Reverse Mentoring and Other Thoughts on Millennials and Organizations

I spoke on Sunday at an event called the Leadership Summit: Creativity and Innovation 2008 sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, DC.  It was nicely attended, with about one hundred people who were largely senior staff at Jewish nonprofit agencies and synagogues in and around DC and a smattering of Millennials. During our conversation there were several interesting ideas and observations that I think are worth sharing and chewing on:

1.  We discussed the opportunity for younger staff people to mentor older ones on the use of social media. I call this Reverse Mentoring, and it really resonated with both the younger and older people in the audience. Of couse, Millennials ae going to have to slow it down for those Boomers to catch up! What about a monthly brown bag lunch for Millennials to demonstrate how Twitter and IM work and sign their co-workers up for those services?

2.  After I had described the Listening Deficit to the group -- the vestigial muscles for really hearing what constitents have to say about organizations (whether they are for or non-profit) -- Misha Galperin, the Executive Vice President and CEO of the Federation, told a story. Last year, he said, they wanted to know how the experience was for newcomers to the community (and DC has a lot of those!) who were trying to connect with local Jewish agencies. So, his staff set out and called or emailed all 119 of them in DC. 47 responded with a call or an email. I'm not very good at math, but less than a 50% response to the most basic question -- what doors are open to me here? -- is pretty appalling.  Confirming of my belief that the Listening Deficit is a prevalent and serious problem -- but  disappointing, nonetheless.

3.  One of the Millennials told about the Sixth and I Synagogue in downtown DC that has changed its model entirely to invite young people to participate with them. Rather than the dues-heavy model that scares off so many people (young and old), 6th and I has moved to a fee-for-service model to attract young people. Come to a class or a concert and pay as you go.  Of course, it helps if one of the richest men in DC, Abe Pollin, is the chair of the board, but they have still had the courage to look at their model in a different way and work towards reducing the institutional barriers to young people participating. Many traditional organizations, congregations or not, should take a look at what they've done.

Lots of interesting thoughts for one presentation!