GENERATION WHY!

Over the past few months as is my job I have been in the process of re-engineering a Services business. The thing that has stood out this time around (have been doing this for more than 20 years) is the attrition rate of the younger service personnel as change begins to gain momentum.

Although it would appear that most understand the logic behind the changes and in most cases even have no issue with change itself ( we are talking mainly University graduates here), they cannot accept personally that they are in any way connected to the necessity of the change. In other words that they cannot see that they are often the main contributing factor as to why change is now required. The principles of cause and effect, whereby they are the cause and change is the effect are lost on them. Those that have been struggling are unable to accept that they have effectively been under achieving and under performing in their roles for some time.

Obviously to an extent this has been caused by poor strategic direction and inadequate leadership and management but some of the responsibility must lie with the individuals for deep down they must know that they have not questioned the status quo nor have they been proactive in presenting alternatives.

To justify that in no way are they remotely responsible for or have contributed to the current state of play they reason that they are only delivering what has previously been asked of them and accept no responsibility for not trying to develop either personally or professionally by voluntarily exceeding historical expectations.

When now presented with new personal development challenges and raised expectations of delivery, they seem to take this as a personal criticism that is not justified(as outlined above),is seen as completely negative and even the mere hint of personal failure or criticism are concepts that are completely alien to them. I believe the issue here is that as a generation they have grown up being told at every juncture that everything they do can only be a positive thing, " your team may have finished last in the competition but at the end of the day you made the team. Good Job Jason, well done". Effectively they have never failed. Any competition is frowned upon, everyone is a winner and they have never needed to understand or develop being part of a team to achieve success as all individuals are a success whether the team has obtained its objectives or not.

In essence they have very little desire or ambition to work on long term aims or objectives as they see no point in these. They are used to receiving instant gratification in whatever they do and if this is not forthcoming they move on to the next thing that will hopefully provide this. There is no point in expending effort in understanding a methodology, a science, a religion, long term career development as tomorrow all these will have morphed and changed as there is no constant in their universe.

If we return to my original point, they have no issue accepting change as change IS the constant for them. What they cannot accept is that they are not without fault, that they can fail or fall short and that this in itself is not necessarily disastrous as understanding such short comings will provide the catalyst for them to comprehend that actually personal development often comes out of adversity and is a thing to be grasped with both hands not to be avoided at all costs.

In the meantime I will carry on looking through the Resumes for a few failures!