Gen X is a lot Like Jan Brady

This Generation X cohort is a real piece of work, isn’t it?  Is it possible to have a whole generation stuck in a massive inferiority complex?  It’s kind of like meeting a Canadian backpacking across Europe.  Yeah we get it – those 500 Maple Leafs you’re wearing mean you come from Canada.  The rest of us don’t really care that much, but you go ahead and dress up like a Mountie.

Gen X is not unlike when Jan Brady got completely bent out of shape because everything was “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.”  (You have to be a Gen Xer to get that reference).  Grow up Jan, and stop being so annoying.

Actually all this generation talk is getting a bit boring.

In 1994, I suffered through a breakfast seminar where the guest speaker was telling us how this new generation of worker was completely different than anything that had every come before it.  These Generation X types were not loyal to any employer, didn’t care too much about their jobs, and were just generally hard to get along with.

Remembering back on this particular breakfast seminar now, it was particularly offensive on at least three levels:

  1. About 2500 years ago, some guy named “Socrates” made the same observation.  I’m more familiar with the published works of Socrates than I am with the guest speaker (whose name I’ve forgotten) that morning, so I’m going to assume it wasn’t an original talk.  Although the flashy Powerpoint slides were something that Socrates never pulled off.
  2. Those entering the workforce in the early 1990s had just watched their parents be laid-off en masse after a lifetime of loyalty to their companies to take on a new role as an unemployed middle-aged former corporate drone with no real marketable skills.  Add to this, the fact that Generation X – to date the most educated generation in history – walked into a job market with very few prospects, and you may begin to understand some of their crankiness.
  3. These Gen Xers did finally manage to find jobs — though not the cool, self-fulfilling ones they were promised.  Fast forward in time twenty years and these Gen Xers are now lamenting the fact that the generation that came after them has no loyalty to their organizations, and don’t care too much about their jobs.  It really does come fully circle, doesn’t it?

We need to quit trying to rationalize and explain the fact it is each generations’ express mission to drive the generation immediately preceding it crazy.  How else can you explain the music of the devil (also known as Jazz) that today’s older retirees used to make their parents foam at the mouth with anger.

Your job as a leader is to get other people to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it (with credit to Dwight Eisenhower).  Spending a whole bunch of time trying to label and define different generations won’t help you with that.

Finally, just to prove there’s no hard feelings about the crack about Canadians above, this week’s video is dedicated to those viewing from Canada: