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Market Opportunity: Gen Y Coaching?

By crooky | August 11, 2008

I just came out of a meeting with some colleagues this morning where we had a deep discussion about “what’s wrong with Generation Y”. We’re doing a project right now for the University of British Columbia who wants to develop a new program that targets recent (within 5 years) graduates of environmental engineering/geological engineering type programs. The issue of “the Generation Y” problem came up.

This was an awkward discussion for me to have because my two co-workers are at least 15 years older than me and probably in the early Gen Xer generation/late Baby Boomer generation. As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, I’m 30 years old so any discussion panning “anyone under 30″ makes me very uncomfortable.

Here’s the gist of why my co-workers think Generation Y is “difficult”:

1. They believe that Generation Y has a “self entitlement” problem.
2. They believe that Generation Y needs “too much reassurance” and that they don’t perform well after getting negative feedback.
3. They believe that Generation Y doesn’t know how to do problem solving and are not self-sufficient.

They also told me that HR managers at one of the Big Five accounting firms has been coaching Baby Boomer managers on how to “deal with” Generation Y employees. Their take on the situation?

“This is [the babyboomers] fault. These employees are the same generation as your children. You, as a cohort of parents have turned them into the kind of problem employees you’re complaining about now.”

To me, this isn’t a contructive way to approach this issue. How does saying “it’s your fault” enable managers to work more effectively with this generation if it’s true that they are as difficult to work with as some people imply?

What I see is a market opportunity. It’s possible that people in my age range (early 30s) can act as a bridge between early Gen Xers and late Babyboomers who are complaining about Gen Yers. I’m not in Gen Y but I understand a lot of the cultural reference points, the economic reality that these young people have grown up in.

People my age have also been around the block a few times and understand the operational realities of running a company or government organization. If I was an older manager and I had employees that were acting like overgrown children, I’d be concerned too. However, I don’t believe that the problem is that simple. If it was, you just fire these guys a few times - teach them some hard life lessons. They’ll grow up fast.

I think the problem is a lot more complicated than that. I want to explore this problem in the future. If you see a market opportunity as well, feel free to get in touch with me and we can talk about how this opportunity might turn into a commercial opportunity.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for over ten years.

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Topics: Business of Consulting, social issues |

One Response to “Market Opportunity: Gen Y Coaching?”

  1. Jeff Says:
    August 12th, 2008 at 9:30 am

    I just got done reading your post regarding Generation Y. My company has written a book on such a topic that I think you might find interesting. Its WAVES for Teenage Workforce Success. How to motivate, educate, retain and recruit todays teens. Please check it out.

    Thanks and best of luck,

    Jeff.

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