You don’t manage Ys and Zs generations. You collaborate!

People born after 80โ€™, 90โ€™ or 95โ€™. โ€œEntrepreneurshipโ€ pushes them away and โ€œstart-upโ€ is a dream. Called Ys, Zs, millenials, tabletโ€™s and screenโ€™s generation – or anything else. Boundaries are fluid, terms inaccurate. However surely all of those generations have one thing in common: they scare off employers and astonish older colleagues. Is it possible to manage them effectively and establish great business built on their unique skills?

Letโ€™s start from the beginning, in other words recruitment. About how Ys and Zs are โ€œnot adjusted for the marketโ€, how they have โ€œlack of education and unreal expectationsโ€, โ€œthey donโ€™t respect workโ€, โ€œthey donโ€™t understand procedures and classified informationโ€ – weโ€™ve heard them all. It happens for one simple reason – most of the employers understand recruitment as it has always been understood: we have vacancy in the companyโ€™s structure so weโ€™re looking for perfect candidate for it. What if we changed this paradigm? Firstly search for great, motivated, competent people with passion and then make positions for them?

โ— Great because we need to get on well with them

โ— Motivated because inner motivation (managerโ€™s Hoy Grail) isnโ€™t hard to find among Ys and Zs, unless responsibility is matched with them – not the job title

โ— Competent but not for fulfilling specific tasks but for achieving adequate goals (for Ys and Zs means to achieve goals are changing so fast that every trial to structurize it makes no sense)

โ— Passionate because for Ys and Zs itโ€™s the most important (feeling that what I do makes actually sense and I like it!)

โ— Making job positions because of that approach, bigger problem is making accurate job title on the business card then choosing the perfect candidate for position based on specified procedures and duty list.

Changing recruitmentโ€™s paradigm doesnโ€™t mean that we canโ€™t expect specific knowledge or skills. For example: in indaHash weโ€™re perfectly aware that every single candidate is confident while surfing on all social medias and that theyโ€™re using them everyday. But on the other hand it doesnโ€™t mean that they shouldnโ€™t have all the knowledge on this subject. Being a user isnโ€™t always the same as being able to answer the question โ€œhow to fix itโ€ or โ€œhow to use itโ€.

Did we manage to find right people? Time to move on to management. Hereโ€™s the most important thing. You donโ€™t manage Ys and Zs – you collaborate with them. Vertical, restricted rules and structures wonโ€™t work. Small, teams made of 6-7 people in horizontal flexible structure and supervisor, who is member of each team and takes part in teamโ€™s work – thatโ€™s fundamental. His/her managing role is essential. Here we are, not talking about human management, but (same as it was while discussing recruitment) talking about instead goals management and individualsโ€™ responsibilities. Dynamic tempo of environment changes, where Ys and Zs move fluently with their multitasking skills, makes it definitely more effective.

When it comes to setting goals, long-term and short-term ones as equally important. This is instant generation – everything must be happening immediately, right here, right now. Thatโ€™s why current goals should be short-term and evident with clearly set finish line. On the other hand, Y and Z want to fulfill in their passion and have a feeling, that what they do makes sense – so they must feel that the project is coherent with their interests, it leads somewhere and it will bring desired results. Thanks to setting long-term goal this way, without narrowing Y or Z just to specific tasks, weโ€™ll use his passion, preference for diversity of those tasks and realising many things at one time to expand company towards desired direction. To sum up setting goals: Y and Z must know: โ€œwhy am I doing it now?โ€ and โ€œwhat impact does it have on the future?โ€.

As in recruitment, same in daily management – you should remember not to manage people but manage their clearly defined responsibility range. For project realisation we donโ€™t need to match people by their position and by what do they do by daily job basic. Letโ€™s match people who understand projet, feel it, see sense in it and willingly undertake it. Then management would come down to optimal project adjustment for the target and advantages of an employee. What is more, honing strongest Yโ€™s or Zโ€™s assets will affect his future effectiveness. Feeling that โ€œIโ€™m the best at what I doโ€ (or โ€œIโ€™m aiming for it and my company is helping meโ€) causes social and colleagues approval, which enhances Yโ€™s inner motivation and gives him necessary feeling of personal growth.

The last one is absolutely essential for Ys and Zs. If you donโ€™t give them personal growth – donโ€™t count on loyalty. These young people who canโ€™t stagnate, have a huge need of learning and exhibiting themselves. If you give them this possibility (by organizing trainings, workshops, providing specialistic or comprehensive knowledge – preferably everything a little, because diversity for Ys and Zs is a value) and take care of good atmosphere (there are many ways to do that: in turns we use evening integration with drinks and all day workshops with coach) the amount of grassroots initiatives, innovative ideas and proposed improvements can surprise you.

To sum up: if youโ€™ll approach YZs properly, youโ€™ll receive team of amazing people and self-organizing structure. Everyone will co-create the company by adding own ideas to it. Everyone will enthusiastically come up with initiatives and mythical โ€œbottom-upโ€, innovations and improvements will be dailiness. And something else will appear, something thatโ€™s hard to call differently than โ€œcompany spiritโ€. To achieve that, the only thing person who manage people has to do isโ€ฆ not to manage people. Resign from full control, share responsibility and collaborate.

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