Bootstrap Leadership Blog

There was a great article in the Harvard Business Review recently on millennials (people born between 1977 and 1997) and what they want from an employer and a manager.  In 2014, millennials will account for almost 50% of all employees in the world.  Think about that for a minute… pretty amazing, huh?   As the HBR article pointed out, in some companies they already constitute a majority.  As a people manager, are you ready for this wave?

Millennials are famous for wanting a constant stream of feedback, and for being in a hurry to have success.  They also view work as just a part of life, something to be balanced with the rest of their passions.  As a result, they place a lot of value on finding work that is fulfilling.  HBR polled 2,200 professionals across a wide range of industries to ask them about their values, their behavior at work, and what they want from their employers.  Here are some of the results:

What millennials want from their boss:   

•  Help me navigate my career path
•  Give me straight feedback
•  Mentor and coach me
•  Sponsor me for formal development programs
•  Be comfortable with flexible schedules

 What millennials want from their company: 

•  Develop my skills for the future
•  Demonstrate strong corporate values
•  Offer customizable options in my benefits/reward package
•  Allow me to blend work w/ the rest of my life
•  Offer a clear career path

 What millennials most want to learn: 

•  Technical skills in their area of expertise
•  Self-management and personal productivity
•  Leadership skills
•  Industry or functional knowledge
•  Creativity and innovation strategies

What do you make of these lists?  I think the first two look a bit different than they probably did 30 years ago… but that last one seems pretty timeless.  Maybe managing millennials isn’t that hard after all… I’m guessing the classic management tips still apply:     1) Get to know your people – find out what really motivates them; 2) provide lots of candid feedback about their performance; 3) challenge and stretch them; 4) engage them in the process – ask for their input, and 5) help them get exposure across the organization.

If you’re managing millennials, I’d love to hear from you – what’s it like?  Are you finding these survey results to be true?  Are they easier or more challenging to manage than other employees?  Pretty soon, millennials will be the workforce.  I wonder what that will mean for employers, and for the millennials themselves, when they become management?

Here’s some recent data on the concept of women leaving (and returning to) the workforce.  In the June edition of the Harvard Business Review, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Laura Sherbin and Diana Forster conducted a survey in 2009 using the same questionnaire they used in 2004 to examine the choices women make about their career paths.  Interestingly, the results of the two surveys were quite similar, despite one of the worst recessions in recent memory.

In 2004, in a robust economy, 37% of highly qualified (top performing) women said they were “offramping” – voluntarily leaving their jobs for extended time periods.  In 2009, the researchers found that, for the most part, off-ramps and on-ramps are here to stay; 31% said they had taken an off-ramp, and for those who did, they’re staying out of work longer – up to six months longer. 

In the 2009 survey, the researchers found that, of the 31% of women who had off-ramped, 40% re-entered the workforce in full-time jobs, 23% came back for part-time roles, and 7% became self-employed.  Perhaps most interesting, 30% had not returned at all to the workforce. 

The authors hypothesize that the nonlinear path is not a luxury for boom times, but the way many women want to structure their careers, regardless of the economy.  All of which left me wondering what these results might look like in another 5 years… of the choices, I’d bet on the self-employed number going higher and higher.  What do you think?

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but performance management is getting a second (or third or fourth) look these days.  Without question one of the most controversial organizational processes of the last 50 years, performance management is getting some interesting recent publicity.  What started as a way to differentiate performance for the purposes of applying compensation morphed into a sort of “feedbackapolooza” with the advent of competency ratings and the balance of “what” and “how” (results and behaviors).  This was received as mostly good news in the Human Resources arena, as it helped us reward and recognize teamwork and civil obedience among the workforce.   

Personally, I’m a fan of the equally weighted “what” and “how” model, but now it looks like the pendulum might be swinging back a bit.  In last week’s Wall Street Journal, I read about a recent Hewitt Associates study that found 11% of manager’s and 10% of other employees’ performance reviews were being based ONLY on results (using objective measures).  These numbers were up from 7% and 8% respectively in 2005.  The survey further stated that 33% of all executive’s ratings were derived solely from results, which is up from 20% in the 2005 survey.  OK, so these might feel like small moves, but they do represent a bit of a trend. 

Two new books are also finding their way into the performance management discussion.  The first is called One Page Talent Management (Effron and Ort, 2010) which presents a case for framing the behaviors any employee is being held accountable for as an actual goal – one that can be measured in terms of progress toward completion, just like results objectives (however subjective this assessment might be).  In other words, we might not rate every employee on the same set of 7-8 behaviors, but rather set up unique behavioral elements of the performance appraisal that fit each person’s specific development plan (determined during the goal setting process).  In a sense, this probably tips the scale a little bit back to results, as it seems reasonable to include only 1-2 of these “how” development efforts per year, whereas you might have 3-4 “what” goals.  An interesting approach to be sure (btw, this is a terrific book with lots of solid ideas).   

The second book is Get Rid of the Performance Review! (Culbert and Rout, 2010) and it has a simple premise that really pushes the envelope – it calls for the unequivocal end to performance reviews as we know them.  Culbert, a UCLA management professor, teams up with Wall Street Journal senior editor Lawrence Rout to tell us why performance reviews are bogus and how they undermine both creativity and productivity.  Culbert and Rout do offer an alternative - the performance preview, which is designed to hold people accountable for their actions and their results and give managers and their employees the kind of feedback they need to improve their skills.  It’s especially intriguing as a tool for teams.

One of the cool things about working in leadership development is watching the macro trends within HR.    I feel the sands shifting with performance management and the performance review process… it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if we see a movement back toward a results focus, or away from annual reviews entirely. 

This is one I’d like to here from you on – what’s your company doing with performance management, and do you have any innovative ideas?  Or what do you think of the premise of doing away with it altogether?