Advice on Managing Gen Y. Please give me a break..

In the interest of full disclosure, I am somewhere between Boomers and Y, generally in the X era, where we loved grunge, coffee, made mix tapes and spent most of our lives listening to people say how our generation wouldn’t amount to much. 

Now I find myself in management, watching this whole generational relationship thing play out.   I have been stewing on this post for quite some time because it frustrates me.  There is a whole cottage industry who I assume make a good deal of money professing to know the best way to “manage” the generations.  Here is a Business Week article:

article link http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2008/sb2008122_338569.htm

The author puts forth some tips such as “Don’t give just one way to solve a problem” and “Gen Y thinks physical meetings are ineffective”.

I don’t want to discount any of the hard work that has been put into researching whether listening to Britney Spears changes employees’ view of upper management, but there is NO secret sauce.  Every time I read something about the best way to handle this generation or that generation, I always go back to the best (IMHO) management book ever written, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.  In it, he lists the following fundamental techniques: (referenced via Wikipedia)

• Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
• Give honest and sincere appreciation.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want.

And if I could add one more – Respect.

It doesn’t matter if they are 7, 17, or 70 – treat people right, treat them with respect and they will do well.  You can’t win them all.  You also can’t change the entire makeup of your organization because the conventional wisdom is that Gen Yers don’t like meetings.  That is hogwash.  You know what is right.  You know how your organizations runs best. 

This does not mean that you should not be open to new ideas.  It does however mean that you can’t go chasing every idea an “expert” says is the new hipness.

I think it was Ghandi who said “Be the change you want to see in the world”.  On a smaller scale, BE the change you want to see in your organization.