Girl Meets Business

There is a great new blog out there called Girl Meets Business. The sites blogger, Angela, is writing for Gen Yers who are new to the workplace. Her advice is spot on and also helpful for all age groups. She has recently written a great post about accepting critism (don't we all love to do that). From Angela:

Hearing criticism, even constructive and polite criticism, can be painful. I mean, really, who wants to hear about the things they do wrong?I’ve got news for you - You do! The fact is most people, when hearing a criticism about their work or their actions or whatever, will immediately go one of the following routes:
Denial. “What you mean that report was wordy? It wasn’t wordy. You’re wrong. It was great.”
Dismissal. “The fact that you just told me my report was wordy isn’t even worth considering.”
Defensiveness. “The reason the report was too wordy was because you didn’t give me enough time to edit it. If you’d given me enough time, I could have pared it down. My other reports haven’t been too wordy.”
Disregard. “Did you say something to me?”

Here’s the deal: The report was wordy. Your clothes do fit you poorly. You do need to improve your organizational skills. You are too confrontational when you speak to your boss. Read the rest here.

Don't forget to enter the philanthropy memoirs contest here.

Ready to Lead

There is a great new study from the Myers Foundation about the next generation of leadership for nonprofit organizations. From the report:

A skilled, committed, and diverse pool of next generation leaders would like to be nonprofit executive directors in the future, according to a new national survey of nearly 6,000 next generation leaders. However, the survey also finds that there are significant barriers: work-life balance, insufficient life-long earning potential, lack of mentorship and overwhelming fundraising responsibilities which may prevent many younger nonprofit staff from becoming executives. The survey, Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out, is the largest national survey to date of emerging nonprofit leaders and was produced by the Meyer Foundation in partnership with CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Idealist.org.

An interesting fact from the report is that less that one-third of nonprofit executive director hires happen from within an organization, compared to 65% in the for-profit sector. Without a clear path to move up in nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, will the sector lose its most promising new talent?

20 Hour Work Week, the Future of Foundation Work?

I know that you are reading the title of this post and laughing. When you think of the pile of grant reviews that are threatening to break your desk in half and the long list of phone calls that you need to return to grantees and potential grantees, the idea of a 40 hour work week seems laughable. The website Web Worker Daily has a post about how a shorter work week may be what is needed as baby boomers begin to retire and Gen X staff members rethink the idea of work-life balance. What if we could use technology to improve the efficiency of our work? Could we use shared positions or completely change the idea of our work to make it possible for a person to hold a job that they love, while still having a life outside of work? Do you think this day will ever come or is work-life balance something you can only fantasize about while you are answering your Blackberry during your daughter's dance recital? What do you do to keep your work life from taking over your entire life?

Tips for managers of younger workers

Rainmaker Thinking has a short mind map about things every manager needs to know about retaining younger workers. The reality of the workplace has changed and you no longer have employees that will stay with your organization for life but they will work their butts off for you while they are there. This generation is looking to solve previously unsolvable challenges in the workforce and will use new technologies and the experiences of their networks to do so. Learning how to harness the talents of this generation will be the new challenge for managers.

The new generational lanscape at work

Rainmaker Thinking has come up with the most understandable mind map of the current realities of the multi-generational workplace that I have seen. Check it out and let me know if you think it accurately portrays the current reality of your workplace.

The Great Generational Divide or the Cross-Generational Solution to Work Satisfaction?

I have been in what some people would call a “generational rock and a hard place” for the last few months. I am a young person in the foundation field and one of my passions is helping young people learn how to advance in the philanthropic sector but one of my professional duties at the foundation is managing a project on older adult civic engagement. A big piece of this project is figuring out how to keep baby boomers in my community engaged as they begin to retire or change careers. Talk about competing priorities. On one hand I know how important it is to keep baby boomers engaged, on the other hand I am hearing from young people on a daily basis that they can’t advance because baby boomers won’t leave the philanthropic sector and make room for young people to advance. I have finally realized that this isn’t an “either, or” proposition. Baby boomers at foundations and in the nonprofit sector as a whole have great expertise that they contribute to the field but they have created positions for themselves where they work 80 hours a week and refuse to take vacation (or sick days for that matter), with the idea that “this whole place would fall apart without me”. Young people want more responsibility but would also like to have a life outside of their job. There are lots of explanations for why this is but one of the most probable that I have heard is that Gen X was raised as latchkey kids and saw the family sacrifices that their parents had to make to slowly climb the career ladder. They also saw their parents lose their pensions in mass layoff and Enron scandals, so they know that the old paradigm of work hard for the same company for 40 years and retire is no longer realistic.

What if a new way of working was created that still kept baby boomers engaged but allowed them to reduce the number of hours that they work so that they could keep health benefits and stay involved in a career that they love? What if this same new way of work allowed Gen X the flexibility to spend time with their families or take on a second job (to pay down the massive student loan debt that so many have)? If we started thinking of the program officer position (of any other foundation or nonprofit staff member for that matter) as a collection of tasks that can be completed by one or many people depending on the time available for each worker. How much more effective would a foundation be if instead of one program officer, they now had three sharing that same 80 hour a week position? The foundation would now have 3 times as many connections in the community, 3 diverse perspectives on how to solve social problems, and 3 great ambassadors for the foundation’s work.

What refinements (or significant changes) do you think are needed to create a foundation workplace that is supportive for multiple generations?