Pub. 1 2018-2019 |Issue 4

15 years is a good number: long enough for big changes, but short enough to keep actions and milestones realistic. • Look at tactical elements that improve performance. Always favor concrete actions that are over abstract ideas. “Provide in-house daycare” is better than “provide support to parents who are employees.” Accountability and Trust There are distinct differences in how baby boomers and millennials approach work. In fact, the baby boomer approach and the millennial approach can be exact opposites. What really matters is getting the work done and not so much how the work gets done. Your strate- gy, therefore, should be doing your best to avoid letting people divide into age-based camps. How can you accomplish that goal? It almost cer- tainly won’t happen by accident. One good strategy is to pay more attention to accountability than to methods. If an approach works, and it is legal and ethical, why should anyone care about the specifics? The baby boomers probably have better interpersonal communication skills. The millennials are certainly going to be better when it comes to digital communication. You want all the skill sets you can find. Think broadly and find a way to accommodate everyone’s strengths. Your attitude will go a long way toward creating the right kind of culture, but you should also encourage people to compromise and to learn from each other. The way management makes decisions should make it clear that employees can trust the organiza- tion to be fair about accountability. The Advantage of Being Diverse Family dealerships are not alone in being multigenerational. The general population is in the same situation. As a result, troubleshooting problems becomes more effective if it takes advantage of generational diversity because that diversity makes for better solutions. When you have projects, the smart approach is to involve representatives from each generation. Approaching a problem frommultiple perspectives is more likely to produce solutions that are comprehensive. After all, millennials offer efficiency and creativity in their work, but those qualities pair well with the high-quality, detail- oriented work of baby boomers. 3