Alison Sher: The Millennial's Guide to Changing the World

Today, the Be A Smart Woman podcast welcomes renowned author Alison Sher. Alison is an expert on the subject of millennials and the challenges they face. This is the subject of her fantastic book: Millennial's Guide to Changing the World. Today, in the first part of a two-part series, Alison shares what led her to write this book, what it is like to be a millennial in the world where older generations think they are floundering and only living up to a small fraction of their full potential. In addition to her amazing book, Alison runs Millennials Incorporated. Millennials Incorporated does cross generational reconciliation work inside of organizations helping bridge the generational gap that leads to millennials turnover and helps organizations transform corporate culture. Alison offers cost sensitive, custom tailored organizational strategies to transform company cultures in a way that is proven to help increase retaining millennial employees. Alison shares her thoughts on the millennial generation from her study of numerous perspectives within the generation uncovered by the interviews she conducted as a foundation for her book (2:45). Alison also discusses the impact of coming of age within the great recession, climate change, and income polarity has shaped the values of the millennial generation. (6:47) Alison discusses how she believes we can break away from the victim mindset that is so prevalent in society, especially in the millennial generation (13:42). Alison then talks about the challenges of misinformation and biases that todays digital world faces and how millennials deal with these and other systemic issues in their emerging adulthood. (16:48) Alison spends the remained of her time discussing the issues that is caused by the generational gap inside businesses and how the millennial generation is changing how businesses get done. (22:18) To Learn more about Alison and her work visit her website at http://www.millennials-incorporated.com. Quotes: Alison on what the millennial generation really wants: “What I know about this generation is where we want to go is we want to change the world because we're inheriting a lot of global crises and our systems need urgent changing in order for us to mitigate [their] impact…” (04:46) Alison on frustrations other generations often see with millennials: “My experience with working with baby boomers and working with people who do care about the future of this earth and do feel some kind of responsibility for the legacy they're leaving the coming generations is we're like, "I want to empower millennials with the resources that I have, but I can't even get them to pick up the damn phone and give me a call back.” (08:23) Alison on why she included so many perspectives in her research for the book: “[The] reason why I made sure to include all these different perspectives inside of the book [is] because empathy, I believe is how we start to come together and really understanding other people's perspectives and stop turning them into the enemy or the other.” (13:43) Alison on why the millennial generation is changing so many businesses and causing so many businesses to go bankrupt: “They are not places where we want to work, so what we're finding is that this evolution of business has to happen for these companies to stay alive because millennials are not, we're not drinking the Kool-aid.” (23:01) Alison on emotions and the millennial generation come together: “Millennials just aren't able to compartmentalize their emotions the way other gene ... We come with them. You're going to have to acknowledge that aspect of our psyche if you want to earn our loyalty." (26:52) Links Mentioned in Todays Show: The Millennial's Guide to Changing the World: A New Generation's Handbook to Being Yourself and Living with Purpose by Alison Lea Sher Connect with Us To learn more about Claire Faithful and the Be a Smart Woman movement visit us at: http://www.beasmartwoman.com Or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter Also listen to this podcast on: iTunes, Spotify, and at BeASmartWoman.com