Carol and I took a walk this afternoon, and while we were walking we each complained about two different organizations we belong to:– call them the Hippie Organization and the Staid Organization.
“They’re just not focussed on their mission,” said Carol of the Hippie Organization, to which she belongs. “They’re spending thousands of dollars on [name of program deleted], but they’re requiring that their big annual conference make a profit. It should be the other way around, they should subsidize their conference because it’s better at promoting their mission.”
“I know the feeling,” I said. I told her how the Staid Organization, to which I belong, has had a mission statement that sets very low expectations, asking very little of its members. “I give them credit for working on a new mission statement this year, although it’s not guaranteed that anyone will do anything differently once the new mission statement is in place. But something’s got to change.”
We traded stories back and forth about how we’re plotting to change these two organizations from the inside. Finally, Carol said, “I’m tired of all these middle aged men who don’t do anything.” (I’m a middle-aged man, but I didn’t take offense because I knew just what she meant.) “I feel like the Baby Boomers, people who are older than us but younger than my parents, are stuck in their ways. I think there’s a generational difference.” Carol belongs to Generation X.
“You know, I hadn’t thought about that, but — yeah,” I said. I told her that most of the people in Staid Organization are older than I am, and are Baby Boomers. “Technically, I’m a Baby Boomer, too,” I continued, “but I’m barely a Boomer. It seems like the Boomers who lived through the 60’s got really good at criticizing and tearing down institutions, but they’re not so good at institutional maintenance and direction.”
“Although if you really look at the Baby Boom generation,” Carol said, “only about nine percent of them actually were involved in the counter-culture, and the rest were just like Tricia Nixon. But now all the Boomers are proud of the whole 60’s rebellion thing. I’m just not interested in that:– ‘protest, protest, protest!’ It doesn’t really get anywhere.”
We also talked about when it’s time to cut our losses, and resign from the organizations. I’m giving Staid Organization another six months; Carol is giving Hippie Organization another two months. We each have limited time and energy, and don’t want to waste it on organizations that don’t seem to be going anywhere.
Is the generational difference between the Boomers and the younger generations really significant from the point of view of institutional life? It may well be true that Boomers are more intrested in being rebels and less interested in being good institutionalists — not each and every Boomer, but the generation considered on average. And it may be true that Boomers are more likely to have a modernist mindset and less likely to be postmodern systems thinkers — it seems that each succeeding generation contains a few more systems thinkers. (Research on generational cohorts seems to support these two views to a certain extent.) But do these generational differences actually affect the flesh-and-blood people in your congregation?
So now I’d love to hear how my readers perceive generational differences in congregations (or other institutions and organizations)….
If you respond, please say which generation you were born into, based on Strauss and Howe’s generational divisions in their book Generations [summary]:– G.I. Generation (born 1901-1924); Silent Generation (1925-1942); Baby Boomer (1943-1960); 13th Generation, a.k.a. Generation X (1961-c.1981); Millennial Generation (after 1981).
There are three things I look at/avoid in organizations precisely because they do warn of Boomerism: 1. a tendency to see institutional relationships as a “hub and spoke system”; 2. a big idea reduced to a tacky trademarkable slogan or buzz-word; 3. consultant-mania.
Ick.
About a year ago, I quit volunteering for an environmental education organization because of some generational issues, but they’re not necessarily what you describe (or perhaps they are and I didn’t see it that way). I am generation X and childless/childfree. The organization was made up of mostly boomers with almost grown children. Rather than being rebels or focusing on the mission of the organization, they were obsessed with creating social opportunities to meet each other’s families. They warmed to the other new volunteers who were in their generation and had children (and who were straight, white, and wealthy), but tended to ignore me. After getting chewed out by one of the leaders of the organization over a really minor issue, I decided this wasn’t a good way to spend my free time.
I’ll add with-us-or-against-us do-nothing protest-liberalism.
I’m a boomer, and I am neither interested in being a rebel, nor in being an institutionalist. My approach is, what do we call it, a tempered radical? That is: I work for systemic change on many levels — the institution that pays my salary, the community I live in, the greater world beyond my own community — but work within the system(s) I am trying to change. Which is of course holding two opposing notions at the same time: working in the system as it is, and working to change the system that I’m working in. A little crazymaking sometimes, and it’s not flashy, it’s not fast, it takes enormous effort and coalition building (without consultants!!), but it works. Incrementally.
Oh, hey, Dan: do you know the joke about consultants?
Question: What’s the difference between a consultant and a rooster?
Answer: A rooster clucks defiant.
there’s probably a joke about mission statements somewhere too…there *ought* to be!
I’m a boomer born shortly after WWII. I think that at our worst we are cynical and that at our best we are idealistic, but somehow we can’t seem to catch that magic spot we need to find between cynicism and idealism that lets us believe that change is possible, but is down to earth enough to know it isn’t easy. This makes it hard for us to roll up our sleeves and go to work on the problems.
I’m still recovering from the horrors of the sixties when my idealism was smashed by the reality of political corruption, assasinations of my heros and a war we should have never fought. I wonder how the events happening during the formitive years of young people today will affect them.
Scott — Say more about “hub-and-spoke system” — it’s not a term I’m familiar with. And I hear you about “counsultant-mania,” but as a systems thinker I’m also aware that bringing in an outside perspective has a good potential for shifting systems that are stuck — so do you allow for the possibility of using consultants to effect systemic change?
Steph — Very interesting story. You framed it as a generational difference, so do you think maybe Gen Xers are more tolerant of those of us who choose to be child-free? (I ask as someone who is also child-free.)
Chutney — Strauss and Howe say that one of the characteristics of Gen X is hard-headed pragmatism, so Gen Xers are less worried about sticking to ideals at all costs — although of course pragmatism has its own weaknesses.
Jean — Hmm, you sound like a pragmatist to me. Since you’re a “trailing Boomer,” maybe you share your pragmatism with Gen Xers?
Cee Jay — One of the chief characteristics of the Boomers, according to Strauss and Howe, is that they are a generation of spiritual reformers (note that Strauss and Howe’s analysis draws strong parallels with the spiritual awakenings of the 60’s, and earlier Great Awakenings in Anglo-American culture). If you re-framed things in terms of your spiritual journey, could you see that mix of cynicism and idealism as a real strength? Considered spiritually, would you think of the 60’s with the same horror?
Actually, I just talked about this at my church the other Sunday saying that our congregation has helped me find my belief again, not in divinity, but in our ability to make a difference by speaking out and working together to bring peace.
When people think of Unitarian Universalists they don’t usually think about finding faith, but idealism is faith, spirituality. I was happy with Ohio’s choice of Senator and Governor this past election. They spoke to the idealist in me and helped to temper the cynicism.
“Spoke and hub” — a tendency to centralize or professionalize a situation, after the failing airline practice, and in contrast to networking. Point-to-point service would be the airline parallel.