By Morley Winograd and
Michael D. Hais
Senator Barack Obama’s
success in the 2008
presidential campaign
marks more than an
historical turning point
in American politics. It
also signals the
beginning of a new era
for American society,
one dominated by the
attitudes and behaviors
of the largest
generation in American
history.
Millennials, born
between 1982 and 2003,
now comprise almost
one-third of the U.S.
population and without
their overwhelming
support for his
candidacy, Barack Obama
would not have been able
to win his party’s
nomination, let alone
been elected President
of the United States.
This new, “civic”
generation is
dramatically different
than the boomers who
have dominated our
society since the 1960s
and understanding this
shift is critical to
comprehending the
changes that America
will experience over the
next forty years.
The arrival of social
network technologies
enabled Millennials to
create the most intense,
group-oriented
decision-making process
of any generation in
American history. This
generation’s preference
for consensus for
everything from minor
decisions, like where to
hang out, and major
decisions, such as
whether go to war, stems
from a belief that every
one impacted by a
decision needs, at very
least, to be consulted
about it. This approach
will dominate how
leaders of America’s
primary institutions –
from corporations and
churches to government
at all levels – will be
measured in the years
ahead.
Contrast that approach
to those of the
candidates who struggled
in 2008. In her losing
run for the Democratic
presidential nomination,
Senator Hillary Clinton
presented case for a
highly assertive,
controversial – if
sometimes a bit too
strenuous – Boomer style
of leadership. She
emphasized the value of
her years of experience
and wisdom. Senator John
McCain tried that
approach as well during
the summer lull, but
found it didn’t have
sufficient power to
overtake Obama in the
national polls. He then
rolled the dice and
asked a Generation-X
Governor, Sarah Palin,
to help him win voters
by emphasizing their
mutual belief in the
superiority of
traditional social
values and small
government. The
Republican ticket has
had about as much
success with this
strategy as Governors
Huckabee and Romney did
Millennial voters during
the primaries.
To successfully manage
the transition to a
Millennial era,
institutions will need
to find leaders of any
age far-sighted enough
to fully embrace
Millennial attitudes and
behaviors. They have to
give them full reign to
makeover the outdated
structures they will
inherit.
Millennials, in
particular, are ready to
take on the challenge.
Millennials were taught
that if you follow the
rules and work hard, you
will succeed. As the
first generation to
experience “always on,”
high-speed access to the
Internet at a young age,
Millennials have
confounded the vision of
many Gen X futurists who
envisioned the Net as a
tool to enhance
individual freedom and
liberty, not as a new
resource for community
building. Sharing their
ideas and thoughts
constantly from short
Twitter texts, or
“Tweets,” to extended,
if often amateurish,
videos on YouTube,
Millennials generate and
absorb an overwhelming
amount of information.
Individual Millennials
use this ability to
influence their own
decisions, and then
those of the wider
group. If institutions
and their leaders want
their decisions to have
any credibility with
this new generation,
every institution will
need to open its own
governance procedures to
ensure a level of
transparency and
fairness that meets the
test of Millennial
values.
There have been other
times in American
history when a “civic”
generation like the
Millennials has emerged
to transform the nation.
In the eighteenth
century a “civic”
generation, called the
“Republican Generation”
by the seminal
generational theorists
William Strauss and Neil
Howe, created the
constitutional republic
whose democratic values
we celebrate to this
day. About eighty years
later, an equally
“civic” impulse
propelled to the war to
abolish slavery and
extend liberty and
freedom to all citizens.
And when the last
“civic” generation was
called upon by its
elders to conquer
fascism and remake
America’s economy in the
twentieth century, the
GI Generation responded
with such fervor and
ability that they were
labeled the “Greatest
Generation” by a
grateful nation.
Now, another eighty
years later, it is the
Millennial Generation’s
turn. Its “civic”
revolution draws its
unique character from
the particular way
Millennials were brought
up, and their use of
interactive
communication
technologies. We believe
the Millennial
Generation's revolution
will be just as profound
as that of previous
“civic” generations.
Barack Obama’s victory
does indeed mark the end
of the late 20th century
“idealist” era of
Richard Nixon and Ronald
Reagan. But its
significance is much
deeper, and likely to
shape the nature of the
new era the country is
about to enter.
