From Publishers Weekly
Alsop, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, explores the emergence of the 80 million strong millennial generation into the workplace and the resulting ramifications in this insightful and in-depth look at Generation Y. Born between 1980 and 2001, millennials are a new breed of student, worker and global citizen, with distinctly different—often paradoxical—values and motivations. Millennials have a high sense of entitlement but are also philanthropic…
Buy The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation is Shaking Up the Workplace at Amazon
Born between 1980 and 2001, “millennials” challenge us as they move into their roles of student, worker and citizen. For anyone that has experienced these trophy children, they realize that we (management) need help and guidance. This is a well-crafted book that will help you adapt to the demands of the millennial generation. It is also full of advice on how to retain this generation. As pointed out in this important work, attracting is one problem. Retention is quite another.
Spending most of my career in human resources as a manager and now as a human resources corporate director, I have experienced many of the attributes from this generation and found this to be a very helpful book for planning the future. Ron Alsop shares his insight and helps us understand the many facets of this fascinating albeit frustrating group. As I read the book, I wrote down many of the conflicting qualities and characteristics of these millennials.
1. High sense of entitlement
2. Philanthropic
3. Surprisingly Community-minded
4. High premium on career success
5. Job-hoppers
6. Not Loyal to any employer
7. Technologically savvy
8. Committed to self-determination
9. Confident
10. Hard working
11. Achievement oriented
12. Display poor leadership abilities
13. Not good problem solvers
14. Demand freedom and flexibility
15. Expect explicit rules
How can we ever hope to blend this eclectic mix of attributes? Well, this book provides a rich portrait of these young people (and their parents) and more importantly, offers sage advice on how to deal with them.
I hope you found this review helpful. Michael L. Gooch, Author of Wingtips with Spurs:Cowboy Wisdom for Today’s Business Leaders.
Ron Alsop casts a thorough, balanced spotlight on this generation’s strengths, preferences, and challenges, sharing essential understanding for all who teach, hire, work and play with this remarkable generation. He also prompts us to recognize how they developed and explore their interests and world view. As an MBA professor, I found this to be an essential guide that has helped me best motivate many. It also prompted me to think about and continue to explore my own generation’s strengths and challenges, as well as the confluence and interaction of the several generations in the workplace and our overall society. I recommend this to every educator, employer and manager. It is studded with essential insight shared with refreshing storytelling and clarity.
Fred Talbott
Vanderbilt University
Journalist Ron Alsop (The Wall Street Journal) has taken a group of columns and expanded them into a book titled, The Trophy Kids Grow Up. Alsop’s kids are the millennials, those born between 1980 and 2001, who have grown up with prosperity and have had lavish attention and praise wash over them throughout their lives. Now that they are arriving in the workplace, Alsop proposes ways that companies need to change to accommodate this generation of workers. I’m not as sure as Alsop is that this generation is shaking up the workplace. It may be that this group, to whatever extent they represent a real group, may be unrealistic in their expectations of the workplace, and are making their concerns heard. Some companies are listening and making changes; other companies are likely to tell them to grow up. Alsop provides lots of examples of what changes some companies are making. Each chapter ends with “chapter highlights” to recap his key points. I found this book to be tedious to read and sometimes repetitive. I was aghast to read about helicopter parents wanting (and sometimes getting) to sit in on performance assessment meetings with their children who are adults. My forecast is that this cohort called millennials may be starting out with expectations that some companies will be willing to meet. As the bulk of millennials come to the workforce, their expectations may become more realistic and more consistent with current corporate practices. If you read this book and decide to copy what some companies are doing, I encourage you to think twice, and make only those changes that you conclude are absolutely necessary to avoid alienating the talented millennials you want to become part of your organization.
Rating: Two-star (Mildly Recommended)