Everyone Thinks They Are First

A few years ago on a trip to Vietnam, a friend took me to a concert by the Vietnamese National Symphony Orchestra, accompanying a Japanese pianist in a program of American jazz at the Hanoi Opera House.

That’s creative globalization at its finest.

One of the fun things about that was that the pianist was 70 years old this week, which means he has been playing American jazz for a long, long time. Much longer than any Gen X’ers or Millennials have been alive.

I think that is significant because I often get the feeling that people think creative globalization (or global creativity — whatever, it just means creativity that ignores borders) is a new thing. It’s not. Creatives, perhaps more than most people, have been ignoring borders as long as the means to cross them — whether physically or electronically — have existed. It is not something that was just invented by today’s twenty-somethings.

And that, I think, is a useful example to keep in mind.

In a number of conversations with different groups over the last few weeks, I have been asked the question “How can we lead Millennials? They’re so different from earlier generations.” Yeah, they sure seem to be. But they are not as unique as you might think. They did not come up with a lot of the ideas in use today, they just came up with new means of expressing them. They did not come up with most of the technologies at work today, they just use them differently. And yeah, they are different from the preceding generation…but so is EVERY generation.

There’s a persistent attitude that leadership and management are harder because Millennials are in the workplace now with Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers. But the differences between Gen X’ers and Boomers (and for that matter, between Bookers and the World War 2 generation) are just as sharp. Millennials grew up with cell phones, I grew up with push button phones, Boomers grew up with rotary dial phones, and WW2G often grew up without a phone at all. Millennials see the emergence of a creative economy, I saw the growth of the knowledge economy, Boomers saw the evolution of the industrial economy, WW2G saw the decline of an agrarian economy (at least, in the US and many other Western countries). We have all had different experiences, we all have different ways of expressing ideas (ideas which often have a common foundation), we all have different expectations, and we all think we are the first ones to be unique.

So perhaps, instead of starting from scratch when it comes to leading Millennials, we should instead go back and read the lessons about incorporating Gen X’ers into the workplace during the economic roller coaster of the 1980s, or the things we learned as the Boomers came into the working world during the politically turbulent 1960s. I am betting those lessons are still relevant today, but we have to study them for them to do us any good.

This is, I think, particularly relevant for Creatives, because the creative fields are largely populated with Millennials, but at the end of the day, we often end up with multigenerational workplaces no matter what field we are in. Leading such a workforce is not about catering to the needs and expectations of any one particular cohort; rather, it is about understanding ALL those cohorts and what they offer, as well as what they need in order to reach their full potential.

You think you’re the first generation to be different? I am betting their were some teenaged Hittites who thought the same thing.