Susan Berg, Guest Contributor
Just last week my colleague Bill Wilson and I conducted four back-to-back Organization Workshops (OW) for a large defense contractor. We’ve been doing this workshop for seven years as part of an annual leadership development program. What’s noteworthy about this program is that the average age of the participants is about twenty-five. Yup, I said twenty five. We’ve seen about 1,000 of these twentysomethings over the last few years.
So what are these twentysomethings actually getting out of the OW at this tender young age? And why develop them so early, when they have little to no management experience? Can they really get this stuff? Different worlds? The meaning of power in the top-middle-bottom-customer spaces?
Well, the answer is yes and no. Let me explain. Let’s face it⎯at twenty-five you haven’t experienced a lot of ups and downs in organizational life. But if you’ve been tapped for a program like this, chances are you have a lot of gumption. And since people in their mid-twenties are in the “Warrior” phase of their lives⎯ you have a crew of people who are anxious to conquer the world and eager to learn.
And there’s no time to waste. Businesses will be losing a lot of Boomer generation workers over the next ten years. So if they are going to thrive, they need to develop this group of managers-to-be quickly. This generation of twentysomethings will end up filling the gaps that Boomers leave in the workforce, so some of them will need to hurry up and get trained to step in quickly.
So what’s the YES side of what they get out of the program? It is their willingness to jump in and engage, despite what little they know of organizational life. They listen⎯hard⎯and there’s no sniping at the idea of simulating an organization. They love learning this way. In fact, sometimes they are willing to try out things that those of us who are “hardened” to the conditions of everyday life in organizations have just given up on. For example, one group of tops last week, after a time-out of time (TOOT), realized they would be more successful by organizing cross-functional teams to work with each customer.
Now, the NO side of this would be how easy it was for them to get side-tracked by non-mission critical demands from the bottoms. They ended up tripping over themselves and getting distracted from their task to reorganize. Overzealous youth? Or typical Tops? Hard to say. But still the same pivotal lessons.
Probably being Top or MIddle is the toughest role for folks as early in their careers as these people are. Most of them still feel like Bottoms. For twentysomethings, testing out their ability to focus on their power zone in an unfamiliar role⎯becomes a hotbed of discomfort⎯and opportunity.
But let’s not discount the fact that most of these twentysomethings have played sports or been involved in other community and team activities in their school years. Some have already coached, so they have touched a variety of roles on a team. And this helps them greatly as they choose how to respond to the conditions of the organization they have created in the OW. Their team learning experiences pay off big here.
So if you’re wondering if the OW “works” with the younger crowd, the answer is indeed YES and NO. But isn’t it the same for any age group? When we’re older, we bring the bias of having been conditioned. And when we’re younger, we bring the bias of inexperience. And since the OW is all about exposing our biases, it seems to work either way.
We’ll keep you posted on our future experiences with OW and the Twentysomething Crowd.
Susan Berg and Bill Wilson, Power & Systems Senior Associates
For more help with the twentysomething crowd, check out Susan’s new book Choose on Purpose for Twentysomethings.
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