A colleague of mine who read my latest blog sent me an email that read, in part: “Good info on the roles in collaboration, but how do the roles influence collaboration across generations?” Great question! First, it’s worth noting that a collaborator can be of any generation and be in one or more of the four roles of we define in effective collaboration. (To date, I’ve discussed two of the four in my blog: individual contributor and customer.)
Second, what I’ve noticed as a significant difference between Millennials, Gen X, Baby Boomers, and Traditionalists, is that millennials have little patience for lack of clarity, which is demonstrated specifically by the lack of:
- setting clear expectations,
- defining priorities and success criteria, and
- providing tools or giving direction to the millennials to create tools to support the collaborative effort.
Traditionalists, Baby Boomers and Gen X have typically had the attitude that if the work is not clearly defined, they’ll just figure it out. While tenacity and perseverance are good qualities, they come at a cost, primarily in wasted time. Millennials don’t like wasting time. They are used to finding what they need in short order, and they excel at this task. They want to be seen as valid contributors to the team/work in short order as well. Ambiguity in defining collaborative efforts for millennials comes at two high costs:
- If they perceive (often rightly so) that the team/organization doesn’t have their act together, then they look for opportunities elsewhere. This results in an expense that most companies don’t track or report: the cost of hiring/recruiting the millennial, training (classes and/or on-the-job) over X months, followed by repeating the effort again when the individual quits.
- The lack of information, leads them to seek it out on the internet or intranet. The danger here is they are new to your organization and therefore lack awareness of the credibility of the source of the data they quickly find.
So what can be done to give clarity for all generations in a collaborative effort? At a minimum:
- Define Collaborative Success, including the priority of deliverables and noting major milestones or checkpoints in a one to two-page document.
- Identify all team/individual contributors and their specific deliverables along with who is dependent upon their work completing on time.
- Conduct a 1-hour kick-off meeting for the project/collaboration to set expectations. Video/record the meeting so that it can be referenced by new team members who join after the kick-off is held.
The above are just a few examples of the tools and best practices we discuss in the Cross Group Collaboration workshop. Each can be customized to meet the needs and culture of your organization. Bottom line: they provide clarity and save time no matter what generation is involved in the collaborative effort.