brad garland

I came across this post discussing the communication techniques of Gen Y and loved the pictures displayed.

Here they all are:






They definitely made some pretty big assumptions here but I think the overall theme works. I wanted to add a bit to the conversation however.

1) Give the Boomers some credit. On the Boomers picture there is no existance of email or even a cell phone on it? Come on…this pic might’ve have been better suited for the ‘Traditionalists’. Boomers definitely bridge the gap between this Boomer pic and the Gen X pic as most are comfortable with email and cell phones.
I do appreciate the subtle AOL mail icon & beeper on Gen X pic though. Hehe! ;)

2) Communication reply differences. I’m always intrigued on how people interact with one another so I always ask people, of varying ages, why they do the things they do. Something that I’ve come to realize is Boomers are more likely to expect a response from the place the message was originated. If they called you, they expect a phone call back. If they emailed, email them back! This has shifted for future generations. Gen X & Y can flow in and out of the communications mechanisms and as long as the end result is met, it doesn’t matter how they get there.

3) Face to face always wins but… I say it often but face to face still wins but I’m surprised in the Gen Y area there isn’t a video chat mark between phone calls and face to face. That mechanism works well today (Hell, Oprah is using Skype on her show now) and can really add to an internal meeting or a quick 5 minute interchange between co-workers.

I’m always looking for ways to be a better communicator and we all have our preferences so trying to understand why people do what they do is always an interested topic to me. Do you agree with these pictures? What’s missing?

There has been much sensationalism (include me in that) about the Gen Y workforce and how they are coming to our businesses and into positions of authority and how all things are going are to completely change. I still agree that businesses will need to spend time to understand how to ‘work’ with this generation but I’ve been considering another scenario as of late. Boomers aren’t done yet.

We are at the point today where the oldest Boomers are retiring and should start enjoying their time off but considering the financial crisis we’re in (and will be in for a while) they don’t have the funds to retire. People are losing massive amounts of their retirement funds whether it be 401K’s or investments. I heard the American public has lost $1 Trillion (with a T) in the markets over the last month. So Boomers have no choice but to stick around until they are able to build up their reserves again.

With a little researching I came across this article from the WSJ talking about this very topic. This story says it all:

John Dougherty is among them. “Two weeks ago, it was frustrating; last week it was scary,” says Mr. Dougherty, a mortgage broker in Raleigh, N.C. who estimates that his nest egg has lost 20% of its value in the past 18 months. He had planned to retire at age 62 — but now, like Ms. Davis, he says 70 might be a more realistic target.

There is even talk in this article about people that were IN retirement having to come back OUT of retirement to get back on track with their finances.

Gen Y’s? Listen up! Yes, we’ve grown up in a world with 24/7 access to anything but we HAVE NOT ever gone through a financial crisis and especially one of this global magnitude. We would be smart to watch how our more mature brethren handle this crisis and learn something from them. My Boomer audience, what are your strategies to protect you and your family from this mess?

That’s right, I’m a people watcher.

My wife and I both are…we enjoy going to places and just watching the types of people that are all around us and start thinking about the lives that they live completely disconnected from our own. Last week, we were both in Vegas for a conference I presented at and we could’ve people watched all day long. On the plane trip home I noticed a man and his wife sitting across from us minding their own business but check this picture out (I couldn’t resist).



Now two things are going on in this picture.

1) The Obvious - I dunno how this guy sleeps that way. I’d have a neck problem for a month!

2) The Subtle - His wife, sitting next to him. If you look closely you’ll see her writing away in her address book. This is what got my attention more than the old man. What she was doing was transcribing her addresses from her OLD address book into a NEW address book. I could see that she had contact after contact of people that she was patiently writing from one book to another. So me and all my geekery started translating this into a technology discussion.

Why would she do this? Why not put it in the computer and store it indefinitely, update it at her leisure, and not have to spend hours inputting this data ever again? WHY?!?

Since I had time to spare on the plane ride I let me mind wander. I find things like this interesting because I’m always trying to understand the gap differences between generations and why Gen X/Y’s do what we do and why Boomers/Pre-Boomers do what they do. It all relates back to me to the financial industry and why people like in the photo go into branches for every single transaction they ever do and then there are people like myself that hasn’t been IN a branch for years.

I came to the conclusion that is was a comfortability issue. She did it that way because I’m sure she’s done this same task 10-20 times before and its what she knows. Her technology of having a smaller address book is far more advanced than putting it down on an large address book binder that she couldn’t tote around with her. She keeps her little address book in her purse and knows she can go to it at any point. It has, in a way, become a security blanket for her…she relies on it to be there in her purse when she calls on it. The thought of having a cell phone with all this data probably hasn’t even crossed her mind and if it had, she probably dismissed it just as fast because it sounded too complex for her to accomplish. That statement in itself is another interesting discussion. How ‘she’ judges that as complex.

Aren’t people interesting?