Business: The ’60s Kids as Managers

Ten years ago, he was at Boston University, battling the Establishment as an activist sympathizer of the Students for a Democratic Society. Today he wears three-piece suits as a senior associate of a Manhattan-based management consulting firm. “The former radicals are an asset to business,” he says. “They are aggressive as hell, they’re by and large well educated, they have stamina. Business is a rigorous area in which to channel the same kind of energies we had then. And it’s damn satisfying to see the results of your work on a balance sheet.”

An extreme case, perhaps, but a telling one. The defiant students who marched behind antiwar banners, experimented with drugs and challenged their parents’ values during the shake-’em-up days of the 1960s are young adults today. Many of them, and a lot more of their classmates who never chanted a slogan or smoked a joint, are channeling their talents into the corporate world. As they rise in company ranks, these junior executives are presenting some unusual challenges to their bosses, who have had to accommodate new life-styles and non-negotiable demands for increased personal attention, intensive career planning, openness with information. Scratch any chief executive officer and he will say that compared with their older supervisors, managers aged 27 to 35 are not only more determined to enjoy their personal lives but also more socially aware, more in favor of affirmative action to hire women and minorities.

Almost all the people who went to college from about 1965 through 1972, even the tamest ones, were deeply and permanently affected by the tumult of those wild and grim times. The so-called ’60s kids clearly constitute a group apart, markedly different from the gang that graduated in the 1950s and early 1960s, who celebrated football, proms and exclusive fraternities, and somewhat different from the more conventional, career-directed students of today. Yet it was not difficult for corporations to recruit the ’60s kids. As products of the postwar baby boom, they faced stiff competition for places in law and medical schools. And as they became breadwinners, they gained more respect for the financial and psychic payoffs offered in the corporate world.

Many alumni of the ’60s and early ’70s think their college experiences have enhanced their effectiveness as managers. Notes Bob Klein, 30, a product manager for Conoco Chemicals in Houston: “I went to college [Clarkson] in the era of the draft, and I had to change my career plans by postponing grad school and taking a job in the oil business that would probably hold off my draft board. Now I think that that taught me how to be a flexible planner.”

On the job, the ’60s grads are still ready to challenge authority by asking many more questions than their predecessors did—or do. One persistent questioner at the Bank of America is Dale Radcliff, 30, a controller. Dropping out of Berkeley in 1966, he traveled the country as a rock musician for three years before returning to Cal for his M.B.A. Radcliff, who joined the bank in 1975, peppers supervisors with questions about why they follow certain procedures when others would be more efficient. He has developed new ways of speeding paper work, redesigned work schedules around more flexible hours and begun weekly meetings to share more operating information with his staff. Says a 38-year veteran of the bank: “All these changes began as one of Dale’s questions.”

“Lower-level managers used to take direction without question,” observes Richard Eastburn, 42, director of management development at American Standard. “Today there is more questioning of decisions and more resistance. The young guys are less afraid to confront power, and they argue their cases better. Older managers talk about this in terms of insolence because their comfort level is being disturbed.”

Eastburn should know. When he was with a computer company in Boston a couple of years ago, senior executives wanted to make a major investment in South Africa; younger managers protested that it was foolish because that country was headed for grave racial crisis. So the company sent a team of five managers, all in their 30s, to study South Africa for three weeks. They brought back, such a bleak report that top management withdrew the investment plan.

Young executives closely question the relationship of business to society at large —governments, “little guy” shareholders, consumer advocates, civil liberties groups. William George, 35, president of Litton Industries’ Microwave Cooking Products Division, is fairly typical of his age group in the way he handles such concerns. Instead of hunkering down when the Government draws up energy-labeling and other regulations for his industry, he offers to help bureaucrats frame the rules. George concedes that he tries to influence and soften the legislation, arguing: “I concentrate on cooperating, not waiting to have things stuffed down our throat the way, for example, the auto industry did.”

These youthful managers place a high premium on their lives away from the job. “What’s important now,” says Bruce Bernard, 30, who has just been promoted by Shell to division petroleum engineer, “is quality of life more than how fast you move up in the corporation. There is more of a tendency to watch the clock.” Jerry Smith, 35, a department manager at Bechtel, the San Francisco-based construction company, is typically scornful of workaholics. Says he: “When I see someone putting in too many hours, I think his viewpoint is skewed, that he doesn’t have control of his life. The idea now is to have a balanced life-style.”

Of course, many young executives put in long hours to finish special projects, get a firm handle on new jobs or simply win promotions by impressing their bosses. “I do it because I am learning a new area right now,” says Louis Costanzo, 34, General Electric energy systems engineer. “But I refuse to keep it up forever.”

Young executives are also reluctant to accept transfers to other cities if the moves do not fit in with their personal plans. A principal reason: young male managers these days tend to be married to women who also have careers. “These people are not the gypsies we thought,” says William Read, personnel chief of Atlantic Richfield. When they do agree to move, young managers expect help from the company for spouses who also want jobs. The Bank of America regularly assists families. When it brought a woman in her mid-30s from Boston to San Francisco, the bank arranged for her dentist husband to take local board exams and be interviewed at hospitals. The couple moved—but only after he had landed a job in a clinic.

Differences about the work ethic have led to friction between generations. Terrence Thompson, 36, a 1970 graduate who is a senior financial representative at Bechtel, says sweepingly (and with a touch of the arrogance that veteran executives criticize in the juniors): “The older group seeks recognition for patriotism, Judeo-Christian morality, prudence, thrift and loyalty. Younger managers value creativity, energy, sensitivity and candor. If I don’t get present-day satisfaction, I won’t stay. I won’t work for the future. Nobody’s going to guarantee its arrival.”

For all their resistance to moving from city to city, the young managers are more than willing to hop from company to company if a new job offers more money or promotion possibilities. That is one reason why older executives tend to view them with a predictably paternal mixture of unease and affection. Paul Duffie, a personnel officer in his 40s at an appliance manufacturing company in Chicago, winces at what he regards as their self-centered attitudes, charging that “if a young guy gets just one setback, he is on the phone looking for a new job.” Adds George Skoglund, personnel chief of the Bank of America: “The ’60s executives are simply a very difficult group to manage. They insist that they have a unique and personal contribution to make, and want to know what they can accomplish for society. On the other hand, they are terrifically concerned over whether there will be room for them at the top.”

Companies are experimenting with ways to accommodate the young executives by opening more areas of authority to them. Largely in response to the younger employees, companies are trying to give more time to each person’s evaluation and future plans. Once a year Litton Microwave Products managers decamp for several days to a Minneapolis conference center, where they meet with bosses to discuss their own strengths, weaknesses and how best to use their talents in the future. Many other companies have also started yearly career review sessions with supervisors, who keep files on employees’ goals and how well they are moving toward them. Rather often, young executives dispute the annual evaluations, demanding to know from the boss, “Why don’t you consider me tops?”

Since the ’60s kids still hold relatively junior jobs, their influence remains limited. But just wait a while. Says Stephen McLin, 31, planning vice president for the Bank America Corp.: “The people from my generation are not driving the ship yet, but we can shape a little of what goes on. In a few years, we will take the helm.”

As their influence rises, they will lead corporations toward more openness and disclosure; more debate before making decisions; more emphasis on selecting, training and rewarding people, including more women and nonwhites; and greater flexibility in lifestyles. It is hard to judge whether these changes will substantially affect efficiency, productivity, quality control, profits and other concrete business concerns. But it is a safe bet that those ’60s kids will continue to make other people uncomfortable—and more innovative—as they work their way toward the top.