It's been over a month and I'm finally ready to go over some of my thoughts from Annual.
The first that I've been thinking of for a while was the response to the Generation Y sessions, particularly to Nadira Hira's thought leader session. I was amazed at the reaction of non-Yers, mainly the comments I heard that sounded something like "I have such a better understanding of my young staff's expectations."
This got me thinking, but I just listened in the halls. I didn't want to seem to emotionally attached as a Gen Y myself, but my simple thought is this: Did you sit down with your staff and go over their expectations?
As an association, staff's tend to be smaller and direct reports are easily in the single digits. Instead of taking a sample of millions and millions and applying these commonalities to a few staff, why not just sit down with the 1-10 folks who fit this group and have an open dialog . Maybe they'll fit the "typical gen y," but why miss the opportunity to discuss individual expectations and goals? Don't wait for a Gen Y speech, just have the conversation and discuss those areas you can't quite grasp.
It's not that hard and you never know, the conversation you have with your Gen Y staff could shine a whole new light on Gen Y that hasn't been covered (because your staff's individuality was lost when they were lumped with the other millions of Yers).
Thanks for reading,
bob
P.S. Generational information is great, I'm not arguing against that, but it should be used with large numbers. The larger the population, the better it will match the Generational reports (in theory).
