This past week I was honored to be a speaker at
the
2015 Commercial Integrator Summit which is an annual event (by invitation
only) that was held this year at the Gaylord Hotel in Washington
DC. The CI Summit is an opportunity for executives from the industry’s largest
and most progressive commercial integration companies to get together to dive
into technology and business trends, to share best practices and to move the industry
forward.
The topic I spoke on was "The Millennial Challenge" which
is one that has been near and dear to my heart since millennials comprise
almost 50% of the ISI sales and support team. So what pearls of wisdom did I
share with the over 200+ summit attendees that attended the roundtable
presentation?
Initially I presented issues that were part of "hopefully the last
presentation they'll hear about millennials" which included what doesn't
work with managing millennials. Those included old motivation strategies such
as cussing, threatening, intimidation, etc. as well as labeling millennials as the "entitlement generation."
One important point that was made was
that, different from Baby Boomers, millennials want to live life on their own terms and don't want their jobs/work to define them
After an open discussion and audience/group feedback on their own experience
(with what hasn't worked managing millennials), I then presented what has worked
managing them which included building an employee farm system, presenting
millennials an "opportunity" (and not just a job) as well as flexible
work hours and fostering a creative work culture. Additionally I made the point
that millennials really weren't that much different from Baby Boomers (like me)
which includes traits such as impatience (in moving up in their companies) as
well as changing jobs and careers multiple times.
Finally, it was noted that
many of the attributes of millennials has been shaped by social media and
exposure to technology at a very early age. There was another group open discussion on what has worked managing millennials
and got some great additional feedback (on what was important to their young
workers) such as giving back to the community and social responsibility. Really
good stuff!
I then wrapped up my presentation by challenging attendees to go
out and actively recruit young millennial talent and work hard to motivate and
retain them to not only build their businesses in 2015 but for the future as
well.
After my presentation , I was gratified to receive a lot of positive feedback
from a number of people and really feel that many of the strategies I
presented on millennials can and will help my fellow integrators for many years
to come