Interview with Don Tapscott author of Grownup Digital: How The Net Generation is Changing Your World

 

"If you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future."

 

Don Tapscott, author of Grownup Digital: How The Net Generation Is Changing Your World, generously agreed to sit down with us to chat about his latest endeavor.  In this interview he expounds on the invaluable insights, stats and information raeders will find in his book that will help to substantively engage, educate and sell to this powerful new generation.  

 

We hope this will encourage you to know more about this unique audience and how to reach them.  And please be sure to read Don Tapscott's other publications for even more insight into the world of direct marketing.

  

The Net Generation

DMEF:  One of the things I have noticed in this recent book - Grown Up Digital - (it's a recurring theme in your books and speaking engagements) - is your extraordinary respect, interest and faith in the generation you call the Net Generation (ages 11-30).  As we are an organization committed to supporting today's youth, with readers from the corporate and academic world who serve, market to, and engage with these young adults, is there a message you'd like to specifically stress to us that gets to the heart of your message about this group? 

Tapscott: This generation has tremendous potential for improving the world, and all of us should work together to help them with this.  Today’s youth are flooding into the workplace, marketplace, and every niche of society. They are bringing with them their demographic muscle, media smarts, purchasing power, new models of collaborating and parenting, entrepreneurship, and political power. They have strong values and care deeply about our planet. In many countries, volunteering by young people is at an all-time high. In some countries we can see this civic involvement morphing into political involvement; witness the critical role the Net Generation played in the election of President Barack Obama.

There has never been greater need for the skills and values of today’s youth. We’re facing unprecedented economic turmoil, and institutions in areas such as business, government and education are experiencing deep transformations. What the world really needs now is a generation of fresh, energized, savvy champions for change, and that’s exactly what today’s youth are.

Educating the Net Generation

DMEF:  I was particularly interested in reading Chapter 5 of your book, "Rethinking Education:  the Net Generation as Learners."  You noted that the first recommendation the Gates Foundation's 2006 report (related to education) was to improve teaching and the curriculum to make it more relevant and engaging for young people.  As a nonprofit organization devoted to educating college and university students to prepare them for a career in the direct/interactive marketing field, we work closely with academics - including those engaged in teaching students and conducting research to impact the future of this field.  Do you have a special message for educators - and for us as a foundation serving these groups - which builds on the information provided in your book, so we deliver more effectively in our respective areas? 

Tapscott: Until now education has tended to focus on the teacher not the student. This is especially true in post-secondary education where the specific interests and background of the teacher strongly influences the content. Most of the activity in the classroom involves the teacher speaking and the student listening.

The lecture, textbook, homework assignment, and school are all analogies for the broadcast media - one-way, centralized, and with an emphasis on pre-defined structure that will work best for the mass audience. Curricula are designed by experts who presumably know the best sequencing of material and how children can best learn math, acquire a new language, or understand Mesopotamia. When you have a class with 38 students and no technological tools for a different approach, broadcast not only makes sense, it is the only option. Programs are not customized to each student but rather designed to meet the needs of a grade - one size fits all, like a broadcast.

The new media, particularly the Internet, enables centering of the learning experience on the individual rather than on the transmitter. It is important to realize that shifting from teacher-centered to learner-centered education does not suggest the teacher is suddenly playing a less important role. A teacher is equally critical and valued in the learner centered context, and is essential for creating and structuring the learning experience. Much of this depends on the subject; no one would suggest, for example, that the best way to learn the piano is the discovery mode.

Learner-centered education begins with an evaluation of the abilities, learning style, social context and other important factors of the student that affect learning. The digital media enable students to be treated as individuals - to have highly customized learning experiences based on their background, individual talents, age level, cognitive style, interpersonal preferences, and so on. They would extensively use software programs, which can structure and tailor the learning experience for the child. It would be more active, with students discussing, debating, researching, and collaborating on projects.

Selling to the Net Generation

DMEF:  In Chapter 7 of your book, titled "The Net Generation as Consumers," you say that many of marketing's fundamental tenets must change.  You go on to say that business schools still teach the Four P's of marketing - product, price, place and promotion and then proceed to explain how this generation is changing this game.  Clearly, this change in education will impact on a students' ability to enter the marketplace, and thus, the obvious result is that it will significantly impact a company's productivity and ability to deliver.  Since writing the book, have you learned additional information that you would like to share with our readers? 

Tapscott:  When trying to sell products and services to N-Geners, most marketers continue to think in the old paradigm of marketing, believing that they control the message and their brand. They think they should focus on customers rather than on what they should really be doing: engaging and co-innovating with them. They are still trying to sell products rather than customer experiences.

Young people today have what I call n-fluence networks. These are their classmates, friends and co-workers that are on sites such as Facebook. When I was a teenager I could influence a half-dozen or so of my friends. Today, an individual young person can influence hundreds of Facebook contacts. Companies have to understand these growing networks of influence and become part of the digital dialogue, inserting themselves in the discussion in a way that is respectful to the participants and useful to both the consumers and the company.

The War for Talent

      
DMEF:   Clearly, the majority of companies in the marketplace are not able to stay ahead of this generation, as it applies to technology, social networks, etc.  What are some suggestions you'd like to make in order for companies to garner the potential and knowledge base of these young people, whether companies are marketing to them, employing them, or being in relationship with them?  

Tapscott:  Net Geners are savvy, confident, upbeat, open-minded, creative and independent, but they can be challenging to manage. To meet their demand for more learning opportunities, frequent feedback, greater work/life balance and stronger workplace relationships, organizations must alter their culture and management approaches, while continuing to respect the needs of older employees.

Compared to their parents at the same age, N-Geners have a much stronger sense of employee entitlement. A large number of N-Geners feel the job should be customized to fit their needs rather than the other way around. More than half, for example, say they want to work in places other than in an office. The perfect world for many N-Geners: Replace job descriptions with work goals and give them the tools, latitude and guidance to get the job done.

N-Geners use the Internet at work not only to do their job, but also to re-charge or eliminate boredom. Most visit social networking sites, catch up on news headlines, Google, IM with friends or watch videos on YouTube several times a day. Many perceive taking a "virtual coffee break" for 10 minutes allows them to return to their work even more focused; they don't view such activity as abusing the system.

Far too many companies make no effort to learn from their young employees. Too often the young people go to work and hit a wall of corporate procedure and a deeply entrenched hierarchy that rewards those who command large numbers of followers. The widespread banning of Facebook at work is a classic example of misguided supervision. The Net Gen wants to take a digital break; the boomer employers shut them down. Get ready for the generational clash at work as a generational firewall builds up frustration.


DMEF:  Two years ago the DMEF introduced a rotating residency pilot program called the Leadership Development Program, which employs recent graduates for a 12-month period, rotating among 2-3 employers in a specific city in the US.  The program is designed to give a 360-degree view of the vast opportunities in the direct/interactive marketing field, and to attract a greater number of highly talented and motivated students to this field.  The program is delivering beyond our expectations.  A critical part of our screening process to identify and hire the best and brightest students for this program is evaluating the candidates' extracurricular activities, whether it's intern experience or leadership positions in sports or other extra curricular activities.  We are finding that a particular knowledge base of direct/interactive marketing is not nearly as critical as a candidates' fundamental love of learning, which includes an innate degree of curiosity and a fearless approach to try new things.  This, combined with a proven record of discipline and performance, achieved through excellent grade point averages are qualities that help us identify the true stars coming out of school - and filling these premier positions.  Do you have any suggestions for HR departments and corporate executives responsible for hiring and employing these young adults? 

Tapscott:  In today’s working world, being able to collaborate is hugely important - and I don’t mean the kind of collaboration that equals endless meetings. Work has become more cognitively complex, more team-based and collaborative, more dependent on social skills, and more time pressured. Work is more reliant on technological competence, more mobile, and less dependent on geography. Thus, growing numbers of firms are decentralizing their decision-making and embracing new technologies that link employees in teams around the world.

The new web - which allows you to not only hunt for information, but contribute - offers the technology to help us harness human skill, ingenuity, and intelligence more efficiently and effectively than anything we have witnessed previously. By mobilizing the collective knowledge, capability, and resources embodied within broad networks of participants, smart firms can accomplish great things. People throughout a firm, locked into traditional organizational structures, can be freed to share knowledge and ingenuity. Further, companies can reach outside their boundaries to tap into vast pools of labor available in the global economy. Whether designing an airplane, assembling a motorcycle, or analyzing the human genome, the ability to integrate the talents of dispersed individuals and organizations is becoming the defining competency for managers and firms.

Even with the current economic turndown, we’re on the brink of a major War for Talent, as many companies that rely on knowledge workers already know. The tables have turned. Twenty years ago, when college grads poured into the workforce, companies had their pick of the best and the brightest. Employers had the power to choose; employees were grateful to get a job and did what they could to keep it, and the last thing on their mind would be to suggest radical new ways of working and managing a company. But, in the next 10 years, as middle-aged and older employees retire, there won’t be enough Net Geners to fill up the management spots recently vacated.

To win the war for talent, companies will have to completely rethink the way they handle employees, from the first contact to after they leave the company. I call it Talent 2.0. The old model of employee development: recruit, train, supervise, and retain. The more appropriate employer-employee relationship for this generation is described as initiate, engage, collaborate and evolve. Here are some examples of what I mean:

Re-think authority. Be a good leader (e.g., coach, mentor, facilitator, enabler), but understand that in some areas, you will be the student and the Net Gen employee will be the teacher. Net Geners need plenty of feedback, but recognition must be authentic. False praise doesn’t work.

Rethink recruitment; initiate relationships. Don’t waste money on advertising for talent. Use social networks based on trust to influence young people about your company.

Rethink training; engage for lifelong learning. Rather than traditional training programs that are separate from work, look to strengthen the learning component of all jobs. To achieve this, encourage employees to blog.

Don’t ban Facebook or other social networks. Figure out how to harness them. New tools like wikis, blogs, social networks, jams, telepresence, tags, collaborative filtering, RSS feeds can be the heart of the new high-performance workplace. Rethink management processes and design jobs and work for collaboration. Give the Net Geners a chance to put collaborative tools to good use.
       

Characteristics of the Net Generation

DMEF:  We are seeing the impact of this generation, and how they use interactive / digital outlets to communicate, innovate and impact our world.  Recent activities, whether it's our last election (which, by the way, we feature a Harvard case study of Blue State Digital's work on the Obama campaign in our Direct@Work section of our website, directworks.org) and globally, as witnessed in the anti-Communist revolution taking place in recent days in Moldova through Twitter, demonstrate their influence and their use of the digital space to galvanize their friends locally or nationally to achieve a result.  To this point, you talk about characteristics of this Net Generation:  passion, commitment to integrity, social and personal engagement, to name a few.  This is very different than what we often read and hear in the news.  What would you like to tell our readers about this generation, and how they may be able to view this generation differently so it impacts their business - today and in the future?

Tapscott: I believe that no generation has ever possessed as much potential to contribute to society than today's youth and young adults. Not everyone shares this view. Young people are being condemned in some books and the daily media as "the dumbest generation ever" and "more narcissistic" than any generation in history. I believe these critics to be profoundly misguided.

I believe it is increasingly important for companies to act with integrity - the expectation that they will operate honestly and forthrightly, honor their commitments, and hold themselves accountable when they make mistakes. PR and "spin" are diminishing in importance. These traditional approaches are grounded in the assumptions of a broadcast world: that the media environment can be controlled and that corporate messages can be pushed out to consumers and employees who will believe and internalize them. In a pervasive computing environment, such one-way conversations fail to build credibility, which is essential for success.

 

Don Tapscott Don Tapscott is the author of Grownup Digital as well as 12 other books.  He is Chair of nGenera Insight, an international business strategy think tank, and is also an adjunct professor at the Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto.  You can follow Don on Twitter at dtapscott.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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