Online team productivity systems don’t yet capture the “offline needs” of individuals
This writing started as a reply to Why Millennials Want More Face to Face Communication from Christine DiDonato.
Having the conversation, about their individual career, their life growth; within the company. This is an area that needs much more work. For Christine DiDonato, there is a gap — companies are not spending time and really focusing, or listening to, millennials. Christine elaborates more on that at Millennials and the Changing Workplace.
“Most employees, especially younger employees, report that they really want more face to face interactions when it comes to topics that are most important to themselves. So when talking about someone’s career development, their career path, their leadership skills; that’s when companies have an opportunity to really look at strategies that are much more human focused. “ Christine DiDonato @ (Career Revolution Inc, 2019, 1min13sec)
The thesis that face to face still covers a gap — too many systems capturing processes but not individual goals
In the current situation, there is a gap between the face to face “offline needs” of an individual and the online structured development of a company. Christine makes a call for us to regain the human conversation side.
Christine is also reminding us about the state of our tools, our processes, and the improvement needs — Our (gen-x) current systems are not capturing the person’s self-development component, the conversation needs. Perhaps our systems are lacking transparency, structure, and processes in this regard.
Millennials may think that it’s weird that there is a process to capture everything but not their inner development.
Other related research
OKR and Measure What Matters — in the book of John Doer, Measure What Matters, there is a reasonable amount of information, however not much structured, about the conversations 1:1 between an employee and their managers, and modern ways to measure/value performance of individuals, especially for the case of companies dealing with innovation.
The Alliance from Ben Casnocha and Reid Hoffman — in the book of Ben and Reid, The Alliance, there are different models of development for an individual — rotational, mission, and long-range career (need to check the term used in the book). The mission model is especially very interesting and seems to have an alignment with the idea of agreements, or deals, and may define a structured relationship between management and the individual contributor.
References
UCTV.TV. 2016. Millennials and the Changing Workplace with Christine DiDonato (Career Talk audio). Retrieved from https://www.uctv.tv/careers/search-details.aspx?showID=30590
Career Revolution Inc. 2019. Why Millennials Want More Face to Face Communication. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/P_SPOGKEX2E
