From Changing Tides and Gen Y:

There are very few ties that keep us in one place or in one job. The internet allows us the ability to be instant experts on any given topic – learn about a topic one day, spend the next researching it, teach it the third. With the right resources and determination it is a very easy process. Sure, we won’t be experienced experts but we’ll know what the tools are, what the problems look like and some general idea of how to mix the two. Creativity will fill in the gaps.

I love this quote. I think a lot of people will quibble with it, arguing that the internet isn’t a deep enough platform for real leaning. And, sure, it’s rare that someone will actually become an expert on a topic after honing their google fu for a day or two.

But that’s really the point: how useful are experts, really? Once we get away from the more traditional varieties of work, specialization and expertise loses its value. In its place, adaptability becomes paramount.

Someone who is exceptionally good at, say, Microsoft Visio isn’t really going to be of much use 99% of the time, but someone who can learn the basics the morning before your board of directors needs an extensive org chart? That employee is golden.

Something to think about.

BusinessWeek had an article last week full of tips for employers on how to communicate with Gen Y employees. For the most part, it was kind of useless – ValleyWag even called them on it – made up of platitudes like “Don’t manage, mentor” and “Don’t conceal, communicate”, which run the gamut between obvious and oblivious but don’t get anywhere near real value.

I’m not exactly sure why older generations are having trouble communicating with Generation Y. They seem to regard us like they would a foreign language, looking to books and consultants and lists-disguised-as-articles for explanations on how to best learn what makes us tick.

But the dirty little secret behind all of this is that a lot of managers aren’t just looking for information about us — our habits, culture, attitudes, and so on –, they’re also looking for information on how to control. These employers don’t want to adapt. They’d much rather just figure out how to BS their way into the appearance of Gen Y friendliness.

They want to harness this changed workforce without ever really acknowledging our differences.

The only tip employers really need for communicating with Gen Y is this: don’t BS. Be honest. Speak plainly and directly. Don’t lean on hierarchies, memos, policies and procedures. Keep your explanations straightforward. And don’t you ever use the “because I’m your boss” card.

That may seem like a lot, but it’s really not. It all boils down to a simple “No BS” rule. Try that, and all the other ‘tips’ you need will start to fall into place.

Photo by fabblo. Licensed under Creative Commons

Here’s the sequence of events:

• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reveals his company’s newest product: The Kindle, a handheld electronic device for reading & buying books on the go.
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs responds to the release, saying “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read any more.”
• Timothy Egan, blogger for the New York Times, responds in a blog post, firing back with “The Mac, Pixar, the iPhone, the iPod, iTunes. This stuff is cool. Lighter than air. iGetit. But it’s just product, dude. Reading is something else, an engagement of the imagination with life experience. It’s fad-resistant, precisely because human beings are hard-wired for story, and intrinsically curious. Reading is not about product.”
• Blogger and my pal Erin Balser responds to that, writing “Egan is confusing “reading” with “books”. iTunes and iPods are products, listening is not. The Mac is a product, everything we use it for is not. iPhone is a product, interacting with friends and surfing the internet is not.”

Got that? Good.

I think it’s pretty clear that Jobs was referring specifically to printed books (and not the act of reading itself) when he made his statement. It’d be silly to think Jobs & Apple don’t see a future for reading in and of itself: just look at the iPhone. One of its most touted features is the ability to deliver the ‘real’ internet. They even ran a commercial showing the New York Times web site on the phone, all primed and ready to be read.

If Apple was so down on reading, they would have emphasized the iPhone’s video and youtube abilities, and not made a device that offers probably the nicest mobile text-reading experience available. Seems simple, doesn’t it?

What Jobs (probably) meant

I think you have to look at what Jobs was saying from two angles:

First, he’s not a man who’s above being overtly dismissive and even hostile when it comes to competitors’ products. He can be a bit of a prick. How much this figures into his statement is left as an exercise to the reader.

Second, and more critically, Jobs was responding to the idea of the Kindle as a product where the primary use case is buying digital books online. This isn’t a convergence device. It does (basically) one thing — lets people download and read books.

And so I ask: is the idea that that market segment isn’t large enough to sustain a $400 electronic device really that outrageous? It’s not that there is zero market for digital books, it’s just that there’s no market for a $400 digital-book-reading device that doesn’t do anything else. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Apple announced book sales through iTunes tomorrow, because it makes sense to offer them for reading on a convergence device like the iPod or iPhone. What Apple would never do is design and release a device dedicated to reading digital books.

When you have music, movies and games, books are a nice side-business. But to think books can stand-alone as the driver behind a device like the Kindle? I’ve got to side with Jobs on this one: on that scale, people don’t read any more.

All that said, I’ll leave you with two digressions, offered without comment.

Digression #1: Some Sales Figures

• Est. Unit Sales of You: Staying Young, the #1 selling book for the period October 29 to December 9: 503,000 _source
• Est. Unit Sales of Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360), the #1 selling video game for the period November 2007: 1,565,404_source
• Est. Unit Sales of Ratatouille, #1 selling DVD for the period October 29 to December 9: 9,190,669 _source

Digression #2: A message from Amazon on the Kindle

From Kindle’s product page:

Kindle Availability
Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. We are working hard to manufacture Kindles as quickly as possible and are prioritizing orders on a first come, first served basis. Please ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. We will keep you informed by email as we get more precise delivery dates. Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to customers living outside of the U.S.

The Toronto Star recently published an article about Generation Y’s attitude toward retirement plans and banks in general. The interesting bit:

At the same time, the generation born between 1977 and 1994 – also called the millennials or echo boomers – tend not to visit their bank branches and talk to advisers about investing and financial planning advice.

“They are young, have grown up in a technological age and are very comfortable with computers,” says Dmitri Mastoras, regional manager with BMO Retail Investments.

“Visiting their local bank branch is not one of their regular habits.”

The technology piece is huge. Thinking back over the past year, I have only physically gone into my local bank branch twice: once to see if I could get some Euros there (I could, but not a lot!) and once to cash a bond my parents bought for me when I was younger.

Other than that, I do all my banking either online or through the machine. And I think most of my peers would echo that. If there was a simple way to contribute to an RRSP or make investments through the web interface, I might be liable to do it, but — at least with the bank I use — there is not.

It’s a key point when dealing with Gen Y: making us call you is a red light. If we can’t find the info or functionality we’re looking for on your web site, it might as well not exist. The article tends to hint that Gen Y doesn’t invest because it’s not a priority for them, but I suspect it has far more to do with the accessibility (or rather lack thereof) of doing such things without having to either pick up a phone or physically go into a bank.

A postscript on retirement

Also from the above article:

Many generation Y investors might be saving for shorter-term goals such as buying a house or going back to school to further their education rather than retirement.

Financial advisers believe this generation should be taking more ownership for their financial future.

The whole concept of ‘retirement’ needs to change. It doesn’t really make any sense when no one actually considers it likely (or at all possible, really) that they’ll spend their whole life working one job. Also, is it just me, or does 65 kind of seem like it’s a little bit young to just stop working completely?

Photo by benchilada. Licensed under Creative Commons

A couple of interesting bits from my news reader from the past week:

The changing face of the global labour market

From Auckland, NZ: Generation Y Full of Demands

A finance and accounting recruitment firm is firing a warning shot at a lazy element amongst Generation Y job seekers.

The agency Robert Half says it was shocked when an applicant handed over a list of demands, instead of a CV. The woman wanted $15,000 over the going rate, cash for her exam fees and a short contract so that she could do her OE.

More Gen Y & Finance

From The Motley Fool: Who can save Financials Now?

Generation Y certainly can’t change the financial industry overnight — not even Superman could fix the years of lax practices that have led to the current debacle. But with their large numbers, Generation Y certainly can be key to a turnaround in the financial world.

Tips for Employers on managing multi-generational offices

From The Financial post: Restructure to be cross-generational

Here are a few basic changes employers can adopt to recruit and retain Gen-X and Gen-Y workers:

• Restructure leadership to be cross-generational. Gen-Xers demand challenging but balanced work assignments. Gen-Yers expect high perks in exchange for loyalty;
• Restructure compensation, benefits and incentives to satisfy each generation. The Baby Boomer one-size-fits-all won’t work;
• Expand communication strategies. Stop relying so much on corporate communication, but make communication available in multiple formats;
• Make mentoring a natural part of the management structure, with flexible mentoring models.

(I fixed the formatting on that last one. Text is unaltered.)