2008 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting:
Energy and Climate Change Working Group:
Renewables Revolution
Clinton Global Initiative
September 25, 2008
[START RECORDING]
CAROLYN LUKENSMEYER: Good morning, folks. Was that an extraordinary opening session? [Applause] So, now I’m just up here to give you a reminder—I just want to remind all of the members and people at the tables that while the panel is talking, don’t forget to write your questions and comments on cards and give them to your table facilitator and recorder so that we can have them ready for the panel in the second part. Great.
MALE SPEAKER: Carol Browner, Principal, the Albright Group.
CAROL BROWNER: Good morning. Let me start by thanking all of you for joining us at this session on the Renewables Revolution. We have a great panel for you. We’re going to have a great conversation here.
Before we bring our panelists on stage, though, we have a special treat. We have a special guest, the governor of Florida, Governor Charlie Crist. And it’s a real honor for me to get to introduce him, since I am actually a native Floridian. And you’re mostly a native Floridian. You came there when you were very tiny. But Governor Crist has been at the forefront of the whole climate change discussion that is going on in our states, and has provided tremendous leadership, not just in Florida but across the country and around the world. And so we are pleased that you were able to take some time out of your schedule today to be with us. And while we welcome you to the stage, let us also congratulate you on your upcoming December wedding. He is here with his fiancée, Carole Rome. Thank you, Governor. [Applause]
GOV. CHARLIE CRIST: Thanks very much, Carol. I told her, I said, well, from one Carol to another, that was very kind of her to make that acknowledgement. And I am truly blessed.
Let me talk about Carol’s accomplishments and what she has done, not only for Florida but for America very briefly. An extraordinary Floridian and a dear friend, and someone for whom I have enormous respect because of her accomplishments, and maybe even more so because of her drive and her heart. So, Carol Browner, Secretary, thank you very, very much for what you have done. And please give her a round of applause. She deserves it. [Applause]
I just wanted to share a few thoughts, because things went over a little bit downstairs. I’m tightened up, and I’ll try to be efficient. I wanted to share a privilege I had recently in Florida, to be able to bring a message of hope and opportunity to Wall Street, of all places, recently about some innovation that we are offering from the Sunshine State. It was a piece of legislation that offers 2 billion dollars of investment in technology, and what concerns me the most, green technology. And I was very excited to have the opportunity to sign this legislation here in New York and have this kind of cash infusion devoted from my fellow Floridians to a better technology for our country and our world. The legislation also doubles Florida’s alternative investments from $9.2 billion to $18.4 billion, not a small sum of money in anyone’s estimate. And other venture firms will likely invest even more, I hope and believe, as a result of Florida’s increased investment.
I would invite all of you who have an interest in accessing those almost 2 billion dollars to visit a website, either myflorida.com or sbafla.com. It’s a great opportunity to do some very good things.
I also had the honor this summer of signing bipartisan legislation in Florida that created additional economic opportunity for the Sunshine State and increasing our use of renewable energies in Florida. I had a visit early on, about a month after I got sworn in as governor in 2007, from a gentleman named Terry Tamminen, who had been serving Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. And Terry came into my office and he showed me a big map of the United States of America, and he said, “You know, Governor, you’re a new governor, and I wanted to show you what’s happening in California, the accomplishments that we’ve been able to make there. There have been great things that have happened in the other northwestern states in our country and in the northeastern part of America. But when it comes to the southeast of the United States, there hasn’t been a whole lot moving forward as it relates to climate change and the environmental policies.” He goes, “You’re the new governor of Florida.” And he says, “That means that you have an opportunity. You have an opportunity to do something very good and potentially lead in this part of our country.” And so we embarked upon some things, and we’ve had some relative success with wind, solar, other renewable energies, biomass. And I’ve very, very pleased about what we’ve been able to do.
We have sought to remove the barriers to greater investments in renewables in the Sunshine State. That’s why solar is so important to us. But in addition, we also have met metering requirements that relate to power, net metering which would give full retail rate for renewable power as an offset to the traditional sources of power. We’re paving a way for expanding the production and use of renewable energy. We’re encouraging innovative solutions that will expand our capacity for renewable energy. And solar energy is on the forefront of all of that, along with wind and wave and currents.
In addition to ethanol, we in Florida are embarking upon a project that is historic. It is the purchase by the state of about 187,000 acres of land near Lake Okeechobee that is now used for farming sugar. And it would include sugar mills if we get it all right. And one of the things we want to do with those mills is transform them from producing sugar to producing ethanol made from sugar. It’s a much more efficient way to produce it. It doesn’t make food cost more because it’s not born out of corn. And we think it’s the future of energy independence, along with some other very good ideas that we heard about this morning here at the conference.
I want to conclude by explaining how we’ve been able to do this. We’ve been very fortunate, and we’ve done it by bipartisan opportunities. I would really refer to them as non-partisan. The energy bills that we have done, along with other health-care bills, cover Florida, which we believe will offer affordable health care to about the 4 million Floridians who do not have it now for about 150 dollars a month. Right now it costs 600 or 700 dollars a month. We, for the first time in the Sunshine State, now have an autism bill that will cover children who have autism in Florida for the first time in the history of our state. And both in the House and in the Senate, there was not one single no vote. Every Democrat, every Republican voted yes. Same on the energy bill—every Democrat, every Republican voted yes. And the same on the Cover Florida Heath package—every Democrat and every Republican voted yes. It is us working together to try to do what is right for the people who elect us and expect us to serve them—could be a model for America.
Thank you all very much, and God bless you for what you’re doing. [Applause]
MALE SPEAKER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our panelists: Wesley Clark, retired U.S. Army general and director of Emergya Wind Technologies. [Applause] Peggy Liu, founder and chairperson, JUCCCE, Joint U.S. - China Cooperation on Clean Energy. [Applause] Marcel Brenninkmeijer, founder and chairman, Good Energies. [Applause] Lester Brown, president, Earth Policy Institute. [Applause] Carol Browner, principal, the Albright Group. [Applause]
CAROL BROWNER: We have got a great set of panelists here. We’ve got creative thinkers, doers, investors. And what we’re going to be talking about here is the renewables revolution. Thirty percent of new energy in the United States last year came from wind. Iceland, we hear about, is almost all geothermal now. Solar entrepreneurship in China is growing more and more successful.
But if you look around the world, worldwide renewables are still only a fraction of our energy production. And so what I want to do is start very quickly, go down the row here with our experts and ask you to each answer the same question, in a one-word answer, a one-sentence answer, and then we’ll open it up. The question is: What would it take, in your mind, for the world to really scale up on renewables? What’s the one more important thing the world could do? Lester?
LESTER BROWN: I think get the price right for energy, get the market to tell the environmental truth. General Clark and I were talking earlier. One of the problems is that—
CAROL BROWNER: You get one word. Market? We’ll be back to you.
LESTER BROWN: Market with tax restructuring.
CAROL BROWNER: Okay. Marcel.
MARCEL BRENNINKMEIJER: Well, I believe that getting the right framework for people to invest will help.
CAROL BROWNER: So, investment opportunities. Peggy.
PEGGY LIU: So, I won’t repeat, for China we are investing. I think the key is the implementation of smart grids, so that we can allow the renewables onto the grid.
CAROL BROWNER: And General Clark.
WESLEY CLARK: Back to what Lester was saying, it’s the market. You’ve got to pay the full cost, not only the economic cost but the climatological costs, environmental costs, and social costs for carbon. Once you know what the real price that you’re paying is, then renewables will come in.
CAROL BROWNER: Well let me—you all have taken us into the market discussion, so let me ask you a follow-up along those lines. What role do you see a cap-and-trade-program playing? We have several who are active here in the United States, and also from a global perspective. Is that the market mechanism that is most likely to get us the kind of pricing we need? Lester?
LESTER BROWN: If you’re to take a poll of economists, they would probably 95 percent say let’s restructure the tax system. It’s clear, it’s clean, it’s transparent, it’s honest and it works. Industries prefer cap and trade. I think in the end, as Mayor Newsom said this morning, we’re going to have some combination of both. But the tax restructuring, lowering income taxes and offsetting it with a higher carbon tax, is really a fairly simple, straightforward thing that we could phase in over the next dozen years. And once people know it’s happening, then investment decisions begin to change very rapidly.
CAROL BROWNER: Marcel, can you talk a little bit about cap and trade, maybe from a global perspective and as a businessman?
MARCEL BRENNINKMEIJER: What we see is that the real cost of energy is not attributed to energy cost. So, this morning we heard that oil is very expensive. I would say it’s still not expensive enough. And energy prices are going up. We’ve seen in European countries 15 percent power price increases. At the same time—and I don’t want to jump ahead—but if we look at solar costs, they have come down like they will be halved in five years. We have several roadmaps in several of the companies where we’ve invested where we can halve the cost of a panel within five years. So, the one is going up. The other’s coming down. And there will be a crossroad, which we can discuss later on.
CAROL BROWNER: And so, Peggy, from your perspective, you’ve been an entrepreneur, you’ve been in the business world, now you’re leading a large NGO, one of the big debates every time our Congress talks about cap and trade is what’s going to happen in China.
PEGGY LIU: Well, in China, I’d like to sort of shift the debate from cap and trade to something more home-grown, which is our 11th five-year plan. So, in 2006, the central government said we are going to reduce, by 2010, 10 percent of our emissions. We’re going to decrease energy intensity per unit GDP by 20 percent. And so I think the key in China is not necessarily the cap and trade, although it is very interesting. For China, what works is KPIs. It’s the key performance indicators that are tied to the local leaders, the mayors that are responsible for implementing these targets locally. And we’re actually moving towards that.
So this last year, these last 12 months, as JUCCCE has been growing, we have seen phenomenal progress in the central government, the Chinese central government’s intentions. And so look to our KPIs to grow more specific and lead the local leaders towards helping the local cities to implement clean, renewable technologies.
CAROL BROWNER: General Clark, you’re 38 years in the Army, four stars. Can you talk a little bit about the issue of energy and renewables from a defense perspective?
WESLEY CLARK: Well, strictly from the defense perspective, I mean, we’re the largest consumer of petroleum in the country. That’s probably not going to change in the near term, although we’ve been looking for electric drive on tanks and so forth for a long time. The Navy’s gotten away from boilers, as you know, and they’re into nuclear.
But I think that to really understand the national security side of this, you have to go back to the market. If you look at the market—let me just give everybody an example of what the market looks like in a small southern state that I know pretty well. In the 1990s, we thought the future of energy was natural gas. We built a lot of natural gas turbine plants. Natural gas was a dollar per million BTUs, except maybe in the heating season when it went up a little bit. We had some backup. We had the old coal-fired plants. Now it’s 80-percent coal. We get it for 1.80 dollar per million BTUs coming in out of Wyoming on long-term contracts. We don’t use natural gas except during the MAC season. There’s a little bit of hydropower, a little bit of nuclear.
And the way it was explained to me by the people who do this, they said, We’re concerned because we’re selling our power now at five cents a kilowatt hours wholesale. It’s eight cents retail. And if you put a 10-dollar carbon tax on it, that’ll raise it a penny. So, if it’s a 10-dollar carbon tax, it’ll be six cents. For a 20-dollar carbon tax, it’s seven cents. And for a 40-dollar carbon tax, it’s nine cents. So, industry, the utilities, nobody wants this carbon tax. It changes a lot of—it moves a lot of people out of their comfort zone.
But I do agree with the point that Lester was making, that we’re going to move, I hope, to a cap and trade and some kind of a carbon tax, because that’s the best way to send to the market the signals about what the real cost of energy is and help all of us live with that cost.
CAROL BROWNER: Marcel, you mentioned your work in solar. Can you spend a few minutes just helping us understand just sort of what are the opportunities? And then what are the obstacles, specifically as it relates to solar?
MARCEL BRENNINKMEIJER: When I started in solar in 2000, 2001, the industry had the size of about 200 megawatts. Five years later, it was four gigawatts, which is equivalent to a nuclear power plant with a gigawatt, if you take the sun hours and divide them by the yearly hours we have. And it’s projected to grow by another factor of five to ten within another five or six years. So, solar, for me, was the area to enter because it was small enough to be meaningful in that area, but also because it has probably the greatest propositions of all the renewables.
Now, we do need all the renewables to combat climate change, but solar is the area where I believe, or where we believe—and this is based on studies by Shell. Shell, for instance, put out a study at the end of the last century where solar will take about two thirds of the entire energy provision by 2100.
Now, the way I sold it to my family was that we’re a large family business, six generations now entering. I said, well, it’s only four more generations for us to hit 2100. So, do you want to be in this business, yes or no? Now, given the fundamentals of solar, that you can use it to decentralize, that you can use it on grid. You can have thin film concentrated, crystalline silicone based, you can have thermal solar, CSP, so there are many options.
And the nice thing about solar is it correlates quite well with the peak of the day of the consumption. Now, it’s a little bit on the early side, meaning that by the time that solar has its peak, it’s just before the peak of the consumption. If you take California, where you have 5 o’ clock in the afternoon the highest consumption, solar is about 1 o’ clock. But you could cover the first half of that peak. And there are other means, other storage means, ice energy, things like that, where you can do the second half. So, in order to cut the peak and avoid expensive and CO2-emitting base load, solar is probably one of the best propositions. Besides using it in Third-World countries, where we have projects, for instance, in Ethiopia supported, where access to energy via solar is the cheapest way of doing so.
CAROL BROWNER: Thank you. General, you’re our wind expert on the panel. Maybe you can give us a similar overview of wind and sort of what are the opportunities today and the challenges going forward.
WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think if you were going to think about wind, you think about let’s say maybe a million and a half dollars, maybe 2 million, 2 1/2 million dollars per installed megawatt. The problem is that the wind isn’t where the consumption is. So you have to get it there. To get it there, you’ve got to really work the transmission grid. The transmission grid in the United States is very fragmented. It needs about, according to some studies, 900 billion dollars of investment over the next 30 years as the electricity demand in the United States grows. And that investment has to go into the right high-voltage transmission linkages between the wind corridors and the centers for consumption.
In addition to that, to get wind started now, we need a steady and consistent tax regulatory regime. This year, the production tax credit is expiring. The way it works for wind producers financially is you get six, seven, eight cents a kilowatt hour in a power purchase agreement. If you can sell your facility to a financial investor who can use passive income tax credits, he can take advantage of a production tax credit that adds another three cents of value per kilowatt hour after tax. So this is pretty substantial. This is what’s fueled the explosive growth of the American wind industry over the last four or five years.
But, that production tax credit is expiring on the 31st of December. Today, the Congress is voting and arguing again about whether or not they’ll extend it. The extension is only for another year. The cost of the extension is five billion dollars for the one-year extension. And yet the entire wind industry in the United States, the investors, the manufacturers, the wind park developers, 90 percent of that industry is hinged on this Congressional vote. It’s a terrible stop/go response from the country that should be the leader in renewables, and yet we can’t seem to get our own policy straight.
CAROL BROWNER: I have to agree. It’s been very disappointing that Congress has not been able to get this straight. And the one thing I learned as a regulator, as the administrator of the EPA, is that you’ve got to give the business community certainty and predictability if they’re going to make the investments. And I think this is a fabulous example.
Lester, I want to go to you. You’re the co-author, I think, of 50 books or so. I think nobody in the environmental arena has probably—there’s not a person in the environmental arena who hasn’t gone to your books on more than one occasion when we needed the facts and we needed to understand the nuances of something. And so I have sort of two questions for you. And I know you’ve thought a lot about sort of the scalability and how we manage that, but also maybe some of the other renewables that we haven’t talked about, like geothermal and maybe some thoughts on that.
LESTER BROWN: The book is called Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
CAROL BROWNER: Sorry. But there are 49 others.
LESTER BROWN: The thing that I have found most interesting and pleasantly surprising over the last maybe year or so has been the extraordinary increase in the scale of thinking and planning in the development of renewable energy resources around the world. I mean, we all know about Texas, for example. Texas has over 5,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity, I think more than Denmark now. It has more than 20,000 under development as Governor Perry’s effort to build these two transmission lines in west Texas and from the Texas panhandle. There are another 20,000 megawatts of wind in the development and planning stages, including two 600-megawatt wind farms near Corpus Christie on the coast.
Developers are now looking at the coastal wind in Texas. This totals 45,000 megawatts. That, when developed, will more than satisfy the residential needs of Texas by a wide margin. Texas, which has been our leading producer of oil, is now our leading producer of wind-generated electricity and will become an exporter of wind as it has been of oil.
When I look at South Dakota, with Clipper Wind and BP in a joint venture, developing 5,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity, that’s probably three times as much as South Dakota could consume. But they’re going to build a transmission line into Illinois, feed that electricity into Chicago and the Midwestern industrial heartland.
Another oil man—a lot of oil money now going into wind—Phil Anschutz, who started in oil in Colorado, this 2,000-megawatt wind farm in south-central Wyoming, just on the west side of the continental divide, and he has the right-of-way now, has the rights to build a 900-mile transmission line to California. That transmission line is intended to carry eventually tens of thousands of wind-generated electricity from Wyoming to California and other points in the southwest.
An example outside the United States: Scotland. The government of Scotland is negotiating with two investment funds in Dubai to invest 7 billion dollars in an offshore transmission grid off the east coast of Scotland that will link with Europe and enable the Scots to develop 40,000 megawatts of offshore capacity.
Another example, Algeria. Algeria is now planning to develop 6,800 megawatts of solar-thermal generating capacity. They know that they will not much longer be exporting oil, but they want to keep exporting energy in the form of solar-generated electricity to Europe via undersea cable. That has now morphed into a proposed project of a transmission line from Morocco across the top of Africa, up through Syria that would be designed to carry and connect 130,000 megawatts of solar-thermal generating capacity.
I mention this just to give a sense of what’s happening. You asked about geothermal. Indonesia has announced it’s going to develop—and this is just in recent weeks—6,800 megawatts of geothermal-generating capacity. This is a country with 500 volcanoes, 131 of which are active, an enormous amount of energy near the surface. The principal agency responsible for developing geothermal in Indonesia is Pertamina, the state oil company. Oil production’s falling in Indonesia. They’re now a net oil importer. They see their future in geothermal energy, and Pertamina may be the first oil company, state or private, to make a major shift from oil into renewable energy resources.
So the scale of thinking now in this field is just extraordinary. And we’ve not seen anything like it before. And I think it’s partly because of a comment T. Boone Pickens made, when he was asked why he, an oil man for 60 years, now 81 years old, is investing 10 billion dollars in wind. He said very simply, “I’ve gotten tired of oil depletion curves.” And what he’s acknowledging is that when he invests in wind and the infrastructure, he’s investing in an energy system that can last forever. I mean, of course you have to replace the bearings and so forth, but this is the excitement that’s now driving this huge, huge jump in the scale of thinking with renewables.
CAROL BROWNER: Peggy, if you could maybe help us understand sort of what are the mix of renewables that China will be looking towards, and how you see that playing out. You talked a little bit about the government’s plan. But as an entrepreneur, as someone who’s been on the business side of issues, if you can maybe talk a little bit from that perspective.
PEGGY LIU: So, great numbers from Lester. The scale of what’s happening in China is huge. So, if you take a look at what we spent last year, 2007, in renewables alone, it was $10 billion. The government’s plan is to get our energy mix of renewables to 15 percent, which I think compares to Europe’s 2 percent. So that’s very favorable, given the fast amount of time that we’re progressing.
There is tremendous international cooperation opportunities in renewables. China is looking to the west and north and south and east, to have you bring in know-how and technology. I was just on the phone with State Grid yesterday, and they’re like, We really want to invest more in wind generation. Just so you know, in China there are only two utilities. One of them, the State Grid, covers 88 percent of our land mass. So it’s an oligopoly. It’s a very simple sales cycle for any of you out there who are trying to come into China and make money. And they are very eagerly looking to know-how for education, for how do you measure, do assessments, software technology, not just the turbines.
In wind, we are doubling. So, last year I think we had an installed capacity of six gigawatts. This year I think we’re moving to 13 by the end of 2008. I believe that the Chinese Renewables Association just estimated that we’re going to be at at least 30 gigawatts by 2015. So these are really large numbers. It’s very exciting.
Solar. You probably already know that one of the richest men was an entrepreneur in solar panels in China. Everybody knows that. But 90 percent of our panels go outside of China. We’re not deploying them inside. However, again, in the last 12 months, the last 12 months have been really, really crucial for China. And any of you who have been to China in the last five years need to come to China again and see what’s happening. We’re developing large solar farms. So Bading [misspelled?], which has declared itself a solar city, is creating these whole supply chains of different industries. So, solar, there is a huge number, I think 30 to 50 different companies, just focused on different aspects of creating solar panels. You’ve probably heard of Yiling [misspelled?] Bading. That’s from Bading.
Wind: They’ve got, again, a few tens of companies just focused on different parts of the supply chain. And then they’re also building a huge solar farm around the city. A lot of you might be familiar with Rizhao, which is sort of Sunshine City of three million, a very small city in China. Every rooftop has solar thermal.
So, we are really, really trying to do the right thing for China and for the world. We are very interested in international cooperation. What JUCCCE does is try to translate, to convene the right players from international experts and bring them to local leaders so that they can help deploy this clean and efficient energy as fast as possible.
I’ll give you a really interesting example. Again, I was meeting with State Grid last week, and I was showing them some pictures of recent events that JUCCCE has done, including bringing David Sandalow and Ken Lieberthal over to meet with a variety of government leaders. And they looked at this picture and they were like, “Is that David Sandalow?” We had five translators spend weeks translating his book, Freedom From Oil, into Chinese. And we distributed it in digital format to all our leaders. Again, the State Grid is the leading utility in the world. So can you believe how much interest they have in learning from the international community?
Now, they didn’t just translate it. They then said, “Can you put us in touch with David Sandalow? We want to publish it in China.” So, what I’ve done today is—David, can you come up? Are you around? They have asked me to personally give David—come on up—
CAROL BROWNER: What we’re supposed to understand now is that David is now a rock star in China?
PEGGY LIU: At the State Grid, yes. And they’re like, “Would you please, please hand over this written, top-secret translation in Chinese of your book. And we would like to cooperate with David Sandalow to publish this in Chinese, in China for the entire country.” [Applause] So, I’d like to spontaneously create a new commitment with you, David, between JUCCCE and David Sandalow and the State Grid to talk about, to teach the Chinese people about how we can have freedom from oil. And so I’d also like to give you a Beijing Olympic T-shirt, since I know you weren’t able to come.
DAVID SANDALOW: I’m speechless. My only words are [speaking Chinese].
CAROL BROWNER: Thank you, thank you. Congratulations. [Applause]
I think it would be inappropriate to have this panel discussion today in all the optimism which I think we all share about renewables without spending just a moment putting it into the context of the current economic situation. And particularly Lester and General Clark, I want you to maybe spend—we don’t have much time and I want to hear from both of you about how you think our current economic situation, how renewables are going to play into that. Should we be concerned that there’s going to be a slowdown? I actually think that maybe there’s an opportunity here. But as people who look at this on a daily basis, and General, why don’t I start with you.
WESLEY CLARK: Well, there’s still money in the financial community to invest in renewables. In fact, the hottest sector is the renewable sector. Solar is very hot. Wind will be hot if we can resolve the production tax credit issue. So there’s a lot of interest in that.
Also, if you look at this financial crisis, you cannot get out of this crisis by fixing the banking system. The banking system is part of the supporting network for the American economy. But it’s not the driver of the American economy. You’ve got to do something for homeowners. I think everybody understands that. But the basic thing is you’ve got to create jobs in America. You can’t just invest in homes and consume.
And one of the great things America can do is produce. So our company that I’m representing up here, EWT, for example, is a Dutch company. We’re bringing manufacturing facilities into the United States. And that’s not out of altruistic motives. That’s because it’s cheaper to manufacturer in the United States than it is in Europe for the kind of technology that we’re using.
So I think that when we move into the renewable sector, we can create lots of jobs. They’re good jobs, and they’re part of what we need to keep America growing. I think that’s the ultimate way we move out of the financial crisis.
CAROL BROWNER: To do follow-up, we talked about how—we started with everyone agreeing that the market signal, the market mechanisms that are going to be important to really stimulating the kind of investment and commitments. Do you think, and I’ll ask you to put on your political hat here, do you think we’re going to see a reluctance in Washington to make that kind of political commitment? We saw Mayor Newsom talking about this, others talking about it earlier. Are people going to become reluctant to sort of delve into this energy world with the financial crisis?
WESLEY CLARK: Well, in the near term they certainly are reluctant. There’s a coalition of House Democrats called the Blue Dog Democrats. And they want to go back to the 1990s principle of paying as you go, so you don’t keep running up the national deficit and the national debt. But I think the financial crisis and the extraordinary sense of emergency around this will give the next President, whoever he is, the opportunity to put forward some really bold programs in this area. And so, you just have to take this as an opportunity. And I think it will be an opportunity if we look at it that way, that can go beyond the concerns over narrow affordability in terms of conventional budgeting.
CAROL BROWNER: Lester, I’m going to give you the last—we have a minute. We have a little clock in front of us so we stay on time. And, again, as you looked at these issues over a very, very long time, are you concerned that the financial situation of the moment, which will be with us for some time, is going to slow sort of the political commitment to renewables and alternatives?
LESTER BROWN: It probably is going to obviously affect thinking. But the thing to keep in mind is that during the last century, as the world turned to oil, we saw the globalization of the world energy economy. During this century, we’re going to see the localization of the world energy economy. And that means a lot of local investment. It’s difficult to imagine now the scale of jobs that is going to be created as we develop hundreds of thousands of megawatts of wind-generating capacity, as we build 94 geothermal power plants, projects now underway in the western states, for example.
If we look at solar-thermal power and some of the huge plants now underway, Governor Crist is planning one for Florida, for example. There are some big ones in the Southwest now coming. It’ll dwarf anything we’ve seen before. And then solar cells, of course, which is a very local thing, creates a lot of local employment in every community in the country. So, we’re looking at the job creating potential here in this industry probably exceeding anything since the IT revolution itself and the enormous expansion that came with that during the 1990s.
CAROL BROWNER: Great. What we’re going to do now—someone’s going to explain what we’re going to do now, which is Carolyn. We’re going to take a break, and you’re going—
CAROLYN LUKENSMEYER: Great. How about a round of applause for a fantastic panel? [Applause]
Because we’ve run late this morning in the plenary, we’re only going to have a 20-minute table discussion in this topic. So we want to get you all right into it initially, get as many ideas as you can into your table.
This is a perfect panel to follow with a question that is the core of CGI. Imagine a dream CGI commitment that could help scale up renewable energy dramatically. Imagine a dream CGI commitment that could help scale up renewable energy dramatically. Try to be as specific as you can about what would it look like and who would be involved. Our goal is to get as many good ideas. You don’t have to be able to do it yourself, even, but to get it out there stated so that someone could grab onto it. Have fun.
MALE SPEAKER: Carol Browner, former EPA Administrator.
CAROL M. BROWNER: Okay, we are now moving on. All your good ideas have been captured and recorded and we will be looking at those shortly. If I can get everyone’s attention, so now comes a really fun part of the day and that is when we make the announcements of commitments and joining us to do that is Shirley Ann Jackson. I had the pleasure of serving in the Clinton Administration when Shirley Ann Jackson was chairwoman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Now, this is so interesting. She is a theoretical physicist. I have no idea what that means, but I am sure it is very, very important but most importantly, she is currently president of Rensselaer Polytec Institute, and we thank you for joining us here today and to announce the commitments. [Applause]
SHIRLEY ANN JACKSON: Thank you. Having sat at my table, I realize how much work people really put into thinking about the commitments. I was told I would be introduced perhaps by the voice of God or by Carol Browner but I said Carol Browner is the voice of God. [Laughter]
I am very delighted to announce a few commitments this morning, but first I would like to invite to the stage Dawn Haig Thomas, who is president, and her fund, The GSMA Development Fund, please. [Applause]
They have a commitment that is entitled Green Power for Mobile and the intent is to promote the use of renewable energy across mobile networks in the developing world, to extend coverage in regions which currently lack connection and to reduce reliance on diesel, and in particular the GSMA Development Fund and its partners, and I will just very quickly read them, Baréty, Dialogue, Digicel, Idea Cellular, MTN, FT Orange, ORISCOM, Reshown, Safaricom, S-Smart, Tel-Nor, VimpleCom, Vodacom and Vodafone, and Zain. And they have made a commitment to take a leadership role, particularly the GSMA Development Fund, in driving the adoption of renewable energy across the mobile industry in developing countries and helping to provide power to base stations that are off the grid, to develop Green Power tool kits for developing world mobile operators and build relationships with renewable energy vendors, to encourage the adoption of renewable energy in the mobile industry through regular action-oriented meetings and summits.
Over the span of five years, this commitment will reduce the carbon load by 3.4 million tons. It also will ensure that 40 million people in developing countries are connected to mobile networks, enhancing their access to modern technologies and markets and thereby boosting economic development. This represents a commitment of 1.5 million U.S. dollars over five years. [Applause]
Next I would like to call Achille Colombo, chief executive officer of Grupo Falck. [Applause] Grupo Falck is committing to develop wind energy through the use of technical solutions that will help reduce future generations’ dependence on fossil fuels. Through the development of wind farms, the commitment will help to construct 1,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity by 2012.
Moreover, as wind farms produce and provide a clean and sustainable form of energy that does not emit any greenhouse gases, it will help address the climate change challenges of the 21st century. It will, in fact, support the European Counsel’s goal of having 20 percent of total energy consumed from renewable resources by 2020.
Over the course of five years, it will help reduce the carbon load by 1.3 million tons. The value of this commitment is worth 400 to 500 billion U.S. dollars in equity over five years with a total project value of two billion dollars. It involves France, India, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and the U.K. Thank you very much. [Applause]
Next, I would invite Robert Bannick, vice president of Dundee Capitol Markets and founder of Enhanced Geothermal Systems Company, AltaRock Energy. [Applause] Robert Bannick, along with his partners is committing on behalf of IGDC to assemble a team of geothermal development experts to identify and develop the abundant but yet untapped geothermal potential of emerging and developing countries. For instance, the African Rift Valley, which intersects six countries including Kenya and Ethiopia is estimated to have 7,000 megawatts of potential geothermal energy. Developing this resource could make a meaningful impact on rural electrification challenges and help to reduce poverty.
This commitment seeks to bring clean, new geothermal power infrastructure to such countries by developing electricity-generating facilities or district heating programs having the potential to have a positive impact on thousands of lives, and let me just say that having visited not so long ago a township in South Africa and looking at some of the electrification challenges there, all of these sorts of decentralized energy generation opportunities are very important, and to actually have these kinds of commitments is critical. This has a value of 300 million U.S. dollars over a three- to five-year period. Thank you very much. [Applause]
In case any of you want to change your thoughts about the answer to the question that was posed, I would like to invite Dr. Dan Nocera to come forward. Dr. Nocera is professor of energy and professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. He holds a Ph.D. from Cal-Tech, the California Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University, and I have known him and about him for a number of years, and he has an extensive and very distinguished background in research and education, and he is currently focused on basic mechanisms of energy conversion and biology and chemistry, and he is here to give us a progress report. Dr. Nocera. [Applause]
DANIEL G. NOCERA: So, with the title professor of energy at MIT you would think I would be the most knowledgeable person at this conference in energy. And I was disappointed to find out this morning that I’m the second-most knowledgeable person, since Governor Palin was attending the conference. [Laughter] It was a big blow to my ego [laughter].
But there is something that is good about being an energy expert is one thing you should do and it is really good I think for the CGI to do this is to make sure they have all the numbers right. Because it is really hard to solve problems when you don’t have the right numbers and there is a lot of money to be made in energy. And that’s good and it is bad, what's good is market will drive things. What's bad is sometimes you don’t really want to know what the right answer is or people don’t want you to know the right answer because they could lose a lot of money, and so that is where CGI could be really important and in this commitment the one I’m here for that really drives the heart of the matter.
You’ve heard a lot of big numbers, gigawatts and terawatts, no you haven’t heard terawatts, gigawatts, megawatts, what you should know is in the next 45 years you need 15 terawatts, which is 15,000 times a gigawatt, which is 15 million times a megawatt. That is what the world needs.
And so the commitment that I am here to tell you a progress report on is the Solar Revolutions Project. And it came out of the goodness of the heart of a single family foundation, The Chesonis Family Foundation. And they gave MIT 10 million dollars and that in terms of the big scale of things and money wise isn’t very much, but what it did is it has energized MIT so if you go on the Web, I do not want to tell you about all the accomplishments, just look on the Web in the last year, or look in Technology Review. But what it has done is it has collected around 15 to 30, 20 faculty, 30 to 45 students, totally committed to moving. There is a magic number people use, it is always ten years.
I saw General Clark is here. Everybody always says ten years when you are a talking head, so when I was on CNN I’ve gone to 8.215 years, but what we are really committed to is under five years to try to actually come up with important innovation so we were talking about why solar hasn’t penetrated a market or wind.
There is one word I can use. I can use a word storage, so if you have storage and took out intermittency, that would solve a lot of problems and then cheap, so that is what this solar revolution project has done, and it has done it at the right way. Guess where it has put the money? It is in the brightest, youngest minds in this country, and these kids are super energized. And just to give you a feeling, just out of the one year of discovery, there are three or four start-ups. And the amount of money behind these start-ups is almost incomprehensible because they are involving the top corporations in India and the top corporations in Africa to move this stuff forward as quickly as possible with the goal of making your place where you live a gas station and power station, and you don’t need anybody else’s energy, right, so that’s what we are doing. That is what the Solar Revolutions Project has done. Like I said, only 30 to 45 students, MIT has become the solar hub, as I learned the other day on the Web. There is a lot of innovation coming out of it and it came out of this one single act of kindness, The Chesonis Family Foundation for 10 million. But if you want the progress report, just look on the Web and see what we are up to. So, thanks a lot. [Applause]
MALE SPEAKER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the platform, Carol Browner and our panel.
CAROL M. BROWNER: We had lots of great questions, thank you all for doing that and what we are going to do, we had to pare them down in the interest of time. We have agreed on one question for each panelist, and they are going to have to give, unfortunately, a very, very brief answer. But I know they have been working on being concise. So let me go ahead, and Lester, I am going to start with you. The question for you is: Given that wind and solar are intermittent technologies, what technologies do we need to meet base load needs?
LESTER BROWN: Among the major renewable sources, geothermal is by far the best for base load. But keep in mind in much of this country we need peak power and that is solar energy. And California, for example, is moving quickly to develop solar to satisfy its peak power needs. Solar fits very well with rising air-conditioning needs.
The third thing is wind, and here this question of wind intermittency has been answered by a Stanford team that assumed that we build the Eisenhower equivalent of the interstate highway system in a national grid and develop wind resources on a huge scale and what happens is that because no two wind farms have identical wind profiles, the larger of the grid and the more wind farms you get, then eventually wind becomes base load and that is what we have to work for in this country.
CAROL M. BROWNER: Thank you. Marcel, we have a question for you about Europe, and I think in sort of what are the good things that are going on in the renewable world and what are sort of the challenges?
MARCEL BRENNINKMEIJER: If you take Europe and it’s difficult to kind of generalize it so much, but cost is still the issue and there’s, I think, no energy farm that has not had subsidies in the beginning, so what is important is to have like Germany has, a good ground system so that investments you get half your equity in form of grounds but you get job creation requirements and things like that linked to it. That is working very well for Germany.
We have [inaudible] tariffs in some of the countries which support the higher cost of the power. Now that is needed also for a few more years, and about five to ten years, if we look to grid parity and that is necessary also to be expanded in other countries.
Now the big challenge that we see is that if you look at buildings, buildings emit about 40 percent or are responsible for 40 percent of the CO2, so working on energy efficiency is probably the most efficient way of saving CO2, and doing something good for the environment but not selling energy is not in the interest of the utility, so that is one of the challenges that we have to deal with.
CAROL M. BROWNER: And Peggy, the question we got for you is what advice would you give to investors interested in China? What should they know, what should they be thinking about?
PEGGY LIU: So China is ready to go green. We are spending billions of dollars; just to give you an example, last year alone in new power grid construction we spent 35 billion dollars. The State Grid, since proposing ultra-high voltage transmission lines in December 2004, we have built 645 kilometers by end of 2008 for AC and we are building 2,000 kilometers for DC. These are incredible amount of money and another good example is sweet sorghum for bio fuel. We are using sweet sorghum on marginal land. They are building not one pilot plant but four pilot plants in four provinces that are 400,000, 400,000, 200,000, 200,000 tons of ethanol each year. These are huge pilots.
So my one advice to people who want to come to China and take advantage of this huge economic opportunity is not to come as individual companies but to band together so that you can provide turnkey solutions to a country that doesn’t speak English. Right, so what we need to do is go to cold-fire power plants. We need to go to mayors. We need to go to the top 1,000 SOEs, band together as a coalition of smart grid companies, a coalition of coal plant abatement technology companies and give people, the local decision-makers, a vision of the ecosystem that will help them leapfrog. And in that way, you can make impact happen much, much more quickly, so this is part of the work that we’re doing at Joint U.S. China Cooperation on Clean Energy is really to be a convener of light guards used trying a smart grid cooperative that we’re announcing this afternoon. It is to be a convener and a translator so it’s a tremendous economic opportunity. I really welcome you guys to come to China and take a look at it firsthand, especially since we are having our international forum November 10th and 11th. Come to Beijing. Come to Shanghai. See what revolution is happening on the ground in China.
CAROL M. BROWNER: Great and General Clark, for you, who should pay for facilitating the transmission of renewable energy across the country? Who gets the bill?
WESLEY CLARK: Well, that’s easy. The consumer! That’s the standard answer in every economics course, but it gets washed through the financial community. It is in the form of bonds. It may be in the form of bonds underwritten by local or federal guarantees, and what we need to do to facilitate this is we have got to pass, Harry Reid has a great piece of legislation in front of the senate called Senate Bill 2076, which creates seven energy superhighways to take solar and wind out of the western energy production areas and take them to the energy consumption areas. And so it paves a way for 765 kilovolt transmission lines with expedited approval, and these will be financed by bonds.
I would say this, though, when you say who pays, it sounds as though somebody is going to pay more for this. But the truth is we are going to pay less if we do this because energy congestion is so bad now on the East and West Coast that during the peak loading periods, people can’t get electric power at all. And, for example, in the San Diego area, you may get if you’re selling power into the grid, you may get ten cents a kilowatt hour on a 24-hour basis, but if you could sell it at peak power prices, they will pay you 30 cents a kilowatt hour. People are desperate for this power so and ultimately the consumer pays everything, so we are talking about lowering consumer costs by proper investments in the U.S. grid.
CAROL M. BROWNER: Let me ask you just a quick follow-up question: What would it cost, say, a fully integrated smart grid across the United States, what would that cost?
WESLEY CLARK: I don’t know, different figures, because it depends on how you define it and how much of the existing grid you can use and what your time frame is. We are anticipating a 30-percent rise in U.S. electricity consumption over the next 20 years. That translates into all of this rolled together between 700 and 900 billion dollars worth of investment, which sounds like a lot of money. But there is a lot of people who would love to make those investments because they have really high returns, if you can make them. The problem is the regulatory approval. We are in a semi-deregulated chaotic environment with hundreds of different authorities all passing judgments on every proposal for change.
CAROL M. BROWNER: I know a little bit about that regulatory environment, it can get a little complicated. We are now going to go to David Sandalow, who is going to tell us what you told us.
DAVID SANDALOW: Hi everyone, we had dozens and dozens of fantastic ideas coming back to the theme team, and I just want to start by asking everyone to give a big round of applause to the theme team back there. [Applause] Incredible job tolling all this out. It was hard to choose from all these great ideas but just to cite a few, large property owners buy renewable energy, a lot of stuff along that line. CEOs of top 50 companies choose suppliers based on the level of renewable energy use. Somebody suggested the American Bar Association should analyze legal, regulatory and financing aspects of renewable energy development and someone suggested a genius award for renewable energy innovations.
We had a lot of great specific ideas, a clean energy core for national service. This might have been the theme team’s favorite, students submit renewable energy ideas, CGI members vote on the best ideas and fund 100,000 dollars each for them. Somebody suggested the U.S. military commit to 50-percent renewable energy use by 2015; interesting idea. A competition between U.S. cities to reach 80-percent renewables first. A lot of discussion of transmission, someone suggested a consortium to create transmission solutions, but there is a lot of recognition that transmission is a big part of the issue here. Demonstration projects for energy storage, also a lot of discussion of energy storage and recognition, in order to move forward on renewables, we need to address energy storage issues, and then a coalition of universities and energy companies to educate consumers.
Two of our favorite glib suggestions were a trillion bucks from the government [Laughter], somebody thought $700 billion dollars sounded like a better number and Donald Trump sponsors an Apprentice on renewable energy [Laughter]. Thanks very much. [Applause]
CAROL M. BROWNER: Thank you, David. So panelists this is what we are going to do now. This is like the game snow portion, CGI’s version of American Idol, and we didn’t have to sit through a lot of really bad performances and singers. We are going to pick our favorite. Each person gets to pick, maybe we will all pick the same, and go down the row and then spend a moment talking about how we would recommend making whatever commitments we pick, if it’s the same one, making that one happen or the individual ones, Lester what is your favorite?
LESTER BROWN: This reminds me. Someone once asked me who my hero was, and I said Donald Trump, and they were disappointed I think.
CAROL M. BROWNER: So you pick the Donald Trump answer and commitment?
LESTER BROWN: The one I like is the competition between cities to see who can reach 80-percent renewables first. I think that would really set in motion a lot of activity, a lot of innovation, a lot of investment and an enormous obviously reduction in carbon emissions.
CAROL M. BROWNER: Marcel?
MARCEL BRENNINKMEIJER: I agree but I have two others, being the genius award and the [break in audio 00:24:33-00:24:38] is probably the most innovative area in the solar space so encouraging that even more to get the cost down faster, to get better products, that is what we need.
PEGGY LIU: I’ll choose something different. The first one, large property owners buy renewable energy. In China over the next 20 years, McKenzie says that we are going to be building 50,000 new skyscrapers, the equivalent of ten Manhattans in the next 20 years.
Okay, every year we are building two New York Cities in new floor space alone. The property managers in China are building not blocks but they are building cities at a time, at least the equivalence of American cities, so, for example, one of our partners, Shran Land in China, they are committed to every single one of their future developments to be sustainable, so I think this is a great customer base. They are interested in looking at geothermal for Thimpel and Beijing, the MOMA Building, right in the heart of Beijing is already using geothermal. They are looking at cities like Hammersby to talk about waste collection and all these great renewable ideas, Bio gas, etc, so in China at least there is certainly a huge opportunity, economic opportunity to take the top ten developers who are literally building cities at a time and sell them renewable energy, so again I invite you to come over [Laughter] to our forum and meet some of these developers who are there.
CAROL M. BROWNER: General Clark?
WESLEY CLARK: I like all these ideas but I’d like to see us do some demonstration projects for energy storage. This is pretty tough for the private sector to get a grip on and I think if you look at the renewable sector, it’s probably the one area, we all understand the transmission problems, we need more consortia, there are a bunch of them in operation, they are never as effective and as easy as we want. The demonstration projects we talk a lot about, but actually they do require a lot of scale, and they are probably not cost-effective right now, so if we got a little help on that, that would be good.
As far as the Defense Department is concerned, I love these things, the Defense Department is trying to put wind and solar on its facilities. We’ve got some old air bases and other facilities that could be really great for that but mostly we want the Defense Department to do its job. I want to see it succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan, however we define it and get those troops home and the less we can do burdening them with other things, the better.
CAROL M. BROWNER: Okay, since I am the moderator, I get the final voice here, I’m kind of inclined towards the trillion bucks from the government. If we are going to spend 700 billion dollars on bailing out the financial, why not a trillion into energy and renewables? Actually my favorite is CEOs of top 50 companies choose suppliers and I think that is like a perfect CGI commitment, bringing together sort of the power of, their purchasing power to really stimulate opportunities for smaller businesses to scale up and start producing these clean energy technologies.
Please join me in thanking our great panelists and all of the good ideas and thank you all for being here. [Applause]
MALE SPEAKER: Ladies and gentlemen, the workshop session is now concluded. Please move directly to the plenary. The luncheon plenary is about to begin. Please move directly to the Metropolitan Ballroom for the luncheon.
[END RECORDING]
Transcript provided by kaisernetwork.org, a free service of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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Tamara J. Erickson is both a McKinsey Award-winning author and popular and engaging storyteller. Her compelling views of the future are based on extensive research on changing demographics and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations work. 
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Thank you for this very accurate (in my experience) and affirming message. I will be turning 40 this year and recently started to consider and explore employment avenues that will allow me to work independently or within a smaller venture. While I have not worked in 'corporate' America, advancing my career in higher education (administration, not faculty) has not been dissimilar to what you describe.
If there's been one big positive to my X-er experience, it's that I learned at an early age how to manage money and to have an enjoyable life on very little. Sometimes I think I have more in common with my paternal grandmother who was a child of The Great Depression and bore the scars of hunger and material want. This way of life has allowed me to save considerably for my retirement, not fall prey to 'facile' displays of materialism (I still like nice things, but I'll buy them on eBay or at TJMaxx instead of Barneys or Nordstroms), and given me the confidence and ability to change jobs when I've needed to. I know that I'll always be able to take care of myself and I won't need to rely on any form of external support.
Throughout my varied and winding career I have always looked for mentors but never had much luck finding them. I did not have a family-social network in the professional/educated class growing up so it has taken me time to learn the value of those support structures and how to create them for myself. I've learned a great deal through trial and error and by developing my research skills and knowledge, and I am eternally gratefully that almost all of my education has been funded by scholarships or grants.
What I would most like to know about is how to best position myself for the 'second half' of my life. :-) I realize that as I get older, the strategy of changing jobs for more money/more interesting projects/ more freedom... may no longer work. I'll be vying for positions with younger, more competitive candidates and I'll soon 'age-out' and reach my career plateau. What do I need to consider and prepare myself for?
And what am I most afraid of? Being old, alone, and stuck in some god-awful nursing home with sub-standard care. I'll take the walk out into the desert before I spend my final days that way. :-)
Thanks so much,
Laura Z.
- Posted by Laura Zurowski
May 10, 2008 18:01
As someone who works with Gen Y's, I want to thank you for this post. I believe that there is a tremendous opportunity for leadership with Gen X. We need their wisdom and guidance considering the transition we are in with so many Boomers leaving the workforce in the next few years.
As I travel around the country, many Gen X leaders have a great deal on their minds, especially around the question of how to lead Generation Y and how to meet their expectations in a world that is struggling with so many economic, political and social challenges. I think one of the best books for everyone to read on this subject is Navigating the Badlands: Thriving in the Decade of Radical Transformation by Mary O'Hara-Devereaux. I believe that radical times call for radical leadership, and this book addresses this topic head on.
- Posted by Bea Fields
May 11, 2008 10:09
As a Gen Xer myself, managing the ADHD of Generation Y is a tenuous experience. Gen Xer's have a lot of responsibility in the workplace being the conduit between the older generation and the newer generations. Let's just hope Xers don't get stuck in middle management their whole life.
- Posted by Tod
May 12, 2008 11:16
It is impressive how accurate many of your observations are. I fall in that GenX category.
Your points about backup plans were particularly interesting. I always have at least one backup plan for any action I take and while I rarely need to use them, I take pride when they are put into action.
I can also identify with the lack of trust in corporations. I believe this quote best defines my feelings about that subject:
'Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.' - Ambrose Bierce
I am looking forward to this book you mention.
- Posted by Alan Savoy
May 12, 2008 11:24
As a younger Gen Xer, I don't understand why everyone doesn't take more control over their own corporate destiny.
There are companies out there (large and small) that give you the ability to make an impact on a corporate level. You just have to find the right companies and the right niche within the company.
For me that happened to be in a communications role, where I can help shape the corporate image. And image is becoming ever important for Gen Yers, both managing their own online imprint and when researching potential employers.
My experience with Gen Yers is that they want to be given goals not tasks. Don't rein in their creativity and their willingness to find a technology solution to problems. Encourage it.
Just remember when you joined the workforce and your boss or another higher up told you 'this is the way we do things in this company', how demoralized did you feel? Did it spur you to come up with something new and ultimately more productive? Of course, it didn't.
So why should we continue to put up roadblocks for the latest entrants to the workforce? I and my company, Serena Sofware, strongly believe in the principle of 'Innovation Without Permission'.
Companies, managers and IT departments need to all take heed. People strive to innovate, and this is particularly prevalent among the upcoming Gen Y class of workers. So rather than lock everything down, why not find ways to support their natural inclinations?
Who knows, you might even find ways to be more productive, bring in more revenue and make work a much more enjoyable place to be. For these reasons, I don't understand why everyone doesn't just embrace the differences and the attributes that each generation brings and find the best way to use them to your (and your company's) advantage.
- Posted by Kyle Arteaga
May 12, 2008 15:04
This post resonated with me; thanks for posting it. By some measures, I'm an X'er and by others I'm a Y (born in '79), and I feel the tug of both at times. My aversion to power structures and rules is deeply ingrained and that really made it hard to enter the corporate workforce in my early 20s. After a few professional near-catastrophes, I finally figured out how to posture myself in the workplace, feel content, and be successful. But lurking in the back of my mind and always in the fore of my daydreams was this: 'How can I get out of here...'
After 3-1/2 years of night and weekend classes to finish an undergrad, it took about 2 months after I graduated to identify the next step and make my 'exit plan' from Corporate America a reality. I'm getting ready to job-swap with my wife; who will start working full-time for the first time since our early 20s. I'll be in a seminary/grad-school dual degree program for the next 4 to 5 years, at which point I'd like to start a consulting firm to work with churches, ecumenical organizations, and maybe even secular orgs on conflict management/resolution.
It's a drastic U-turn from the career that I was just starting to be really successful with, but I plan to fully leverage the lessons and experience I gained in corporate world in this new, hopefully more fulfilling, venture.
Again, thanks for the post!
- Posted by Brian G.
May 12, 2008 15:25
I certainly can identify with strains on personal life. With 2 young kids my 'work-life' balance right is pretty good but I dread it will suffer if I start making the upward climb. Secondly your comment about layoffs. Most of the managers I know are all boomers and are a pretty unimpressive bunch. I asked many of them what was your big break and they all said they got promoted shortly after surviving the major layoffs during the early 90's. It wasn't like they made it on merit but rather simply stepped up in a vacuum. Perhaps when the boomers retire (still waiting...) there will be a similar vacuum and the company will make that next demographic surge upwards but it has little to do with leadership or capabilities.
- Posted by Marcel
May 13, 2008 10:45
I think discontent with corporation life cuts across many generations. It is not wonder - corporate life is often stifling and painful.
The early Americans were independent artisans and individualists - maybe that is the path to blaze.
There is also a lot of 'Boomer Bashing' which is troubling. There's a great post about it at http://www.Vaboomer.com
- Posted by Nancy Mehegan
May 13, 2008 11:45
I think discontent with corporation life cuts across many generations. It is not wonder - corporate life is often stifling and painful.
The early Americans were independent artisans and individualists - maybe that is the path to blaze.
There is also a lot of 'Boomer Bashing' which is troubling. There's a great post about it at http://www.Vaboomer.com
- Posted by Nancy Mehegan
May 13, 2008 11:46
Thanks very much Tammy; I believe your observations are very accurate. Im at the tail end of Generation X and find that my professional views are a homogenized version of your Gen Y & Gen X descriptions. Im eager to succeed at one of my entrepreneurial ventures in order to move away from the rigid corporate environment, but while Im working for the company I recognize the importance of putting in my time to gradually accomplish promotion.
That said, my most recent project tears at the fabric of corporate culture, employee compensation. It blatantly undermines employee negotiation procedures and questions the authority and support of corporate human resource departments.
Right again Tammy.
- Posted by Zenzia
May 13, 2008 22:03
I am a Gen Y'er (barely as I was born in '80) and have recently decided to leave my corporate job to start my own consulting firm. I believe that there are things that corporations could be doing (or doing better) to attract and retain talented Gen Y's. One of which are better corporate mentoring programs......which is why I started my consulting firm
www.danbrutonconsulting.com
- Posted by Dan
May 14, 2008 01:03
Tammy, thanks for another thought provoking post. I'm a Gen-Xer with some Gen-Y tendencies. I had struggled with finding satisfaction and happiness in the workplace for 15 years. At one point I left a successful IT consulting practice to open a coffee shop. This dramatic (and eventually unsuccessful) leap into self-employment came after significant self-reflection. I couldn't think of a single job or organization that would meet my needs as a professional and person.
After re-entering the corporate workforce I've moved jobs three times. I'm currently with an employer that I believe has got most of it right. The first thing I was asked to do was to complete my StrengthFinders. After that, my goals were aligned with my strengths and opportunities identified to reach those goals. There is respect for maintaining my work-life blend. The company also encourages lateral movement across job families which satisfies my desire to continually learn and grow.
This isn't nirvana, but I feel a sense of relief in finding an organization that is trying and takes action to show that its employees are valued.
The challenge I see is that the firm has not been able to attract Gen-Yers. With the possibility of over 50% of our workforce being eligible to retire in the next 10 years this will quickly climax to create critical business impact.
- Posted by Gary Rosenfeld
May 14, 2008 16:07
I was born in '68 and have always worked in large multi national organisations. It is certainly true that my focus has shifted away from my career as I have got older and more onto focusing on other things in my life that may have suffered in the past - family, leisure, health etc.
For me it is being able to take control over things. The interesting point though is that since I started doing this my career has developed even more than ever!!!
Chris
http://learn2develop.blogspot.com
- Posted by Chris
May 15, 2008 11:37
Tammy,
Great piece and one which completely resonates for me. In fact, I just recently wrote a piece on my own blog about employee satisfaction levels and how most employees, not limited to Gen Xers, are living in 'comfortable misery'. You can see my entry here:
http://ninasimosko.com/blog/2008/05/13/comfortable-misery/
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this piece.
Regards,
Nina
- Posted by Nina
May 15, 2008 19:32
'I belong to the blank generation
and I can take it
or leave it each time...'
Richard Hell & the Voidoids
I think the things the X-geners learned are extremely valuable in times of great socio-economic and political chaos.You are doing a great thing by turning the focus back to this generation after we stealthed our way through our short and inglorious legacy within the corporate rank and file. WoW! I had almost forgotten we existed.
Caught in between two worlds and native of neither. If it hadn't been for the hardcore ethos of our early formation we would not even rate a nod from the new breed. Let's face it, WE freaked the Boomers out and they have always been ready and willing to 'throw us under the bus'. Too much attitude, I guess.
Thnx again for your article
- Posted by Firehorse
May 15, 2008 19:35
Tammy,
I found your post interesting. I agree with some, but not all. As a 31 year old Associate Vice President at a mid tier information technology company, one of the things I find most disheartening is the lack of mentoring opportunities, or willingness to mentor, on the part of the older Boomer generation. As I have grown up in my career, I used to be able to call on my Grandfater (Builder Generation) and others at his age for advice and guidance. My Grandfather and many of his peers have all passed away now, so there is a major void. What I find more consistant with Boomers is a sort of 'eat poop and die' type mentality as they grow increasingly concerned about holding onto their own positions while the next generation moves up the chain. I think being mentored, and mentoring are lost arts. My perception is that many Boomers look at mentoring as if it's a charity event and all they are really doing is training some kid to take thier job. Of course, I may be wrong.
Matt
- Posted by Matt
May 15, 2008 19:37
I was born in 1950, and so by all counts, I have little to add. Maybe. But as a supervisor of two generation Y's and two X's, perhaps I can field the comparison from a different perspective. The X's seem to have 'gotten it,' or at least they are able to hum the tune; that is, they understand the rules of the game, while the Y's seem to be hoping that that the game will either go away, that the rules will change, or that everyone will come to their senses soon and start to play fair.
Thanks
- Posted by Stuart Harrow
May 15, 2008 19:41
Tammy was spot on with her points. I especially related to #4 and #10. It was difficult to land the 'right' job in a time where the economy was souring, and when I felt I had found that right fit, the dot com bubble burst, and I was laid off along with countless others. Having gained good experiences in various positions, I am now in a dream job, but find a new challenge in parenting three young kids. I want to provide the best leadership in the workplace, but I want to give my kids equal billing. It feels like Gen X has always been a struggle. That is not to say I'm discontent. It just reveals that our generation has had unique issues to overcome.
- Posted by Fidencio
May 15, 2008 19:49
Last year I wrote a poem that pretty much sums up my feelings on this matter:
Boom, Retire
http://www.raymondpirouz.com/2007/11/22/boom-retire/
- Posted by Raymond Pirouz
May 15, 2008 20:15
I really understand this as someone on the tail end of the Baby Boom and early entry of the Gen X - a 'tweener - who often has characteristics of both. The problem I am having is less competent upper management who is self-satisfied, complacent, and has no real skills to contribute. Two levels of management above are Boomers who are unable to get out of their current thought processes to go out and find work for the company. Meanwhile, the employees who are being threatened with half-time and so their jobs are ready to try new things. Results: we are polishing our resumes and looking for new jobs; our manager and her boss are securely full time, won't be fired, and completely ignorant.
- Posted by Charles
May 15, 2008 21:35
Born in 1970, I resent the misfortunes which seem to have compromised Gen X at key moments: Recessions, Debt, Aids, Boomer Divorcees.
Boomers continue to throw their money at Y's, who dazzle them with the elixir of youth.
However, the most positive attributes of X-ers to emerge from this experience include Flexibility, Articulation, Vision, Resilience. X-ers can mix it with both Boomers and Ys.
Unlike Boomers and Y's, X-ers are not blinded by their own preoccupations.
I think X-ers make perfect management material right now, capable of better medium and long term decisions that will protect all 3 generations.
Y's know less about technology than they think. Social networking is not the internet.
Get a Y idea, Boomer money, and give it to an X - empowered to make disruptive change. Result = huge success.
- Posted by Richard Harrison
May 15, 2008 22:01
In Singapore, the boomers (likely parents who are rich and loaded from the boom period) are so in love with the Gen Y that they are moving the Gen Y into management position ahead and making them manage Gen X folks (who faced all the bad luck and will perpetuate it to their next generation as well). Seriously, you can see the amount of resentment over here. The Gen Y think the world revolve around them and unlike this site, many snub the gen X and do not think they have any thing of value to learn from. So frankly, I have a stronger dislike for Gen Y than technology.
- Posted by Carol
May 15, 2008 22:17
I am a W generation, born in 1947. I have managed X and Y generation people and find the Y more stimulating but also more frustrating than X. However having worked in many countries organisations and industries I believe that categorising groups of people as X or Y this is not helpful. Its a bit like racism or sexism with a small r and s. To clarify my position I am ok with technology having use electric calculators since 1964, mainframes 1970 and desk tops 1980 and built and managed in high tech automated manufacturing plants using mini robots before robots existed. I have also worked in Universities in Scotland and the South Pacific. I carried out research into Human Activity Systems that focus on peoples Weltanschauung (world view). The premise being that a persons perceptions and attitudes are a result of their life experiences as X and Y generally have the sets of experiences as stated in the article one can generally agree with the conclusions but in practice there is a whole range of experiences. Accountants generally but not always behave in a similar way, as do engineers etc. However as an individual's experience is broadened (not deepened) and if that person learns from doing etc their perceptions and attitudes will change. As far as corporate rules are concerned any organisation must have some rules and these will depend on the type of industry, the attitude of the corporation and the people employed. Generally the fewer rules the better but there is a bottom line. By the way we have our own export business that has struggled for the last ten years, being adversely affected by Foot & Mouth, September 11, Bali Bombing and China joining the WTO. Now it is picking up but it will most likely be affected by the coming recession but thats life life is not supposed to be easy. I am just grateful that I was not born at a time when I would be called up for the great wars or current wars. Sure I would do it but I would rather not. And what about our and your children and global warming etc. Do you think that will be a picnic for them - no but they ill have to deal with it. Business and work are part of life but not life itself. Do your best in life, enjoy it and your families you dont get another one..
Jim OHara, Indonesia
- Posted by James O'Hara
May 15, 2008 23:58
I am a Gen Y (born in 1981) who also happens to have an MBA. I have noticed that many Gen X people look down on me because of my age and resent that I have such an advanced degree at my age.
I have had to deal with the prejudice that comes with youth but I have always sought to form bonds and share my knowledge and learn from Gen Xers and boomers. My last boss was a boomer and my co-workers were all Gen X - and we all got along great. We still keep in touch and hang out, share articles and so forth.
They called me the 'ideas man' in that organization (over 2000 employees) and the Gen Xers never had a problem coming to me for suggestions, as well as I never had trouble going to them for guidance.
Showing mutual respect for the respective contributions of each person is the most important thing, not simply looking at what generation they fall into.
The only reason I left is because I moved from that country. My experiences here in the USA have been quite the opposite so far. People don't want me to be in management and Xers certainly so far seem not to consider what an employee like me is truly capable of (I graduated college at 19).
I hope I meet Xer and Boomer managers like the ones I had before. Makes for a better working environment. I guess this is part of the reason I became an entrepreneur on the side and so many Yers do as well.
- Posted by David Mullings
May 16, 2008 00:03
I'm on my 60s and completely identify with xers issues. Corporate america was and is structured. Flexing with changes in markets is difficult and changing cultures to accomodate newer definitions of work is also difficult.
Is and xer like a tween in corporate America?
Xers have work ethics, make comittments, can accept and carry through difficult problem solving. Why is it not embraced?
Gen Y is very ehasperating because they seem to want everything on their terms. Deadlines- timelines- are all bad words to gen y so how, without the xers understanding of all this will we remain corporately strong and competitive?
- Posted by Neil Licht
May 16, 2008 00:32
Agree 100%. upon entering the work force after college I was disillusioned with corporation structures after working for a few of them. Moved to a smaller town, found a job that fit without much structure and stayed there until it too became a corporate monstrosity of rules and regulations (15 years).
Ultimately the realization that I was making money for someone else while struggling to pay bills annoyed me to such a point that work suffered and I left (or was asked to leave by my boomer boss depending on your point of view).
So, I did what I always dreamed of and took a much needed road trip of 50 days and 6000 miles in a RV (with 4 kids and a wife).
Though still unemployed, I am much happier, more free and much more wise. I will find my own way, on my own terms.
As a side note:
I too have experienced the 'screw you' attitude of the boomer generation. Mentoring for me amounted to 'you are dirt and you shall remain dirt'. Trust corporations? I think not.
The boomer didn't just sell out to the man, they became the man...
- Posted by Steve
May 16, 2008 01:25
After viewing and pondering everyones comments. I wonder if we might need to add 'ungrateful' to the profile of Gen Xers. When did we all become so cynical? Perhaps I am an X outlier, but I know I wouldn't be anywhere without the multiple boomer mentors who guided me. Yes, I dont like hard and fast rules; they all werent a piece of cake to deal with, but they taught me something - how to survive and thrive in corporate culture, to be patient and preserve to move up, to work hard, and eventually be creative and develop my own ideas about the corporate culture for the future.
W, X, Y, and boomer alike need to concentrate on the ways we complement on another and fill gaps to build America into the world class nation it once was. It was creative and innovative thinking that gave us this country in the first place. To form party lines about our qualities as workers limits our ability to be global and world class once again.
Let's not continue to divide and concour ...ourselves.
- Posted by Alyson Silverstein
May 16, 2008 01:52
Both, Baby Boomers and Generation Y seem to take too much for granted.
My impression is that Baby boomers have not yet truly accepted the fact that reliance on position and long term organizational practice is barely as applicable it was when they entered the workforce, if at all, even as they watch there kids the generation Yers adjust to the paradigm.
- Posted by Aran Ariel
May 16, 2008 03:05
Tammy, thanks for sharing, this helps me a lot undesrtanding my current situation.
To come back on your point on the Xers being stuck in middle management, it just made me realize how the situation in my company mirror this.
In my function, we are short of the level 2 people , meaning we have level 3 people (would be the high end of middle management) and recruit level 1 people but struggle to keep them (the Yers)
As a result the Level 2 people tend to be stuck there for longer period of time (6 to 12 years) whilst 10 years ago you would spend 6 years on average.
All level 4 jobs are filled with 40 yo and above people.
Some level 3 jobs start to be available but given the level 2 is so short of people they delay promotions or restructure jobs to avoid having to deplete the level 2 (like reshuffling a level 3 role, in level 2 projects plus a small level 4 support)
In my network, people currently between 30 and 40 yo spent already 2 more years than their predecessor at their level and they still don't have any promotions coming their way.
And it looks like the Yers that stay long enough to reach level 2 are starting to get to level 3 faster than Xers. But they don't care that much about the opportunity, generating a lot of frustration from the Xers who would love to get it.
Another effect I witnessed is that, given that their management had to keep the level 2 there for a longer time than expected, they created a lot of reasons why they couldn't be promoted to the level 3 . Suddenly it looks like those reasons are not holding for the level 2 Yers.
On top of this the Yers never hesitate to use the 'give it to me or I quit' pressure to get promoted. And whilst it was rarely working from Xers, that did really quit from what I saw in the end, its seems that the level 4 and 5 accept it from Yers and give them what they wanted.
On the positive side, I think there is an opportunity for the Xers coming from that situation: if people you've been managing, get promoted above you, they become very good mentors for you.
Kind Regards
Anne
- Posted by Anne
May 16, 2008 03:50
This is a very interesting topic. I work for a franchisor and we are seeing a trend toward younger people (average used to be around 50 and is now headed closer to 40) getting into running their own business. I myself am a Gen Xer and work for a Boomer. It is always interesting to me to see the difference in our motivations and I am constantly talking to him about differences in what we want (in a positive way - he's a good guy!). One that seems superfluous but actually illustrates the differences well is casual Friday. He would love to do away with it - the two Xers in the office want more casual days. And yet he has never offered an extra casual day as a reward for completing a big project or something when he wants to do something to reward us! We all know in management often the small rewards are remember better than the money ones (although don't get me wrong - I'll always cash the checks) but he's always looking for those rewards he likes. Management has to take a step back and realize what do people really want to be able to retain them and keep them motivated.
- Posted by Kathy
May 16, 2008 09:18
I (a gen Xer) think of it as being a second string quarterback to the boomers as the job opportunities were not there. Then, just before the first string guy retires they draft a promising youth that garners all the accolades and attention.
In some respects, the Yer are in the same wide open environment as the boomers experienced, thus explaining there similar styles. This might challenge the ego may gen Xers. I guess it's time for a gut check.
- Posted by Dan
May 16, 2008 09:30
I was born in 1961, and I am currently working part-time 24 hours per week in a senior technical position. It works perfectly for me -- intellectual stimulation and plenty of time to raise my two girls.
Sometimes there is a lot to juggle when projet deadlines and recitals both occur in the same week, but overall it is a very satisfying balance. Of course, I am not looking to move up in the management chain, just to keep having interesting work that I enjoy and interesting colleagues with whom to collaborate.
- Posted by Cindy
May 16, 2008 09:51
I am a Gen X-er. Oddly enough, I haven't even thought about that for about 10 years. I have worked in global investment banks for my entire career, until recently. I basically raised my hand to be laid off from a very large corporation after coming to the conclusion that corporate management work is innately bureaucratic and I didn't want my boss's job, nor did I want my boss's boss's job.
I don't view this as a Gen X vs. Gen Y issue. This is about the battle of the institution versus the individual. All individuals. Some may have played the game, adopted the corporate values as their own, and yes, they will benefit financially from it. But at what cost?
Most of the Gen-Yers I have come in contact with have been singularly focused on getting the grades, passing the tests, doing the internships, etc. to get the job they want. If Gen Y is willing to make demands or they will quite, I say more power to them. How else do you think you are going to get what you deserve. Surely, you don't think you will get it simply because you're a hard worker and good at your job, do you?
In my opinion, there has been a cultural shift in the way we view the role of work in our lives. Downsizing, offshoring, and outsourcing has made us all vulnerable to losing our corporate jobs. I have personally been at the table where management has discussed 'reducing headcount' while smiling, laughing, and literally cracking jokes at the expense of the people about to lose their livelihoods.
Once upon a time, being a small business owner meant you were in a riskier position than sitting behind a desk at a large firm. Frankly, I'm not sure I buy that anymore.
Check out my blog at www.mindheartbody.blogspot.com
Best,
Gattosan
- Posted by Gattosan
May 16, 2008 10:17
As someone who entered into the managerial track late in life in healthcare, I thought it was important obtain an MBA in case I could no longer work as a Medic or RN which can be a strenous job even when you are young. I worked for 4 years as a supervisor for a small hospital and when I tried to get a job as a nonmanagerial/nonadministrative type, I was instantly turned down by those in management who either feared that I was coming behind them to take their job or had lost my skills as a nurse because I was in a supervisory role. It was possible that I was going after their job but it simply wasn't true that I had lost my skills. I was someone who was a hands on manager who took an active interest in patient care. So I was stuck in the middle with no options to go forward or backwards. I managed to prove my capabilities through testing but I resented the fact that management was turning me down when there is a deficit in the number of available nurses. Quite frankly, I also resent management for their lack of insight and fear that many of them are not on track. Many of the newest nurses are young and I watch as management has a different set of standards in regards to rules for these nurses in order to ensure that the young ones stay. The oldest ones have all of the skills which the young ones don't so mangement gets upset when we want the same rules applied to us. For instance, the newest ones always complain that the don't have enough vacation time so management tends to bend rules and give it to them. When the rest of us ask for the same we are instantly turned down and told that our services are required. We also watch as the newest nurses get the same salary as we do which is really a slap in the face considering that so many of the older nurses have to prove our worth all of the time. This act is causing many of us to leave the field totally. We know that mangement does not respect us and there are many times that mangagement seems to think that they can run the place without us. With the increasing vacancy rate, I don't know what mangement will do. What is ironic is that I have actually finished my MBA in healthcare administration and I find that I simply don't want to use it. I am that typical x'er who has multiple backup options that can be used in times of crisis. Yet, the mba has actually given me options to escape nursing all together. I am torn at this point because I love patient care. However, I find there are other opportunities in EMS and disaster management which may be far more fufillinbg than the task of trying to convince new nurses that salary is not the most important thing in healthcare. I am not surpirsed by the fact that many of them have left given the fact that there are far more easier jobs. However, in this economy, nurses know that healthcare is probably the most stable option. I see people entering it that don't have the drive to care for patients like they should producing substandard care. Do I want to deal with these people? I don't think so. I need to go where I am needed and appreciated. I have worked hard for my degree and don't want to burn out!
- Posted by Richard Haley
May 16, 2008 10:34
As a late Xer (1975) I completely understand several aspects of the angst that seems to precede me. I also believe that while we had to toe the line at work these last 10-20 years, we've also laid the seedlings that are changing how businesses set up their organizations, define culture, and establish work rules. Maybe we're so frustrated because we couldn't relish the fruits of that labor (now that we're in middle-upper management, we're blazing new work rules in those areas, where Gen-Y will skate into our old jobs with a comfy newly redesigned model). Everything I read says that Gen-X doesn't need a lot of tangible perks. Maybe we would like something in exchange for our perceived toils to 'make the world better' at work.
- Posted by Karen
May 16, 2008 10:57
SAY MORE ABOUT ITEM #9: specifically: '...the Boomer parents of your Y reports are down-right over-the-top. Xers cant believe the frequency of Y-parent interactions and are deeply turned off by parents who make their presence felt in the workplace.....'
Does this mean the kids simply communicate with their parents more? That I do believe, and frankly think it is a good thing.
However, if you mean that parents are actually getting involved in workplace issues, or inserting themselves into their offspring's professional conversations (ie: talking to their kid's bosses), I'm not buying that.
I have heard a couple of consultants mention this, but have never seen even a whiff of this in the real workplace.
In college? Absolutely, many parents are way over the top with their interventions.
But in the workplace? I believe that type of intervention is a consultant myth. It not only flies in the face of the experience that we are all having out here in the real world, but also flies in the face of many HR guidelines. The Y'ers I know would be MORTIFIED to have this type of intervention taking place, as well they should be, and the X'er's I know would think very poorly of anyone who had Boomer Daddy and Mommy do their talking. Geees.
Thoughts?
- Posted by Mary
May 16, 2008 11:55
WHAT DO WE NEED IN A 21ST CENTURY LEADER?
Business leaders need people. They must hire and retain people to innovatively solve problems for new and old products so they can continue to increase profits and preserve their company's growth. The challenge of the emerging Generation X leaders is to do more with less. These leaders must inspire people that have different generational values. To be successful, these 21st century leaders must guide their smaller Generation X peers and the newly emerging Generation Y employees through difficult business challenges. They must smooth the loss of the technical knowledge and skills of the retiring Baby-boomer workforce. To perform this, they must have the leadership ability to align their generational peers and inspire Generation Y. Their vision for new managers must set a clear direction to maintain productivity with a workforce that has fewer skills. To further complicate these leaders successes, they must deal with the mismanagement of our government and other governments, by ill-advised policies about energy, environments, intellectual property, and trade. Future leaders must adjust to the global markets and currencies variation from the newly formed economic partnerships. With the concerns above, these leaders must preserve a global competitive edge within their industry to ensure their company's future.
Over the next ten years, most of the Baby-boomers will retire to their homes and leave their offices behind. The baby boom began in the mid-1940s and ended in the mid-1960s. Baby-boomers are sons and daughters of the Silent Generation, the Veterans, and the Builders. This Generation of men and women knew sacrifice, discipline, common value, teamwork, and strength. The Baby-boomers are the sons and daughters of veterans. As they merged into the workforce, they brought a skilled, driven, and team-orientated attitude into work that complemented their parents. The baby-boomers unprecedented work ethic and innovation drove major business growth within the Untied States. As they begin to retire, they leave a void within the workforce. This void is a large burden on the emerging Generation X leaders because we are loosing senior managers, technical workers, and knowledge keepers that built the current state of our companies. As these workers retire in large numbers, much smaller generations must replace them.
Generation X (1965-1981) and Generation Y (1982-2002) need to fill the worker and leadership gap. Generation X, most of my MBA classmates, are the leaders for the next 20-30 years. Generation X has been described as self-absorbed, suspicious, cautious, skeptical, unimpressed with authority, self-reliant, and individual survivors, which does not demonstrate our leadership potential. Therefore, we have much work to due. Generation X has the classic technical skills that most companies were built on, but are too few to meet all the needs of our future companies.
Generation Y are beginning to graduate from college with less technical skills than the Baby-boomers and Generation X. Generation Y are partly the cable and Internet generation, therefore they want life on-demand and are less willing to earn respect, the expect it. In addition, Generation Y is technology absorbed, which results in a short attention span and poor business communication skills. Unlike Generation X and the Baby-boomers, Generation Y expects life to fit into their work. They also have more self-worth than technical skills, but are in limited supply. Generation Y has no fear of change, in fact they can be expected to move to a new job if it does not fit their life needs, or if they do not stay engaged with their current employer. Emerging Generation X leaders need to gain the skills to keep the Generation Y workforce engaged and resonant.
What qualities do emerging Generation X leaders need to keep Generation Y employees engaged? Future leaders must develop their emotional intelligence and deliberately practice these skills. Emotion intelligence has four main units: self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, and relationship management. Both self-awareness and self-management will aid emerging Generation X leaders in discovering themselves and increasing their emotion intelligence. Our future leaders must carry out this self-realization to move forward into the future. In addition, to keep the Generation Y employees engaged in their current job, emerging leaders must master their social-awareness. These leaders need to sense the mood as the walk into a room and discover an individuals DiSC profile quickly. These people skills are critical to minimize timelines and maximize productivity.
Generation Y's self-worth and life-work balance needs are different from the Generation X leaders. Future leaders must increase their capacity to empathize with and understand their Generation Y employees. These leaders need to actively develop Generation Y employees for two reasons. First, Generation Y employees are used to a constant flow of relevant information. Second, as these leaders actively develop their employees, they will start to build relationships with their workers. Relationship management is critical to future leaders. These leaders must coach and mentor Generation Y employees. As emerging leaders and their employees relationships develop, they can have a positive impact on others team members. Once they build an emotionally intelligent team, they will act like a social group. This influence will increase team building and communication. In this case, the future leader recognizes Generation Ys' wanted life-work balance and develops trust that will strengthen their group's efficacy. Generation X leaders must assess the developmental needs of their team members. Once assessed, these leaders need to use various leadership styles and influence tactics to engage their team members. Both categories of emotional intelligence, self-awareness/action and others-awareness/action, will be critical to navigate the governmental pressures and globalization changes in business in the coming decades.
Emerging Generation X leaders need to inspire their Generational peers, engage Generation Y, and get their company to continue expanding globally to lessen the domestic financial burden. In turn, this expansion will be hindered by the financial circumstances associated with the new century. In the coming century, Generation X leaders must deal with the impending decisions made by government officials today. Payroll, merit increases, and bonuses will be more limited than they are today. To further complicate the employee benefits, we will have larger debts and expenses. US based companies and employees must pay for the Baby-boomers social security, socialized health care, and the deficit, just to name a few. In addition, increased energy costs and costs associated with rising environmental concerns will have to be dealt with by future leaders. Open communication and emotional intelligence skills will pay big dividends when addressing and empathizing with employees concerns about reduced benefits from increased expenses.
The 21st century leader must lead a business world that is shrinking as the global economy expands. Competition within a given industry will be fierce for many reasons. Developing economic alliances has reduced the value of the dollar. This may benefit companies that are all ready global, but increases the expense of global expansion for US based companies and could make their global expansion difficult. Supply chains and manufacturing capacity must be geographically diverse to be responsive to wavering currencies. Outsourcing of minimal labor and medium level technical jobs may continue to shifts to the lowest biding country. However, this may slow dramatically depending on the value of the dollar and the formation of new economic alliances. In addition, sales volumes in global markets may also be reduced with the violation of accepted international intellectual property rights and piracy. These significant concerns will lead to reduce margins and slow growth. Emerging leaders must use a dynamic foray of influencing strategies to quicken employee buy-in. Emerging leaders must develop their people skills to ensure increasing profits continue growth.
How can emerging leaders deliver results quickly to increase profits and sustain their companys growth? These leaders need to heighten their ability to relate to people. In addition, their integrity must be clear and evident to everybody; otherwise, employees may not effectively buy-in to their leaders vision of the future. Future leaders must constantly develop their emotional intelligence, situational leadership, and diversify their influencing skills. As these leaders emerge they need to interact will all levels of the organization to negotiate, delegate, and prioritize critical goals that will help fulfill their vision. To ensure a steady profit margin spurs globalization, future leaders must use cross-functional teams effectively. These leaders must lead their teams with vision, not over manage them. Once these leaders develop their organizations, the benefits will become obvious though innovation, operational efficiency, and speed. Eventually, the organizations that rapidly increase their global presence will lessen the effects of the shrinking business world and thereby continue their companys future.
Leadership is about people. People solve problems, people innovate, people work on the floor, and leaders need people to fulfill their vision. The leaders that have the intellectual abilities and technical skills, but lack peoples skills will become middle management. As the Baby-boomers retire, Generation X and Generation Y must fill a large void. Emerging Generation X leaders will be under tremendous pressures to enlarge profits with increased expenses. These expenses will be unavoidable, since they are the results of governmental policies set in place today. Global competition from emerging markets and new economic alliances will also increase the need for rapid business decisions. Whether my predictions of need for business globalizations happens or not, tomorrows leaders will be facing more problems with fewer people. Emerging Generation X leaders will not have the time to learn these people skills as they need them, the must be prepared to lead people and they must lead they way.
- Posted by Walter Leise
May 16, 2008 12:18
Mary, parental involvement is a reality in the workplace at least where I am. I had one parent call an interviewing manager directly to find out why their child did not get the position. They went on to explain certain attributes and characteristics of their child that they were certain the interviewer had missed.
It's strange, but it does happen.
- Posted by Valerie
May 16, 2008 12:27
Older generations like to focus on whats wrong with Generation X (i.e 'Why Xers Are UNHAPPY at Work') rather than what they're good at or the positive aspects of the group. Alot of Xers ARE happy and doing well at work -- thank you very much (Michael Dell, Barak Obama). The image of young people has changed from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged. The image of Generation Xers as 'losers' is an old and tired stereotype that benefits someone else. Older generations need to help rather than criticize.
- Posted by discussion1
May 16, 2008 13:11
One thing that I've noticed, is that in my career, I've seen older Gen Y'ers (you know these, the ones who think they're Xers, but really aren't) move up the corporate path faster than Gen X'ers.
I resent the fact that these 'kids' graduated from college when the economy was booming, and were able to jump on the career path immediately after college. While those of us who graduate during the tough economic times in the late 80s/early 90s and took several years to get in the workplace, seem to be left behind in middle management positions.
On a side note, I HATE it when people still refer to Gen X as the 'slacker' generation. We work as hard as anyone else in the workforce (and arguably harder than Gen Yers). Just because we don't live and breathe work and want to balance our personal lives with work, doesn't mean we're slackers!
- Posted by Neal
May 16, 2008 13:21
Generation Y is the last five years of Generation X. The new group are called 'Millennials' born 1982 to 2000. See Strauss and Howe.
- Posted by discussion1
May 16, 2008 13:34
Erickson correctly observes Gen-X's relative conservatism and increased parenting pressures. She also scores hits on X'ers entering the workforce when the economy was slow and witnessing more than their fair share of layoffs. In fact, X'ers have not only seen lay-offs, but have often been laid off many times themselves.
However, Erickson, like many in her position, incorrectly misplaces her focus by examining the X'er rather than looking at the corporation.
I remember working 80+ hour work weeks. I remember 20 hour all-nighters because the company needed it. However, I do not remember being rewarded with extra responsibility or having my voice heard in decisions or freely given an increase in pay for my efforts. Like the Y'ers, had to threatened to leave to get a good paycheck. I too began to wonder what I got from my efforts when pink-slips were being distributed through the office.
I think the unhappiness of X'ers comes from having seen the corporate game from the outside for so long, we have realized that the vast majority of us will not be invited into the club. While we can be seen wearing the white shirt and tie and slacks, we are simply the working class in nicer attire. X'ers realize there is very little we can do to change anything. At least, anything that is worth something to us as human beings.
If corporations can magically transform themselves into the ethical, stable entities they once were, who are accountable to their employees as well as their stock holders, then perhaps X'ers might stick around. Otherwise, we will happily hand the torch to the Y's and go our way, like we should have done so many years ago.
- Posted by Kevin
May 16, 2008 15:05
Xers and GenY -- team up with Millennials. They have the momentum. Focus on where you went right!
- Posted by Anonymous
May 16, 2008 15:30
I agree with so many of these posts. Good article. However, there is a key segment that most articles on gen x ignore. A significant number of people that fall under the heading of gen x, are not in management. That would be a step up.
You are concerned about those with a level of success that has eluded a significant percentage of an entire generation. It's a particular class of people: Highly educated, low wage, struggling to retain middle class status.
This is what breeds a certain amount of resentment with other generations we feel had it 'easy' (real or imagined). I definitely find more in common with my depression era relatives.
I am with a large company and while I appreciate the stability of being part of a large organization, I am frustrated by the waste that is all around me as people (usually outside consultants) 'create' work for themselves in bloated, unnecessary projects that do not offer much in terms of real value. I have not personally experienced Millennials jumping ahead of me as my job requires a certain level of expertise that requires significant effort that most do not want to exert. I see them jumping in and out below me. Coming in, finding the work too difficult, leaving. This is part of the reason why it was so difficult for me to move up. No one to transfer my job to. I am very concerned about this as I would like to move on.
- Posted by marianne
May 17, 2008 00:13
Hi Tammy,
As a card carrying genxer, I appreciate your attention on this subject, as it is more important than most people seem to realize.
For not being a genxer yourself, you do a great job of being progressive in your analysis, and you are very sensitive to the overall trends.
http://globalitandbusinessnews.blogspot.com/
- Posted by metaport
May 17, 2008 02:07
A lot of this definitely resonated with me. Earlier in my career, responsibility meant attention to detail and rolling up sleeves to make sure things got done. But Gen Y is not so eager to get their hands dirty, they want a shortcut. It is hard to explain that technology is an implement but not the solution itself. As a result, I feel like I am still rolling up those sleeves more than I should be. This is a catch-22 in terms of moving upwards, because on the one hand you are distracted from the things you should be doing, and at the same time your management ability isn't looking so great. It might be that we are pushed into this because we are also in the middle tier of flat management - and I do mean that as a contradiction. It doesn't seem like the new kids are far behind us, but opportunities above us are very limited. The sense is very much that we have to fight our way in, rather than being welcomed or groomed to execute the goals of the company.
I am less negative on the boomers. I think their situation might not be all that different than my own. Oftentimes, nobody has the right answer to a problem, but what I don't get is the failure of this demographic to take a risk and commit to any particular path. I would guess the reason is that by not committing, they feel safer in their jobs - that is definitely NOT the way I would react, and I think that is maybe common among Gen Xers.
I work in a large, resource-intensive company, so while it is appealing to thing I have the will and the energy to beat them at their own game, it's not something I can do as an individual. I resent it a bit, not being able to develop my own vision. I don't expect the game to be fair, but you are absolutely right that if I can't have more freedom, I would happily walk out the door and find a different employer. That is not uncommon in my industry, and I've done that more than once - but it too has pitfalls. It is certainly harder to move up at the same time (or in the near term) after you are moving on.
- Posted by kk
May 17, 2008 06:22
As an 'Xer' in her early 40's, I think a form of 'morphing' takes place--many of the reasons Tammy Erickson identifies are probably true...but it's how we deal with those reason and what one's current state of mind is --in handling (or not) such challenges is the true 'litmus' test.
I have been in the bio/pharmaceutical industry for 20+ years. As a full-time employee for four different companies throughout my career, until a year ago when I decided to become a contractor. As a contractor in the bio/pharma world, I feel less 'burdened' with the politics of the current employer. I gravitate to my 'temporary' colleagues that display true interest in 'getting the job done' and collaborating. Age doesn't matter I have older peers who may be tough at the delivery of their messaging, but genuinely want to do the right thing. Then I have younger colleagues who are focused and talented--great to be around them---just hate watching some egotistical pharma supervisor suck all the life/energy out of those 'up and comers' while taking the credit for their work or intimidating the young workers so they do what they have to do but don't 'question authority.'
As a contractor, my peers fear me less--I'm a 'temporary' fixture--but if they like me, and there's work to be done, I could be around for awhile--that's acceptable to them, again because I'm a contractor. They know, I really don't care to get too deep in the office politics, but I care about them while employed there. It's been quite a pleasant surprise. I should have probably contracted years ago.
As for the modern IT resources, yep, I must admit, I'm not up on most of them--and finding someone to teach you (especially if you're a contractor) seems near impossible.
If you've been in a career field as long as I have, you do get tired of the 'grind.' I know I'm morphing into some sort of career transition--and as long as I can pay my bills, keep the roof over my head, it's far more important what I do with my time outside the corporate walls--than within.
- Posted by Diane Murray
May 17, 2008 10:51
As an 'Xer' in her early 40's, I think a form of 'morphing' takes place--many of the reasons Tammy Erickson identifies are probably true...but it's how we deal with those reason and what one's current state of mind is --in handling (or not) such challenges is the true 'litmus' test.
I have been in the bio/pharmaceutical industry for 20+ years. As a full-time employee for four different companies throughout my career, until a year ago when I decided to become a contractor. As a contractor in the bio/pharma world, I feel less 'burdened' with the politics of the current employer. I gravitate to my 'temporary' colleagues that display true interest in 'getting the job done' and collaborating. Age doesn't matter I have older peers who may be tough at the delivery of their messaging, but genuinely want to do the right thing. Then I have younger colleagues who are focused and talented--great to be around them---just hate watching some egotistical pharma supervisor suck all the life/energy out of those 'up and comers' while taking the credit for their work or intimidating the young workers so they do what they have to do but don't 'question authority.'
As a contractor, my peers fear me less--I'm a 'temporary' fixture--but if they like me, and there's work to be done, I could be around for awhile--that's acceptable to them, again because I'm a contractor. They know, I really don't care to get too deep in the office politics, but I care about them while employed there. It's been quite a pleasant surprise. I should have probably contracted years ago.
As for the modern IT resources, yep, I must admit, I'm not up on most of them--and finding someone to teach you (especially if you're a contractor) seems near impossible.
If you've been in a career field as long as I have, you do get tired of the 'grind.' I know I'm morphing into some sort of career transition--and as long as I can pay my bills, keep the roof over my head, it's far more important what I do with my time outside the corporate walls--than within.
- Posted by Diane Murray
May 17, 2008 10:52
This is a problem which is self-solving -- as corporations have demonstrated time and time again, there is no real need to be concerned about 'the limited supply of managers' -- remember the mantra: 'There are 10 people on the street who would just *love* your job'. So if in fact the Gen-X people become disaffected and drift away, it is not like there is any lack of willing replacements -- including the horde of boomers who now cannot even think of retiring because of the economic tsunami sweeping over us.
Things are so bad, there is a lot less to worry about than you might think!
- Posted by John Howard Oxley
May 17, 2008 11:09
Hi All --
First, thank you very much for the great and thoughtful responses. I appreciate the insights that each of you are sharing very much.
I do want to clarify, if it wasn't clear from the origianl post, that my empathy is pretty strongly with the X'ers. I'm sorry that several of you have read the message as one of criticism.
As I said above, 'I fear many current corporate executives are taking this small and therefore precious group for granted. . . . I understand that we need to create corporate environments that are more conducive to your needs and preferences.'
I'm actually a huge fan of your generation and spend much of my time encouraging corporations to modify practices in ways that I hope will make corporate life more humane (for you and, frankly, for other generations as well) and more closely aligned with what many of you have told me you value most. I also spend a lot of time explaining to Boomers why any perception of 'slacker' comes from the lens through which Boomers view the world -- and has nothing to do with X'ers per se -- I wrote about this specifically last August 29 in a post called 'You've Won.')
I hope you'll continue to comment about what you'd like to see done differently in corporations to make them more attractive places to work. I sincerely want to know.
With warm regards, and again, thanks,
Tammy
- Posted by Tammy Erickson
May 17, 2008 14:24
In 'Generations' Strauss and Howe write that Generation X (born 1961-1981) total 90 million people. I'm curious as to why you say they're a 'small and therefore precious' group?
- Posted by Anonymous
May 17, 2008 17:51
Thanks for taking the time to respond, Tammy.
I'll be happy to comment on 'I hope you'll continue to comment about what you'd like to see done differently in corporations to make them more attractive places to work. I sincerely want to know.'
For starters, I'd love to see corporations begin to **truly identify** themselves (by their actions) as members of a global community of human beings as opposed to extraterrestrial entities looking for ways to maximize their profit potential on every nuance of the human experience -- from conception to cremation.
After all, these corporations are run by human beings (at least one would hope so) who -- if cornered in some elevator -- would most likely admit that their individual worth is no greater than that of any other human being.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to believe that their actions in the sandbox of human experience have ramifications outside of their seemingly narrow minded perspective of profits for themselves at the expense of everyone else, in a world (of their design limited to their construct) where 'winner' takes all while 'losers' are washed away by the floods.
Case in point, the recent decision by GE to drop appliances. Don't they remember that appliances 'bring good things to life'? Instead, they prefer to profit from the business units (nuclear power & weapons of war) that bring questionable things to life -- and in many cases are responsible for ending the lives of many around the world.
Another case in point would be the global oil giants operating in Burma/Myanmar, who essentially finance the ruling Junta that is not allowing aid to be delivered to the people of that country. Not one mention of this corporate influence on the military dictatorship of that country in our mainstream media, but it's definitely another example of real human beings on corporate boards around the world who seem happy to look the other way when profits are concerned.
There are other cases, as anyone with a web browser can surely discover.
Is it too much to ask corporations to be responsible citizens in our world?
- Raymond
- Posted by Raymond Pirouz
May 17, 2008 19:01
Im a Xr
i dont feel trusty about that 'fantastic' world of the boomers... they say they have trustful rules, but the fact is that only they believe in them... they assure life means what they mean... you understand me... the are all the time involving and complicating life... for example the way they arise and prove that the family means something that has to be cared in only one way...
i believe that they are living in fantasy, not because we have reasons, but because they are really afraid of the 'non known world'... we xrs go to the unknown like going to the known, but boomers dont... may be Ys also...
thanks for this space
Arturo
mexico city
- Posted by arturo ybarra
May 18, 2008 00:10
As a Gen-Xer who left a corporate job to seek self-employment, I find generational differences to be unconvincing in this situation. I think there are simpler reasons why dissatisfaction with corporate work grows as people approach their late 30s, early 40s:
(1) corporations are no longer the best place to work, because they no longer offer job security, pensions, and adequate room for advancement.
(2) smaller companies have really excelled in the last 10-15 years at providing a more challenging work environment, and jumping among different companies has become a more realistic (and accepted) career path
(3) I'd also guess that people often burn out around 10-15 years into a career. It is just that now it is more acceptible to be vocal/honest about this.
- Posted by Daniel Sroka
May 18, 2008 17:26
I don't think it is about Gen-X or Y. It is about the economic realities. Gen X has seen the ebb and tide of economics and also seen the pain of job loss due to outsourcing.
Gen-Y on the other hand is yet to experience these realities of life. Once they do that, there won't be many differences between the X and Y.
- Posted by Anirban
May 19, 2008 07:05
Tammy, what a great articulation of many of my own Gen X motivations, concerns and experiences! (b. 1964, walked away from Sr Director technology position at Fortune 50 corp rather than take a promotion to VP)
I would throw one more reason for our exodus from corporate leadership: Boomer executives expect us to act and think like they do whereas they don't seem to have that pre-conception for the younger generations.
In other words, after years of learning under their wise leadership we're 'mature' enough to understand and embrace the idea that layoffs are just a part of doing business, that people must be thought of as 'resources', and that it's only natural for individuality to be suborned by corporate culture. It's only now that we've been molded appropriately can we be permitted to take up the reins of executive leadership and begin molding the Y's accordingly.
Is it any wonder some of us reject the idea that we are destined to always live in the shadows of the Boomers and their ideals rather than applying our own ideas and viewpoints in leading organizations?
- Posted by Lance
May 19, 2008 11:52
ADULTHOOD IS OVERRATED
As a Gen X'er whose built a career in the nonprofit sector, I certainly feel sandwiched between 2 generations that (a) aren't ready to release the reins of power and allow me to 'move on up' and (b) have a slightly unrealistic view of how the work world actually operates.
Boomers clearly have established a solid foundation for us to lead from. However, as Boomers face retirement, the '60 is the new 40' slogan is cute, but, where does that leave the 30 and 40 something's that were supposed to take their spots - a perpetual middle manager?
Gen Y'ers clearly are getting the best parts of the chicken when it comes to the support of their mature/well-off parents and modern technology (if I had access to sites like Wikipedia, eHow, free newspapers, etc. when I was tween/teen or even in college, I'd have launched my own multimillion $ start-up too).
- Posted by Bahati
May 19, 2008 11:54
Tammy -
Excellent post, thank you for the points and I look forward to reading your book on these strategies. It was interesting to read how many of the comments assumed an X versus Y competition; from my position as a mid 40s Xer knocking on the glass ceiling to the executive suite I have always felt the issue was more with the boomers.
My fundamental concern with these boomers has been their lack of faith and trust in the X generation. This is evident in the difficulty many Xers seem to have in finding and holding mentors, in sustaining a career growth path at a velocity one would expect to see, lack of merit/performance based career growth, and in finding satisfaction in the workplace. Throw in the parenting pressure and the associated financial pressures of raising and educating those kids, and you quickly develop a survivalist mindset. Prior to your list I had not really thought about our generations risk aversions as I had assumed my engineering background is where my conservative nature was founded; with this list I can now see its systemic across the generation.
One item not in your list that might merit some attention is the impact of mergers and consolidations on the Gen Xers. For a generation seeking security and satisfaction within a career with some hope of growth, to have an acquisition occur is very disruptive. This has happened to me and Ive watched 2 more large acquisitions occur after mine; and all have resulted in a degradation in security, satisfaction, and hope. Those that can find better solutions elsewhere, some make a hobby out of looking for the greener grass, and the rest fall into the Comfortable Misery zone that Ninas blog discusses.
Lastly, I am surprised about the Y-generation parents issue. Ive seen that in the hiring process as they actively coach their kids; but overall the biggest issue I come across as a manager is the split families and the increased vacation impact on holidays. On one case I did have a parent look to me as a surrogate father for a very bright but troubled generation Y employee and that required some work to refine and revise that role. This is at odd with the over the top parent -- its almost the 'non existent' parent issue.
Thanks again.
Bruce
- Posted by Bruce
May 19, 2008 13:24
You've very closely described my career over the past decade. I'm in my early 40s and relate very well to the article you posted. I am at a point in my career where I'm being asked to trust the company I work for (a fortune 500), but frankly, there's no trust there. I've seen too much. The Boomers are set--they've worked for the company for many years, are well taken care of, and as they leave, seem to be giving the corporate keys to kingdom to the GenY group. I'm being asked to train and mentor GenYers, but am not being mentored or trained. There is a significant disconnect between what I'm being asked to do for others and what's being done for me. In addition, and to parrot statements from others, mentoring and training the GenY group is incredibly painful--and it's the GenXers doing the training not the Boomers. I've been told on many occasions that the concept of 'paying dues' is antiquated and of no value in today's environment. Part of me--the part that embraces technology--agrees with the comment. We need the GenY group here to help us enter into the next phase of technological progress; but, as I mentioned earlier, the concept of paying dues and waiting a turn to take the reins of leadership seem to also be something that isn't valued by the GenYers (or the Boomers). I honestly feel as though I'm being asked to train the Boomers replacements. I do not expect opportunities for me to advance to be presented. I expect I'll be passed over for promotions by the Boomers as they place the GenY group in higher positions--and I'm not alone in this feeling.
Having outlined my feelings on the matter, I have to say I don't feel I am being given any other choice but to make alternate plans. Why should I be loyal and trust an organization that is sending out all the signals of a company who doesn't value me as a potential future leader? I see no reason whatever to trust them, nor do I. I am making plans to take care of myself by creating options that will allow me to secure the longevity of my career so I can care for my family as best I can through the remainder of my work career and into retirement.
As a final comment, I would suggest you left out one other thing that caused the GenXers to behave in a manner outlined by your top 10 list--I was part of the .com bust in the early part of this decade. I wasn't one of the success stories--and for as many success stories there are as a result of the .com boom, there are a hundred stories like mine. I put all of my savings and energy into making a .com business and it didn't work out. I've had to go through a rebuilding, like many other GenXers. I've not had to navigate through a tough corporate environment once, but several times. I've learned when and when not to trust a company.
Thanks for a great article--I feel, well, vindicated.
- Posted by R. S. Scott
May 19, 2008 19:35
I am just one click away from the Big 4-0 (as an X'er, I just surprised myself that I just used a trendy pop-culture phrase to describe turning 40 when I should disdain pop culture).
Many of the points in this article are true to me as well, particularly with running out of options in a corporation. I have a decent paying non-management position with sought-out skills, but I feel I need to move into management to continue to climb and/or out pace those younger than me. I have been in corporate middle-management before and I don't necessarily find it better than what I am doing.
After switching 3 jobs in as many years, should I find a place where I can settle in for retirement now that I am almost in a protected class based on my age? That would be the advice of the Boomers. However, my gut tells me I will have more job security working as my own boss, calling my own shots.
I also agree that not all technology advancement is good. However, I wonder if that is an X'er thing, or a 'getting older' thing. How is spending two hours at a computer, downloading music to a PC, then up-loading to an MP3 player supposed to be easier and better than just putting in a CD?
That being said, I do agree with the previous poster that this problem will correct itself. We X'ers have heard several times before than Boomer's will leave in droves giving us more space. Hasn't quite worked out that way. At least they are putting off draining the Social Security.
- Posted by Bill
May 20, 2008 14:31
GenX?
A few insightful words about GenX, we'll start with Chuck
' Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. '
~it's our lives, our liberties and our freedom that matter, we realize once we caught the dreams we chased it can become a guilded cage.
We prefer freedom and freely choose it over 'advancement'.
I'd like to counter, however that the notion of a 'lovefest' between GenY & Boomers is as fallacious as they come. Proof?
It's a myth perpetuated by a media-types who wish to see the torch of socialist struggle passed from one generation to the next. It's a continuity they need, crave. The two could not be more disconnected.
If the 60 generation were the children of 'Marx & CocaCola' then GenY is the midterm abortion of Steve Jobs and Jessica Simpson...they're as shallow as her haircolor and as programmable as an iPod.
They fall for bumper sticker slogans b/c they've no moral compass. Their attentions are the size of a soundbite and memories half as long.
The boomers, however, worked hard to give us abortions, a 70's energy crisis, an 80's economic depression and a national debt 8 generations deep.
And now they want us to step up and pay for their mistakes as well as the misguided mistakes of GenY's social-engineering? The two generations enjoy pulling together what GenX looks to inherit and maintain as stable...and you wonder why we're unhappy about work?
Yeah...whatever.
- Posted by tyler
May 20, 2008 15:30
I can identify with the point about not liking rules. I hate rules and found I didn't fit into corporate structure very well. I was far too entrepreneurial and creative to be stuck in one role at a corporation. However I am not so sure about your point of technology fears. I love technology. I think this is a case by case deal as opposed to a generational idea. I also identify with the point that the Boomers were supposed to leave in droves and our generation would basically have our pick of the leadership roles. I agree with the poster above, definitely hasn't worked out that way.
However for me personally it is far too late. I have already made the jump to my own entrepreneurial life. I have been at it for almost 5 years now and I can safely say that a team of wild horses could not drag me back into the corporate world. I love being independent, making up my own rules as I go, and the freedom to work on what I want when I want to do it. If others from my generation get a taste of the entrepreneur's life they will leave in droves. Once the genie is out of the bottle it isn't going back in.
- Posted by Michael Temple
May 20, 2008 15:34
Ten Reasons Gen X'ers Are Unhappy at Work: A Response
Let's take the articles key points, one by one:
1. X'ers' corporate careers got off to a slow start
Hmm. Lessee, I left college in 1976, at the very end of the Vietnam war. We didn't have a recession. We didn't have inflation. We had stagflation, the worst of all worlds (short of a depression). During this period, the most I ever earned was about $4 an hour. It took me 8 years to find a career in publishing, at the tender age of 30.
2. When you were teens, X'ers witnessed adults in your lives being laid off...X'ers lack trust in large institutions...
Hey baby, I grew up in the 60s. The war cry: 'Never trust anyone over 30!'. We just didn't trust big corps...we tried to burn them down. Now that's action!
3. Most corporate career paths 'narrow' at the top...X'ers crave options...
Earth to X'ers: grow up. If you have a passion for something, you'll end up doing that and your options will narrow. That's what happens. If you want more options, you have to expand your education and knowledge. As for specialization, it's been with the human race since 10,000 BC or so.
4. Stepping into leadership roles right now looks more difficult...
Leadership roles? For a GenX? Hell, the boomers are still waiting for their turn. Blame superior Western medicine for allowing that Greatest Generation to live so long.
5. 'Managing' Y's ...is an impossible task...
Pulleeeze. Try managing Gen X'ers, who expect instant promotions after 2 weeks on the job, along with latte machines at their desks. X'ers can't manage Y's because, frankly, the X'ers are so self-absorbed they can't see anyone else.
6. X'ers are surrounded by a love fest...Boomers and Y's are...enjoying their interactions.
Well, the Boomers are interacting with the Ys because their kids are often Ys. Maybe X'ers are getting left out because boomers and Ys are sick of their whining.
7. X'ers are the most conservative cohort in today's workforce...you had to follow [rules] in the workplace and you resent it when others now don't.
Well, having managed many X'ers over the years, 'following the rules' is a matter of degree. Basically, X'ers wanted to rewrite the rules the first day on the job. And granted, they often had a point. And many times, they didn't.
8. Many X'ers' are not comfortable with the technology that is changing the way things are done...
Small surprise. Boomers, coming from the Analog age, had to figure this stuff out. X'ers also suffer from the 'if it happened before I was born, it doesn't matter' syndrome. As my X'er pal Emily says, 'That's soooo BE'. (Before Emily).
9. And if Boomer colleagues are annoying, the Boomer parents of your Y reports are down-right over-the-top.
Yes they're a pain. The response, X'er? Learn to be a manager and say 'No!'.
10. Finally, your own parenting pressures are at a peak... we need to create corporate environments that are more conducive to your needs and preferences.
Reality check from this boomer: I wish you well. This is the way all corporations should be. But truth be told, corporations are sharks that exist to feed and to make little baby sharks. And giving globalization and a tightening job market, chances are **you** will have to accommodate the corporation, not the other way around!
- Posted by Richard Young
May 20, 2008 18:54
I'm pretty much agreeing with most statement listed except reason 3, 7 & 8. FYI I'm a genX myself age 33. What Im going to say is only base on my own observation and through discussion with peers. Also take into consideration Im a Malaysian (ASEAN region) which my have some culture different.
Except the first 2 years, my career path is pretty good I would say, getting promotion averaging every 1.3 years and is currently in border of middle and top management. Which indirectly deny reason 3 (narrow career path). Im not saying reason 3 is completely wrong but it is just not as simple as that. The biggest issue why genX having narrow career path is mainly due to several reasons
I) There is a huge ideology differences between genX and Baby Boombers (BB). For example in business BB very much toward financial control & rules, while genX is the starting point of wise spending. This is even more clearly with genY but lucky for them they have a buffer in genX instead of directly report to BB.
II) GenX go through tough time as mentioned hence they have an urgency to seek for better life, because of this they getting more & more impatient with BB who like things to go slow & steady, the result is confrontation. Because BB is born in the era of order and rules, confrontation is almost unacceptable in most cases.
III) GenX is in the border line of old & new handling both BB & genY along is a tiring task, getting the assigned task to move is even more headache.
However once genX able to put in a bit more patient understand the differences between them and BB and try to improve from there, genX can reach very good success in career. Im one of the living examples. Similarly if BB able to do so will be much better.
As for 7 & 8, it is not that we do not like to change or we do not like IT but mostly because we are frustrated by constant rejection of change from BB. Most of my peer in genX including myself when starting entering corporate world we are so eager for changes but genX is starting to give up due to constant rejection. Myself is still constantly propose for change simply because I dont give up easily, otherwise I will be one of many genX which frustrated and stop proposing for change. Having say that frankly speaking Im almost giving up on IT proposal to BB as they are so reluctant on IT related improvement.
- Posted by CK Tan
May 21, 2008 00:26
Though I am a 'Gen-Xer', which I find particularly funny,as when the term came out, those my age found it a marketing joke...I have not had a 'normal' career path either inside or outside of the corporate world. I started out in a circle of friends, all inquisitive, intelligent, creative and both sarcastic as well as sceptical. Sceptical about where we saw the society going, the effects of corporations upon our lives and quality of life...saw the 'right-sizing', lack of responsibility, centralization all in attempts by corporations to meet quarterly goals as opposed to long term goals. Questioned the intelligence of granting corporations 'rights' using the 14th Ammendment during the end of the 19th Century, saw the continuation of union busting during the eighties which had begun during the twenties...watched as the cost of living contiued to spiral, while wages either stalled or spiralled in the opposite direction.
In my mid-to-late twenties, when I was preparing to return to school, I found myself with an 'instant' family and did what was needed to provide, when I did finally return to school in my mid-thirties, I dropped out to put my wife through school with the understanding I would begin my career goals when she finished. When she finished, she chose to leave and I found myself without an education, without a job and not able to pursue my goals...so I once again started over, this time, with building a career to support my other goals. I found a good corporation to work for, one that I had previous contacts within and prepared to start near the bottom. I was told that there was plenty of opportunity, that they took care of their own, et al...I have been at the same wages for three years, bouncing around the same entry-level positions, and though I have been recognized as being both highly productive as well as detail oriented there has been no opportunities...let's just say I had teh foresight to get into the 'housing' field.
My experience working with-in an International Corporation has been almost as 'Dilbertesque' as imagined. The petty politics, the 'CYA' approach by mediocre employees who seem to be 'marking' time as well as Middle Managers who seem more concerned with maintaining there place in the pecking order rather than either efficiency or morale for those working for them...as well as taking credit for things accomplished by their team instead of giving credit to those working for them has made the experience quite entertaining.
I believe that the large corporate structure is enslaved to the open investor market and while they make it difficult to accomplish your occupation's goals...they feed you morale doublespeak. If they could get beyond the numbers of the next three months, take responsibility, become part of the community as opposed to using it as a marketing tool then perhaps positive aspects could be realized. Personally, I believe working for regional-based companies with strong ties to the communities which they provide services to makes a lot more sense.
As for X-ers whining, yes, I believe there is that element...if nothing else, a lot perceive that they are accomplishing 'less' than their parents were able to while making more. They are looking at a future which not only has an uneasy economy, political uncertainty, a seemingly unending war, continuing political 'questionable' behavior, the probability of peak oil...they also are remembering who they were and some of us are wondering how we became who we are presently. There is a definite re-examination in our late thirties thru early forties, the realization that 'goals' of retirement, security may have been more illusional thean reality based and the desire to actually find work which is more fulfilling than making other's wealthy from our resources.
...or perhaps I am just having a bad day and should not have listened to so much Jello Biafra and Henry Rollins when I was younger.
- Posted by C Erickson
May 21, 2008 02:00
I'm late 30s and work for a corporation. I think there is a lot of truth to your article. I can relate to the notion of feeling like there's a baby boomer log jam ahead of me in my company preventing me from moving up or getting more responsibility when I feel I'm ready. The flip side is I've had some good baby boomer mentors.
I recently had a conversation with an older boomer who was commenting that his generation was totally sold out to the corporation and would uproot his family as needed to climb the ladder. He said that he saw the Gen X generation not willing to do that as much.
All that said, doesn't every generation bump up against the generation before it at some point? I don't know how unique this situation is. Maybe the demographic numbers make it more pronounced due to the sheer size of the baby boom population.
In a perfect world, my boomer superiors would recognize my need for variety and growth opportunities while I wait for them to move on. Nothing is owed to me, but they need us and we need them.
- Posted by Alex
May 21, 2008 16:41
'It is Hell in the Hallway'
I heard a saying the other day that really hit home for us Xers. Apparently this is not a new saying, but one I've not heard before. 'It is Hell in the Hallway'... since being a little girl, I've always heard the phrase, when a door is closed, a window is open. I have always believed this to be true- but there is that horrible time when you're caught in the middle- which is where I think our generation currently is for all the reasons you mention above.
I think many of us Xers whole-heartedly agree that we are at a point when the door has closed on one chapter of our lives & we can see the window of the next phase, but man, this in between time is really challenging. I would have to imagine that every generation goes through this at one point, if not several, in their lifetimes, but it seems to be very true for us right now!
- Posted by Erinn McMahon
May 21, 2008 16:47