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Five things Millennials never want to hear

5. 'We work from 9-5'

James Poulson/Daily Sitka Sentinel/AP/File
Dan Gray heads out to join other surfers at Sandy Beach to catch a wave or two in January in Sitka, Alaska. Incorporating flexibility (including surf breaks) into work schedules may actually encourage Millennial productivity.

  • By Jim Finkelstein (boomer) Contributor
  • Matt Finkelstein (Millennial) Contributor

Millennials view the world 24/7/365. They see the possibility of going surfing in the ocean when the surf is up, and surfing the Internet when the need arises. Telecommuting, teleconferences, and virtual work open up a world that's more flexible and (perceptually, at least) less demanding or ritualistic. Boomers should take advantage of this boundary-less, wanting to have it all when they want it perspective. Trying building flexibility into the work schedules for your younger counterparts and you may be surprised how productive they really can be.

The wisdom and experience of boomers, combined with the savvy and boundless energy of the Millennials, will help inspire a new workforce culture, one in which conversations about generational differences are replaced by an understanding of how the blend of talents makes for a more effective and efficient frontier. If you can master this new brand of corporate sweet talk, which doesn’t polarize but instead engages and embraces the assets that Millennials have, you create the possibilities for a higher level of productivity and success.

– Jim Finkelstein is president and chief executive officer of FutureSense and author of "FUSE: Making Sense of the New Cogenerational Workplace." Matt Finkelstein is a part-time consultant at FutureSense and farm manager at the Four Elements Farm in San Luis Obispo County, Calif.  

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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