Well, more time, anyway.

 1. That modern democracy is the best way to govern.
Yes, it works, more or less; but is it the best design for effective decision-making? On the plus side it gives voters a sense of engagement with “government” and, if enough people are involved in the process, quells unrest to a large degree. But increasingly it appears to favour popularity and polling over substance and intellect. In some ways modern democracy works by seeking out the lowest common denominator rather than the best set of solutions. And if the popular vote rests in the wrong hands at the wrong time it can lead to poor decision making that is hard to unravel. And this seeming dive to the depths is exacerbated by the ease with which our connected society can now communicate, allowing an easily embraced and marketed notion, irrespective of substance or even veracity, to be repeated endlessly until it becomes “substantial” and majority-believed. Whereas less marketable, more complicated ideas fail to get across to the masses. (Look at the anthropogenic climate change debate!) Thus you end up with more support for the weaker, less effective notion rather than the stronger, more complete or complex one.

 2. That Generations theory works.
Whilst demographics include the study of real and measurable cohorts of people, for example swelling birth numbers in a generation or two being labelled a “baby boom”; how substantial are the other labels we throw around with such ease? We have ‘Generation X’ largely because it is the demographic that comes on the tail end of the post-war ‘baby boom’, which is fair enough as a door-stop if you like. And after that a slew of labels that are tied not to changing birth numbers, wars, or clear, widely accepted changes in behaviour but, rather, sheer marketing convenience. Does it really matter what consumer goods were on the market when you were born, or whether you get driven to soccer practice by your mum every week? Does that overcome good schooling and parenting or even our inherited genetic material? The names are as fanciful as their statistical validity, which is often as profound as astrology, or perhaps even less so. Gen Y, Gen Why? Gen Next? And the point of these labels is to… simply label people, for marketing convenience. Haven’t we gotten over that yet?

 3. That Religion and spirituality is an alternative to science.
 Although people like to blur the lines sometimes, in truth science is open-ended and transparently mutable – that is to say that it’s open to question and can readily change. Whereas spirituality and associated beliefs survive uncontestably outside of logic and reason and are based on accepted “truths”. Which is not to say that religion and sprituality in general are “bad”, of course, nor that science is “good”. There is a place for each in our lives. They are just different things. New scientific “facts” arise from contestable theory and are open to intelligent, educated critique. Which is surely good. And, yes, religious beliefs can change, too, but the key thing about faith – or belief – is that you accept them. They are not presented as a “theory”. To question or deny them goes against the grain, at least for most people, most of the time. So why do so many religions see the need to fight or argue against science? Is it because they feel threatened by truths that conflict with their own unsupportable ideas? In which case the logical approach would be to accept the current science as the best truth we have and review instead the conflicted areas of your own beliefs, rather than rail against the science alone. Which, admittedly, sometimes – though too rarely – is the case.

 4. Progress is speed, speed is progress.
We must always be moving forward – and to so we need faster cars, faster trains and faster planes. In essence, to slow down is to fight against progress. Why is it so? Why is speed the major determinant of ‘progress’ in so many minds? Surely less waste, more efficiency and a better overall environment matters more than velocity alone? It’s a narrowly focused mind that solely wants to speed things up, a mind that overlooks the whole picture. Discuss.

  5. The Good Old Days, or today’s ‘nanny state’.
It was always better ‘back then’, and in some specific cases maybe it was. Usually it was riskier, less restricted, more “free” and unobserved, at least in some people’s minds. Often this is tied to criticism of the “nanny state”, an idea that has some validity, perhaps, but has become both a cliche and a lazy label. In truth the past is riddled with avoidable injury, unfairness, distress, pain and disease. What we have now may be more cosseting and less risky but it’s a calculated trade off as well, a deal where we get a better, safer life and lose some of our riskier behaviours. We have certainly tended towards overprotection and over-evaluated some risks, especially with regard to our children, but we have also measurably reduced needless injury and death. If the trade-off needs adjustment, do so. But don’t just label everything you disagree with as part of the ‘nanny state’. Take personal responsibility instead and live your life on the edge, or as close as you wish. See what happens. And don’t neglect your medical insurance!

6. Consumerism and materialism.
Need I explain? Consumerism is great at driving economic benefit but it also drives waste and inefficiency. You’d imagine the opposite would be true, that it would drive efficiency and effectiveness too, except that we fail to account for what economists call “externalities”: those things that are affected by or are generated as a result of our activity. Like waste, pollution, loss of habitat and species diversity. And so on. We not only hide these things and fail to price them into our products and activities, we distort the market by actually subsidising wasteful practices. Every government does it. Especially democracies, where the popular vote, money and marketing speaks loudest.

7. Vested interests and entrenched power.
Oh yes, the popular vote, money and marketing at work – again. This is really coming back to “modern democracy”, where the loudest, most cashed-up voices often prevail. You’d hope that democracy would’ve toppled the old dictators, but no, they have simply adapted. Simple ideas gain support over the more complex, harder to explain ones. Like anthropogenic climate change is buried under the shouting of coal miners and other vested interests. And cashed-up voices with a personal stake in the argument can use their resources to shout down the common good. Like running TV ads against a resources tax. Not everyome can do that, only the rich, and usually those with, yes, vested interests. You know who you are.

8. Self-interest vs the community interest.
Ditto. It’s a battle that has been going on forever. You own a waterfront property that is affected by climate change, of course it’s going to affect your personal wealth at some point. It’s a trade off, like living on the edge of a cliff. ‘Great view, pity about the erosion.’ Your local council has a duty to the greater community to prepare for inundation and erosion and take action to alert the public by appropriate land zoning or other regulation. So do you fight against your probable loss of property value or accept that it’s unfair to sustain your wealth at the expense of a future buyer who will have to bear the future loss? That’s just one example, of course, but it illustrates the concept.

9. Persuasion, opinion and fact.
If there’s one thing I’m confident of, it’s that I’ve made mistakes. More likely than not I’ve made mistakes of fact, logic or judgement today, right here on this virtual page. I can only do what I can do and be authentic to myself in doing so. It’s what I am thinking right now, translated into words; nothing more, nothing less. I’m equally certain that everyone makes mistakes, sometimes serious ones, more likely or more commonly less so. Now if I were a confident or persuasive person I’d probably tout my views publicly and push them out to other people. And in some ways I am and I’m doing exactly that, right here. But in other ways I’m not promoting or marketing these ideas much at all. I’m just making them available. The alternative is to do speaking tours, get on the radio or TV, write and promote a book or join an organisation that pushes a set of ideas, like religious zealots or professional politicians may do. It’s important to reflect upon their intentions, to ask whether they are being authentic to their own beliefs, and to recognise that they may be using tricks of the trade – or their wealth or power – to amplify their opinion over others. And to remember that everyone makes mistakes.

10. List-making and list-makers.
Don’t you hate ‘em?

It really should be put to rest, this idea that the younger you are the more adaptable, motivated and interested you are in today’s technology. It’s assumed that new tech uptake is aligned (magically) with your label: ie Baby boomers vs Gen X or Y or even Next; when these are really just vaguely useful pop culture demographic labels with little or no correlation with anything, other than age and raw number.

Take this for example: Radwanick concluded that current assumptions about who might use a technology first might need to be reconsidered. “Not only teenagers and college students can be counted among the technologically inclined,” she said. “With those age 25 and older representing a much bigger segment of the population than the under 25 crowd, it might help explain why Twitter has expanded its reach so broadly so quickly over the past few months.”

Rather than assume that the young will drive new tech uptake, look instead at the real drivers (and/or impediments to uptake) like access, need, wealth, depth of responsibilities and available time. These things can occur at almost any age, and to varying degrees – but we can generalise a bit about who typically has a need for a short-message, quick contact microblogging service; who has the time, or lack of time to use it; and who has the connectivity and hardware platforms to make it happen. And who’s mature enough to appreciate it, too.

Quick and dirty assumptions don’t always stack up.

It really should be put to rest, this idea that the younger you are the more adaptable, motivated and interested you are in today’s technology. It’s assumed that new tech uptake is aligned (magically) with your label: ie Baby boomers vs Gen X or Y or even Next; when these are really just vaguely useful pop culture demographic labels with little or no correlation with anything, other than age and raw number.

Take this for example: Radwanick concluded that current assumptions about who might use a technology first might need to be reconsidered. “Not only teenagers and college students can be counted among the technologically inclined,” she said. “With those age 25 and older representing a much bigger segment of the population than the under 25 crowd, it might help explain why Twitter has expanded its reach so broadly so quickly over the past few months.”

Rather than assume that the young will drive new tech uptake, look instead at the real drivers (and/or impediments to uptake) like access, need, wealth, depth of responsibilities and available time. These things can occur at almost any age, and to varying degrees – but we can generalise a bit about who typically has a need for a short-message, quick contact microblogging service; who has the time, or lack of time to use it; and who has the connectivity and hardware platforms to make it happen. And who’s mature enough to appreciate it, too.

Quick and dirty assumptions don’t always stack up.

If you want to believe in something as trivial as the difference in managing “gen Xers” and “gen “Yers”, go right ahead, but don’t foist it on everyone else just because you can. Yes, every person is born into a very slightly different world with a marginally different set of circumstances, and yes you can make broad generalisations about people based on what technologies have been popularised in their childhoods or the mean wealth their families may have accrued. You may even believe in the “soccer mum” theory that has supposedly led to a generation of high-expectation children. But as I keep pointing out, relentlessly, the demographics of many, many countries was massively distorted in a very real way by 2 successive ‘world wars’. Now war robs us of young men in particular and creates (hopefully) temporary deprivation and profound uncertainty. These world wars (and the Great Depression for that matter) were not trivial, they reshaped nations and cruelly influenced succeeding generations in many profound ways. The so-called Baby Boomers were identified as the generational change that came after those events, and was measured as a surge in babies born immediately after WWII. I have no argument about that obvious, real and characteristic demographic bump, and I further accept that analysis has revealed correlations with many societal changes in attitudes and behaviours that can reasonably be attributed to that post-war “generation” and its circumstances.

But the increasing trivialisation of “generations” based on increasingly weak correlations (or pure assertion) is stretching belief too far. To imagine that the computer, the mobile phone and the “soccer mum” is a driver of social conditioning comparable to a world war is frankly, quite silly.

OK, everything has an influence and we are a product of our environment as well as our genetics and social circumstances. Yes, the technologies that we use in our daily lives influence how we live, interact and behave. But to assert that we should manage people “differently” because they are labelled “Gen X” or “Gen Y” is making some gross – and to my mind pretty shallow – assumptions about them as individuals. In fact we should manage people as individuals and drop our preconceptions before opening our mouths.     

If you want to believe in something as trivial as the difference in managing “gen Xers” and “gen “Yers”, go right ahead, but don’t foist it on everyone else just because you can. Yes, every person is born into a very slightly different world with a marginally different set of circumstances, and yes you can make broad generalisations about people based on what technologies have been popularised in their childhoods or the mean wealth their families may have accrued. You may even believe in the “soccer mum” theory that has supposedly led to a generation of high-expectation children. But as I keep pointing out, relentlessly, the demographics of many, many countries was massively distorted in a very real way by 2 successive ‘world wars’. Now war robs us of young men in particular and creates (hopefully) temporary deprivation and profound uncertainty. These world wars (and the Great Depression for that matter) were not trivial, they reshaped nations and cruelly influenced succeeding generations in many profound ways. The so-called Baby Boomers were identified as the generational change that came after those events, and was measured as a surge in babies born immediately after WWII. I have no argument about that obvious, real and characteristic demographic bump, and I further accept that analysis has revealed correlations with many societal changes in attitudes and behaviours that can reasonably be attributed to that post-war “generation” and its circumstances.

But the increasing trivialisation of “generations” based on increasingly weak correlations (or pure assertion) is stretching belief too far. To imagine that the computer, the mobile phone and the “soccer mum” is a driver of social conditioning comparable to a world war is frankly, quite silly.

OK, everything has an influence and we are a product of our environment as well as our genetics and social circumstances. Yes, the technologies that we use in our daily lives influence how we live, interact and behave. But to assert that we should manage people “differently” because they are labelled “Gen X” or “Gen Y” is making some gross – and to my mind pretty shallow – assumptions about them as individuals. In fact we should manage people as individuals and drop our preconceptions before opening our mouths.     

Had enough of mindless Millennial drivel? Too late, I’ve got more… and the bottom line is that “we”, the non-Millennials, “should” know and identify these Millennials, and somehow expect them to be different from other humans. And of course they somehow deserve ‘different’ treatment because of that. Heck, they may not even be human!

So take a read of this, from BNET: “The teens entering college over the next few weeks were probably born around 1990. Here are five observations that jumped out at me from the “mindset list”:

1. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available
2. They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib
3. Caller ID has always been available on phones
4. Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born
5. Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

According to Benoit, ‘The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are ‘wired’ and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.’”

OK there’s good stuff here. The ever-decreasing size of Western ‘family units’ will show up in a larger proportion of kids who have never shared a room with a sibling. It may shape some attitudes about sharing, although I have seen no research on that. And there are also more blended families, so what does that mean with regard to attitudes? And although they may be living somewhat different lives from people born 10, 20 or 50 years ago, what evidence is there that it actually makes a difference?

As for the rest of it, whether you are familiar with computers, cell phones and whatnot all of your life or whether you have adapted to it as it has evolved is of little concern, surely? We all live in the same world and have embraced gizmos to greater or lesser extents, irrespective of age. Yes, to be older (on average) affects our uptake of new stuff. So does relative wealth, culture and religion, amongst many other things. It’s a continuum, a sliding scale of influence and uptake – not the black and white of the dime-store demographers. Plenty of Millennials actually don’t care for the latest and greatest stuff, and plenty of so-called Boomers do. 

Now we can try to analyse it to death, but people are people, and should not be labelled just for the heck of it. But humans love to label, and having labelled them we should not try to second-guess how we should treat them, or ascribe values based on untested theory. It’s so easy to say that young people ‘these days’ prefer part time work, shifting careers and lower levels of loyalty when we have brought them into a world that has created exactly that environment. There are fewer full-time jobs, more service-oriented jobs and entirely new careers that didn’t exist even 5 years ago.

On the one hand we say ‘they want this stuff’ but on the other we didn’t give them a choice - it’s how it is!     

Had enough of mindless Millennial drivel? Too late, I’ve got more… and the bottom line is that “we”, the non-Millennials, “should” know and identify these Millennials, and somehow expect them to be different from other humans. And of course they somehow deserve ‘different’ treatment because of that. Heck, they may not even be human!

So take a read of this, from BNET: “The teens entering college over the next few weeks were probably born around 1990. Here are five observations that jumped out at me from the “mindset list”:

1. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available
2. They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib
3. Caller ID has always been available on phones
4. Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born
5. Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

According to Benoit, ‘The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are ‘wired’ and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.’”

OK there’s good stuff here. The ever-decreasing size of Western ‘family units’ will show up in a larger proportion of kids who have never shared a room with a sibling. It may shape some attitudes about sharing, although I have seen no research on that. And there are also more blended families, so what does that mean with regard to attitudes? And although they may be living somewhat different lives from people born 10, 20 or 50 years ago, what evidence is there that it actually makes a difference?

As for the rest of it, whether you are familiar with computers, cell phones and whatnot all of your life or whether you have adapted to it as it has evolved is of little concern, surely? We all live in the same world and have embraced gizmos to greater or lesser extents, irrespective of age. Yes, to be older (on average) affects our uptake of new stuff. So does relative wealth, culture and religion, amongst many other things. It’s a continuum, a sliding scale of influence and uptake – not the black and white of the dime-store demographers. Plenty of Millennials actually don’t care for the latest and greatest stuff, and plenty of so-called Boomers do. 

Now we can try to analyse it to death, but people are people, and should not be labelled just for the heck of it. But humans love to label, and having labelled them we should not try to second-guess how we should treat them, or ascribe values based on untested theory. It’s so easy to say that young people ‘these days’ prefer part time work, shifting careers and lower levels of loyalty when we have brought them into a world that has created exactly that environment. There are fewer full-time jobs, more service-oriented jobs and entirely new careers that didn’t exist even 5 years ago.

On the one hand we say ‘they want this stuff’ but on the other we didn’t give them a choice - it’s how it is!     

Are we really so stupid as to put up with this sort of weak, sloppy analysis? (And I mean on BNET’s behalf here – c’mon, please don’t just repeat what’s told to you, actually do some work here!) 

From BNET: Lack of authority and an inability to see where their contribution fits into the big picture is leaving Generation Y, or Millennials, disengaged and disenchanted with work, according to a report by BlessingWhite.

What’s wrong with that statement? Well, first up, what is BlessingWhite and what axe do they have to grind? Unsurprisingly we find that they are “engagement” specialists, ie people who make money out of advising others how to “re-engage” and “re-align” a disenchanted workforce. So they are hardly likely to want to report a solid “engagement” situation, are they? (Not that I’d suggest they would distort the figures, but they may unconsciously ask the wrong questions of the wrong people, or simply leave out the good stuff.) 

Secondly, where is this report, how was the research conducted and how valid are the results? Well if you click on the link and look at the free summary reports (as against the $500 ‘full analysis’) they do tell us that it was an online survey of employees (invited by email and broken up by the usual demographics)  backed up by manager interviews. BNET doesn’t look into it, but one wonders (doesn’t one?) what the (multiple choice) questions were and how the invite-only email addresses were obtained (randomly, or from prior interest shown in surveys?). Of course such surveys are only as good as the final sample size and distribution, and the questions posed; and only as accurate or truthful as the respondents care to be. Which is to say they probably mean little but look fabulously interesting when graphed.

One interesting takeaway from these reports was that the HR industry in North America was the most engaged of all – doesn’t that suggest something? Either the HR industry is the most adept at engagement – what they’d suggest, I wager – or simply the best (or most “aligned”) at answering “HR”-style surveys.  Groan.  

Anyway, to get back to BNET – it all revolves around generational labelling again. Like, somehow, it matters. Well it’s interesting to label things – or in this case people – but what does it mean? Millennials or Gen Y are somehow, surprise surprise, the least engaged and empowered, the Boomers the most. Heck, guys, this isn’t because of their birthdays – this is because Boomers have grown up, have had their kids, settled their affairs, saved some cash, travelled, gotten used to life and probably found their way into an “empowered” and respected role in their working lives. Whereas young adults are just starting their journey. Where you happy about starting at the bottom when you started out? Where you more likely to look around and try different things when you had no kids and no responsibilities except to enjoy your youth? Of course you feel less empowered doing “assigned” or “donkey” work – when you get into senior management and settle down a bit you may be a bit happier about it, eh?

Let’s face it – just thinking of Western democracies now – we had 2 massive World Wars in a row that seriously distorted our demographics – robbed us of our sons, if you like. The generation after that was a release from fear and war and an opportunity to rebuild populations. Early ‘boomers’ really had to face some changes, some deprivations, and built some real prosperity out of it. That was a real thing, and those that came later lived off that prosperity and rapid post-war change. And whilst the aftershocks matter, that’s all they are. To dream up correlations with “engagement”, “technology” and “soccer moms” just for the sake of it, and to apply these funky X, Y and Z labels simply because we once had a real demographic post-War bubble… is just a convenience for the researchers, the marketers and the booksellers.

Get over it. 

Are we really so stupid as to put up with this sort of weak, sloppy analysis? (And I mean on BNET’s behalf here – c’mon, please don’t just repeat what’s told to you, actually do some work here!) 

From BNET: Lack of authority and an inability to see where their contribution fits into the big picture is leaving Generation Y, or Millennials, disengaged and disenchanted with work, according to a report by BlessingWhite.

What’s wrong with that statement? Well, first up, what is BlessingWhite and what axe do they have to grind? Unsurprisingly we find that they are “engagement” specialists, ie people who make money out of advising others how to “re-engage” and “re-align” a disenchanted workforce. So they are hardly likely to want to report a solid “engagement” situation, are they? (Not that I’d suggest they would distort the figures, but they may unconsciously ask the wrong questions of the wrong people, or simply leave out the good stuff.) 

Secondly, where is this report, how was the research conducted and how valid are the results? Well if you click on the link and look at the free summary reports (as against the $500 ‘full analysis’) they do tell us that it was an online survey of employees (invited by email and broken up by the usual demographics)  backed up by manager interviews. BNET doesn’t look into it, but one wonders (doesn’t one?) what the (multiple choice) questions were and how the invite-only email addresses were obtained (randomly, or from prior interest shown in surveys?). Of course such surveys are only as good as the final sample size and distribution, and the questions posed; and only as accurate or truthful as the respondents care to be. Which is to say they probably mean little but look fabulously interesting when graphed.

One interesting takeaway from these reports was that the HR industry in North America was the most engaged of all – doesn’t that suggest something? Either the HR industry is the most adept at engagement – what they’d suggest, I wager – or simply the best (or most “aligned”) at answering “HR”-style surveys.  Groan.  

Anyway, to get back to BNET – it all revolves around generational labelling again. Like, somehow, it matters. Well it’s interesting to label things – or in this case people – but what does it mean? Millennials or Gen Y are somehow, surprise surprise, the least engaged and empowered, the Boomers the most. Heck, guys, this isn’t because of their birthdays – this is because Boomers have grown up, have had their kids, settled their affairs, saved some cash, travelled, gotten used to life and probably found their way into an “empowered” and respected role in their working lives. Whereas young adults are just starting their journey. Where you happy about starting at the bottom when you started out? Where you more likely to look around and try different things when you had no kids and no responsibilities except to enjoy your youth? Of course you feel less empowered doing “assigned” or “donkey” work – when you get into senior management and settle down a bit you may be a bit happier about it, eh?

Let’s face it – just thinking of Western democracies now – we had 2 massive World Wars in a row that seriously distorted our demographics – robbed us of our sons, if you like. The generation after that was a release from fear and war and an opportunity to rebuild populations. Early ‘boomers’ really had to face some changes, some deprivations, and built some real prosperity out of it. That was a real thing, and those that came later lived off that prosperity and rapid post-war change. And whilst the aftershocks matter, that’s all they are. To dream up correlations with “engagement”, “technology” and “soccer moms” just for the sake of it, and to apply these funky X, Y and Z labels simply because we once had a real demographic post-War bubble… is just a convenience for the researchers, the marketers and the booksellers.

Get over it.