Change Your Space, Change Your Culture: How Engaging Workspaces Lead to Transformation and Growth

Chapter 5What Every Executive Needs to Know about Millennials

Media is like an environment; it takes us over, and sort of consumes us in many ways … Media, in some ways, determines or dictates who can say what to whom, what they can say, how it will be said, etc. And so, when media change—our conversations change.

—Michael Wesch¹

When I recently made a presentation to a company retreat of senior executives, I mentioned our research on Millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000). Immediately, the room temperature increased. Strong opinions bounced around the room like beach balls. Adjectives were barked and growled like profanity: “disrespectful,” “entitled,” “antisocial,” “uncaring.” Several snapped variations of, “They never answer their phones or e-mail” or “They're all like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, or Jersey Shore.”

Wow. So that's your hot button.

I understand. Bob Johansen, author of Leaders Make the Future, writes, “The digital natives will be a disruptive force on a scale that we cannot yet imagine.²

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

“For my one-year-old daughter a magazine is an iPad that does not work. It will remain so for the rest of her life. Steve Jobs has coded a part of her OS.”

—YouTube Video

Ten years ago I wrote, “When the primary means of storing and distributing information changes, our worldviews change.”³ When technology changes the way people see and experience the world, it remakes children into different human beings. They grow up to form ...