We know them; the ones with their heads buried in their phones or mac books, oversized glasses and scarves draped around them even in the month of July. The millennial, the modest, thumbs-tapping-on-surfaces restless thinkers of today who have already figured out how to do it better than you while you were mid-sentence in a conversation.
And they are quite ready to take over the world.
Millennials belong to the generation of youth born after 1980, who are okay with failures, who have wider options as compared to their parents generation that had responsibilities tied down to them at an early age.
So what do they know about entrepreneurship that can be shared with the whole world?
The Millennial’s Definition of Success Will Raise Eyebrows
For the millennial, success does not always mean getting the swanky corner office on the 40th floor. Today’s success for the youth has been redefined to being risky, fearless and very performance oriented.
Research by Deloitte has proven that only 13% of Millennials out there are looking towards climbing the corporate ladder. Almost 70% of them are keen to start their own business.
Not All Mentors Wear Suits
Jack Welch adopted this technique while he was running GE, and it worked wonders. This technique involves younger employees of a company taking up the mentor role for their older colleagues.
The less experienced professionals can feel more confident whilst playing mentor and sharing ideas with older colleagues and the latter can stay up-to date with latest business developments and technologies.
They Carry A Business Plan On Their Sleeve
A survey conducted by Reason Magazine proved that over 61% of Millennials believed that hardwork is the main secret to building a business.
Over 55% of millennials today are ready to take on projects that are uncertain or have a high risk factor and this is due to the main reason that they have a game plan ready for the possibility of failure.
The drive to be more independent in terms of building businesses coupled with fearlessness make them the ideal future corporate leaders we need.
They Are The ‘Yes!’ People
They will hold meetings with candidates they are not hiring right now, they will invite an events producer to their office even if they do not have the sufficient budget for it.
Sales meetings are more about what’s happening out there, rather than what has to be done immediately in office, there are fewer plans made and more meetings held, ideas shared, the list goes on.
Millennials today do not hurry towards setting something right for their company, they prefer to listen and keep doors open for anyone who has something to share.
They Grade You Better Than Your Maths Professor
A very innovative growth measure taken by Millennials today is to measure the performance of any team collectively. Their performance is graded on a curve; an individual’s performance is measured against everyone else’s.
This gets the brightest performers of any team to be on their toes almost all the time. Facebook, a company way ahead of anyone in terms of employee engagement has adopted this technique.
A star performer will now be subjected to an average appraisal if the team has performed so. This helps everyone overcome the ‘crab mentality’ attitude at work and spearhead teamwork.
A Dazzling Report Card Does Not Matter
Today’s top executives from the millennial generation do not believe in your PhDs, MBAs, and Bachelor degrees from Ivy League universities.
They are travellers, adventurers, trained martial art experts, artists and bloggers who are still learning and exploring different domains someone conjured in a start-up lab.
They welcome wacky ideas with open arms and absolutely fall in love with those who have the whole plan set out for something offbeat. Education is important, but learning on the job is gold for a millennial. The conference room is their classroom.
Motivation Is Not Just In Your Annual Bonus
For a lot of millennial youth, the prime key of motivation comes from negative factors. The growing rate of unemployment, student loans, lower levels of wealth and personal income are what actually drives the millennial employee to a point where they fear nothing and have nothing to lose.
They take risks almost in spite of the personal burdens on them. They belong to a far more hungry generation of thinkers who no longer need answers, but solutions.
Traditions? What Traditions?
Have an idea that has been used 10 minutes ago? A millennial is already not listening to you. They trash traditions because they have grown up in an economic climate that literally tried to extract the imagination out of them.
They loathe paper filled desks, excel sheets running in tabs and databases with information and they cannot handle the phrase “but that’s an easier way to do it!”
They hate shackles, and will come up with something new while we are brooding over how an age old corporate practice has died down.
You Will Want To Stay Beyond 5 PM In Office
Everyone today talks about creating a work-life balance and for millennials, that’s something that secretly says ‘9-5 jobs are the best.’ Well, not everyone thinks so.
Entrepreneurs nowadays have designed their work environment and company culture to make it all a part of the employee’s life, in a way they enjoy it and don’t worry about it on a Monday morning. it’s about networking the right way, reducing the scalar chain gap and making work something people look forward to.
Marketing Today, Design Team Tomorrow
Often, people believe millennials to be a fight or flight risk and it is true that they are comfortable switching employers every few years in order to learn and see what exactly they can do out there.
Millennials out there are constantly changing roles within their companies in order to get a wider curve of what work they can do. Many startups have implemented this technique with excellent results.
They Avoid BS!
Seriously. Millennials do not have the time for inauthentic work and they value only those who are relatable to their company goals and ideas, and who believe in teamwork where everyone grows together.
According to Gottstein, millennials are not ready for stereotypical ways of working or rather the ‘hipster culture’ way of working as people perceive them to be.
Millennial culture is not something everyone knows about, it is good to listen and learn rather than throw in your ideas on the first day of the job.
In Their Case, Speed Thrills
If their company gets bigger, they start doing things fast. The honeymoon phase of the company’s fledgling startup stature is over and there are more processes to be taken care of.
They shake their heads at the ‘best practices’ of how the good ol’ things are done and do not get tied down by rules.
This, surprisingly enables them to take a faster approach towards removing unnecessary ‘good to have’ processes and enable newer and quicker methods.
They Know It’s Tough Out There
Millennials have had to battle the recession in a world where there are already way too many talented people. Therefore, they are constantly weighing in the risk factors associated with their businesses, which is why sometimes they take on higher risk projects with a smile.
Job security is important to the entrepreneur today, but they will not yield to the bureaucratic hierarchical methods of older companies.
They Believe In Limited Face To Face Meetings
Face to face communication is pivotal to millennials. Therefore, they limit valuable face time for those who have been filtered through the other modes of communication like emails, DM’s or phone calls.
This is a direct influence of technology on them as it has become easier to find what they are looking for through a social media profile alone.
They will conduct video conferences, phone calls, exchange emails and then decide whether a face to face communication can happen.
[First published on Explara by Chethna Menon]
