A week ago, I wrote a blog post where I said that the "millennials," or the members of the "Head Down Generation," spend so much time in their digital worlds that they don't live enough in the real world.
Needless to say, that post came under fire in the Steiner Sports offices, where we employ quite a few of these people.
So it's only fair that I let one of them respond.
The following is by Jessica Podell, 25 years young:
For the generation that allegedly has no voice, I'm speaking up.
Maybe you are right, Brandon, and we, the millennials, rely a little too heavily on our emails and text messages.
And while I don't disagree that building relationships is an important facet of business (and life), we must also acknowledge that as technology evolves, so must our methods of communication. We must leverage the technology we have at our disposal in order to utilize our time more effectively.
How else to do this without diving into it? How can you master something without knowing it inside and out?
To take it one step further - leaving messages on voicemail drives me insane. Send me a text to call you back. Listening to a 3-minute message where I'm asked questions that I can't respond to and necessitate calling you back anyway is annoying.
It's incredible to think how much time I waste playing phone tag with my parents and other members of Generation Boomer to ask a simple question that an email or text would easily clear up.
We may be guilty of keeping our heads down, but I would argue that generations before us have been guilty of being too slow to adapt and embrace new technology that has transformed life and business for the better.
You see what happens when we get a new email system or copier in the office. "Certain people" are loathe to learn about the new machines. They ask us to help them out!
Well, how do you think we know how to use them?
But that's not how it is, really. It just seems like we never look up because it's all relative.
