But your Millennials are finding out a great truth about business – that risk takers and innovators are a good thing in theory, but in practice they usually receive a very cool reception.

”You should not wonder why innovation doesn’t happen in most organizations. For much of the journey, innovation is hard work rewarded by bad headlines” says Rick Porras et al in “Success Built to Last” (2006, Wharton School Publishing), which explores the work of successful people who have achieved extraordinary results for at least 20 years.

Porras et al define the best strategy for innovators as “tolerate the risks, feel the fear, take the brickbats, learn from failure and do what matters to you anyway”. Oh yes? GenYs may be more likely to blog bitterly about how their ideas are being ignored, and then look for another employer, or get some start-up capital and become entrepreneurs.

What your managers need to know:

Managing the Millennials is not simply an intuitive process which can be done without specific thought about the challenges which this demographic group presents.

Embedding this principle in the organization’s knowledge:

Organizations themselves can learn to become progressively more agile in response to differentness. Generational differentness is merely one part of the spectrum of human diversity.

You don’t help your organization learn to cope with heterogeneity because it is a compliance issue. You do this because it creates competence and confidence in the organization’s ability to respond easily and fluently to cultural, lifestyle and generational differences. And the result is trust, communication, agility, innovation and good business – on the bottom line. This is the kind of competitive advantage which companies like Genentech have been leveraging for years!

Great read: Dov Seidman’s How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in Life). Probably more for the serious reader of business and management books, but a great explanation of the need for reputation and trust in a transparent business world (which tech-savvy GenYs live in).

You can safely dismiss Publishers Weekly’s comment that Seidman does not explain exactly how this can be done. I wondered whether those guys live under a rock if they haven’t seen any of the last 15 years of literature and research on exactly how these strategies can be implemented!

The cost, to both women and organizations, is high.

Research proves that when women do ask for what they want, they do not do so as clearly, quickly or as often as men do. GenX and GenY women are following in the footsteps of their Boomer and Traditional predecessors in this pattern.

Women also tend to think that what is offered (“what is on the table”) is all that is available. Men draw on their socialization (which includes things like being taught how to slip the Maitre d’ a few bucks for a better table) and assume that their wants and needs might be met if they speak up, irrespective of what seems to be on offer.

Organizations suffer. Their valuable women work and wait for rewards or options, then one day, *poof*! They’re working for your competitor or running their own small business, and you’re saying “why didn’t she TELL me she wanted that position, the same salary as John, that title, a new computer screen, a more flexible schedule, a space heater? It would have cost so little … a tiny fraction of what this is costing us now!”

Linda Babcock, Co-author of “Women Don’t Ask”, admits that those who ask, often get. She describes how she, herself, gave more resources and opportunities to men in her department, while she was researching the way women are socialized to wait for rewards, and why women don’t imagine possibilities outside The System. She did this because men asked.

Great read: “Women Don’t Ask” (by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever) has some great strategies for managing men and women who are valuable assets to your organization, but do not ask clearly for what they want. It’s also a must-read for working women or parents of daughters.

But maybe Boomers should worry less about GenY (described by Marcus Buckingham as the generation who got prizes for coming 8th in a race). Some Boomers still need to learn that you can’t win against GenX if you use the old-fashioned methods of business power broking.

There are still a lot of Boomer and Traditional managers who have days of thinking “I’ll do it my way, now I am the boss”, forgetting that the rules of the business game have changed … forever.

Deep in the cubicles of the corporate jungles there is an army, trained to deal with their parents’ generation. One result is that the Boomer who thinks in terms of “my way or the highway” soon finds out that this only works if the person who is going to hit the highway is the Boomer him/herself.

Imagine you’re a Boomer and you don’t have your head in the game. You were born 1946-1964 (or perhaps you are a Traditionalist and born before ’46.)

Let’s assume you’re an innocent. You go to work to..um..work. You go home to socialize. You think you’re technologically sophisticated (yeah right!). You grew up in a world where you waited your turn for authority. You “paid your dues” by shutting-up-and-putting-up with stuff, until you got into a position of responsibility. Now it’s your turn and perhaps (like Frank Sinatra, whom you still remember) you think you’re going to do it your way.

There are the Xers, and (even more frightening) GenY. They’re probably better educated than you are, and they can show you the *real* meaning of “technologically savvy” (they can fix an IPod). They think that they can do your job now. They need your salary to pay for their college debt, or their techno-gadgets, or just a bit of gas for their hybrids at $4 a gallon, so they have little interest in doing schlep jobs. They have the skills, energy, technological currency and innovative ability to do “the interesting stuff” now.

The Xers probably have the concentration to do some schlep jobs. The Millennials can’t focus that long, unless you praise them every ten minutes.

“Oh nooooooo” you say. “A promotion Ms. X? No I need you there … with your techie skills. You are so not going anywhere. I’m the boss, and I pay the piper and I call the tune. A promotion? Get real, kid. It took me 20 years to get to this position.

That evening, over a glass of fine wine, you describe the unimpressed look on the Gen-Xer’s face to your significant other. But you’re in charge now, and your personal White House feels pretty darned good.

Perhaps you forgot how the GenX and Y terrorists socialize in their work-life continuum? (They will even move jobs to be with their friends.) They have networks of GenX/Y friends throughout the company. They don’t live in silos, like you do, and they bang out vast numbers of emails and texts to their whole network, hourly, while also keeping constant contact through their blurred work-social boundaries.

Hmmm… and perhaps you should have taken into consideration that the whole freaking IT department is Gen-X too, before you annoyed one of them.

GenXers use software to keep their to-do lists. [Did you know that GenYs sometimes use the company software and back it up on the flashdrives they wear on their keyrings or in their necklaces well some of them.]

Now your GenX has a number of tasks on his/her list. Your request has been done last. Why? you ask. There is a perfectly logical reason for tasks being done first, or last… sequencing. Your job just happens to be last today. Watch the GenXer’s “What is WRONG with you?” face as s/he shoves a handheld Blackberry-like device s under your nose, to show you the list.

Isn’t it strange how you are last on every list? In so many unconnected departments? Yesterday and tomorrow too? (Yup – you’re the last silo generations.)

Please don’t request anything verbally once you have annoyed a GenXer, as anything you ask for will be forgotten by all GenXers. When you ask again, the GenXer is puzzled: Did you ask Natasha or perhaps Darren? Please print the email and the GenXer will find the culprit and bring him/her to justice immediately! No email? NO EMAIL? *Gasp.* You must have asked Kimberli or Shawn, but no, it clearly wasn’t me.

If you ask for something by email, the GenXer will of course (eventually) give you what you asked for. Exactly what you asked for. And s/he will have filed the email which documented what you asked for. And the reply, and the confirmation that the reply was received, and opened. People on a GenXer’s good side get what they want, but you will get what you asked for, and exactly, and only that.

Yes… the power rules have changed, and the old system will never work again. The people who changed the rules are not going away – or if they do go away, you will be spending a lot of time and money begging them please, please to come back.

The training camps are not only in Afghanistan or Pakistan. They’ve been downtown for a long time.

We gave birth to the new terrorists. They work for us, we work for them: they are our employees, potential employees, customers and suppliers.

Some days, I rather enjoy them.