Are you a Millennial? Good! Keep reading. If you're a Gen Xer you can keep reading, too, although you've already learned through tough experience everything I'm going to talk about. If you're a Baby Boomer, scram. I don't need any more flack from Baby Boomers for spilling the beans about the way the business world really works. We had our chance to fix the massive structural problems in the business world, to clear out the termites that have nearly eaten through the foundation, but we didn't do it.
Now Millennials represent our only hope.
Here's the secret that nobody tells you about business, my young brothers and sisters: it's fake. It's a movie set, like those one-street Western towns that have facades on the fronts of the building but nothing behind the facade. Everything that seems imposing and impressive about business is made up. It doesn't exist.
Business is just a bunch of people getting out of bed and putting on a suit every day. It isn't any different from regular life, but lots of people will tell you it is. They'll tell you that you have to act Professional in business, use a different language, different rituals and a different tone of voice, but why?
All the fake, formal, gray, boring, linear and analytical stuff in business comes from the fearful brains of people who want to prop up the broken Godzilla edifice. That's the structure of rules, policies, fear, and obsessively left-brain thinking that has already shown itself to be a waste of time and a pox on our planet.
Don’t let a rotten economy spoil your goals. Use the career and money advice in The Millennial Game Plan to get and stay ahead for good.
Working people lie in bed at night stressing about doing or saying the wrong thing and looking Less than Professional in front of other people at work, especially when they're fresh out of school. What a waste of energy, and of sleep!
Who are we trying to impress? There isn't anyone to impress. Anyone who needs you to be anyone other than yourself in order to be impressed by you is someone you have no time for. You don't have to impress those people. They come from a different tribe than you and me and all the other regular humans. They come from the tribe of fearful weenies, and you'll never get anywhere trying to please, appease or impress those guys.
I spent years as a young businessperson trying to wear the right clothes and say the right things. I used to second-guess every word coming out of my mouth. I thought everyone around me was smarter and more well-versed in business than I was. Little did I know, nearly everyone around me was faking it, the same way I was. None of us had the courage to say "Yo! I don't have a clue - how about you?"
You can bring your whole self to work. If anyone doesn't like it, they don't deserve you. That's the secret thing no one tells you about business. All the certifications and special credentials, the offices and titles and administrative support and teams to manage and budgets to oversee, those are all hedges that keep people from acting normal and human at work. Whenever you feel like someone is looking down on you because you don't have a big title or a company car, you know that's a person to avoid and to ignore.
If that person is your boss, keep the job until you can get out of there and find a new job working for a human being.They are out there in the business world, but you have to look for them.
Don't become a pod person and start worrying about knowing the latest social-media buzzword or the latest business fad. Those things pass by in a heartbeat. Don't become a person whose flame is lit because s/he knows something other people don't know. None of that stuff will last, and little of it matters. People who hoard information are fearful weenies, and you don't have time to waste with them, much less to join their ranks.
Don't ever hesitate to say what you think just because you think you'll sound naive or uninformed. The more naive you can be, the better! Your customers aren't immersed in your subject matter the way you and your workmates are. They don't ask every question that occurs to them about your product or service, because they don't want to sound stupid. Somebody has to ask those questions! Why not you?
When I got to U.S. Robotics in 1988, I was 28. Everybody in the place was friendly and helpful, but I could see there was a divide between the people who understood the technology in our products and the people who didn't. I was definitely in the second camp. I'd been working in a manufacturing company, so I understand that side of things, but I didn't know Thing One about technology. I had an advantage, though: I was new. It was my perfect opportunity to ask stupid questions. I asked them loudly and proudly and often. "What do you mean by 'echo cancellation?'" I'd ask, and people would roll their eyes. I didn't care. Let them roll their eyes!
If I didn't ask stupid questions, who would? Here's what happened. Fewer and fewer people rolled their eyes and more and more people jumped in to answer my questions. I learned about block waves and the Nyquist Coefficient. I learned about Ohm's Law and how resistors and capacitors work. How are you going to learn anything, if you don't ask? Pretty soon the techiest people in our company were tutoring me on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the laws of physics. I made great friends and learned a ton.
You can do the same thing. Don't be afraid to speak up, whether you're asking a question or telling some little business emperor his clothes are looking a little threadbare. You'll grow your muscles that way, and other people will benefit, too. Watch out for weenies, and remember: If they don't get you, they don't deserve you.
