By Danielle DeLonge
March 31, 2011
Are your organization’s rising stars being heard? Are your leading ladies and gents being heralded as such? Perhaps it’s time to reconsider roles within your organization.
A few short weeks ago, actors Anne Hathaway and James Franco became two of the youngest stars ever to host the Oscars. Now, whether or not you’re a fan of “The Devil Wears Prada” or “127 Hours,” this fact alone might give you pause, as it did the folks at Reuters: “Oscar organizers tried something unprecedented in the awards' 83-year history on Sunday—entrusting a young, attractive pair of Hollywood stars to host the film industry's highest honors.”
Apparently, this all came about in an effort to attract a younger audience, which either fell flat or was spectacular, depending (like so many other things) on who you ask. Did it really work? Since many of us can hardly remember who hosted last year, in some ways, it hardly seems worth noticing. However, while most of us will never be seen on the silver screen, this whole episode brings up yet another point about the difference between generations at work, and begs the question: Why do so many millennials expect an award, as a colleague put it, “just for breathing”? How can some expect to earn so quickly what took others decades to achieve? To many viewers watching at home, Anne and James are still relative newcomers. Did they really deserve to host the awards?
As many of you know first-hand, millennials have a reputation for being very insistent about the status of their positions; we expect to rise up the corporate ladder right away. Some might say we even tend to go for positions for which we’re not qualified. As someone who started out on the bottom rung of a financial services firm, I can readily admit that I fully expected to be a partner someday. Not someday soon, mind you, but I probably expected it for myself much sooner than this particular firm would have.
Which brings us to the topic of speed, as in the speed with which decisions get made, or business gets done, or life happens. In my father’s day, business success took years to achieve — and even then, it only happened if you were lucky. A search of “notable baby boomers” includes some of the usual suspects: John F. Kennedy, Morgan Fairchild, Natalie Cole, Donald Trump, George Bush, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, people who were well in their 40s before they became status symbols. Yes, in his day, JFK was young — really young — compared with those who came before him in that position. But my generation has Mark Zuckerberg — you know, that Facebook guy who was a millionaire by age 25. The one they just made a movie about. Sound a little different?