Whether you attended SHARE in Anaheim last week or not, most of us in enterprise IT can relate to Jason Dorsey’s keynote “Crossing the Generational Divide: Leveraging the Power of Generations™ for Your Strategic Advantage.” Jason is from the Center for Generational Kinetics and kicked off the five day event by sharing strategies and humorous anecdotes on balancing a workforce made up of four generations working side by side. An impromptu poll found that about half of the audience was Baby Boomers, which Jason defines as people born between 1946 and 1964. Gen X – people born between 1965 and 1976 and Gen Y – people born between 1977 and 1995 also had a strong presence. There were also about a dozen Traditionalists – the generation born before 1946 in the audience.
The poll demonstrated the changing face of mainframe computing and highlighted the reality that IT professionals tackle cross-generational challenges at work every day. As the field moves from Traditionalists to Baby Boomers to GenXers to GenYers, Dorsey said the pains of generational transition make sense, as each group can hold different mindsets based on regional traditions and the influence of parenting styles applied to them.
Read the full blog post in the SHARE President’s Corner blog to find out more about what each generation values in the workplace as well as tips on how to welcome GenY workers to the industry and strategies for better communication across generations