| Horrible. That generation, born between 1946 and 1964, had a collective fascination with butt-kicking, entrepreneurial achievement. Look at where all the "butt-kicking" corporate warriors got us! So-called millennials, born between mid 1970s and 1990s, have received a radically different message--one captured in part by President-elect Barack Obama's stance on the benefits of "spreading the wealth around." The author seems to suggest that cleaning up the messes of power's previous custodians, as Barack Obama will have to do, couldn't possibly be preparation for anything useful in the corporate world. Not that millennials are damaged goods. Corporate recruiters drool over them for their ability to adapt and fit into bureaucratic enterprises. Overachieving, nobody-tells-me-what-to-do entrepreneurial types don't go so gently into that good night. I thought the complaint about our generation was that we had sharp elbows, demanding to assert our individualism at work and be treated "as colleagues rather than as subordinates". If any generation is bureaucratically-inclined, it's the Baby Boomers. We've accepted that there's no point in climbing corporate ladders that are going to vanish as we attempt to traverse them. Rather than seeking to come out on top in zero-sum games, millennials strive for consensus. Is that a bad thing? Although driven by competition, isn't business supposed to be positive-sum? It's only "zero sum" in stagnant corporations that have given up on measuring and encouraging production and, instead, fall back on political success for allocating rewards. Dr. Steven Berglas spent 25 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry. Today he coaches entrepreneurs, executives and other high-achievers. So he's a professor and a life coach, and he's berating us for our lack of entrepreneurial spirit? |
I am current in college (a few months from graduation), and let me just say that myself and many of my fellow students are all very entrepreneurial. More than a few of us have launched products, sites, and services to make money on the side, and going into business for yourself is a constant topic of conversation.
Yes, millennials are entrepreneurs - sometimes out of necessity. We no longer have the prospect of a cushy pension to look forward to, nor a predictable climb up a corporate ladder. The playing field has changed, and IMHO it now favors the bold.