Finger-wagging think-pieces on millennials—like this one by AV Nation—rarely put the generation into appropriate context. According to a recent peerform review, you have nearly 100 million young people who ended up on the short end of an economy that has shifted nearly all profits from productivity to leadership and barely left workers and managers anything by way of increased profits and stability over the past 30 years. Add to this the fact that comparative debt burdens are astronomical due to literally billions in loans for higher education and it’s no longer mysterious why millennials might have a bit of an existential crisis when it comes to some seemingly outmoded professional expectations.
Anyone who has been going to trade shows for the past few decades knows that this industry historically has had a problem attracting racial and gender diversity. The millennials’ diverse makeup and appreciation of multiculturalism and various perspectives is going to help save this industry from itself. A market in which relatively homogenous groups focus largely on making stuff to sell to each other is finite. Diversity broadens that gap, and it breeds compelling innovation. Seeing more women and faces of color out in our professional realm with increasing frequency over the past handful of years has been refreshing, and many of those faces have belonged to millennials.
We have 100 years of institutional knowledge to share, and perspectives and insights on sound, technology and approaches to business, absolutely, but if we are able to open our minds to doing so we might very well find that we have more to learn from this generation than they do from us.
And none of this is to mention what they’ll help to usher in by way of technological advancement. Our generations paved the way for 3D printing and the younger of us helped to launch it and scale that launch. The millennials are bringing it to market and helping to make it part of our daily lives—helping accelerate progress in interesting and compelling ways.
So yeah, you need to show up to work on time or whatever, kids, and some of you are too precious for your own good. But then again, the list of complaints that can be lodged against us Boomers, Gen Xers and beyond—from some sexist and racist outlooks to tendencies toward not compensating people for good work—are themselves severe character flaws. We all have work to do, but we are excited about the promise provided by this generation.