Grown Up Digital

Don Tapscott: Well, I started studying young people about 15 years ago when I noticed how my own children were effortlessly able to use all this sophisticated technology, and at first I thought they were prodigies, but then I noticed that all their friends were like them, so that was a bad theory. So I started working with about 300 kids and it was a dozen years ago I wrote the book, Growing Up Digital, and I came to the conclusion that this generation has a defining characteristic. They're not appropriately called the Millennials as some people call them, because the fact that the year 2000 came and went, didn't really affect the experience of youth, and to call them Gen Y didn't seem right to me either, because to name them a follow on to the demographically puny Generation X didn't seem right. This has been Net Generation. This is the first generation to be bathed in depth in computers, internet, interactive technologies at the heart of growing up; this is the first generation to come of age in the digital age and that's really what defines them.

Rachel Salaman: And is it your term, the Net Generation?

Don Tapscott: Yes, that's correct, I chose that term about, I don't know, it was almost 15 years ago now.

Rachel Salaman: What form did your research take?

Don Tapscott: Well, we first of all interviewed or surveyed about 11,000 young people in ten countries. We did a lot of case studies, we talked to every leading thinker from sociologists to brain scientists, and we had a team of about 20 people working on this over a two year period. It was the biggest investigation of this generation and for that matter, of any generation.

Rachel Salaman: And how different in background were your 11,000 interviewees?

Don Tapscott: Well, they were very different. They had two unifying factors, they were all in the group, in the age group, which is between the ages of 11 and 30, this is the children of the Baby Boom in the United States, for example, and they also were all young people who had been using information technology and the internet, so having said, there are differences between geographies, gender, even within the group there are differences – there are class differences as well. But the most surprising finding is that they have enormous similarities across all of these different geographies and strata, in that they have a common set of norms that really define them as a generation, and that make them different from their Baby Boomer parents.

Rachel Salaman: So briefly, what were those norms, what were your main findings?

Don Tapscott: Well, time online is not taking away from hanging out with your friends, learning the piano, talking to your parents or doing your homework. Time online is taken away from television. In the United States, the Baby Boomers watched 24 hours a week of TV when they were growing up, and these kids watch a lot less TV and they watch it differently. They come home and they turn on their computer and they're in three different windows, talking to their friends, reading, organizing, authenticating, they are reading a magazine or something and they have a video game going and, oh, yeah, they're doing their homework as well and television is in the background, it's like passive or ambient media, it's like muzak. And when they're online, they're the active havers of information, so that means that they have different brains. After your DNA, the number one factor shaping your brain, when you're growing up, is how you spend your time. I'm talking about the actual building of the human brain here, and if you spent 24 hours a week being a passive recipient of somebody else's television, you get a certain kind of brain, and if you spend an equivalent amount of time as an active user and haver of information, you get a certain kind of brain as well. So these kids actually process information and think differently. So you may be wondering how can your, you know, 13 year old daughter be getting As when she's doing her homework and five other things at once. She's actually not multi-tasking, she has better switching ability and she has better active working memory than you do.

So across all of these ten countries, there are a set of norms that define the generation, and I explain these in Grown Up Digital, that it's a generation that wants freedom, freedom of choice, freedom of mobility. A generation who likes to customize everything, who are a generation of collaborators. They like to have fun, they think that work, learning, collaborating and having fun is all the same activity, so very different from me. When I was watching the Mickey Mouse Club as a kid, I was only doing one of those things, having fun. A generation with very strong values, it's just not true that they don't give a damn, and volunteering is at an all time high in countries around the world among young people. The generation of innovators, speed is really important to them, and these norms really differentiate them from other generations and from previous generations as well. And if you're designing a work system or a marketing campaign, or a government or a democracy or school or a university, you need to drive the design by these eight norms.

Rachel Salaman: Now all those norms sound quite positive and yet many people have identified potential downsides to people spending so much time online, including that they become self absorbed and develop short attention spans, did you not find any negatives in your research?

Don Tapscott: Well, first of all, let's address the issues that you raised. They become self absorbed: hmmm. "We've created a little army of narcissists," says one writer. Well, the big problem with self absorbed narcissists is that they don't give a damn in the world. They only care about themselves. If that's true, why is youth volunteering at an all time high? And in the United States, civic action has become political action; they've just elected their first President. If they have short attention spans, why are they graduating from university in record numbers, and standards have never been as high in our universities, and in college admission tests, like the SAT. You need to focus to be able to graduate from university. If they have short attention spans, how does that explain a 15 year old boy that sits in front of a screen for three hours collaborating with others around the world playing an adventure video game, with a laser focus? So basically the critique of young people today with regards to the use of the internet is a very cynical critique. "They're the dumbest generation; they are coddled; they mooch off their parents; they steal intellectual property; they don't care about society." The problem with this critique is that it's not based on any data. In fact, I conducted the largest study ever and the data suggests the opposite.

Now, of course, there are negatives. The biggest one, and I talk about this extensively in Grown up Digital, is privacy. We have a whole generation who are irrevocably giving away their informational privacy. And this is going to be a huge problem for them later on in life. There are thousands of young people around the world right now, today, who are not getting that dream job because they failed the "reference check", meaning that their employer went on to Facebook and saw that they were doing something inappropriate.

Rachel Salaman: How viable is it to really generalize about a whole generation, because we all know young people who are very articulate and engaged and we also know others who are monosyllabic and can't look you in the eye, and I'm not just talking about teenagers. Did you really find in your research that you could generalize about a whole generation?

Don Tapscott: Well, you make a good point. Within the generation there are differences, for example, on the issue of being smart and informed. The top third of the generation are spectacular, graduating more than ever before from university. The middle third seem to be very good, especially compared to previous generations and the bottom third are dropping out of school, out of high school. There are real reasons for that. They have to do with problems in the school, class size, an old model of pedagogy that doesn't work, kids coming to school hungry, they've got single parents, their mom's hardly got time to talk to them let alone to nourish their interest in learning. To blame the internet for these, of course, it's like blaming the library for ignorance. The internet's not the problem here, it's the solution, but having said that, there are real generational differences between this generation and others, and they have many common things. That is the ones that have grown up using this technology they have many common things that hold them together. The main one is their brains are different, they process information differently than older people, and that suggested this is not a life stage difference, you know, young people are always different. It's an actual generational difference that will endure as they travel throughout life. And my view is that this is the first time in human history when children are an authority about something really important. I was an authority on model trains when I was a kid. These kids, today the 11 year old at the breakfast table is an authority on the digital revolution that's changing business, commerce, government, you know, human resources, marketing, education, entertainment, every institution in society, which by the way is part of why we have such a cynical and negative view of young people that we fear what we don't understand. The kids know more about the biggest innovation in learning than the teachers, and the kids in the family know more about this powerful tool than their parents, and the new employees in the workforce have at their fingertips more powerful tools than exist in the UK's largest corporations.

So what do we do? Well, we fear that and we do the wrong thing. We do the opposite of what we should be doing actually. In the family, we spy on them, suspicious that they're into porn. But the people say, you know, "Put blocking stuff on computers and put the computer in the living room where you can spy on your kid." "Well, hello, anyone notice that that 14 year old boy has a computer in his pocket?" And he'll also see a dozen computers throughout the day. If you don't like porn, job No.1 is to talk to your kids about porn. In the workforce, we do the opposite. The social network, their tool is becoming the new operating system for business, what do we do, we ban it. Banning Facebook's a popular thing to do in schools. We do the opposite of what we should be doing. The smartest kids don't go to lectures, and rather than understanding that the whole model of pedagogy based on the lectures is wrong and transferring schools, we give them zero for class participation, or we write articles about how dumb university students are today. The problem's not the student it's the faculty and their institutions of learning.

Rachel Salaman: But if you are an employer and you want your young employees to focus on the work that they're employed to do, surely it's okay to ban Facebook. Why should they be looking at Facebook during a work day?

Don Tapscott: Well, first of all, social networks are becoming the foundation of the high performance productive enterprise. You shouldn't be banning these tools you should be adopting them for use by your entire company. And if employers are wasting their time during the day, is that a technology problem which you then eliminate by eliminating some technology, or is it a bigger problem that has to do with management and workflow and job design and motivation and supervision and performance evaluation and so on. I was talking to one CIO of a government department that had – where the Governor, this is in the United States, had banned Facebook. I said, "Why did he do that?" he said, "Young people are wasting their time." I said, "Well, that's a bigger problem, isn't it?" I said, "What was the effect of banning Facebook?" he said, "Everybody went to MySpace." I asked another young person, 27 years old works for a US federal government department, "What was the effect of banning Facebook?" He had a different answer, he said, "It was the single most demoralizing thing management has ever done." It said to an entire generation, "We don't understand your tools, we don't understand collaboration, we don't understand your generation and we don't trust you."

Rachel Salaman: Although it is a little bit like telling employees not to use their mobile phones during the work day, isn't it, it's a mode of communicating and it's fair enough for employers to not pay for people to arrange social events with their friends?

Don Tapscott: No, actually that's wrong. You see, because if you read Grown up Digital, you'll see that the style of working of an entire generation is different. So they'll ramp up to an activity, they'll move into a high intensity period, and then they'll want to cool down for five minutes, maybe checking Facebook, maybe checking some sports score on the web or something like that. And they're able to do that, because they have better switching abilities and they have better active working memory. If you want high performance, then you should insist that young people have access to the web and Facebook and other tools, and that they should go there during the day, occasionally, for social reasons. You know, when the web first came out, I've heard this argument over 35 years, every time a new tool comes in to the office. And when the internet first came out in the mid 1990s, everyone said, "Well, employees will be wasting their time on websites, surfing around." You know what I did, I sent out a memo to my entire staff and I said, "Part of your job description is now to waste your time. Go online and waste your time during the day, because I need you to understand these tools, because these tools are going to transform innovation, performance and effectiveness." Personal use is a precondition for any kind of comprehension, you know, rather than preventing employees from using Facebook, senior managers should be asking their employees to show them how to use Facebook, and then maybe they'll start to have a clue about how social networks can transform organizational performance.

Rachel Salaman: Well, of course it makes sense for certain people within an organization to really know how to use these tools and use them to the best advantage of the organization, but there is such a thing as giving an inch and people taking a mile, isn't there, you've got to admit that this could be abused in some circumstances?

Don Tapscott: Oh, of course, it is being abused now, but my view is that if people are wasting their time, you have a big opportunity to talk about stuff. "Hey, how do we work around here?" "How do we get things done? Let's build proper performance evaluation." And these tools can be a big part of that. There is a software package that we use in my company called Rypple, and that changes the employee evaluation from happening once a year to happening multiple times a day, from batch to real time. So if I give a presentation, I'm about to give one where a number of people from my company are attending, after that presentation is over, I'll go on to Rypple and I'll get feedback. It's anonymous and it's real good feedback, and it will be enormously helpful to me. It's just upon my laptop wherever I am. Somebody say, "Yeah, Don, you made a good point there, but you talked on too long about that point, and you didn't leave enough time for questions," you know, whatever. So these tools are so powerful and if people are misusing them, that's a great opportunity to talk about how we should be using them.

Rachel Salaman: How else has digital emersion changed the way that Net Geners view their careers, how do young people now see their careers when they start out?

Don Tapscott: Well, that's a really interesting question, and the research is very surprising on this. First of all, we ask them, "When you come into the workforce, do you want to work for a whole bunch of different organizations throughout your life or would you like to work for a very small number?" All around the world the vast majority of them say, "A very small number." But by the time they're 27, they're on this third job, so that they come into the workforce all bright-eyed bushytailed, they want to work for you, they want to be loyal, and they end up leaving, because they don't like what they see. And we've created a generational fly on the wall in our companies now, that's what I call it in Grown up Digital, but these kids come in and in their cultures and their culture of work, these eight norms that we talked about of innovation and collaboration and scrutiny and speed and customization and so on, and those norms bump up against the traditional models of the organization. You can't customize a job description in most companies. You can in Deloitte, one of the first companies to be able to do this. Things take forever. My son – my daughter's boyfriend, he's probably to be my son-in-law, was working for a telecommunications company up until a month ago. He loved the company, he loved his job and he quit, because he said, "Things just take too long to happen around here. I only have one life. I can't be waiting half a year for something to happen that everyone knows has to take place." So they end up leaving the organization, so we need to make some big changes to the way that we work, and if we embrace the good parts of this culture, you'll end up with a high performance and workplace. I'll just tell you one other example, you know, when I was a kid, when I graduated from university, everyone wanted to work for a big company, you know, be the organization man, like say IBM or GE or something. In the 80s they all wanted to work for Michael Milken or McKinsey or somebody like that and make lots of money and the 1990s would be to work for dot.com or venture capitalists. Today the number one choice of university students, undergraduate from Harvard, is to go to teach America. Do you know that money is number four on the list of what they're looking for? The first thing is that right out of university, they want to do interesting work, meaningful work and meet interesting people. Number two is they want to learn, three is they want to have fun. "What's with that?" we say, you know, we have this view that work is work and fun is fun, there's a period in your day where you work and then you go home and you have a Martini or something, and that's fun, but work and learning and collaborating and having fun are all the same thing to them. And then the fourth thing is about money. Now, of course, as you pointed out earlier, there are variances internationally, for example, in India, number one is to make money, but if you're the lucky kid and you got to go to university in the family, then you're supporting the family. But we don't really understand them, and how they're different coming into the workforce, and that's one of the reasons I wrote Grown up Digital.

Rachel Salaman: So what would be some of the top tips you would give an employer who's really keen to harness the talents of the younger generation?

Don Tapscott: Well, it's a great question and number one, is understand that there is reward for talent. People say because of this current economic crisis that reward for talent is over, well, no. There may be a temporary shortage or surplus of labor, there's not a surplus of talent. And especially in countries like the UK where you have fewer young people relative to other countries, like the United States, the reward for talent would be the defining battle for performance and success, for the next few decades really. But winning that war is you have to behave really differently. In the book, I say, "Don't try and recruit people in the traditional way." Advertising for recruiting is largely a waste of time. You need to get to them through their social networks, you need to engage early. "Try before you buy" internships are really important. You shouldn't try and manage and supervise them in the traditional sense. Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy says, "I'm not a manager, my goal is to unleash human capital, to create the context whereby people can self-organize." Training departments need to be rethought. If work and learning are the same thing, it's called "knowledge work," right, what are all the listeners of this podcast doing today? Are they working or are they learning? It's the same activity. So if that's true, why not increase the learning component of work. At nGenera, our Training Department is as follows, "Everybody must blog," that's our Training Department. The way that we supervise, we need to create these collaborative environments using tools like wikis and blogs and jams and social networks, but we're all stuck on email. As one kid said to me, "Email's good for sending a thank you letter to one of your friend's parents, but that's pretty much it." And as for retention, I don't think you retain them in a traditional way as well, you need to build alumni networks; you need to understand that talent can be both inside and outside your organization, it's really big implications for how you – for everything to do with talent and management.

Rachel Salaman: But where do you start, I mean, a lot of people listening, especially managers, will be thinking, "Gosh, that just sounds like such a different way of working. I wouldn't even know where to start."

Don Tapscott: Well, the starting point is to listen to young people and to talk to them. That you need to understand the generation, their culture and how they're different, that's the first point. The second is personal use of the technology, you know, I have reverse and entering programs with four young people and I just had a session yesterday and they tell me all the new stuff that they're into and they give me some ideas, and then I try and, you know, mentor back, give them some context and some wisdom from my years in business. But it's a humbling thing, you know, that kids know more about – I'm supposed to be some big expert in the internet and information technology, the main way that I learn is from young people. So you've got to let go and be open and be humble, and if you listen to them, they'll show you what to do.

Rachel Salaman: And everyone will benefit?

Don Tapscott: Well, that's the idea, I mean we have – we're the unique period really, in history, where children can help show us the way, and it's a tough thing to wrap your head around that idea, but if you do, well, I'll tell you, the companies that I work with are just – they're thriving, even in this difficult time.

Rachel Salaman: Don Tapscott, thank you very much for joining me.

Don Tapscott: Thanks for the great conversation.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Don's book again is "Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World." And there's a website to go with it – www.grownupdigital.com.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.