Generation Clash

"You want me to do what?"

No. I wasn't mistaken. My boss really was insisting that I, a card-carrying baby boomer with multiple fancy degrees, dictate procedures to my employee-involvement team. Why didn't this old fart get it? I'm a boomer, a team player extraordinaire-a collegial, optimistic, cool achiever. Just ask me.

We were generations in conflict sparring on the bloody battlefield of age diversity. Fortunately, Ron Zemke, Claire Raines and Bob Filipczak, a team of respected cross-generational practitioners, have sent in a rescue reconnaissance. In their Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in Your Workplace,

the authors offer strategies to the "old farts and upstarts" who face-off cubicle-to-cubicle in the "most age- and value-diverse work force this country has known." Their fresh, insightful guidelines help managers go beyond their usual cadre of ammunition to better understand the divergent values, ambitions, thought processes and work styles of the four generational cohorts that now exist in the work place.

The book is divided into five entertaining, easy-to-read yet powerful sections: profiles of the four generations, case studies that illustrate generational peace, practical exercises, answers to commonly asked questions and a cross-generation survey.

The authors conclude that through awareness, managers of today can create a work place that is a "positive, productive and compatible home for old, not so old and young workers alike." Although each generation has "idiosyncratic styles and unique ways of viewing issues as quality, service, and, well . just showing up for work," any self-reliant Gen-Xer will text you: We can survive.

-Judith Kolva, Ph.D., assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, International College