Tammy Erickson Associates Building Intelligent Organizations

Q&A: The Implications of Widely Available Information on the Generations

I enjoyed your session.

If you take your age groups and run a line down the middle. This line is â€œWe now know the price of everything via the internet.â€ We know what everyoneâ€™s house cost—car, boat and everything they own is. We can also figure out about how much every one makes.

So now your example you have a promotion with relocation is skewed. I will look up and see exactly what it costs to live there during my thought process. I will also be able to study the community and know every thing about the area in minutes. I think the knowledge of the price of what everything is affecting the economy in a new way. If someone is laid off they will not relocate so quickly to an area that is doing better.

Before the internet we would go for it with confidence and make the best of it. Now we will hesitate and might not risk as much with this new information we have. I am just wondering if you think this knowledge is changing us.

Thanks

Mark

Hi Mark—

Yes, I think you are absolutely right. There’s no doubt that access to widely-available information is changing behavior. One of the key traits I list for members of Generation X is “information savvy.” By this I mean that members of this generation are far less likely to take the word of someone in authority on any topic—they will double-check it through their own channels. This applies to the cost of relocation, as you suggest, and to many other activities in the workplace, including the best way to approach a particular task, the most reputable data, and so on.

Thanks for your comment.

Warmly,

Tammy

Filed under: Comparisons Among the Generations | Published: 01/15/11

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