I was reading an article by the Harvard Business School entitled How Will Millenials Manage? and was fascinated how I was branded. The article calls the next generation of managers as such. Here’s a brief description taken from the article.

They are generally bright, cheery, seemingly well-adjusted, and cooperative. They’ll pull an “all-nighter” for a good reason, but they won’t let that kind of thing intrude regularly on their personal lives. Their work styles are sometimes confounding. They need to work in a social environment, often one that would appear to some of us as chaotic. This means, however, that they are very good at working in teams. They are good at multi-tasking, understand how to employ technology productively, and as a result can often produce good work at what appears to be the last minute. They are focused on their own personal development. They want an accelerated path to success, often exaggerate the impact of their own contributions, are not willing “to pay the price,” and have little fear of authority. As a result, they are often not a good bet for long-term employment, because they are quite willing to seek other employment (or no employment) rather than remain in a job in which they are not growing. They want their managers to understand their needs and lay out career options.

This is how we are described, people who were born during the late 70’s to the late 80’s. It’s fascinating how generations and their behavior changes with time. But not too many of us. Sad to say that there are still a lot of organizations and people who do not see how important it is to adopt thru the changes. And this is costly as far as businesses and individuals are concerned. One comment in this article points out, “Business which are not adapting, and remain married to the process of blindly searching for degrees and certifications, and who judge employee reliability based on “time served” at other companies are failing to attract, hire, or retain the high knowledge workers.” I’m a victim to this kind of mindset. The hiring process for most organizations still looks for degrees and certifications instead of looking at the individual. Now, I’m not a big fan of Ivy Leagues and PhDs but one of the reason I am still keen on pursuing an advanced degree is to change this mindset particularly in the Asian region. There are a lot of talented individuals out there, most of them didn’t even have a college degree nor a certification to flaunt but are a lot better at creatively solving problems, getting things done and, not to mention, making and keeping social relationships which is a necessity to being an effective leader. The reality still remains that a new generation is ready to take the leadership mantle from the older generation. But unless we adopt to changing times, we’ll lose out on the next generation of leaders.

So, anybody looking for new recruits? You may have missed that one going out of the door after that very recent interview.