Studies have shown (a great one is by the Journal of Applied Psychology and published by the American Psychological Association here) that employees who are given more control over their work hours are more productive and have a greater overall personal and work satisfaction. This goes for telecommuters and anyone who works remotely.

Companies want productivity. Employees want flexibility. What companies haven’t all figured out yet is that Millennials want accountability too. They’re not looking for a free ride, working out of sight of their employer so they can sleep late and take a two hour lunch. They want to be held accountable for their productivity so they can be acknowledged and rewarded for it. But they also want the flexibility they’re use to in order to accomplish this production. This generation works all hours of the day, taking calls and texts in the middle of a dinner party or worse. So, work with that and you may be amazed at what you get in return. Companies want to be “guaranteed” as much productivity as possible. As long as the company sets clear expectations for production, Millennials will be more than happy to meet or exceed those expectations given they have the flexibility to do it.

I’m no psychologist, but I believe Gen Yers are willing to meet or exceed what’s expected of them because they live to be the best. It’s what they were taught growing up. They’re all striving to be the “Tiger Woods” of their own niche. They want to be the best and brightest in their field. However, they don’t want to be forced or coerced into doing it. Give them some direction on expectations and the flexibility and space (which to them is ultimately seen as respect) they want and you will be amazed at how much they can produce.

If you’re wondering what this has to do with Gen-X and Millennial employees, the answer is – everything. It points back to senior-to-middle management not listening to the voice of those already within their workforce. These young minds have never known a day without technology, and they understand it very well. If you want to know how your website should look and feel, what actions it should offer or how the UI interacts with the visitor – ask them. They want to tell you. They’re practically begging to give you the answers you’re willing to pay outside consultants too much money for. All you have to do it ask them. You have the business and project management experience to know how their great ideas can be implemented. So don’t keep them out in the cold. Invite them in, engage with them and most importantly…listen to them.

Don't Quit

Even more so than Generation X, Generation Y has a tendency to want to move on to something new when what they’re working on gets boring or too challenging. Maybe it’s because of XBox and Nintendo shortening their attention span. Maybe it’s their parents’ doing. But somehow this permeates their lives. They have a desire to be more constantly engaged. That’s my politically correct way of saying ADD – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Shorter, more intense bursts of productivity can be a great thing if used properly as with Agile Development. The down side is if managers don’t understand this and when their emplyee’s attention isn’t peaked anymore, they’re more apt to just move on. In a work environment this, at best, means they becme disinterested and disengage. The worst case scenario is – they quit.

Quitting a job can be done with professionalism and grace or it can be done the wrong way. Recently  I was working a Millennial on a web project. He was a very bright guy in his early twenties who absolutely lived for cutting edge technology. Though a novice coder myself, I knew what to look for when perusing his css and jquery and his stuff was impressive. However, the site he had designed and implemented that my team now owned was not maintainable because we had no one else on staff that could support and maintain the site. Though he had the ability to use some amazing code, he lacked the experience and foresight to make the whole business case before implementing.

He recently  moved on to another project.  He is a talented web designer and had some recent “success” with a couple of web projects like the one I took over. He was given the flexibility he wanted in order to tap into his creative side and produced some good work. However, on his new project he wasn’t given as much flexibility by the project manager. In fact, the project manager wanted him to “get in line” more with the rest of the contributors to the project. This was a challenge for him because he “knew he was a better programmer than the others”. But the truth about it is that he is equally as talented as them, but has strengths in certain areas. He learned this first hand in a SCRUM meeting when he suggested what he thought was the best way to approach the project. His inexperience in the businessess environment came through and he was clearly in over his head. He got frustrated because the rest of the team couldn’t see it his way and quit on the spot.

If you’re going to quit a job, I recommend not doing it this way. This young and talented programmer wasted an opportunity to grow. Maybe he was right in his suggestion to build a system that was quick to produce but difficult and expensive to maintain? We may not know now because he didn’t stick around plead his case. But maybe he missed a great opportunity to learn the larger picture and how his cutting-edge code, though at first glance may be prohibitive, couldn in the long run have really been an asset to the company.

To any Millennial (or really anyone) I recommend never quitting in the heat of the moment. The quickest route to burning a bridge you really don’t want to burn is to storm out while you’re angry. It never looks good on a resume, it’s not best for you as a paycheck seeking individual and it isn’t  fair to the company that’s been providing you those paychecks. I would also suggest being patient to see how things play out. Even in the worst situation, you can learn from sticking with it. This isn’t the most enjoyable route, but I’ve found that even working on projects that are doomed to fail can be edifying. Maybe all you learn is how not to run a project. But even that is called “experience”. And the more experience you have, the better you’ll be at what you do.

Last night I had a conversation with two Gen Y (also known as “Millennial”) friends of mine. Two important topics came up that have me thinking. After working through these mentally, I feel light years ahead in my understanding of the problem that so many Millennials struggle with; finding happiness. Ultimately, happiness is the primary goal of every human including Generation Y. But millennials n’t just seeking monetary happiness like some people think. Money and the “happiness” it buys eventually fade. What they are searching for is a way to do something they can be passionate about for a living.

The first topic we discussed was that Generation Y should be subdivided into stages. The span of a Millennial, around 20 years (1977-1997) by most estimates, is a large span of time. While they all have very similar traits as a generation, they can be in different stages of their life. For instance, consider the difference of a 29 year old entrepreneur versus a 13 year old who is just entering their freshman year of high school. The two are drastically different, yet strangely similar. So we break Gen Y into three sub-categories; pre-professionals, workforce newbies (those just entering the workforce), and “veteran” professionals (with as many as 10 years of work experience).

My focus, because my expertise is in this area, is the veteran professional Gen Y’s. This category can be further broken down into three sub categories or veteran professionals; singles, married, and married with children. The first sub category, singles, is the most commonly studied group of Millennials. This group is commonly written about and most often referred to as the individuals who are most willing to turn down a lucrative corporate position for a job they are more passionate about. They are also more likely to relocate for a position, be it in the US or abroad. Millennials in the second group, married, are very similar to the singles because their mobility and income floor are still fairly flexible. They, however, are also enjoying the company of a permanent best friend. The last group, married with children, is the newest section of Millennials simply because the generation as a whole is still young and they’re just getting around to starting a family. This group is studied the least, if at all. Because of this, less is known about them and how their new found state in life affects their decisions, career path, and ultimately – their happiness.

Millennials that are married and have children are a generation in a psychological and emotional transition. These individuals have traded in their once “free spirits” for the traditional desires of family life and are working to combine the two. It’s not as if their rapid-fire thumbs can’t text “c u l8r” just as fast as before, but it’s much more difficult with a baby in one arm. The married with children Millennials have less mobility (though not “no mobility”) than they once had. They are now considering issues such as proximity to their family, long-term career planning, and retirement in their decision making processes. Instead of finding a downtown condo close to the local hot spots, they’re considering moving to a subdivision with a good school system or possibly homeschooling in a smaller town. They’re still mobile, but in a much different way. They still find joy in trying new things even if it means a new town, state, or job. But at the end of the day, they just want their decisions to lead to their happiness.

The second topic we discussed was Millennials in the workforce shouldn’t be viewed as a liability, but as a huge asset whose potential for contribution in the workforce has hardly scratched the surface. As more of them enter the workforce every year corporations will have to begin to adapt with them or risk becoming outdated and fall by the wayside. Baby boomers are leaving the workforce at just as quick a pace as Millennials are entering, though some boomers are working menial jobs out of necessity so they can retain their healthcare insurance and scrape by monetarily. The primary reasons for Millennials remaining untapped are understanding and communication. Corporations and management have yet to fully (or even partially) understand the vast resources sitting in the desks of their own buildings. They haven’t figured out how to motivate and incentivize Millennials or to study and learn from their out-of-the-box style of thinking. Millennials have less pre-conceived notions than previous generations about how things should be done. They would rather ask “what needs to be done and how can it be done better?”  And the best part of them asking that question is that they’ll figure out the answer.

How Millennials find solutions is a new phenomenon I call “rapid collaboration”. In the past few years I have encountered a number of Millennials in the workforce who have requested Instant Messaging (IM) at their workstation. The initial reaction of the employer has always been “I don’t want them chatting with their friends on my dime!” However, this is how Millennials have collaborated since as far back as they can recall. At the touch of a button, they have an army of like-minded Millennials’ knowledge and skill sets at their fingertips. Rather than research for an entire morning how to do a particular task, a quick IM or text message blast can return a customized answer or a link to an answer somewhere on the Web.  Another example of rapid collaborative efforts from Millennials is found in software development. The old school of thought is that a marketing team comes up with what should be created. The business team decides if it will make enough money and sends requirements to the programming team. They, in turn, program the end product and it gets pushed to market for the real test. The Generation Y trend has turned this on its head. Now, cutting-edge software development trends are a real-time collaborative effort with community-based beta testers and on-the-fly adjustment of processes and features.  It adapts and is fluid, just like the Millennials. No longer do they wait for the software’s launch for feedback. Instead, they open up the development to the users and other industry-specific groups that will aid in the creation and the function of the software. The open-source community is a good example of this. These developers, like Millennials, aren’t looking for something in return. They give because they can, and it helps them to feel like they contribute – that they’re a meaningful part of something bigger than them.

So we know Generation Y is diverse and we know they are a virtually untapped resource in corporate America. How companies adapt, how we guide them and work with them will determine our ability to “change with the times” and become industry leaders. In this regard, maybe we can learn something from Gen Y. Their goal is to focus on their passion, then find a way to money from it. Most statistics show that Millennials are more apt to becoming entrepreneurs and starting their own companies than that of generations before. This is because they are more confident in their own abilities, understand rapid collaboration, and know how to use technology to accomplish more work – faster. One day soon, if we haven’t already, we may find ourselves working for and learning from them.

My intent is to create a roadmap that will guide Generation Y into the workforce and also to their destination of happiness. I will teach them how the two can co-exist. This plan has no bias toward entry, yet it has a concretely defined exit path that leads to individual happiness.It doesn’t matter where you are in your current journey toward finding happiness. This challenge has not been undertaken in this manner for Generation Y until now. My desire is to offer this proven roadmap to help Generation Y achieve true happiness, no matter how they define or redefine it throughout their lifetime.