Dan Negroni argues that 2.4 billion millennials demand meaningful goals and genuine human connection from leaders, not hierarchical power. Parents increasingly influence their adult children's job choices, and workplaces must adapt. He urges teaching independence while offering support and accountability.
2.4 billion millennials in the world. 60% of the world's population is under the age of 30. The world is a-changing. We really need to have conversations to discuss what's going on and the impact that we want to have, not only in the workplace where we specialize and focus on, but in our families, right? To figure out who we want to be, what we want to do, what our family story is, and what message and impact we want to have on the world. So your success on family impact depends on how well you can communicate with the next generation. There's a lot of really, really talented, high-performing millennials out there. What are you doing to engage them, talk to them, keep them, including in your families? People today, they want meaningful goals. And this, Blair, I'm gonna attribute it to you on page 173, is a lesson I learned from you, which is we need to move from archaic SMART lists to what are meaningful things we're gonna do. And they care about it. They wanna be transparent, measured, aligned, celebrated, and innovated. It just requires one shift. How do I retain my power? To connect with other human beings, right? That's all it takes. It's a simple shift. So I hope from today you get the encouragement to start the conversations and start connecting. It's so interesting how involved we are in not having our kids fail. When I do a big presentation and I'm talking to HR professionals, I'll ask them for a show of hands about how many of them have been contacted by a parent, by a parent about their child's employment? What do you think the percentage is? 30, 40% of them have been contacted— no, no, been contacted by a parent, whether it's a friend or whether it's someone else. It's egregious. The question is, who do you want to be and what do you want your child to be able to do? Our job is to teach them how to fish. And that's all I can tell you is that in the dead of the night, you're going to be judged, right, by what child you produced and what your child gives back to others. Being a parent is simple, but it's not easy. I think the world is a very different place now, and I think people get too often distracted and they have a very hard time saying no. Especially with family members, and I think we need a little bit more tough love.
