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Steering the Ship and Inspiring the Crew C79

of employees from different areas to give open feedback on how
things could be made better. Discussions run the gamut from topics
about cleaning out refrigerators to questions on benefits programs.
The CEO takes copious notes, then posts action items derived from
those meetings onto our company intranet.”

Senior Leaders and the Multigenerational Workforce

The Advanced Management Institute conducted a survey in
2007 that found that 96 percent of managers and senior ex-
ecutives agreed that intergenerational teamwork was very
or extremely important to their firm’s success. Yet 76 per-
cent of respondents also said that generational differences
have created significant challenges, such as poor communi-
cation, reduced quality and productivity, loss of teamwork,
and lower morale. 6
Because the four generations came of age in different
times, they may not value the perspectives of the others,
which we believe is the greatest challenge of leading a mul-
tigenerational workforce. Most senior leaders are either
Traditionalists or Boomers, and many have yet to accom-
modate the expectations of Millennials and Gen Xers. The
reverse is true in many cases as well.
We cannot emphasize enough that the needs of individu-
als transcend generational membership and that the stereo-
types about the generations may not be true for many. One
of the key lessons of this book is that individual employees
must be engaged and re-engaged one person at a time. Still,
generational and life-stage differences are real and need to