Making The World A Better Place Drives Collaboration in 2016

The determination to make the world a better place trend

Perhaps the harm brought home by the recession to so many families in the form of layoffs, lost homes, retirement funds and the obliteration of saved college funds has launched a new level of consumer innovation and self-sufficiency.  Perhaps for many people under 36 years of age, this is the proverbial “pony in the poop pile”. In late 2015, this age group surpassed the now largest age group the planet has seen  —  the baby boomers.

So how is this shaping up?

Consumer research conducted in 2015 concluded that this age group’s consumer profile (Millennials born between 1980 – 2000)  is more similar to people who survived the Great Depression.  The two age groups that come before them are the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 – 1960) and Gen Xers (born between 1960 and 1980).

The Millennial age group grew up with recycling and up-cycling.  Many were raised with the scientific proof that global warming is real. A growing number are clean food conscious and have health awareness behaviors that will change US food consumption patterns.  For example, some would rather have a black bean and rice burrito than a sloppy old hamburger with genetically modified French fries deep fried in beef fat oozing with hormones and antibiotics.

They also hold another important value.  Many believe in making the world a better place and reject buying things on credit for consumption’s sake along with products and services with high carbon footprints. In 2015 it was interesting to note that even though the economy had picked up, consumption was down.  Is there a connection beyond market uncertainty that is driving demand or lack of it?

According to the book, The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown,  Millennials are well-educated and carry high educational debt loads. They are tech savvy, underemployed and are at risk of becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents.

Millennial Values

In a recent Op-Ed by David Brooks of the New York Times, Brooks writes, “If you look at how millennials actually live, you certainly don’t see a progressive counterculture. In fact, you see what you’d expect from a generation that lived through a financial crisis, family instability and political dysfunction. You see an abstract celebration of creative transformation but a concrete hunger for order, security and stability.”

This confirms what we have been blogging for the past three years.  The hunger for order, security and stability is an asset for any organization with a collaborative workforce development plan.  Eager to learn and be mentored, those HR Directors that bring learning and development back into a workplace that supports transparency can attract a goldmine of new talent.

Millennials like to problem solve and have been taught to do so in teams during their education years.  In teams, they have been taught to collaborate and for this reason, the jury is out for me with regard to whether they will experience a lower standard of living. Collaboration is a different paradigm than rugged individualism. Collaboration provides solutions that do more with less. It also allows people to stand out rather than fit in – something that is prized by over half the Millennial’s that contributed to Ford’s four-year data gathering effort.

The role collaboration plays in the Millennial world view

The threat of a lower standard of living could actually corral their energy and initiative to shovel through the poop left by wasteful commercialism to unearth a very unique pony.  In fact, they will probably combine their ponies because two ponies can carry a cart with more people on it than riding one pony alone. This is the basic principle of merging synergy with cooperation to form collaborative outcomes.

Plus, for this age group and emerging economic power,  it is more fun to progress life’s path in a group that shares similar values and not focusing so much on acquiring things that break or tear the first time they use them.  Maybe it is because many of the toys they received as children for Christmas looked shiny but were cheaply made in other countries and broke shortly after unwrapping them.  This is a generation of people that learned to distinguish junk as junk.

According to the trends the Ford study reported is a trend dubbed a “Swiss Army Life — This is a rising emphasis on self-reliance and an ethos of purposefulness and utility. Better living today is not about having more things – it’s about living smarter by pushing to get greater use out of fewer things.”

For example, one young woman, age 23, shared during the holidays that she sold her car last year and relies on Portland, Oregon’s superior public transportation system to get around.  She used the proceeds from the sale of the car to set herself up close to work and walks most days.  Walking gives her time to think and she is saving tons of money not owning a car.  She doesn’t view owning a car as a status symbol.  She adds that car ownership is a burden for her at this time of her life and not a life enhancing benefit. She thinks it is obscene to pay for gas, a car loan, auto insurance, tires, parking and maintenance and spew green house gasses into the air when her other alternative is to pay cash for her college courses, not incur college loans and walk and jog for health.

Perhaps tough times got the tough going and the direction they are headed is to make a positive difference.