Boomers climbing up a beanstalk

Here is an excerpt from article written by Tammy Erickson for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook. This week’s focus: cultural distinctions and diversity.)


He was searching for an analogy to make sure I got the difference. “You Boomers,” he said, “are like Jack and the Beanstalk. You trade everything you’ve got for a chance to climb. For years, you’ve been struggling up that beanstalk, trying to stay ahead of the other guy. By now, the stalk’s getting pretty thin. The winds are blowing it from side to side, but you’re holding on, determined to make it to the top.”

“We X’ers,” he continued, “hate everything about that. We’re at the base of the beanstalk, adding fertilizer, trying to make it sturdier. Planting back-up beanstalks, just in case.”

Over the past five years, I’ve looked in detail at the dominant characteristics of generations in today’s workplace. As a Boomer and mother of Gen Y’s, it was easy for me to see and appreciate the different strengths each of these generations brings to work. The assumptions we each hold, many shaped by the distinctive events of our youth, made sense and translated for me into logical responses to common workplace activities and decisions.

But who were these X’ers? Despite the prep work I’d done, my initial interviews left me puzzled and even a bit shocked. One conclusion was clear — they sure didn’t think about their lives the way I’d thought about mine. They didn’t want the same things and hadn’t followed the same path. Their instinctive approaches to common workplace situations were surprising and initially, to me, down-right frustrating.

And now they’re stepping to the fore. Will the emergence these leaders from a different generation, shaped by very different backgrounds from their Boomer predecessors, alter our thinking about leadership?

In many ways, I argue, no. The demands of leadership are shaped by the necessity of our times. As the nature of work itself has changed, as the business environment has evolved, the requirements of leadership have shifted, as well.
Today, it often seems the demands of leadership are perhaps more clearly defined by what leaders can’t do, as what they can or should. For a growing proportion of business activities today, leaders simply cannot “lead” in the definitive ways of the past, from the front of the pack (or the top of the beanstalk). The nature of much of the value-added work today comes from the creativity and responsiveness to the moment; leaders cannot specify exactly how the work will be done. The complex environment makes it impossible for any leader to know all the answers or confidently chart the best route forward. Even the day-to-day activities, common for leaders in the past, are being rendered impossible by shifts in the way work occurs — it not possible to watch the work in process as it occurs, to predict the quality of the output, or even to judge how much individuals have contributed to the whole. 

 Leaders’ roles today are not ones that fit the classic “out in front” connotations of “lead.” They are, in fact, ones that are well suited to people who are figuratively at the base of the beanstalk, nurturing the environment, seeding the options, encouraging others to grow. Today leaders’ greatest contributions come from their ability to frame meaningful questions that tie individual discretion to business purpose, to recognize diversity options and encourage creative solutions, and to bind the organization together through the expression of authentic values.

Gen X’ers are by no means alone in their ability to fill these emerging leadership roles well. But I do believe, based on my research, that this generation’s formative experiences and current predispositions render them very well-suited to meeting the new demands of leadership.

* * *

To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

Tamara J. Erickson has authored the books Retire Retirement, Plugged In, and What’s Next, Gen X? She has also written numerous Harvard Business Review articles, most recently The Leaders We Need Now, and the book Workforce Crisis.

(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook. This week’s focus: cultural distinctions and diversity.)

About these ads