Who governs the regions? Russia vs USA

Idea – Evgeniya Shamis. Research and text – Evgeniya Shamis and Evgeny Nikonov. Specially for RuGenerations.

Governing, managing, ruling the country and regions depends on the fact – who is the governor, what generation does this person belong to, what are the values basing on which the governor makes decisions and acts. We decided to analyze generational composition of Russian governors and compare it with US state governors.

Data on Russia was taken from open official sources; for analysis we added to regional governors mayors of two federal cities – Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. American data was taken from  National Governors Association website (http://www.nga.org “Book of Governors biographies”, “Governors of the American States, Commonwealths and Territories”, 2009).

Generations in Russia – difficulties on a skyline

Author – Evgeny Nikonov, specially for RuGenerations.

Let’analyse spread of generations in Russia at the current moment and what will be the strategic management conclusions for Russia. We will take data of Rosstat 2007 research (Federal service of state statistics – www.gks.ru). Calculation of population, belonging to certain generations is not fully precise as the source data of Rosstat research is given in 4-year intervals, so the data boundaries don’t concure with generational boundaries.

Generation Z: what conditions do they grow in and what values will they acquire

Text author – Evgeniya Shamis. Specially for RuGenerations.

Generational values are formed under the influence of social events and specifics of family upbringing up to the age of 10-12 years. What are the conditions generation Z grows  in and Generation Millenium was already formed?

“Echo” generation in “Forbes” magazine rating

Idea – Evgeniya Shamis. Research and text – Evgeniya Shamis, Evgeniy Nikonov. Specially for RuGenerations.

In basic Generation Theory generations change each other approximately every 20 years. It’s obvious, that change of generations doesn’t come with January 1 of a certain year. People, who were born in transition period between generations (plus-minus 3-4 years from the year of generation appearance) are referred to so called “Echo-generation” or “Boundary generation”.

Three traps for generation X

Text author: Evgeniy Nikonov. Specially for RuGenerations.

There are three traps for managers of generation X, which we often see in our projects: 1) “Excessive compensation”, 2) “Looking for the problems where they don’t exist”, 3) “Don’t develop as a manager”.

1. Extensive compensation.

Why does it appear and what X-values work here: value of professionalism, need to see the meaning and believe into it, aspiration to build informal relationships.

How does it look like? Employee who has his part of the work (usualy it’s work which manager perceives as routine) suddenly starts behaving himself irresponsively – quality of work decreases, deadlines are broken. Employee agrees with all the remarks, but soon situation repeats.

How to build relations with Baby-Boomer manager

Text authors: Evgeniya Shamis, Evgeniy Nikonov. Specially for RuGenerations.

Extremely big number of current Russian top-managers and players in politics and business belongs to Baby-Boomer generation (1943-1963 – years of birth) or “Echo”-generation Baby-Boomer-X (1960-1968 years of birth). Examples: leaders of our country are mainly Baby-Boomers (Vladimir Putin) or “Echo” – Baby-Boomer-X (Dmitry Medvedev). Heads of  big companies Baby-Boomers – V.Evtushenkov (Joint Stock Financial Corporation Sistema), V.Lisin (Novolipetsk Steel), “Echo”-generation – M.Prokhorov (Onexim), M.Fridman (Alfa-Group).

What is important for Baby-Boomer manager? How to show that you you can be trusted and you are “in a team”?

Pixar studio cartoon “Up” via Generation Theory

Text author: Evgeniya Shamis. Specially for RuGenerations.

This cartoon is about interaction of two generations: Silent (Mister Fredriksen) and Z (the boy-scout). Interesting that in fact this cartoon is about one generation – as Generation Z is the next cycle of Silent generation (cycle of generations takes about 80 years).

Corresponding generational values in the cartoon: