Your Parents Aren’t Stupid

On December 15, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson
The baby falling into a hole in Baby Boomer
Image via Wikipedia

Your teenager might disagree with that statement.  Maybe it’s because I’m almost the father of a teenager but I have a new pet peeve; Marketers who talk about how today’s consumers are more savvy, or somehow smarter or better educated, than previous consumers.  Yes they have been raised in a technology rich environment but that does not make them smarter.  In my experience Baby boomer’s like the generation before them are just skeptical and cautious.  In some ways this makes them more ’savvy’ than their children and grandchildren.

Why do today’s marketers keep making these claims?  Well for one they tend to be younger.  But I think that most modern marketers are tired of traditionalists, late adopters and nay sayers.  Who is usually telling them that they don’t buy into all these new ideas?  Yeah it’s usually the baby boomer’s.

I think that this actually proves my point.  After years of seeing fads come and go, salesmen and marketers lie to them not to mention those that had investments during the Dot Bomb party.  Something that I do believe is happening is Marketers are finally getting smarter (not much but it’s a start).  Marketers are finally realizing that they can’t keep lying and manipulating customers.  They can’t gain repeat customers and greater market share by yelling at your customers.  Marketers are having to brush up on their interpersonal skills.  Remember respect?  That’s where marketing starts.

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The 2009 Recession Will Produce the Largest Wave of Entrepreneurship

On March 14, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

This isn’t a recession, it’s a Revolution!

I am proud to say that my generation; Generation X has been the largest entrepreneurial generation ever. That’s all about to change.  In preparing for my IgniteBoise presentation my friend Steve Nipper sent this great NYT article over to me:

Tired of Looking for Work, Some Create Their Own – NYTimes.com

“If there is a silver lining, the large-scale downsizing from major companies will release a lot of new entrepreneurial talent and ideas — scientists, engineers, business folks now looking to do other things,” Mr. Cannice said. “It’s a Darwinian unleashing of talent into the entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

The tidal wave of workforce being unleashed on the open market consist of just as many, if not more, Baby Boomers as Gen Xers and as Generation Y walks out of college they are also being hit with the stark reality that there are no jobs.

I predict that the rising force of new businesses will be the most disruptive movement to date.

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The burden of employment has shifted – It’s all on you now

On January 12, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

Brain Drain album coverImage via Wikipedia

It’s amazing how quickly things changed at the end of 2008. Companies went from being worried about the “Baby Boomer brain drain” that was coming as Boomers retired and there weren’t enough Xers to fill the gap left by their physical presence and their on the job knowledge.

Now companies aren’t concerned about filling jobs as much as they are trying to figure out how to do without. Companies are still concerned about filling the expertise gap, but they’ll always have that challenge to deal with. I believe that the only employees that are safe in this job market are those that are the best at what they do.

Jeremiah Owyang has a very thought provoking post about deciding what your career mission is.

What’s Your Career Mission?

During this rough economic time you should be doing some soul searching, the market has changed and you need to evaluate how you’ll position yourself –even if you’re still employed. Scrutiny abound, you should start to think about what your long term goal is, beyond filling in your weekly status report.

I’m not a believer in the “any port in a storm” mentality. Personally I believe that you should always strive to take jobs/work/employment that you are passionate about, that you can be the in the top 10% (preferably even 1%) in your field and simultaneously challenge you to constantly grow and learn.

My personal career mission has always been to help businesses apply new communication tools and techniques to maximize the communication value with all their stakeholders.

Zemanta recommended the Ramones album cover and I couldn’t resist.

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New Media Trifecta (part 1)

On April 3, 2007, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

There is a “perfect storm” coming to American businesses.

Trust – People’s trust is at an all time low (and for very good reason). This doesn’t just effect customer relationships, but also employee, partner and stakeholder relationships. Do your customers trust you? Do your employees trust you? Do you care? (If the answer is no please stop reading and just go away.)

Retention -

- People – Unemployment is at an all time low: 4.4% nationally, as of this writing. Add to that that in less than 5 years Baby Boomers are going to start retiring at the rate of 1,000 a day and there are not enough Gen Xers to take their place. Add to that that Gen X has been career hoping all their lives and shows no sign of stopping.

– Knowledge – What is going to happen to your IP as Baby Boomers exodus the work place for greener pastures? How do you keep all those ideas the creative Gen Xers bring to a work place if they are continually career hopping. How do you pass that knowledge off to Gen Y and ensure that it sticks? In order to fill some key positions companies will have to start outsourcing more or allowing for remote/telecommuting employees.

Innovation – It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, competition is so fierce that companies must innovate to survive. Yet it is difficult to allocate the resources to innovation when companies are constantly forced to do more with less. How can you dedicate a team of people to one product that may or may not pay off? How can you assign employees to another project that will require MORE MEETINGS?

How Are American Companies Supposed to Stay Competitive?

I believe that New Media offers a powerful solution to this problem.

This is part one of a very long post. I realized that it was getting too long so I decided to post this first part. I’m still working on the second part and doing a little research on it. If you have any feedback or suggestions or tyrades, please launch them here.

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Follow-Up on WGI’s Internal Blogging

On March 26, 2007, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

It was almost one year ago that Shel Israel met with Andy Snodgrass to talk about internal blogging at WGI.

I had the opportunity to meet Andy and I had to ask him if anything had become of his interest in internal blogging. I was disappointed but not at all surprised to hear that nothing at all had come of it. It seemed apparent from his response that the idea was not even on the table anymore.

WGI like most companies in America are faced with an uncertain future. There is going to be a huge loss in resources and knowledge as Baby Boomers leave the workplace. There just are not as many Gen Xers (about half) to fill the vacancy’s that are coming and Gen Y is mostly too green to take on higher management role.

Andy admitted that social networking tools would be a perfect fit to solve their problems. He also brought up one of the best arguments as to why they dropped the idea: Baby Boomers won’t use the tools. Now my first gut reaction was: there are Baby Boomers who blog, followed by, if you implemented the tools, provided training and instituted a policy…. Then reality set in, yeah they wouldn’t use it. Most Baby Boomers are not going to use any type of social networking tool.

WGI has a good plan in place: As their engineers move into retirement, hire them back part time and team them up with someone they can mentor. A good majority of these Type A engineers would love an opportunity like this.

Then I thought a little more seriously about their problem. How do they pass on all of that valuable information from their aging engineers to the younger, just out of school engineers? One on one is great and invaluable, but how much information can be passed on and retained this way. WGI’s plan won’t work for each new hire. Even if they could get a one to one match up across the company you have personality differences and generational dynamics that won’t work in all cases. Plus how long will Baby Boomers really want to work or be able to?

Gen Y and a certain percentage of Gen X would willingly use new media tools. Combine those tools with the steps that WGI is already implementing and you have a real Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management solution. As the younger engineers learn from their mentors they can record and share that information with their peers. Blogs, podcasts, wikis, tagging, RSS feeds and all things geeky could make information sharing across the entire company infinitely more powerful than any currently available enterprise solution.

Obviously no solution is utopian, and there would still be many more hurdles to implementing a solution like this but it seems better than anything else I’ve heard of. Does anyone know of a company using new media for this type of solution? Can someone think of a better solution?

Additional Resources:
All Kind Food
Andrew McAfee

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