By Bert Schulze
We are approaching the end of the
series about cross generations at the workplace. For me it was an mind opening journey across many interviews and insights on people´s point of views. I learned a lot about motivation and behaviour and heard many smart statements. Instead of summarizing in a classical SWOT approach I am taking the opportunity to pick some of my favourite quotes from the interview series.
One of my favourite songs from the 90s is “Every generation has its own disease” from “Fury in The Slaughterhouse”. After the interview with Katharina the song did not get out of my head anymore as Katharina answered to the question on expected workplace change that
“Every generation had their “millennial moment”
I think this are very wise words. Change for the sake of change was always a powerful force in between generations. Just think of the 68er. Do whatever you like but be different than your father´s generation. Though in the past the driver was primarily a decoupling process in between the generations while the digitization and Millennial generation is driven outside in build on technology as a catalyst of change.
One most remarkable moments I had as well during the same interview was the following:
“To achieve something of great value, I am more than willing to stay for decades and make significant sacrifices going the extra mile.”
This is a great advice to all managers. You need to take this into account. When you deal with millennials, you must adapt your management style accordingly and need to truly inspire your team, showing a vision of something great to contribute to. If you are capable, you will be rewarded with highly motivated people, very committed to work towards those goals. To achieve something of great value, people…
"It’s all about managing change… but technology does not replace face to face conversation"
This is something I get all people behind. It seems that everybody makes use of advanced technology to improve communications but none relies on this new channel alone.
“The ability to adopt fast is more important than the ability to remember everything”
The omnipresence of Google change behaviour significantly. There are many new applications and technology to explore and understand every day, that the speed of change and the implicated motivation to learn:
- needs to be built in if you want to be successful
- makes the ability to adopt faster more important than the ability to remember
- makes the most important tool from yesterday outdated immediately.
“Social is life is social”
With reference to the above and the enormously development of technology, you have to be up to date with your social appearance on the internet whether it is professional or private. Many people use social media to create a perfect view of themselves and master the self-marketing. As a result, influenced people find themselves in a distorted perception adopting the internet appearance. In a nutshell: The borders between real life and virtual life are fading.
“Cross-Generational Intelligence I required”
SAP recently launched a program with the goal to celebrate all generations within our company by providing a platform in which employees from different generations form pairs across generations. Mentor and mentee will provide distinct generational and personal perspectives on a variety of work-related matters and gain valuable insights from each other.
If you take the coin and spin it ... in the blur, you will see one single shiny coin. Only if we bring all generations together we will win as a team. Organizations need to adopt quickly to get the best of both worlds working together.
“It is all about people, not generations”
Various generations have already changed life at work and left their footprint on our company’s culture. But, I can tell you from experience that it’s nothing employers or managers should be concerned about – diversity and inclusion are important to employee engagement, customer satisfaction and innovation, which is the key to future success.
If you want to read the interviews in detail:
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series -
The Starter
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 1 – Katharina Stopf
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 2 – Corina Kinzel
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 3 – Veena Venugopal
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 4 – Angela Krenkler
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 5 – Reshmi Paul
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 6 – Isabel Brendenahl
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 7 – Heike Weiss
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 8 – Saimadhav Suryadevara
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 9 – Katharina Hellmich
Cross Generations at the Workplace Series –
Point of view 10 – Joachim Stein
Cross Generations at the workplace Series –
Summary
I hope you enjoyed are series. Stay tuned.
I am looking forward to your comments. If you want to follow me:
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@BeSchulze and
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