Boomers and Millennials: A Lot in Common

A video made by a cultural anthropology class at Kansas State University is making the rounds in the global dialogue about the differences and needs of the generations in the workplace.This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o  represents a recent installment shared among those who participate in Vistage, the world’s largest organization of CEOs.vistage.com 

Today’s employers of all generations need to be aware of the experiences and expectations of employees of all generations, including those of the Millennial generation, who are the stars of the Kansas State video. While the world and workplace today certainly are different than they were in any other decade, the Millennials are not so exotic that they don’t share characteristics with other generations that have gone before them.

I’ve noted many times the many similarities between the Millennials www.millennialgeneration.org/ and Baby Boomers, www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/006105.html  the generation to which I belong. Members of both generations love to learn, grew up multi-tasking (although it wasn’t called that yet in the 1960s and 1970s), saw huge changes in technology (albeit faster now than for the Boomers), and for a variety of reasons have been considered and have considered themselves “special.”

Most striking, however has been the shared commitment to cause. Boomers followed John F. Kennedy and “asked what they could do for their country” when the Peace Corps started. Today’s Millennials are looking for ways to make a difference and are marching in droves in Sen. Barack Obama’s Hope campaign.

In the Kansas State video, the students flash hand-made signs and computer screen messages before the camera, expressing the facts, experiences and expectations of their generation.

Interspersed are quotes from scholars and leaders of past decades and centuries, which still are true. On the most basic level, I don’t see all that much new here. There is a reason the antique quotes in the video are still relevant today. The old cliché is correct: The more things change, the more things stay the same.

You can click on the video to see what the Kansas State students think and want to share about their generation. I’ll share here some similarities to those of my Baby Boomer generation:

• The world was as scary and uncertain to Boomers as it is to Millennials. When I was in junior high, older friends were out protesting the Vietnam War and every night on TV we watched the body bags of dead soldiers return. My first boyfriend in high school had a draft lottery number and we worried about whether he’d get sent to war and die. When I was in college, a recession loomed, there were daily protests about the Shah of Iran and against Apartheid, and the year I graduated the Three Mile Island nuclear power disaster happened.
• Technology changed rapidly for Boomers, too, although since then the definition of “rapid” has changed. In the first two years of my first job, my main tool at work changed from a manual typewriter to an IBM Selectric typewriter to a DEC computer.
• Millennials aren’t the only over-stimulated generation to have turned away from what it considered irrelevant, too slow or too “old school.” While the Millennials spend time on Facebook and using e-mail or text messaging, we diverted our attention in our preferred ways. We skipped class, watched TV for many hours, went to movies, goofed around, talked to people in bars, in coffee shops, on the phone and on the Quad, slept through class, passed notes to friends, and multi-tasked when we should have perhaps been reading books in school. Were we more or less engaged in education than the current students? Hard to say.
• Young Boomers shared the hard-wired need to learn, learn, learn. We were brought up in the post-Sputnik education run-up and the global race to the moon. 
• Both generations think they’re “special.” Much has been made of Millennials who have grown up in a world where everyone on the little league team gets a trophy and “helicopter parents” hover. As a generation, we Boomers were “special,” too, mostly because there were so darn many of us. We were “special” because we were a marketer’s gold mine. Businesses at all stages of our life have worked to figure out how to make money off of us. We were the generation that the Barbie doll first enticed, after all.

Maybe some Millennials and Boomers don’t want to believe it, but I believe our two generations have a lot in common and can do great things together. Bring it on.