours looking for mushrooms in the forest, I said, “Why do we have to keep looking? It's taking so long and it's only mushrooms. Let's go home.” And the father said, “But how will we have wild mushrooms for salad?” I couldn't believe it. I wanted to have my mom buy some at the grocery store and send them via airmail. This is when I knew that although living close to the land looks appealing from the outside, but to me it felt monotonous and intellectually dissatisfying.

There are a few ways to get the money to travel. The most obvious is that you should alter your lifestyle And prolific travel blogger Ali Watters has a few suggestions: Don't get a car or a mortgage unless you absolutely need one Give up smoking or expensive trips to coffee shops — it wastes money each day. Stay away from material possessions. Before each purchase ask yourself what you'll do with it while you're traveling.

Ali also recommends that you go somewhere cheap; a month in Europe will cost you three times as much as a month in South East Asia.

If Ali's advice is too hard to swallow, you might try lining up a job that's an adventure. If you are under thirty years old you might be able to benefit from reciprocal work agreements with the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Adventure is a good choice for a lot of people. It will give you perspective on a career that's stuck, and if you don't even have a career, there's little difference between a good entry level job and an adventure. Both are about learning, trying new things, and making sure you don't starve. So when you are looking at your job choices, put travel right up there on top with everything else. It's good for your resume and good for your life.

/6 Comments

Managing generation Y (How to manage my brother)

, ,

I realized that managing Genertion Y requires a huge shift in thinking when I was giving career advice to my twenty-three year-old brother, Erik. He is a top recruit at a top investment-banking firm and he just got a promotion ahead of everyone else in his year.

And he’s looking for a job. He fought very hard to get that promotion. I told him I thought he owed it to the guy who promoted him to stay for a bit. Here’s the email response I got:

“I don’t feel loyalty to the senior people here. I don’t think they are treating me well at all. I asked the head of my group if I could change groups to get more experience in what I’m interested in and he said no. I’ve just been put on a time consuming project where I won’t learn anything and it’s going to last six months. I told the head of my group that I thought it was a bad project for my development, and his response was that he’s the one who controls if I get promoted, and he wants me to do it. I also was put on this project in lieu of doing something I’ve never done before, which would be very good for my development.”

At first I was shocked to read the email. I have been grateful for every promotion I’ve ever received. But you know what? My brother is right. He doesn’t owe the guy anything for giving him a promotion because my brother isn’t getting interesting work right now.

My brother is not unique to his generation. He is the norm. Especially for high performers. Here’s a list of ways to effectively manage young twentysomethings so that they will do good work for you.

As you read it, instead of thinking critically of the new generation, think about yourself. I have found that as I challenge my own assumptions with my brother’s way of thinking, I see more possibilities for myself.

1. When you are interviewing young people, don’t ask them why they left their last job. Or their last three jobs in three years. Who cares? Instead ask about their commitment to doing good work for you right now. Don’t bother thinking you’re hiring someone to stay at your company longer than you can keep the learning curve steep.

2. Manage a young worker every single day. But think of yourself as a coach. Check in. Help prioritize, teach tricks, steer their path. Independence is definitely not what young people are all about. They want mentoring, teamwork and responsibility. Just be sure to give them work that is challenging enough to them to warrant daily input from a coach.

3. Make the work meaningful. They want to know how their work fits into the big picture. How does it help the company? How does it help the team? And don’t even think of delegating those projects that involve five hours pushing papers through a copy machine: Outsource to Kinkos.

4. Forget about nine to five. No one needs it. Figure out the hours you need to be able to definitely see this person’s face. The rest of the hours are up to her. If you tell her you need to see her face nine to five, you better be sitting next to her the whole day, saying things that could never be emailed.

5. Learn to use IM. When a whole generation is addicted to it, you can’t ignore it. Baby boomer lifestyle is not going to dominate the office forever. Make the switch now before you are too slow to keep up with conversation.

6. Don’t ask young people to be patient. Why should they be patient? Who does that serve? As long as they deliver something to you every day, and they are not rude, leave them alone. Let them dream that they can achieve in one year what took you ten. Maybe they can. Don’t take it personally.

/14 Comments