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July/August 2010

Connections

Welcome the Re-Gens

Tamara J. Erickson, 01-17-2010

Over the past several years, a new generation has been taking shape — one steeped in reality, bounded by finite limits and already showing a commitment to stewardship of our shared resources. I suggest we call them the “re-generation,” or “re-gens” for short.

Many of the dominant traits of a generation are formed when its members are in their early teens — roughly ages 11 to 13. This is when children shift their attention from figuring out how tangible objects work to making sense of the events they see in the world around them. This is when they wrestle with concepts and ideas, fit the pieces together and work out in their own minds what matters.

In recent years, 11- to 13-year-old individuals saw a world that looked substantively different than the world did to 11- to 13-year-olds during the past 15 or so years.
Adult optimism in the past two years was doused with the cold-water realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. As the inconvenient truths of the past half-century settle on our shoulders, our preteens have not missed these issues or failed to grasp their complexity. Today’s 11- to 13-year-olds are forming a mental map based on a world with no easy answers.

Most are very aware that the polar ice caps are melting and the march of the penguins is slowing to a halt.
They know why the family is vacationing in the backyard and understand that high gas prices are related to the diminishing global supply of a commodity that has, in many ways, become the ubiquitous lubricant of American society since our trek to the suburbs began in the 1940s.
Many understand that other resources are limited, as well. Their geography lessons have given them a sense of the vital role water plays in politics and our future.
Whatever they or their parents think about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s likely they have absorbed the complexity of the situation. I doubt they have heard anyone offering simple, quick solutions, regardless of the direction in which one would prefer to head.

They have absorbed the impact of the recession. And, although they almost certainly don’t know this, demographics support a view of continued tough times ahead — the number of big spenders is decreasing. Boomers are moving out of peak spending years, replaced by a group that is both smaller and more conservative in its spending habits. The economic conditions during the next decade are likely to be more conservative than the upbeat decades past when boomers were fully engaged in the accumulation of worldly possessions.

This new generation has been swaddled in reality. They have been weaned on reality TV — not the “we can do it” optimism of the boomers’ “Mickey Mouse Club,” the perky interpretation of shifting family structures of the Xers’ “Facts of Life,” or the Yers’ glamorous escape into the unreality of “Beverly Hills, 90210” — but the images of real people taking on big challenges — typically in pursuit of the new great American goal: $1 million.

Virtually all in this new generation are parented by Xers — a generation renowned for self-reliance and self-sufficiency. These children of Generation X undoubtedly have absorbed to some degree their parents’ frustration with the economic hand they’ve been dealt — poor job markets when they began their careers, high housing prices when they bought their first homes — and their general disenfranchisement with many existing institutions. Perhaps they’ve heard their parents’ growing resentment that boomers have been poor stewards of our world. I suspect a desire to be less shortsighted and slow to react to the issue of limited resources will be an important priority for the new generation.

Being 11 to 13 in 2008 and 2009 means you were born in or after 1995. That, I suspect, will turn out to be the switch point — the cutoff for Generation Y and the beginning of the new generation.

This will be a generation of realists, of pragmatists. Truth, finite limits, conservation, trade-offs, balance — these, I suspect, will be their themes. They will tackle the challenges of renewable energy, recycling, reducing carbon emissions and resource limitations. This generation will show restraint and responsibility as they rethink and renew.

Welcome the re-generation. «

Tamara J. Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and expert on organizations, innovation and talent. She is the author of What’s Next, Gen X? Keeping Up, Moving Ahead and Getting the Career You Want. She can be reached at editor@diversity-executive.com.