Over 20 years ago, I joined the United States Navy and was deemed a freshly minted pilot. When I showed up at my first assignment and was designated to manage a team of 20+ employees, my most seasoned team member pulled me aside and shared how to be successful. In that conversation, this person’s advice was this – Make a change, do it and give clear direction. When I asked if I should provide a “why” for the change, they laughed and said, “you will be an all-star boss if you do that. That is above and beyond. However, given precedence, no one expects this.” 

Today, as Millennials become a larger percentage of the workforce, just providing direction won’t be enough. Millennials are more educated than prior generations, want to get more out of work and have grown up with technology; therefore, driving adoption of change requires a different approach for the next generation of employees. 

Explaining the “Why” Just Isn’t Enough Anymore

Prior generations, such as Baby Boomers and Generation X-ers, were happy to get a “why” changes were occurring but didn’t necessarily expect one. Personally, 20 years ago, I can remember being ecstatic hearing the “why” I needed to take on an extra task. I never questioned what that meant for the overall health of the organization or the implications to my workload. Not so with today’s workforce. Millennials want to know more. They want to understand how the changes are impacting their day-to-day work and confirm that the change is adding value to the company. There is also a desire to know how the “why” shapes and impacts the larger collective – socially, environmentally, politically. Change doesn’t exist in a vacuum and there is an increased level of awareness around how one change can impact not just a singular group or organization but have much further reaching impacts. 

They Want to Be More Involved in Shaping the Transformation

Unlike prior generations, Millennials want to have a seat at the table when it comes to key decisions. As a result, change initiatives are creating additional layers to their governance. In the past, end users and stakeholders were engaged only through routine one-hour meetings such as Core Team and Steering Committee meetings. These meetings typically provided high-level status updates and were used as a forum for key decisions. Today this approach leaves stakeholders feeling as though they are not engaged and as if there is limited transparency. As a result, change teams are starting to stand up cross-functional working groups, where many team members are pulled from their current day-to-day role and assigned 100% of their time to the change initiative. 

Traditional Communication Channels Aren’t Enough

Communicating change via email was very successful in the past. Baby Boomers and Generation X-ers loved the novel technology as it was easy to access and direct, versus fliers plastered to the bathroom doors and Town Halls. However, given the volume of emails employees now get daily, change announcements routinely are overlooked or “filed” (i.e., deleted immediately). As a result, most staff are ill-informed of key actions and information around change initiatives. As a result, companies have begun to leverage technologies that play to Millennials’ strengths, such as Slack, to better communicate key changes.

Employee Training Is Changing

For Baby Boomers and Generation X-ers, training is often seen as a luxury, something abundant during economic upturns and scarce when downturns come. To some extent, this thinking was viable in 1990 or 2000 or, even in some sense, in 2010 since skills learned held steady for years at a time with little change. Millennials grasp the present realities of 2020. Experience tells them what the now plentiful studies tell the rest of us: that the life cycle of many technology skills is three years or less. This means some knowledge acquired during study of a four-year degree is obsolete before students even graduate! Training can no longer be viewed as an event; it must be an ongoing process through which skills are continually improved, replaced and augmented. In this, the kids can teach the old dogs a trick or two.