Gen Y in the Workplace

In the case study “Gen Y in the Workplace,” a situation is presented where Josh, an employee and recent graduate has new ideas on how to promote an upcoming film for the company he works for. However, Sarah, his immediate supervisor, has her own ideas and quickly dismisses Josh’s ideas without fully hearing them. Upset, Josh reaches out to the company’s CEO with his ideas. The CEO is impressed and invites him to the following day’s meeting. Sarah did not find out about this until the following morning and was clearly upset about it, creating tension between her and Josh. First, it is our belief that if Sarah had at least fully listened to the Josh’s ideas, the tension could have been lessened or even prevented. Josh had new ideas that he was clearly excited about and wanted to implement in order to improve the company’s performance. Sarah most likely balked at Josh because she believed it was his job to accomplish his assigned tasks such as number crunching and nothing else. This is a good example of the “millennial” dilemma that was discussed in class. Here, Josh is the millennial and Sarah is the established manager. As is the case with other millennials, Josh feels that he has the right to freely express his ideas without obstruction. Although it was wrong of Sarah to cut off Josh from explaining his ideas, Josh is not blameless in this case. When he previously presented his ideas to Sarah, he failed to back them up with solid data. As discussed in class, failing to have solid data to support business decisions can prove to be fatal for a company. Businesses today are increasingly resorting to data-driven management to make decisions. Although Sarah cut off Josh from fully presenting his ideas, she did not do it without reason. She based her decision not go with Josh’s ideas on the grounds of a failed online campaign in 2005 and low traffic from the Rising Entertainment website. Also, Josh bypassed Sarah and went to the company CEO to present