I (Think I) Miss the Boomers
Boomer managers are slowly being replaced by Generation X managers; and may the lord have mercy on our souls.
Years ago I wrote about how working for Baby Boomers was a pain in the butt and, at the same time, a carefully choreographed dance. I wrote that members of my cohort, Generation X, needed all their finesse and quite a bit of 60s trivia to survive under the yoke of Boomer managers. I should have known at the time that I would eventually have to expose the considerable flaws of Xer managers, but I didn’t. I frankly never expected us to make it into management, but now that we have, it’s time to skewer mine own people.
Members of Generation X are typically nomadic, self-directed, survivors with a penchant for extreme sports and rule avoidance. I admire them on a street-smart, pragmatic level. Unfortunately, it is precisely those qualities that I admire about Xers that also make them, for the most part, lousy managers. As with any article trying to describe a whole cohort of people (53 million people at last count), your mileage with your manager may vary.
So let’s take a look at the core characteristics of Generation X and how they might affect their ability to manage other people.
Nomads—Generation X hit the workforce during the massive layoffs of the 80’s and during the 90s when employees were declared free agents. They believed it when companies said that no job is secure, and Xers jumped from company to company to build their resume. They still do.
The idea that you would be loyal to an employer never occurred to them. Now, as managers, that same loyalty vacuum is sometimes directed at these managers’ direct reports. The attitude that “organizations are interchangeable” is beginning to evolve into “employees are interchangeable, and thereby disposable.” If you thought corporations were ruthless during the 80s and 90s, you may be unpleasantly surprised by organizations under the stewardship of Generation X management.
I predict we will see more and more articles about the cost of turnover in corporation. The only real way to stem the bleeding, however, is to teach the Xer managers some of the basics of management.
Rule Avoiders—While Boomers wanted very much to change the rules wherever they went, Xers just created “work arounds” for the rules that got in their way. When they become managers and executives, this tendency to go around the rules means processes and procedures get completely ignored. Nature abhors a vacuum, and organizations abhor disorganization. With SOPs (standard operating procedures) jettisoned, Gen X managers tend to create their own with varying degrees of success. More importantly, they spend a ton of time and effort inventing and creating the processes that they used to avoid.
When Xer managers don’t build new processes, you get whole departments full of people unnecessarily going from crisis to crisis, from unreasonable deadline to unreasonable deadline. Fun.
Survivalists—Generation X has always seen organizational life in black and white terms: survive or die. Those that do survive—or even thrive in the organization—tend to have an overdeveloped bootstrap mentality. If you are having trouble at work, these bootstrap managers have the kind of empathy you might expect from an elm tree. Survivalist managers expect you to be able to achieve success on your own because they did. They also have an “every person for themselves” attitude about life, and that may be the single most destructive force in those corporations and organizations that depend on teamwork and collaboration to get things done—i.e. all corporations and organizations.
Let me say that again: this generation’s preoccupation with WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) has the potential to cripple the productivity of any organization that believes that a bunch of people working together can get more done than just a bunch of independent contractors working like hornets on each of their individual projects.
Self-Directed—One of the results of this generation’s rule avoidance is an outstanding ability to be self-directed in all areas of work. I’ve argued that the current trends in project management are a response to a whole generation of people who have had to figure out how to do things for themselves at almost every turn.
The trouble is, self-directed doesn’t work every time. At its best, self-directed managers tend to be hands-off supervisors who allow you to do your best work without interference. But everyone needs a bit of direction from time to time, and self-directed managers will often fail to see when a project is going off the rails until it’s too late. In many cases, self-directed means no direction at all.
The obvious problem with a whole department of self-directed people with a self-directed manager is that everyone is going in their own direction. Again, teamwork and collaboration suffer. There is a phrase that soccer coaches use when coaching very young children who don’t yet understand the importance of playing their position: managing the swarm. Generation X managers will need to step out of their self-directed comfort area if they want to be effectively lead a team.
Individualistic—Generation X individuals tend to be more comfortable on their own. Boomers and the upcoming Millennial generation are much more group oriented. I’ve already raised red flags in this article about Xers and cooperation/teamwork. This generation has often been described as “generationally pessimistic but personally optimistic.” That means Generation X thinks that things are going get progressively worse for their generation in terms of standard of living, but each individual believes that he or she will somehow make it through the decline and actually come out Ok. This deeply help philosophical outlook does not bode well for organizations being managed by these people, and it could affect everything from short-term budget forecasts to the long-term direction of the company.
At an executive leadership level, most “silo-thinking” Xers will be hard-pressed to succeed when managing large departments or even teams of more than a dozen people. Only those who can look beyond their own inclinations will rise through the ranks, especially in large companies. And because Millennials are so good at big teams, you could see the younger generation leapfrogging into executive leadership positions with tribes of Generation X managers reporting to them.
Pragmatic—It’s been my experience that Generation X as a workforce is very effective at hunkering down and getting work done. Some of the aforementioned traits lend themselves very well to this badger mentality and can make for great employees. However, these same predilections do not make Xers better managers.
No one likes office/corporate politics, but this generation considers it anathema. Moreover, for better or worse, some of the most effective managers are good office politicians and can often skillfully maneuver their projects to completion faster than those who simply work hard and long. Generation X will certainly change the office politics rules at least somewhat, and the changes to the game will probably better play to this generation’s strengths. Nevertheless, Xer’s pragmatism—which they see as an absolute strength—can become a Catch 22. It may push them forward and at the same time trip them up throughout the project.
Entreprenuerial—Xers tend to be very entrepreneurial, and these are precisely the same qualities that often make them unfit to manage. Ask anyone who has reported directly to a true entrepreneur, and he or she will explain what I mean. They tend to be long on megalomania and short on actual people skills.
The seeds sown by Tom Peters, bless his heart, landed on this generation of managers. He wanted employees to be more entrepreneurial. Generation X managers are. Because this generation equates success with survival, they have a great deal of intrinsic motivation to make things work no matter what gets in the way. Unfortunately, if you are their direct report, you do not want to be seen as something that will get in their way. Xer managers are quick to fire up the steamroller when they encounter obstacles.
That’s a pretty exhaustive list of problems on the debit side of Generation X managers, but it has to be. Xer managers need to see that their own generational traits, even their strengths, can be stumbling blocks as they move into management. Only the shock of recognition is likely to snap people out of their generational preferences, but there is still hope.
Finally, it could just be my own prejudice (because I wrote a business book), but I would like to see Generation X managers read a book or two. You could always count on a boomer manager to be up on the latest in management thinking. While some of boomers’ anointed management gurus caused some justifiable eye-rolling, it also exposed them serious minds like W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, Warren Bennis, Peter Block and others. And every boomer manager I encountered got his or her Management 101 training from Ken Blanchard’s ubiquitous book. Boomers were for the most part quite open to the opinions of experts and business philosophers, and I think it did them more good than harm.
You wander through any Xer cube farm these days, and there are no business books. There’s plenty of kitsch and cartoon characters and every imaginable clever, cynical quip and demotivational (www.despair.com) poster. I worry that my generation will come into positions of management without having done their homework.