HR mythology: Gen X and Y - repeated assertions make it so

If you want to believe in something as trivial as the difference in managing "gen Xers" and "gen "Yers", go right ahead, but don't foist it on everyone else just because you can. Yes, every person is born into a very slightly different world with a marginally different set of circumstances, and yes you can make broad generalisations about people based on what technologies have been popularised in their childhoods or the mean wealth their families may have accrued. You may even believe in the "soccer mum" theory that has supposedly led to a generation of high-expectation children. But as I keep pointing out, relentlessly, the demographics of many, many countries was massively distorted in a very real way by 2 successive 'world wars'. Now war robs us of young men in particular and creates (hopefully) temporary deprivation and profound uncertainty. These world wars (and the Great Depression for that matter) were not trivial, they reshaped nations and cruelly influenced succeeding generations in many profound ways. The so-called Baby Boomers were identified as the generational change that came after those events, and was measured as a surge in babies born immediately after WWII. I have no argument about that obvious, real and characteristic demographic bump, and I further accept that analysis has revealed correlations with many societal changes in attitudes and behaviours that can reasonably be attributed to that post-war "generation" and its circumstances.

But the increasing trivialisation of "generations" based on increasingly weak correlations (or pure assertion) is stretching belief too far. To imagine that the computer, the mobile phone and the "soccer mum" is a driver of social conditioning comparable to a world war is frankly, quite silly.

OK, everything has an influence and we are a product of our environment as well as our genetics and social circumstances. Yes, the technologies that we use in our daily lives influence how we live, interact and behave. But to assert that we should manage people "differently" because they are labelled "Gen X" or "Gen Y" is making some gross - and to my mind pretty shallow - assumptions about them as individuals. In fact we should manage people as individuals and drop our preconceptions before opening our mouths.