Author Alison Lea Sher Talks About Why She Studies Millenials-And Why It Matters
“The future is already here —
it’s just not evenly distributed,”
said William Gibson
The
reason behind why I do what I do has stayed the same since I started writing mybook five years ago. I study millennials because I spent too much time wondering
if the human race is doomed. I care about millennials because I care about
climate change and politics and pioneering business as a platform to solve the
world’s
biggest problems. I study millennials because I want to live my life being a
part of the solution. I think there is still time for a miracle if this cohort
decides to truly take united action.
And
I see millennials as lynchpin generation. Yes, the change that needs to happen
to address our global crises really is about everyone. However, there are many
reasons why millennials are unique and why every company need to understand
them, integrate our unique intelligence into your business model and create the
internal cultural conditions that we need to thrive if you care about the
future of the planet, and the future of your company.
Because
by 2020, Millennials will be 50 percent of the work force and 33 percent of the
voting demographic. Seventy percent of us have plans to be entrepreneurs, so if
you can’t engage
us at your company we’re likely to leave to start our own, just to have the
freedom to bring our ideas to the world.
The
reason why millennials matter is because while we might not have the powerful
positions in society, we do have the numbers to make a difference in society —
a
big one. And if you don’t understand how to market to us, keep us employed at your
company, your company risks alienating the world’s
current largest consumer demographic and the next crop of human capital. You
risk becoming obsolete in a market that demands innovation. No matter how large
your current company has been able to scale, you need to know how to appeal to
us.
There
is a lot that’s misunderstood between generations, cultural clashes that
develop because we all different priorities, expectations, learning styles,
ways of communicating, appearance, ways of thinking, motivations, working
styles, decision making habits, spheres of influence, and areas in which we are
personally invested. However, the issues that face humanity have to transcend
all of this to solve, and that means we have to find a way to work together in
a way that will ensure that we’ll have an earth that’s
inhabitable for generations to come.
People
fear change because it’s destabilizing. However everything in this world that successfully adapts for it’s own
survival has to go through it. Anything that stays the same, eventually starts
dying —
and
that’s what
is currently happening within our current human system. We can learn to love
the process of transformation.
It’s not
going to be comfortable at first. Executives people at the top of organizations
who worked their lives to figure out how to make their companies prosper doing
business in the old paradigm are going to have to open their minds to doing it
with a millennial mindset that values sustainability and the triple bottom
line. Because it’s the millennials who are going to inherit a scorched
earth, trillions of dollars of federal debt, no social security and more other
cumulative unintended consequences due to previous generation’s
actions.
And
the millennials are going to have to be able to get uncomfortable too and learn
from those who have built the current empire. We have to act now and work with
other generations inside of our institutions. If we don’t get
over our internal emotional dilemmas enough to believe in ourselves to take
action, we’ll never
actually find the happiness and sense of purpose we’ve spent
so long searching for. But it’s going to require turning
the out pictured enemy into our allies.
Because
this isn’t about
the millennials. This is about us doing what needs to be done.
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