In The McKinsey article “Don’t Shield Young Leaders from Hard Truths” December 10, 2008 talks about the new form of leadership found at the base of the corporate pyramid – the GenY’s. Gen Yer’s not only love change, they need it.
With a positive attitude to make a difference to the world, they don’t expect to wait until they scale the corporate ladder. They want it now – and they want the tools to do it. These are the change leaders that BI program managers should seek out.
Dubbed by Fortune Magazine as “potentially most high-performing generation in history”, this generation is used to having on-demand information to support their need for instant gratification and greater technological skill. With higher expectations of themselves, personal performance dashboards give them the instant feedback they thirst and with little previous commercial experience to resource, they are not blinded by false assumptions and filtered recall of ‘what happened last time we tried that’.
Gen-Yers are not afraid of failure – they are more afraid of not having the opportunity to try. As open communicators, Gen-Yer’s expect the same from their leaders. They are comms savvy and have a higher internal sense of when they are being are not being told the truth or information is being held back. Many more traditional managers are somewhat intimidated by this generation, but smart managers will not hold Gen-Yer’s back – rather they will provide them the the tools and opportunities they need, and support their stretch into innovation, without fear of failure.
Gen-Yer’s remind us that there are many forms of leadership – and not all of them belong or reside in the executive boardroom.