http://www.ExactingEditor.com/RainesXers.html

[Claire Raines is one of America's leading experts on generations, social change, and workplace trends. She speaks regularly on these topics and has authored or co-authored four books during the past decade. Born in 1946, Raines is a leading-edge boomer and lives in Colorado with her husband Allen.]

FRANK GREGORSKY: The transcript that comes out of this tape will center on Generation X. You co-authored the first book on them as employees, so that's where we'll start. But we need one "landscape" question as the opener -- something that overviews how far we've come. Here it is: Each new generation makes its first "splash" inside of industries that are particularly open to new talent. I'm thinking of advertising and, certainly over the past 15 years, digital technology. We can easily see how Xers have changed those sectors. But where else -- types of companies, sectors of the economy, or perhaps speaking geographically -- do you see Xers having made the biggest cumulative impact since 1990?

CLAIRE RAINES: The first sector I began to notice major changes in was the service industries -- places like Starbucks, Kinko’s, and McDonald’s. Because those industries -- restaurants, hotels, retail -- absolutely depend on younger workers, they were forced to change early. They really took the lead on training people about Generation X and taking a hard look at how they were managing, what their expectations were, how they were rewarding. They’re different from most of the dot-com companies in that they were older, established companies with strong Boomer (or older) work cultures.

Eventually, I saw a subtle shift in virtually all industries. I notice it more than anything else in a new casualness, less formality.

GREGORSKY: Okay, now let's rewind -- all the way back to the book you co-authored in the early '90s with Lawrence J. Bradford. [Full title and info: Twentysomething: Managing and Motivating Today's New Workforce -- New York: MasterMedia Limited 1992, 208 pages, ISBN 0-942361-35-0]

At about the time you were writing this, Time magazine -- issue of July 16, 1990 -- came out with a cover story on "The New Lost Generation." Were you glad to see that? Did it more or less confirm where you were going with the manuscript?

CLAIRE RAINES: [Bradford and I] were just beginning to collect data, and [the Time story] was tremendously valuable to us -- because it seemed to begin to define the generation [after the boomers]. Now, most of those articles at that time had sort of a negative bent to them, and I think our book did as well. Not as negative as some of those, but that book was never one I felt real comfortable having people OF the generation read.

GREGORSKY: Um-hmm.

RAINES: Although many of them did like it. But I think it'd be easy to find things [in there] to be offended about.

GREGORSKY: On page 9, you say of twentysomethings: "Their risk-taking quotient is low when compared to the entrepreneurial spirit of the baby-boomers."

RAINES: Isn't THAT interesting?

GREGORSKY: Did the business start-up gumption of the Xers surprise you? The first proclamation of it I saw was in Forbes -- a cover story at some point in '95 -- calling them "the most entrepreneurial generation ever."

RAINES: Well, I think we were wrong, when we said that back then. I'm not sure what made us think that at the time.

GREGORSKY: The book offered some stats showing high-school seniors in 1986 much more interested in working for big companies than the late-boomer seniors of a decade earlier. You actually had some data that showed [Xers] trending back toward big companies -- very interesting. Maybe the point was that they were looking for economic security?

RAINES: Right. And we certainly did not find that to be true [as the 1990s played themselves out].

Interestingly enough, on the "security" issue, have you seen the Randstad survey? They do a survey with Roper Starch, and have for maybe just the past two years (see www.us.randstad.com/global/randstad_surveyresults.html). This survey looks at employee attitudes by generation. And I looked thru the most recent one. As a matter of fact, they hired me to come to New York and do some PR around it -- and I was thinking while reviewing it: "Yes yes, all this seems just exactly right to me..."

And then, in the Gen X section, it said that they wanted job security more than any other generation. That was TOTALLY against the things I would speak about. And yet, when I saw the way they had asked the question, it was almost like: "Would you LOVE to have job security?" And I think a lot of Xers would say, "Well, that'll be when Hell freezes over, but -- OF COURSE I would."

And maybe they would think so more than anyone else, because they're the generation who grew up watching people not have it at all. Watching parents be laid off, and neighbors laid off -- the old implicit "contract" between employer and employee (that said you have a job for life unless you totally mess up) was broken.

So, when it comes to this entrepreneurial zone, it's interesting. Certainly, if you were to ask me [who's] the most entrepreneurial generation, I think it's the Gen Xers -- clearly.

GREGORSKY: On page 25 of that book from a decade ago, you and Bradford profile a new hire named Mike; he's a copywriter, and all of 22. And you counsel Dolores, his exasperated manager, as follows: "Mike needs to know the exact amount of dues to pay. He needs specific standards to measure up to." Perhaps you do this in the most recent book, but, in general, is "dues-paying" a complete non-starter with Xers? Even if you restrict the dues to a horizon of, say, 60 days, and confine the payment to their immediate superior or department, is the very TERM of no use?

RAINES: I think managers need to learn [what's wrong with it], so I've begun telling people "dues-paying is null and void." By the way, if I want to make people really ANGRY -- people who've been in companies quite awhile -- that's a really good way to do it.

GREGORSKY: [laughter] The two-by-four to get the mule focused.

RAINES: Right. And "dues-paying" -- what it means to people in the backs of their heads, oftentimes, is: I was miserable for the first 12 to 15 years that I worked here, and I think you oughta be too. In their heart of hearts, I think that's what people think of "dues-paying."

And it just isn't true any more. If people are miserable, they will go somewhere else. Now, maybe with a less certain economy, this won't be quite as much the case as it was six months ago. But we still have people being recruited for jobs who are in the driver's seat.

Let me go back to the guy [Mike, age 22 10 years ago]. We wrote that, if his manager [Dolores] wanted to succeed with him, she needed to be able to sort of map out for him, "Here's how people get paid more money. Here's how people [in this company] get a more challenging assignment." And really be SPECIFIC about how long it will take and the hoops you have to jump thru.

GREGORSKY: A menu with prices for each dish.

RAINES: Exactly. Yeah.

GREGORSKY: Why do [managers] resist doing that? For the same reason they don't like to write job-descriptions?

RAINES: More because they're mad about the attitude. This also has to do with work-ethic issues. The group I'm lately calling the "Radio Generation" -- born before about 1940 -- proved that they were worthy and valuable human beings via war. The baby-boomers proved that THEY were worthy and valuable at work -- that's why they have this "driven" work ethic.

And it makes them really angry that the typical Gen Xer doesn't define "work ethic" the same way they did. And what they REALLY think -- many boomers and especially older workers -- when they're look at the Generation Xer, they think "paying your dues" means that you sleep here; you spend weekends and evenings here; and that should go on for YEARS.

That's why it makes them angry to have to spell it out. It might in fact not take that long.

GREGORSKY: Your first book is fascinating to me because of what you'd already figured out in '91-92. What did you find most positive -- and also more surprising on the downside -- about the reaction to Twentysomething, again the one written with Larry Bradford?

RAINES: I guess the biggest positive was that there was so much interest in the book. It sold quite well and had a large readership. People said they identified with the book and that it answered a lot of questions they were dealing with, often in their families. I was also pleased that Gen Xers, for the most part, liked what they were reading. Many thanked me.

The downside of the book was that we wrote it partly in response to complaints we were hearing, from managers, about Xers. In some ways, the book helped those people to cathart. I quickly became uncomfortable with that aspect of the book -- and it also became politically incorrect for boomers to "dis" their Xer colleagues.

So I wrote Beyond Generation X [Menlo Park, CA: Crisp Publications 1997, 120 pages. ISBN 1-56052-449-9]. It handles most of what Twentysomething did, but in a way that’s much more positive about Gen Xers.

GREGORSKY: We'll add a URL that displays the basics of all your books. Right now we need to jump to the '99 book you did with Ron Zemke and Bob Filipczak -- Generations At Work. For this session, just the Xer components of that, starting with this quote: "After all, the X-Games were named in their honor and exemplify their spirit of eccentricity and physical derring-do." Is that true -- "named in their honor"?

RAINES: [stage-whispering in the negative]

GREGORSKY: She's whispering, folks [laughter]. Okay, let's try another choice item. Page 101 has a hilarious story about the Xer approach to authority inside companies: "A Boston company recently hired a new company president. He was making his way around the building, meeting with each department. In one such meeting, a Gen-X employee asked the new president where he lived" --

RAINES: A true story!

GREGORSKY: "After the president responded, the young guy said: 'Alright! I can get a ride to work with you.' And that's what happened." Did he actually get to ride, at all, with the president?

RAINES: As the story goes, apparently. I was having an interview with the Boston Globe, and the journalist told me that the person she talked to right before [our session] had told her this story. And that in fact they WERE riding to work together.

The thing that's so fascinating about that story is that most baby-boomers would've never asked the question. They would have LOVED to ride to work with the guy [who's highest up in the company]. But they wouldn't have asked where he lived.

GREGORSKY: Yeah. Yeaaahhhh.

RAINES: For boomers, there's a mystique around leadership. You know, we say we were anti-authority -- yyyyesssss, but: Very drawn to positions of leadership, and a whole aura and mystique around it. For most Xers, there's no aura, no mystique around leadership. I think that's really healthy.

GREGORSKY: Sticking with Generations At Work, on page 115, re the Xer distaste for, and resulting incompetence at, office politics, you say: "The Boomers would tell you that they, themselves, are...better at corporate politics -- knowing just how to say exactly the right thing to the penultimate person at precisely the right time. Xers would say they're not interested in that 'political stuff.' They see the 20% of their generation who are politically adept as corporate stooges." Talk about this 20% -- that is, the Gen Xers who have no resistance to office politicking. Where are they? Geographically, and in terms of industry. And is 20% an educated guess?

RAINES: Oh, I think the 20% is just a made-up number. But it's probably a Myers-Briggs kind of a thing -- [Xers who do well at office politics are] probably the extroverts and the perceivers. By function, it's probably the people in marketing, in sales -- people with extra-good people skills; they were just born with all of those.

GREGORSKY: Right.

RAINES: See, the boomers had to LEARN all those, as part of going to all those seminars.

GREGORSKY: Right.

RAINES: "I'm OK, You're OK," transactional analysis, the Myers-Briggs type indicator, and win-win negotiating. But most Xers haven't had all that stuff, and a lot of those places don't even offer the courses any more. The Xers aren't interested in them, and the [courses and seminars] are now sort of passé.

But, in terms of today's Xers who have no problem taking part in office politics, it's more the ones who just sort of NATURALLY have that style. And then maybe there are the few really devious ones who realize that it'll get 'em where they want to go -- I don't know.

GREGORSKY: Odd question, and it starts with a friend of ours who works in financial services. She says a lot of later Xers, meaning those in the twenties now, are really interested in golfing, and in golf-course memberships "as a perk of work."

RAINES: [smiling] As a perk?

GREGORSKY: Will that 20% -- the "smooth operators" we just talked about -- make Xers the most golf-prone generation since Arnold Palmer and Dinah Shore claimed that sport for the GIs?

RAINES: [laughter]

GREGORSKY: Told you it was an odd question. But seriously, do you see any movement back toward golf among corporate Xers?

RAINES: I haven't heard about it, which doesn't mean it isn't there. Certainly I meet up with a lot of boomers who are playing golf -- professionally. Not professional sports, but as part of their job and a way to schmooze clients -- that kind of thing. Actually, it seems more Millennial to me than Xer.

GREGORSKY: Yeah -- although millennials are the caddies right now.

RAINES: True.

GREGORSKY: Okay, here's a very Millennial-gen topic, although one of the two questions that come out of it will keep us focused on the Xers. You, Filipczak and Zemke wrote in '99:

"While young Boomer women in the 1970s became involved in the women's movement, [Millennial] girls in the 1990s are actively involved in a new, more informal, but more far-reaching 'girl's movement.' When the boomers were girls, one in 27 participated in team sports in high school. Social pressure and the reality of 'Title IX' has now made that number one in three..."

You also talk about the growth of Take Our Daughters to Work Day. And, after your '99 manuscript was sent to the publisher, we had those wild displays, by the likes of fifth-grade millennials, triggered by the U.S. Women's Soccer Team victory. Most important are the years of statistics of girls outperforming boys at school, seemingly in every subject other than computer science and a couple of the engineering disciplines.

If you have any new thoughts on the de facto feminism of this new generation -- which strikes me as the spirit without the ideology or the politics -- then please share them here. Are we living thru some kind of "golden age for girlhood" in America?

RAINES: I think we might be. And not just because the women's movement had time to soak in.

Now, I've heard some controversy between Boomer women and Xer women -- that the Boomer women feel that the Xer women take for granted the things that the Boomer women worked so hard to get, in the workplace. It’s probably a valid complaint. But then isn’t this the case with any social progress that one generation takes the lead on? A few decades later, the change has just become part of the fabric of the culture.

There's a magazine called More. It's primarily for older women -- late forties and up. One of their first issues had an article (which quoted me quite extensively) about Boomer women versus Xer women. (The article was "Are We at War? Baby-Boomers & Gen Xers Face Off in the Workplace" by Mary C. Hickey, June 2000 More.)

There's been enough time for the pendulum to swing back again so that there is interest in women's issues again. I also think that Mary Pipher's book, Reviving Ophelia, made a tremendous difference.

GREGORSKY: Yes, I read that [back in '95].

RAINES: Quite a few parents read that book and got concerned about girls. Pipher especially talks about anorexia and overachievement and all of that. So I think girls have gotten a lot more support. They’re very confident now -- and they like being girls.

I just get a kick out of the T-shirts. "Girls Rule, Boys, Drool." Another -- I think it may be from Nike -- says on the front "weaker sex" and, on the back, "expect neither." Recently I had a guy tell me his daughter insisted that he buy her a sweatshirt for the ski area that said, "Hold my snowboard while I kiss your boyfriend."

GREGORSKY: Right.

RAINES: Now the concern is that some of this may be at the expense of boys. I just think there's been a need for this, so it's sort of the pendulum swinging. Perhaps it's swung a tiny, tiny bit too far. I think it'll self-govern; I'm not worried about it.

But, yes, I do think it's a wonderful, wonderful time to be a girl. Probably the best ever -- at least, that is, in the U.S. We wouldn't say quite the same for Afghanistan.

By the way -- this is somewhat off the topic -- you do know Mary Pipher's more recent book, Another Country.

GREGORSKY: Nope.

RAINES: It's a book you want to pick up -- it is so cool. "Navigating the emotional terrain of our elders" [is the subtitle] -- about how to help our parents into retirement and towards their death. But in fact, it's really a lot of Boomer [and] Radio Generation kind of stuff.

GREGORSKY: Oh yes -- I did see something about this.

RAINES: Pipher expected the delineation between the two generations to be television. She found [instead] that it's modern psychology.

GREGORSKY: Alright, I'll have to get it. That applies to my interview business, too.

RAINES: Yeah. It's out in paperback now.

GREGORSKY: Now the second question that gets to this male-female zone: What is "feminism" to the Xers? Being a highly individualistic generation, most Xers strike me as allergic to "isms" -- of any type. They take you as you are -- as an individual, pro or con.

RAINES: Right.

GREGORSKY: So, where do they come out -- mostly speaking of female Xers here -- if historically they inhabit this "space in generational time" between the raised consciousness and group solidarity evident (in different ways) among both fiftysomething females and young girls?

RAINES: Well, I think -- and remember this is a boomer speaking -- that your typical Gen Xer, male or female, is in fact a feminist. But -- they hate that word. That word sorta does for them what "I walked six miles to school both ways uphill" did for us 40 years ago. It's a generational thing. "Enough already, I've heard about all that stuff."

But I think they really are feminists -- especially the women, who have every expectation they'll be treated fairly in the workplace.

GREGORSKY: What about the rising numbers of Xer females who say, "If we could support this family on one income, I would just as soon stay home"? Something like twice as many females [under 40] who say that now as said that 10 years ago.

RAINES: That's really true. And I think that the Boomer women chose the workplace as their proving ground. Really, it was all that we had available to us. The Gen Xers don't seem to have this drive -- the men OR the women -- to prove that they're worthy and valuable human beings. And it's a healthy thing that they don't -- I think it's just part of their psyche, in general.

I also think the Gen-X women watched the baby-boom women try to be Superwoman -- which meant great professional, great mom, great churchperson, great wife. They saw that it isn't possible to do all of that; you have to make some choices. I mean, they're so reality-driven -- these Gen Xers. That's partly why they're saying: "If I didn't have to work, I wouldn't" -- 'cause you simply can't DO it all.

GREGORSKY: One more question involving Xers and millennials, and this will get us back to the workplace in a big way. Looking out at least a half-decade, page 147 of Generations At Work counsels your business readership: "Be sensitive to the potential for conflict when Xers and [millennials] work side by side. The gap between those two generations may end up making the one between the boomers and Xers look tame."

Over a hundred pages later -- in fact, as the very dramatic closing passage for the whole book -- you, Ron and Bob write: "All in all, mixing Xer managers and supervisors with a [Millennial] work-force looks like a recipe for a future disaster." That scenario posits a clash between the new kids when they begin flowing out of college -- the "we're one big aggressive group" and "we WANT adult leadership" -- and the Xers, who according to your '99 book will "be the first corporate cohort to be accused of 'absentee management.'" And you predicted: "Business books about managing in absentia will top the charts as Xers assume the ranks of corporate power."

Granted, it is still way too early to tackle that probability with even a good case study, never mind hard data, but -- are you standing by that speculative forecast?

RAINES: Definitely standing by it. Like you said, the jury's still out. We just don't have enough millennials in the workplace yet, and in full-time jobs, to really know how all this will play out.

But my sense is that, once we get a bigger mix of all that, we're gonna see a rebirth of interest in all this generational stuff. We'll have a lot of Gen-X managers who will want to be "virtual managers" -- and be a little bit turned off by what'll look to them like Pollyanna-ish optimism and idealism from a rather indulged generation.

Millennials will hit the workforce pretty excited about what they can do. They'll come in with all these fresh ideas. Some Gen-Xers will just feel like pounding that down --

GREGORSKY: [chuckling]

RAINES: -- into the ground. It could be quite interesting.

GREGORSKY: One question from Rob Crowther, the Seattle friend who designed [this website] back in '98. I'll just read it the way he sent it to me:

"In the current economic climate, how best can companies attract and retain Gen-X employees who are used to benefits/perks they received when companies could afford them? For instance, I know several Xers who are literally taking six to eight months off and just 'bumming' around because the companies they've interviewed with were unable financially to give them attractive enough job offers. The offers were there, but the Xers didn't like them. Many Xers aren't feeling desperate enough to take just anything. Are there any other benefits, besides financially based ones, that companies can point to that would attract Xers?"

RAINES: You know, there really are all SORTS of them. Some are in the yellow book (Beyond Generation X). Start with flexibility of schedule: Maybe we can't pay you the salary, but maybe you'll work just four days a week. Or maybe you can choose a day each week to take off. Or maybe you'll work from home three days a week. So time and flexibility are huge for them.

Also, the way we set up the work environment. Are we gonna have a work environment that is more informal, more casual, isn't so hierarchical, isn't so bureaucratic, is set up FOR the employees, so there's some conveniences there for them?

GREGORSKY: Wouldn't most boomer managers say, half incredulously, "That's what we've been doing for the past 10 years!"

RAINES: Mmmmmmm --

GREGORSKY: [laughter]

RAINES: They've been hearing about it -- but they haven't really done it. Most of them -- they haven't really done those things. And it's partly because there was enough money that the whole organization was able to do some of the things that Rob's saying "now we can't do those things any more."

I think one of the responses to tightened financial times can also be: "You're gonna have a manager who takes the trouble to find out what your career interests are, and try to help you get there -- with our organization, or with anyone. You'll have a mentoring program, and you're gonna get developed, and coached." Managers have all sort of [non-monetary] things they can do.

GREGORSKY: Can they use those words with Xers? Career, mentoring, coaching?

RAINES: Mmmmm, maybe not "career" -- "job" is probably better. You know, "what are your job plans? Where would you like to be [in terms of skills and know-how]?" I probably tend to word them in boomer kinds of ways, but: "Where do you want to be? What do you want to do? What kind of life would you like to have, what kind of job do you want to have? How can we help you to get there? Are there some things you'd like to learn that we can get you signed up for, or that I might be able to teach you, because I've been around for awhile..."

And here's a good one: "What would you like your RESUME to look like in three years, and how can we help you to get it to look that way?"

These communication differences between Xers and boomers make an important difference at work. We really focus on them in my newest book, The Xers & The Boomers: From Adversaries to Allies. I wrote it with my best friend, Jim Hunt, and it focuses on the differences between the two most powerful cohorts in the workplace today. [More info on this and the three other Raines books via www.generationsatwork.com]