Generational Inclusion drives change
https://www.fastcompany.com/90820025/boomers-gen-x-millennials-gen-z-at-work
This article mostly focuses on comparing Gen Z expectations to those of other generations, and it outlines the key elements - and the key implications - of the youngest employees’ overall paradigm, particularly around work. And for the most part, these are potentially positive changes.
We all know that younger people are coming into organizations with different expectations and different skills, but most of the time the adaptations that we actually manage to make are only skin deep - and as a result don’t actually address these expectations, or unlock the benefits that they could have for everyone.
This is a crucial challenge for all of us, and it’s not just about accommodating one generation’s whims. The oldest Gen Z’s are currently showing us what Fusion Era systems will require - and that the paradigms, the base operating assumptions, that most of us came up with, will do nothing but throw road blocks in the way.
Ownership Diversity’s impact on decisions.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-20/why-aren-t-there-more-mayors-who-are-also-renters
Even with as much yapping about inclusion and diversity that I do, I had completely, completely missed the fact that renters would provide a completely different perspective to community leadership than homeowners. And as homeownership rates continue to decline for a whole host of reasons, having renters in these positions will be more and more crucial to a commmunity’s ability to understand its future and adapt.
Away from One Size Fits All
https://theconversation.com/diversity-of-us-workplaces-is-growing-in-terms-of-race-ethnicity-and-age-forcing-more-employers-to-be-flexible-194327
Flexibility is incredibly hard for most Industrial Era organizations. We’ve spent a couple of hundred years perfecting systems for plugging people in, laying out rules and regulations, building cultures of personal sacrifice to the demands of the Mission and Vision. But as rewards for that sacrifice have dwindled, and as people have come to understand that living as their authentic selves full time is better for them than stuffing themselves into a rigid mold, they’re increasingly demanding higher and higher levels of flexibility.
That demand, that imperative, necessitates a bottom-up rebuild - not just of attendance policies and work from home, but of core elements like compensation, authority, decision-making, ownership and more. The successful organizations of the Fusion Era are going to structure themselves in ways that our Industrial Era predecessors would have considered insane. And the organizations that make that transition fastest will be the most likely to survive.