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There is a looming cultural clash within the innovation space that will be creating some interesting shifts. Namely, the “kids” today represent the first natively Global generation in the history of man. The rest of us have embraced globality as though it were a foreign language–we speak it, but not natively.

This global generation is less interested in furthering the efforts of our parents and are more interested in doing new things altogether. For example, they are not thinking about building a better/faster/safer commuting experience, they’re questioning the very concept of going to a work location (they prefer to work where ever they already are).

We saw a hint of this looming clash with the dot-com gold rush (for the brief while it lasted before collapsing under its own weight–I am actually at ground-zero: the I267 corridor in northern Virginia, a veteran of the telecom carnival). Where we’re starting to see this renewed clash is in the public sector–government organizations.

Most government agency and department leadership structures are staffed with pre-global/instant/borderless times, well mired in Drucker’s little management book. These Gen-Globals don’t even know who Drucker is, what he espoused, and could care even less only if they tried. What these old timers refer to as “technology” these newcomers refer to as vanilla infrastructure (what? no iPod?? What’s a “P… C…?’). This has lead to a current problem: Government wants the best talent, but its leadership doesn’t speak that talent’s native language (or at least speak it natively).

What happens as the Gen-Globals start moving up through the ranks into middle, then upper level management, just below the CxO’s? Will conventional (old school) management philosophies and approaches be effective managing this new, vital labor pool?

I would think that with all the books and certifications on how to do things (PMP, ITIL, ISO 27k, L6S etc.), that some organization somewhere would be looking to build methodologies and metrics more appropriate for this new labor pool if they want to stay competitive. That means putting the whole management thinking back on the drawing board (if not starting from scratch).

As this is something I track and study, I wonder what you’re seeing, or hearing along these lines, and do you know of anyone trying to standardize or address this upcoming challenge in some kind of certifiable way? Such a body of work would have impacts on virtually all of the existing certification programs out there…

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