Is it simply Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or do post Gen X employees need to be challenged more?

So I was recently involved in a pretty entertaining discussion regarding the different challenges and dynamics involved with managing and leading groups of employees of differing generational groups. Of course we covered what the characteristics were of each group: Gen Y'ers .. (they couldn't think of a cooler name for these crazy kids... oh yeah, that's right they've had like five.. Generation Next, MTV Generation, "The Echo Boomers"...a play on Baby Boomer's, The Millennials, The Net Generation, and finally .. The Boomerang Generation...so that's like six actually), possess an innate ability to ... not move out of their parents houses, blend in quietly and stop using electronic media for 10 seconds to reach out and communicate about ...everything. My humorous take on Gen Y aside, this unique generation born (1977 - 1999/2000 depending on your source), in a time of revolutionary technology explosion carried on the back of the Internet has some great qualities as well: a pesky need to abandon petty cultural, religious and societal difference and are generally more accepting and tolerant then their predecessors... to be commended for sure. I focus mainly on this group from a management perspective because, well, the following generation generally are only working in Third World sweatshops ... so I'm assuming motivation is generally based on the bottom of Maslow's pyramid of needs. These lively youths born to follow the ingeniously named "Generation Y", are simply called Gen Z.

Gen Z is composed of ...uhhm well ... very little yet? Most have yet to reach 18 based on the clearly defined line of generational demarcation. That's why I'm going to focus on "The Next Generation"...of employees.

A recent poll performed by a founding director of MIT's largest internship discovered some interesting trends amongst those Gen Y's being recruited into the work place... they sought above all.. freedom .. freedom to be unsure of what they want to do.. see I told you they wanted to be special.. Gen Y'ers want their work to be meaningful, they want a sense of responsibility, to be engaged and challenged and a clear path towards choice... they will not accept pigeonholing. This brings me to the interesting discussion I had with a classmate regarding what I cavalierly construed was Gen Y's inability to focus, concentrate and be at peace with their life because of the constant barrage of technology presented to them from birth. I spoke of my observation of parents plopping children in front of TV's at a young age. More recently I've seen parents carrying a Radio Shack assortment of portable TV's, DVD players and gaming consoles into restaraunts and malls - technology babysitters as it were. Additionally, the enormous amount of programming and devices marketed to children in the last two decades has been astounding - can't understand why people wonder what's going on with the fitness level of our children. Obvioulsy this is no way a scientific study or analysis - rather my personal musings and frustration when I encounter these brilliant, jittery and uncomfortable in a four hour meeting youngsters from Gen Y in the workplace.

Back to the class discussion; this young lady astutely pointed out (now I think it was astute, before I just thought she was wrong...j/k), that when I say the Gen Y'ers have some environmentally conditioned ADD, maybe I should consider the possibility that they have simply not been challenged enough. This generation can multi-task like nobodies business (offspring of intensively colorful and challenging video games... perhaps) and that simple tasks in the early phases of their work experience bore them... they feel like they can contribute so much more and have talents that need matching to current organizational problems - one of the points of the above referenced article was that "The Millenials" need coaching and open-ended mentoring that allows some unlimited problem solving with limited decision making... this is what the new crop of employees are seeking to satiate their expanding minds. This was their number one reason for choosing a particular position over another not, apparently as HR groups thought, flexible-hours, Starbucks Wednesdays and corporate gym's with free weekly massages (actually I would choose this above all but, of course, I'm a Gen-Xer). Sooo dear classmate, I stand slightly corrected as the evidence proves...

What is the deal with all the farmville/pillowfight things on Facebook

What happened to the good ole days of just contacting friends and keeping up with each others personal and work lives? Who invented these ridiculous applications. What purpose do they serve? Are they trying to spread the word about farms and farming? I mean is that the real intention. Is that what the pointless pillow fight application is trying to do as well.. spread the word about the demise of the down pillow. Facebook did themselves a disservice by allowing these applications to run on their site and basically distract from it's core customers (college students and young professionals). Now it's becoming passe' and outdated and young people are now seeking out the new cool and exclusive site to share their thoughts without fear of being turned into a pillow throwing farmer or being chastised by grandma for getting drunk or taking slightly distasteful photos... that's what young should be allowed to do without fear of repercussions lasting through the rest of their lives...

Social networking should really be split into three main categories: Family interaction, outreach... professional networking sites and personal/school and socially oriented sites.
I like the mechanism that Facebook initially employed to limit access: having a .edu email address. The same could be applied to professional websites to narrow the focus of the activities and ensure some level of enjoyment in performing web-enabled social interactions - with having a semblance of security. Lendors are even performing social network voyeurism to determine credit worthiness? This has basically devolved into a way to peek into your private life - why bother even applying for the credit.. just send a link to your Facebook account and make it easy on them... thoughts

Stupid software updates

As I write this my Playstation 3 is updating it's software from 39876.2356 to 39877 instead of loading my movie... Why is that every time you want to do any thing quickly with your new web-enabled device it attempts to make your life more convenient by making you wait... for another download of firmware to correct the tiny error that caused the 42 year-old guy/girl living in her parents basement in Fargo, North Dakota to not be able to view their Second Life page in 3-D on the second Tuesday of every month? I try to run out of the house to go to the gym... want a quick update of my iPod, well heck no. It has to perform a backup.. then it pushes everything you've bought on the handy dandy device to your home computer... then it wants to know if you accept the user agreement, then it wants to show you its genius mixlist. Yes. I know you can turn this feature off... but everytime you update to the next version of iTunes there it is again... like a long lost friend waiting to be taken in. Plus I like it, but why does it have to take so friggin long... this is the point in my tirade that my too trendy friends recommend I switch to Apple - I see Steve Jobs subtle plan. Infuriate the 98% of the world who has both iPod/iPhones and Windows OS... that way they'll be tempted to switch. I won't do it. I need a regular mouse. All this technological convenience is killing me...

this is my first foray into social communication tools..

I don't understand why some many people have to always be saying or expressing their thoughts.... whatever happened to internal reflection