Writer in Residence - Cornwall

The next generation of business leaders is waiting, sometimes impatiently, to take their place at the head of business and of government. OK, so James Purnell is currently the youngest cabinet minister at 37 years of age but that won’t be the case forever. The new generation are still in university or taking their places as junior members of business. There are also entrepreneurs who are starting out young, just as Sir Richard Branson did, and beginning to have their impact on business.

Maybe all new generations of business people have been different. My generation came out of the sixties with more informal views on life and on business, but we still conformed with suit and tie when it was needed. We’ve embraced the web and email (or at least tolerated it) and we are getting involved with newer technologies, so can this new wave be so different?

The answer to that is probably. They are far more informal in their dress and in their attitudes to authority, more immediate in the way they act and they are much more open in sharing the intimate details of their thoughts and lives.

What’s more, the technology is arriving that supports those changes in attitude and approach. Where we have, in the most part, held on to our face to face meetings, this generation will be much more comfortable building networks and transacting business online.

So what are their technologies of choice? They use instant messaging and text messaging in preference to email. Their familiarity with computer games also makes them comfortable with technology and they learn quickly as technologies change.

Social networks such as Bebo (during earlier years), MySpace and Facebook have been available to them for a few years now and they have mastered these ways of brand building – personal branding is the essence of networking - until it is second nature to them. They share their lives using the Social Networks and blogs. The technology may, in the view of my generation, leave them open to abuse by sharing too much personal information but they don’t see it that way.

Why Vampires and Zombies? Applications that can be quickly added to Facebook allow anyone to put a Vampire or Zombie on to their profile – the place where their musical, literate, filmic and life preferences can also be presented – and use it to ‘turn’ their friends into Vampires or Zombies and to fight with them to earn points. This may epitomise an approach that life (and business) is a game – or it could disguise a killer instinct. The approach of Facebook is to allow anyone to add applications to their platform (they call it a Social Utility) and offer Facebook users a choice. Most applications are free but with advertising, merchandise or other revenue earning options also available. Facebook earns money by creating and signposting web traffic to providers of paid services and through advertising.

‘Older’ business people are also involved on Facebook and are building their own networks there. I’m there myself. However, I doubt that it is the same experience for me as it is for the younger, much more actively engaged, users. The technology, of course, is not new, just easier to use, quicker and more ubiquitous than before and that makes the difference in my view.

As this Facebook generation develops careers or businesses, will they change and begin to conform to the way things are done? It looks likely that their approach to meetings will be different, with far less travelling needed to be face to face, especially as webcams get better and networks faster. Decisions may be more collegiate with the use of polls to gain an understanding of people’s views both within and outside the business. Style and communication will be more informal. The rise of Second Life and other silicon based parallel universes is also likely to change things. Your avatar (an online ‘physical’ representation of you) may attend meetings in cyberspace for you, giving the impression of being together whilst the participants are far apart, sitting at computers.

Does any of this matter? Here on Fresh Business Thinking in the past week, Clare West reported a Jobcentre plus survey that shows that older workers learn from their younger counterparts. Business leaders will also have to learn and adapt to these new attitudes and approaches. We often claim that business should be fun but are we prepared for the logical extension of that – the business version of Vampires and Zombies?

Of course, we can stay as we are and wait for them to adapt to us, to don the suit and tie and conform. I have a small problem with that. Just as Canute failed to hold back the tide, so we may also fail if we try to resist.

Perhaps we need to adapt to them? See you on Facebook for New Business Leadership 101?

Andy Coote is a professional writer and publisher and co-author of A Friend in Every City (2006), a book about Social Networking and Business. As a commentator on leadership and networking, Andy writes for a number of Business Leaders. You can reach him at andy@bizwords.co.uk and, of course, on Facebook at http://profile.to/andycoote/.

Article first appeared in October 2007 in the Virtual CEO Newsletter at Fresh Business Thinking.