Weekly Posts and Insights
Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs on Working with Millennials
Are millennials really lazy? Mike Rowe explains what he's learned from hiring a bunch of them.
XPollination Podcast: Young Leaders in Nonprofits (Special Guest Eli Harrington)
Eli Harrington is the new Executive Director at Technology of Tomorrow. As the Director he is responsible for working with the board of directors, volunteers, and program participants to rapidly increase the scope and scale of his nonprofit. We sit down with him and discuss how he's developing new programs, community outreach and his interest in the Millennial generation.
What Target’s ‘Bullseye View’ Website is Doing to Brand their Internal Millennial Culture
The mix of internal branding with the increasing ease and availability of media platforms will be the next marketing and communications explosion. This is not just for the Zappos or the Targets of the world, but we will see this from small to mid-size companies as well who look to create a more engaging and dynamic workplace culture for Millennials.
Millennials! Stop Playing The ‘Jump to Conclusions Mat’ In Your Relationships!
Do you remember in the movie Office Space when Tom talks about his great ‘million dollar’ idea called the “Jump To Conclusions Mat?” According to Tom, “It would be this mat that you would put on the floor and would have different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.”
Not a great idea, like his friends pointed out in the movie, but it also isn’t a great idea for us to jump to conclusions in real life as well. When we jump to conclusions in conflict we are putting “2 plus 2 together to make 5” which is never good math and leads to mistrust, communication issues and deeper conflict.
New Survey Indicates Millennials in Leadership Roles Directly Tied to Organization's Overall Success
New research from DDI and The Conference Board, titled The Global Leadership Forecast (GLF) 2014 | 2015, Ready-Now Leaders: Meeting Tomorrow’s Business Challenges, directly connects the percentage of Millennials in leadership roles with impacting overall business success.
Millennial Conflict: Texting Our Way to Resolution
In a world where we are often encouraged to speak face-to-face to people, that style may be too much of an “in your face” method for Millennials. Are we evolving into a society that can solve some of its conflicts through texting? We, as a society, may have to swallow a tough pill: the landscape of all things in human behavior and development is changing because of technology and we may have to adapt to that.
X-Pollination Podcast: Special Guest Michael Harrington on Young Leadership in Government
Michael Harrington, at age 32 has been both the Director of Student Affairs as Paul Smith's College in NY and currently is the Economic Development Director for the Town of Bennington in Vermont and was recently recognized as one of Vermont's Top 40 Young Professionals. We will sit down with Michael to discuss key principles and leadership tips that he has learned over his career that propelled him to his current status.
Anonymity Apps: Therapeutic or Destructive (part 2)
What do you think? Are the more secretive apps therapeutic or another self aggrandizing platform for our generation to embrace, or worse, could they become the next platform for bullies and suicides as we talked about last week? Do these apps free us to share emotion and thoughts that would otherwise be suppressed and potentially harmful or do they allow us to retract even more from reality and the boundaries of society to build a world of fantastical secrecy without consequence?
The Secret & Whisper Apps: A Private, Cathartic Process for Millennials or a Narcissistic, Bullying App?
The Secret app and the Whisper app allow users to send messages anonymously and receive replies. Users post messages which are displayed as text superimposed over an image, similar to greeting cards. Secret differs from Whisper and other anonymous sharing apps such as PostSecret and Yik Yak in that it is intended for sharing primarily with friends, making it more interesting and addictive for people reading the secret, anonymous updates because of the closeness of the real relationship.
The Anonymous Trend
Obviously, this is different from what we currently consider social media in the sense that it doesn’t seem too openly social but rather private and behind closed doors (or screens). These types of apps are all part of a growing trend towards anonymous and quasi-anonymous sharing, which is meant as a certain slap in the face to Facebook and other social media that push to encourage real name use throughout the Internet.
10 Tips To Becoming the Value-Added, Indispensable Millennial Employee
When we train on the new workforce generation one of the most common themes that emerges is how can a Millennial worker become more value-added in a short amount of time. In addition to this theme usually the next sub-theme is ‘…make it practical, real life examples, attainable differences.’ With those two thoughts in mind we’ve put together a list of what we have heard, seen, and believe are ways that a new Millennial worker can become indispensable:
1. Have a “Show Up, On Time, Ready To Go” Philosophy. Number one on the list and quite possibly the most important (because all the others need to have this underlying mindset) is the ‘show up’ mantra. This means being on time, being present; attuned, prepared and ready to go in mind, body, and attitude.
2. Review a meeting agenda ahead of time and find places to add insightful value. Write out questions related to the topic. For example, “How would we respond to the problem if we expanded/reduced our approach?” “How might the customer see this situation from his/her perspective?” “How does this information/update affect our timeline or goal?”