Your goal should be to make sure that when that Y calls home, he or she hears three magic words: "Good choice, honey." Your company needs to have a "parent-approved" employer brand.

The U.S. Army's recruiting campaign for Generation Y includes ads addressed to the parents. The series for parents features the slogan "You made them strong. We'll make them Army strong." Another series addressed to potential recruits encourages them to discuss a career in the Army with their parents.

SkyWest Airlines goes even a step further in incorporating parents into the company's recruiting campaigns. The ad reads: "At SkyWest Airlines our employees and their parents have access to worldwide travel discounts on airfare, rental cars, hotels, all inclusive resorts and cruises. So, go ahead, tell your kids to apply . . . And have them give you the world for a change."

Smart companies today are using a variety of approaches to help the parents of Gen Y's learn about the company and get ready to help in the Y's decision-making - orientation sessions, conference calls, special FAQ material directed at parents' likely questions and concerns.

Companies should ask candidates if they would like information sent to their parents and, if so, how to reach the parents, but make the outreach optional. At many Enterprise Rent-A-Car offices, for instance, the company offers to provide information to the parents of prospective candidates and about half of the candidates accept. Merrill Lynch (inviting parents of interns to its offices), Ernst & Young (distributing packs of information for parents to students at some universities), and Vanguard Group (offering candidates the option of sending information letters about to parents or others) are among employers that already are responding to the desire of some Gen Y's for more parental involvement in employment decisions.

Here's a check list of approaches for involving parents in your Gen Y recruiting activities:
• Distribute packs of information for parents to students at universities and job fairs
• Hold a career fair in your community designed specifically for parents
• Create special FAQ material directed at parents' likely questions and concerns (retirement, health benefits, 401(k) plans, educational opportunities and so on)
• Hold parent orientation sessions or conference calls
• Invite parents of interns and new hires to visit the Y's place of work and meet the boss and colleagues
• Provide the staffing necessary to follow through with parent requests
• Run ads communicating your positive attributes as an employer aimed at parents
• Provide incentives for parents to refer their children (beginning with your current employees - if your current employees won't refer their own children, consider whether you really are a good employer)
• Include parents in employee benefits

Do you have a parent-approved brand?

My new book, written for Gen Y's, is called Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work. It's available for pre-order on Amazon.com and will be in in stores in November. I hope you'll give a copy to all the Y's you know and love!

In early June, a stranger knocked on our door. When I answered the door, a clean cut, friendly young man was leaning over scratching one of our dogs behind the ear, making friends. I took note that even the most wary pup had already decided to welcome this guy into the four-footed fraternity.

He politely told me he'd like to work here.

Ah, well, this is a home. We don't employ people.

That's okay, he said. I just love how this place looks. I'd like to work here.

Hmmm. My brain churned through all that I knew about Gen Y's as I listened to Chris tell his story. He'd gone to college, like all his friends, but hadn't found it particularly interesting or relevant. He'd stopped going. He had a job at a local place, but didn't find it particularly challenging or important.

He liked dogs and thought he would like horses, if he got to know some. He thought he would enjoy working at our place.

Well, ah, we really weren't planning to hire someone, I said. What are you thinking about compensation?

Oh, money doesn't matter, he said. I've moved back with my parents. I would just like to work here.

What could I say?

Well, my husband, when I told him the story later that day, thought the answer should have been pretty obvious. Are you crazy? he exclaimed. That sounds very weird. Of course you said, no, right?

Well, not exactly. You see, it didn't strike me as all that odd. He just didn't want to do things that weren't interesting, challenging, relevant or important. He sounded like a Gen Y to me.

So I had "hired" him. And he spent some of the summer hauling brush, mowing fields, repairing fences, and generally helping with farm chores. (And, yes, we paid him a modest wage.)

I hope he enjoyed the summer outdoors, although it was clear that he soon found hard work outdoors to be no more suited to his needs than whatever work he'd been doing indoors before. He set off on another adventure.

David Brooks, in his column for the New York Times, has described people in their 20s today as living through a new life stage - the Odyssey Years - a time of exploration and experimentation.

My recommendation is that the next time one stops off on his or her journey to try life in your neck of the woods, don't panic. They're just being Gen Y's. They're enjoying the experience -- you might as well, too.

Thank you, Chris, for sharing a bit of your Odyssey with us.

The key to skiing is to overcome your natural instinct to lean back, and instead, shift your weight out - into the blue, over the tips of skis that seem to have no ground beneath them.

I've had a similar sensation at times riding horses. Frankly, there is no feeling like being on top of a 2000-pound animal that is running at full speed toward a solid rock wall. Again, there is that moment of human sanity when every shred of common sense - every ounce of preservation - tells you to pull up. Lean back. Shorten the reins. Stop this craziness. Of course, by the time that thought crosses your mind, you are way past the point of no return when that would be plausible. The only thing to do is, as they say, kick on.

We are in nerve-wracking times. Over the past month, I've certainly felt at times that there was little ground under my feet or that I was racing toward a stone wall. Perhaps you have, as well.

My fellow writers on this site have offered some useful things to do during these nerve-wracking times: be tough, be hopeful, be decisive. I've offered my learnings on the importance of continuing to ask great questions, build relationships of trust, and seek disruptive perspectives. These are all things we know are effective.

However, as the experiences of skiing or equestrian jumping have taught me, at the critical movement, during the crux of the nerve-racking event, the key is to actually do the things our minds know need to be done, rather than fall back on our instincts.

When times are tough and every instinct tells you to retreat - to figuratively or literally stay in bed - remember that these are the times when your team needs to hear from you the most. When your strong preference would be to dampen dissent - remember that considering the contrary view can strengthen the eventual choice immeasurably.

As much as we might each want to, these days are not ones in which we should lean back or pull up. Kick on.

MORE FROM TAMMY ERICKSON:

• Dear Gen Y: Here's How to Weather a Recession
• Hard Times Demand Teamwork, Not an MVP

MORE FROM HARVARD BUSINESS:

• A Manager's Guide to Surviving the Downturn
  

The book is terrific - one I highly recommend.  Zakaria presents a thoughtful, grounded perspective on today's world, one as he argues, in which the U.S. is and will remain an extremely important and successful player, but will no longer dominate.  He presents his view of the future with persuasive historical context.

One interesting chapter compares the achievements of the East and the West over past centuries - what the societies accomplished - and even more interesting, how.

He tells the story of the Chinese Admiral Zheng He who, beginning in 1405, made seven ambitions exploratory expeditions, 87 years before Christopher Columbus' famous voyage.  Zheng He's first fleet included 317 vessels and 28,000 men (Columbus had 4 boats and 150 sailors).  Each of Zheng's ships was an astonishing accomplishment in itself - with intricate joints, sophisticated waterproofing techniques, luxurious cabins, silk sails, and windowed halls. Zheng logged over 300,000 nautical miles before Columbus was born.  And then the Chinese stopped sailing.

The Forbidden City, built from 1406 to 1420, was the centre of the ancient, walled city of Beijing.  The palatial complex consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 square meters.  Yet similar construction never occurred throughout the country.

In the Indian subcontinent in 1631, the Mongol emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, one of the most extraordinary buildings ever conceived, to honor his beloved wife.  Its construction required enormous artistic talent, tremendous construction skill and astonishing feats of engineering - never equaled.

By the 1800s, the East lagged far behind West on almost every measure of technical capability.  How could a society produce such wonders of the world and yet not move ahead more broadly?  How could the East not sustain or build upon these major accomplishments?

The answer, as Zakaria explains, lies in part in the value each society placed on human labor - and, more subtly, on the role that valuing labor has on driving and sustaining "progress."

The Forbidden City required the labor of a million men -- and another million soldiers to watch over them.  The flotilla was produced by a similar system.  The Taj Mahal was built by 20,000 laborers working day and night for 20 years.  No value was placed on the man-hours put into the project.

The sustaining value of valuing labor is illustrated by a comparison of the farmers of the Yangtze Delta and those of England, the richest regions of China and Europe in 1800.  Over the next 100 years, English farming surged ahead in labor productivity.  The Chinese made the land productive, but they did so by putting more and more people to work on a given acre.  The English kept searching for ways to make labor more productive through the incorporation of animals and machines.  By 1900, the average farm size in England was 150 acres; in the Yangtze Delta, it was about an acre.

If labor has little value, why spend money on labor-saving machines?

I read Zakaria's analysis about the time I was watching the extraordinary Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics.  When the floor of the auditorium begin to move, I suspect most Westerners watching immediately assumed it was the work of hydraulic lifts, mechanically choreographed in eerie precision.  The surprise of learning that each square was being maneuvered by one human being struck me as an apt reflection of the labor intensive wonders of China's past.  The entire ceremony, unquestionably beautiful, was astonishingly labor intensive.  That one show had a cast of over 15,000 performers.

Artists underneath movable boxes perform during the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics at the National Stadium on August 8, 2008 in Beijing.

I thought of the labor issue again when I heard about the hand-drawn art that had been placed in each athlete's room. The media made a great deal over this kind and gracious gesture of hospitality.  I agree it was a lovely touch - and a smart one that capitalized on a resource that China has in abundance - school children. 

I loved the ceremony, and perhaps even more, appreciated the uniquely Chinese approach.  Virtually no other country could host the Olympics the way the Chinese did. No one else would have enough labor. 

As one person posted after viewing the Opening Ceremony photographs, it's amazing what you can do with a few million extra people.

I thought of this on and off this past week. I was working in New York City, in a building that overlooked Ground Zero. During our breaks, many of us shared our own personal stories -- where we were, what it was like for us -- on that extraordinary 9-11 in 2001. And my son, a Gen Y, and I reflected together on our experiences that day when we met in the evening for dinner.

Most members of the Re-Generation -- as I've discussed it in earlier posts, those born after 1995, who are in their formative 11-13 years this year -- will not remember 9-11. They will not have personal stories of that horrific day. When we tell ours, they will assume the same polite interest, I suppose, that I summoned when my parents talked about hearing the first radio announcements of Pearl Harbor. Re-Gens will intellectually understand the day, but they won't feel it in their bones.

The babies that were born after their fathers died in the 9-11 attacks are members of the Re-Generation. The youngest Y's would have been seven on that day - probably about the last individuals to remember where they were.

I thought about the Re-Gens earlier this summer, watching the Democratic National Convention. Not so much when I watched Obama himself accept the nomination, but when the camera panned to show the delegates -- older Americans of all races -- their emotion raw, and out there for all to see. Faces, many tear-stained, that mesmerized me -- each offering a personal coda to this incredible story. I know they, like I, were both living in that moment and re-living many others -- personal memories of a country that was racially divided and unjust. Memories that the Re-Gens will never have. Feelings of amazement they will never share.

The astonishing political events of this summer convince me even more that we have turned a new corner. The young people who are looking up from childhood this year to form their first views of how the world works are being imprinted with images of a different world than you or I saw when we formed our first mental models.

Re-Gens will be shaped, in part, by not remembering the time before.

One friend told me this story: his wife, a Boomer, decided to go back to work recently and found a great job in what looked to be a very interesting company. On her first morning, she called her husband in a panic - she was in the office (at 8:30 am) and the place was deserted - not a soul in sight! Turns out her new colleagues were mostly Gen Ys - who, as I've written in the past, often operate under the "what is it with you people and 8:30 am" rule. Get over it.

Another Googled the company she was planning to join and found articles that she summarized in a note to me as being about "having tattoos in the workplace and playing Wii and Guitar Rock in the office." She was rattled. "I wouldn't recognize Wii if I saw it and tattoos aren't on my short list....hope I fit in." I quickly wrote back to warn her that it was called Guitar Hero - don't embarrass yourself now!

And what to wear? One friend went in to meet some people in her department and was told by a Gen X'er to ditch the suit and wear flip flops.

Okay, X'ers and Y's: we would love to be part of the great companies you are founding and running. But please meet us halfway on some of the issues:

• Most of us don't have tattoos or flip flops, nor do we want them. We have begun to notice a few instances of sagging skin and understand that a tattooed flower today could look like a flop tomorrow. And our feet are cold.
• Many of us haven't played Wii or Guitar Hero - our kids were the wrong age to catch those trends. But we can play a fierce game of Donkey Kong. And, if you give us time, we'll get into the others, as well. Be warned, we love to win.
• Ditching the 8:30 thing is a great idea - why didn't we think of it? But give us a heads up - we like some face time sometime.

Our closets are full of suits, our alarm clocks are set, and the car is gassed up and ready to commute in every day. But we're up for a change - and for helping you develop your ideas into great companies.

As a result, there's no big surprise that times of trouble prompt many leaders to feel that they have to call the shots, that they must make the key play. It's probably human nature -- or at least human nature for those who take on these roles.

In many companies today, executives are shouting, "Give me the ball!" Authority is being centralized; extra levels of sign-off are being added; and small teams of executives are closeting away in secret retreats to review options, while meetings that would bring the troops together are being canceled. Executive instinct drives tighter control: review your costs, tighten your approval criteria, pull key decisions and approvals up to higher levels, make sure everyone in the organization is as fully busy as possible, narrow the business scope.

These actions are understandable, but dangerously wrong.

Significant research has shown that groups make better decisions than individuals, that there is wisdom in crowds. Rather than personally grabbing the ball during a downturn, leaders need to tap into the wisdom and, perhaps even more importantly, the energy of the entire organization.

During a downturn, a leader's role is to do three things:

1. Ask great questions. Challenge the organization to meet goals that are intriguing, complex and important. Don't narrow the focus to the mundane or over-specify the way teams should approach their challenges. Articulate a compelling intent -- something that, in the language of complexity theory, will serve as a "strange attractor."

2. Build relationships and trust deep in the organization. Don't cut out meetings, intensify the competition among internal teams, or reduce investments in learning. Increase your firm's "collaborative capacity" by building relationships and encouraging knowledge exchange. (For more, see our November 2007 HBR article "Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams").

3. Challenge the status quo. Insure that your team has regular ongoing exposure to disruptive insights through diversity and external forays. Don't cut travel or fall back on the old "tried and true" team. Bring in new people and new ideas - and take them seriously. Get outside your business sphere. Encourage brainstorming and the use of scenario analysis. Don't cut training - invest in your people.

In a downturn, rather than trying to tighten control and hunker down, find ways to help your organization become more spontaneous, innovative and reflexive.

Pass the ball.

See the Complete Downturn Survival Guide

As of the morning of the event, my husband had no idea when and where they were to meet - and he was getting stressed. "What is the matter with these kids - why haven't they sent out any information?"

"Hmmm," I said. "Have you checked your cell phone? They're unlikely to send out an email. They'll text you when its time to go."

"That's impossible," he responded. "My cell phone hasn't been charged in months. You know I don't use it."

"Well then," I said, "I don't think you're going on the outing, since you'll never get the info. Don't you ever read anything I write?"

* * *

Recently a woman came up to me after one of my lectures for some help in settling a parenting dispute. Her husband was refusing to give their teenage daughter a cell phone package that included texting. The daughter was understandably distraught.

I weighed in on the side of the daughter, reassuring the mom that texting was a completely normal mode of communication for teens today and an important way for the daughter to stay connected with her friends. In fact, as I've discussed before, it allows teens to move from planning to coordinating their activities - to move from making arrangements in advance to making them in real time.

Whether you're a teen, or an adult trying to synch up with today's teens, having access to texting capabilities is a critical communication link.

And, by all means . . . keep your cell phone charged.

* * *

What are your favorite stories about communication patterns and preferences in your home or work environment?

Based on my research on leadership - on the capabilities that business leaders will need over the next decade - I've concluded that what's required for business executives is quite different from the capabilities that we've focused on in the past.  I suspect the same is true for political leaders.

Future leaders in all spheres will have to contend with an environment that is complex in many dimensions - a world with finite limits, no easy answers, and the sobering realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. 

Thinking along these lines has drawn me back to the work of Ronald Heifetz, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, who argued that a different type of leadership is required to tackle complex contemporary problems as opposed to routine problems.  The latter require expertise (e.g., knowledge and experience), while the former - what he calls "adaptive" problems, such as the complex issues of crime, poverty, and educational reform, and to which I would add sustainable resources, global warming, conflict in the Middle East and a number of others - requires both innovation and the consideration of values.

To that end, Heifetz encourages future leaders to:

• Consider how individuals' differing values influence their views and behaviors. (Remember the discussions in previous posts of how a business situation - say, an offer to relocate - might look very different to a Boomer and an X'er based on different values?  This is an example of considering values as part of your leadership approach.  Neither is "right" or "wrong" - the values are different.)
• Openly acknowledge the complexity of the issues head on, without attempting to minimize the difficulties involved.  Research has found that ignoring or oversimplifying complex challenges does not work, in large part because of the stress it places on the organization.  Leaders need to wade in and grapple with complex issues. 
• Avoid authoritative (top-down) solutions.  Instead, shift responsibility for problems from the leader to all the primary stakeholders.

Regarding the last point, in "Political Leadership," a classic article co-authored with Riley Sinder, Heifetz pointed out that we have come to accept and expect an approach to leadership in which the leader supplies all the answers.   In contrast, Heifetz and Sinder call for a future form of leadership that provides a context in which all interested parties, the leader included, can together create a vision, mission, or purpose they can collectively uphold.

Leaders able to guide organizations through the complex conditions of this decade will have to become adept at:

• Rejecting absolutes - getting comfortable with the idea that there is no final "right" analysis of events that tops all other analyses, no single rationality, no single morality
• Avoiding expressions of power or dominance - eliminating the language and metaphors of combat and practices that are designed to reinforce the hegemony of one group over others
• Celebrating differences - acknowledging both that there is no reason to grant anyone special significance or value and that the existence of differences are vital to arriving at a full appreciation of the issue and its possible outcomes
• Recognizing one's own built-in bias - acknowledging that your view and the other guy's are both ideology, rather than absolute truth, and are therefore necessarily partial and incomplete.

With that in mind, here are my criteria for evaluating tomorrow's world leaders:

• Has this individual demonstrated an ability to appreciate the validity of multiple points of view?  (Perhaps "flip flopping" should be viewed as a plus, if it represents a considered reflection of multiple perspectives?)
• Has this individual left open the eventual co-creation of a solution?  (Perhaps a pre-set policy should be a minus?)
• Does the candidate avoid authoritative statements and categorical solutions?  (Perhaps being will to listen to multiple points of view should be a plus?) 
• Does he try to simplify complex problems into crisp sound-bite solutions?  (Perhaps we should we wary of any answers that sound too easy to be true?)
• Can the candidate set the context for innovation:  strong relationships, willingness to acknowledge disruptive information (to hear "bad news"), and the ability to ask smart questions?

And I have a follow on request. The editors at Harvard Business Review have suggested that I write an article for corporate leaders on practical approaches to making corporate life better for Gen X. I’m not asking for examples of how corporations have created undying loyalty or any utopian extreme – just constructive ways that organizations have made your work experience better.

Interestingly, as I read all your posts, I think only one out of the nearly 500 offered a comment along these lines (not that I’d posed the question in that first post). One of you said that your company used an assessment process designed to identify your personal strengths and match you with a job that would use those strengths – and that this process made the work experience significantly better.

I’m looking for this level of specific suggestion – programs, approaches, or other ways your corporate leaders have contributed to creating a positive work experience for those in Generation X. If you have an example to share, I’d be delighted to have you post it here, letting me know if you’d be willing to talk with me in further detail. My goal is to develop a dozen or so great case examples of companies that are doing things right.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I guess my assessment is that we collectively end up settling on names that don’t have a strong negative connotation (like the Me Generation or Slackers would) and we resist names that are too narrow – focusing on only one aspect of the generation. That’s why I suspect various other names for Gen Y haven’t really stuck. Millennials speaks to their births spanning the turn of the century; NetGen addresses their comfort with technology.

But, let’s agree that Generation Z would be just plain awful. We can do better. Please, let’s not use that for these poor kids.

Here’s my suggestion: The Re-Generation, or Re-Gens for short.

I think the Re-Generation has a number of appropriate associations:

Reality – This generation will come of age in a world that is grappling with some difficult, inconvenient truths. They will form a mental map based on a world with finite limits and no easy answers.

Realists – Theirs will be a generation of pragmatists, raised by their down-to-earth Gen X parents to consider trade-offs and long-term balance.

Restraint and Responsibility – Necessary postures for them to adopt

Renewable energy, Recycling, Reducing carbon emissions, and Resource limitations – Challenges they will face

Self-Reliance – Their X’er parents’ dominant trait, along with Resentment that older adults have been poor stewards of our world

Recession – Hopefully not something they’ll face throughout their formative years, but demographics alone make it likely that economic conditions over the next decade will be more conservative than the upbeat decades past

Rethink, Renew, and Regenerate – The challenges for this generation

What do you think? Will that name work?

For those of you with children in the under-13 age group, ask them how they’d feel about being part of the Re-Generation.

Many of the dominant traits of a generation are formed when its members are early teens – roughly ages 11 to 13. This is when children tend to shift their attention from figuring out how tangible objects work, to making sense of the events they see in the world around. This is when they wrestle with concepts and ideas, fit the pieces together and work out in their own minds what matters. What their overarching life goals might be. Where their own life priorities might lie.

Individuals who are 11 to 13 this year are seeing a world that I suspect looks substantively different to them than the world did to 11 to 13 year olds over the past fifteen or so years.

This year feels different. Our optimism is being doused with the cold water realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. The inconvenient truths of the past half century are settling around our shoulders, and the preteens of today are not unaware of these issues or their complexity. Today’s 11 to 13 years olds are forming a mental map based on a world with finite limits and no easy answers.

• Most 12 year olds are very aware that the polar ice caps are melting and the march of the penguins is slowing to a halt.
• They know why the family is vacationing in the backyard this year and understand that the high gas prices are related to diminishing global supply of a commodity that has, in many ways, become the ubiquitous lubricant of American society over the past seventy years, since our trek to the suburbs began in the 1940s.
• Many understand that other resources are limited, as well. Their geography lessons have given them a sense of the vital role water plays in politics and our future.
• Whatever they or their parents think about the war in Iraq and the Middle East in general, it’s likely that they have absorbed the complexity of the situation. I doubt they’ve heard anyone offering simple, quick solutions regardless of the direction in which one would prefer to head.
• It would have been almost impossible for them to escape the phrase “housing crisis,” even though few, I suspect, understand how such a disaster came to be. Home ownership, an icon of past generations’ goals, suddenly looks less worthy, now a risky proposition.
• And they have not missed the messages regarding layoffs and challenges to U.S. corporations. The Clydesdales are now owned by the Belgians?

Although they almost certainly don’t know this, demographics support a view of continued tough times ahead – the number of big spenders is decreasing. Boomers are moving out of peak spending years, replaced by a group that is both smaller and more conservative in their spending habits. The economic conditions over the next decade are likely to be more conservative than the upbeat decades past when Boomers where fully engaged in the accumulation of worldly possessions.

This new generation has been swaddled in reality. They’ve been weaned on reality TV – not the “we can do it” optimism of the Boomer’s Mickey Mouse Club, the perky interpretation of shifting family structures of the X’ers Facts of Life, or the Y’s glamorous escape into the unreality of 90210 – but the images of real people, like you and me, taking on big challenges – typically in pursuit of the new Great American Goal: $1 million.

Virtually all in this new generation are parented by X’ers – a generation renowned for self-reliance and self-sufficiency – rather than Boomers. A generation that, like the Boomers, is devoted to its children, but one, I suspect, as parents, often provides a more structured child rearing experience than many Boomers did and are less inclined to compete through their children.

The children of Generation X have undoubtedly absorbed to some degree their parents’ frustration with the economic hand they’ve been dealt – poor job markets when they began their careers, high housing prices when they bought their first homes – and their general disenfranchisement with many existing institutions.

Perhaps they’ve heard their parents’ growing resentment that Boomers have been poor stewards of our world – got us into wars we can’t win and failed to prepare us for the century we face: not providing an adequate educational foundation, making no significant investment in alternative energy, adopting a combative posture toward global partners, in an increasingly collaborative world. A desire to be less short-sighted and slow to react to the issues of limited resources I suspect will be an important priority for the new generation.

Being 11 to 13 in 2008, means you were born in 1995-1997. That, I suspect, will turn out to be the switch point – the cut off for Generation Y and the beginning of the new generation. This is will be a generation of Realists, of Pragmatists. Truth, Finite Limits, Conservation, Tradeoffs, Balance – these, I suspect will be themes of our newest generation.

For those of you with children in the under 13 age group, I invite you to listen to the impressions they’ve been forming. I’d love to have you share what you hear.

What is this new generation likely to be like? Let me ask you to imagine you had no previous impressions of the world – you had never before noticed what was going on around you – you were working from a clean slate. And, you looked up to observe the events of this year. How would this world look to you? What conclusions would you draw about what your life priorities should be?

Peter succinctly outlined the demographic issues that we were then facing: rapid shrinkage in both the numbers and proportion of young people in country after country around the world and the need for what Peter called “non-traditional” work relations: flexible schedules, contract arrangements, and virtual teams.

As a result, he believed that our corporate operating models were headed toward a radical redesign. The growing complexity of the workforce – the need to juggle a wide variety of individuals with diverse preferences and needs, and resultant dizzying array of relationships between businesses and those who perform work – drove Peter to predict that before long, line managers would turn over responsibility for long-term talent management to some type of central staff function. It would simply become too complicated, the arrangements too varied and difficult to track, and the entire process too time consuming for individual line managers to tackle.

In Peter’s vision:

• The workforce would be composed predominantly of knowledge workers in a diverse array of work arrangements – some part-time, some cyclical, some employees, some contract-based

• These people would not need “managers” in the traditional sense – they would manage themselves, but they would need a home base

• A staff function, perhaps an evolution of the then-human resources function, would serve as the “home base” for the corporation’s workforce – attracting, tracking, developing and orchestrating this complex talent corps. Like staffing managers in professional service firms or talent agencies in the film industry, this new talent management function would help connect the right people with the next challenging job.

• This staff function would be judged on its ability to supply the quality and quantity of ready talent to meet the business’ needs. To fulfill the role, the function would evolve toward “line-like” authority over the workforce.

Meanwhile, traditional line managers would evolve to roles more similar to program managers or film directors – setting direction and running the team of employees who have been assigned to the task or division at that moment in time.

Clearly we’re not quite there yet, but, as usual, Peter’s clear vision paints a picture of a world that is looking increasingly likely. Already a number of progressive companies are reassessing the HR operating models – in many cases, laying the ground work for a more active and creative role in talent management.

Where do you see the future responsibility for talent management residing in your firm? How has your capability for talent management evolved over the past several years?

Let’s talk some more about redesigning our organizations – “hacking” the enterprise. Here’s another fundamental assumption upon which our organizations are built that I think has got to go: weekends.

No, I’m not arguing that we should all work seven days a week. But I do think that the idea of a corporation telling us which days to work (and when to “rest”) is outdated.

The idea of a defined work week makes great sense if you’re performing synchronous tasks – activities in which everyone has to be there all together to get the work done. Clearly in an industrial economy, the idea that everyone needs to be there pretty much at the same time is key. You can’t run an assembly line if the guy responsible for tightening the bolts has decided to skip Friday and come in all alone on Saturday.

But how much of our work today, really, is synchronous?

Less and less. Yes, there certainly are a number of customer-facing roles for which you clearly have to be available when the customers are there. But an increasing proportion of the economy is comprised of work that is individually paced. We may confer with colleagues to get input, but for more and more of us, a colleague’s decision to take the day off will have little direct affect on our immediate productivity.

There is of course one big synchronous activity in which most of us invest a fair amount of time – meetings. Secretly, I suspect many meetings are held largely because we are all in there – what else did we all drive in for? It feels silly just to peer at each other over our cubicles – probably we better get together. It seems like the right thing to do. But is a synchronous meeting really essential to the work at hand?

Best Buy, with their shift from a time-based to a task-based management approach, soon found many meetings being canceled. People were concluding that it wasn’t really necessary to get together physically – at least not nearly as often – to get the work done.

And the Gen Y’s I interview who have been in corporations for a year or so, almost universally, comment on how inefficient they find current corporate habits to be. Why do people wait to share ideas or get input until they can physically assemble, when it’s now possible to use social networking tools to gather input quickly – and asynchronously? Why do we spend much of our synchronous time together simply updating each other on our activities when any 20-year-old on Facebook can tell you how much easier and faster it is to do this with Web 2.0 tools?

From a purely pragmatic perspective, as the costs of commuting rise, it makes sense for many individuals to travel to a common physical place only sparingly. For some, it may be worth skipping the log-jam of the Monday morning commute. Over the last month, a number of organizations have instituted a four-day work week to reduce commuting costs for employees. That’s a great step – but why not allow the individuals to determine how much time is optimum to spend in the office?

I’d like to see companies re-think the idea of a pre-set “week day” and a “weekend” and look instead at which jobs actually need synchronous activity with what frequency. If the job doesn’t require it, why not let the worker decide his or her own schedule?

Has your company begun to move away from synchronous schedules? How is it working? What do you think? How can we best re-think this aspect of our organizations?

Really?

Let’s explore this thought: who got the trophies?

Oh, I hear you – the kids, of course. They got trophies just for tenth place, for participation – heck, even for just showing up.

Okay, let me ask again: who got the trophies? Who desperately wanted the trophies? Who purchased the trophies to hand them out to all his or her friends – oops, that is, friends’ children?

I think the major movers behind the great trophy scam were the parents. Boomer parents.

As I’ve said before, Boomers love to win. I sometimes think you could put a bow around just about anything and give it to a Boomer as a prize, and they’ll be pleased. (Okay, let me come clean: I’ll be pleased – I’m a Boomer, too. Prizes are very high on my “these are a few of my favorite things” list.)

There are very logical reasons for Boomers to love winning. When we were teenagers, we discovered there were too few seats in the school – many of us were sent outside to attend class in trailers behind the building. There were too few sports teams for us all to play; too few college admission letters. The infrastructure was too small for the size of our cohort as we squeezed through the key hole into life.

There was only one logical conclusion for Boomers to draw – if life is a never-ending game of musical chairs, you better play to win. And, we have.

We have continued to play the game with our kids as checkers on the game board. We love it when they win – it’s like we’ve won, too! We put those cheap plastic trophies on our living room shelves and the “I’m Proud of My ‘A’ Student” bumper stickers on our cars. We enjoy every moment of our children’s success. There’s nothing wrong with that in my book.

But I do object when analysts use our slightly nutty behavior to interpret the strengths and weaknesses of today’s young employees. Just because they accepted the trophies we shoved in their hands does not mean that they are puddles of insecurity today, in constant search of the boss’ praise. I read an article recently about a company that is teaching managers how to hand out little snippets of praise on a continuous basis to keep the trophy generation fortified. Frankly, I think that is ridiculous.

Today’s young employees do want attention – they want constructive, insightful input that signals that you’ve noticed what they’re doing and given some thought to how they might do it better. They want to learn, to be mentored. (Don’t we all?) Yes, they expect to receive this type of input with greater frequency than many of us would have, but that’s very different from implying that it has to be nothing but sweet nothings.

I really don’t remember the kids asking for all those trophies. But I sure remember the look of pleasure on my friends’ faces when they (ah, their child) got one.