Millennial Madness and the Fabrication Workforce: There Is a Cure!

MICHAEL PERDUE: All right, so as we were saying, we want this to be a dialogue. We've provide a way for you all to give some feedback here. And you should see there at the top of the screen there, if you go to www.menti.com, on any of your smartphones, enter in this code, 38 50 68-- we want to get feedback from y'all, and first of all just see what's your background.

Are you an architect? Are you an engineer? You can pick more than one as well. We're good now.

And so it's menti.com. Some of them are here. I think there is probably about 80 that signed up. It looks maybe we might have 50 to 60 in the room. And so hopefully we'll get this about halfway.

Maybe if 30 of you could pipe in, 25 to 30-- we've got six here. We have some trade partners, academics. And then while they're doing that, Will, did you want to introduce yourself?

WILL IKERD: Yes, my name is Will Ikerd. And I'm a principal at Ikerd Consulting. We founded the company in 2010. I started my career in the mid-'90s, undergraduate civil engineering, masters in structural. I focused on 3D parametric modeling in the mid-'90s, a little before we really called it BIM at the time, and really began my career in structural engineering, and then probably about 10 years ago started doing some graduate work in psychology.

And so my firm today, we have offices in North Texas, Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, and then also St. Louis, Missouri. We work both design and construction side. We're a small independent firm, midsize, I would say.

But what would distinguish us is we do fabrication modeling for all disciplines-- structural, enclosures, MEP, interiors, sub-grade civil utilities. State of Texas, we're an engineering firm and might do enclosures or traditional structural engineering under architects. Let's try the next one, Michael.

MICHAEL PERDUE: All right.

WILL IKERD: What other questions did we get?

MICHAEL PERDUE: So it looks like we've got a good mix there as far as the backgrounds go. We also want to know, when were you born? We'll talk a little bit about each of these titles for the generations, and the dates that we're using for them as well later in the presentation. But for now, if you'll go ahead and pick which one you fall in to by your birth date.

While you're doing that and we're seeing that come up, I'd like to introduce myself as well. My name is Michael Perdue. I'm a Millennial, so that's the perspective I'll be coming from today. I'm a project manager at Ikerd Consulting. My background is in computer science, but right now I'm a project manager of a technology initiative custom application programming, laser scanning, and other initiatives that we have going on.

WILL IKERD: What's our mix looking like?

MICHAEL PERDUE: Right now we've got a lot of Millennials, then some Gen Xers, and then some Boomers coming in third there. So it looks like we've probably got most of the room answering here.

WILL IKERD: Sure, and it is noted that, even if we had a few more, Boomers normally don't fill out these surveys with their smartphones. So if you're a Boomer and you don't want to mess with this stuff, raise your hand or shout it out when we get the Q&A. And do what you do best, boom. What's our next one, Michael?

MICHAEL PERDUE: So next we want to know, what word comes to mind when you think of Millennials in the workplace? After all, I think based on the title of this session, hopefully y'all have some ideas about Millennials. We see "wifi" here. And so we'll get a word cloud going up-- privilege, needy, brat. You know, this is the second time we've done this session today. And so we get a lot of variation here.

And it's always interesting to see what everyone's perspective is. And I'd just like to point out, looking at the results from last time we did this, you might be tempted to think the people that maybe have a little bit more of the negative thoughts here would not be Millennials, but a lot of Millennials put down these words. Lazy, entitled were two big ones that came up. So we're seeing a lot of consistency there.

The last question that we wanted to ask y'all before we really got started was to indicate your agreement with these statements. So and we'll talk a little bit about why we're asking this. But the first one is, psychology is a science, whether you strongly disagree, or strongly agree, or if you're somewhere in between there.

WILL IKERD: One of the things that we were thinking--

MICHAEL PERDUE: Go ahead.

WILL IKERD: --about on that is, I mentioned my undergraduate-- my first graduate work was in civil engineering and structural during, hard sciences. You know, I think of hard sciences, like water freezes at 32 degrees, yes or no. I mean, obviously if you change pressure, add salt, I mean it does change a little-- but for the most part, hard facts. When we get into psychology, it's kind of mushy. And so that's what it's asking. Is it a real science? What else do we have on there, Michael?

MICHAEL PERDUE: I think that pretty much does it for now. This next question that I'm going to pull up--

WILL IKERD: Let me do one thing with-- I'm seeing an interesting one on feelings. So day-to-day tasks, do feelings matter? There is a disparity there. And then are feelings important for staff retention? And when we get into the discussion, I want to talk some about that, because I'd submit to you that those two things are closer than they might appear. And when you start to look at staff turnover in firms, we might revisit that one. What else do we have?

MICHAEL PERDUE: This next one, I want y'all to kind of sit on for now. Don't answer it yet. But as we go along, this will stay open on your smartphones. You can open it back up-- two things here.

The first one is, as you think of things that we're talking about and ideas come to you about how you would like to-- changes that you would like to make, please feel free to chime in here and let us know what those are. And we may review a few of these at the end. And additionally, we would like to take some time during the presentation-- if you are using menti there should be an Ask A Question button. Feel free to hit that. And we would like to periodically take a look at those and see if there is any questions as we go along.

WILL IKERD: Those questions will pop up with Michael Screening read them out as we go. Let's see if we can switch over to this one. And there you go.

MICHAEL PERDUE: Thank you. So just to talk a little bit about the objectives that we have today, first of all, we want to identify the characteristics of each generation. You know, we're talking about Traditionalists, about the Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, or the Millennials, and Gen Z, who will soon be coming into the workforce.

So we're going to identify a few of the characteristics of those generations and really understand what makes them tick, what are the defining characteristics of those generations. We're going to talk about-- then move on to how we can improve the communication and teamwork, you know, that communication being informed by what we've learned about the generations, and how we can make it take it upon ourselves to make the work environment a place where, really, there is teamwork happening. We don't mean this session to be a bash on Millennials, or on Gen X, or any of these generations.

What you'll see as we go along here is that, really, it's not an us versus them. It's all of us working together as a team to accomplish a common objective. And really, we're going to talk about how we can make that happen. As we're going along through this-- we will talk a little bit more about this in detail-- but keep in mind that the success that you have on your projects and on your jobs really is most likely to fall in this category, where really it's 10% about the technology you're using, but 90% about the sociology of what's happening in the workplace and how your team is working with another team, you know, the GC working with the trade, working with the architect, et cetera.

Also, as Will mentioned, you know, we're talking about psychology one of these soft sciences. We're going to have some stuff in here that we're going to call the department of questionable truth. We understand that some of the stuff we're going to talk about isn't right 100% of the time. There is some wiggle room in there. And that's kind of why they call it a soft science.

But what we want to do more than anything is just kind of start this conversation and hopefully give you all some ideas, encourage some thoughts that can provide solutions to any issues you may have in the workplace. And going along with not everything is going to fit into this nice square box, keep in mind, there is a bell curve. You know, if you're in one of these generations, and we're talking about the characteristics, and you say, that's the opposite of what I am, it's probably true.

We're talking about generalities, where most people fall. And there will be outliers. So just because this doesn't apply exactly to you or to someone you know doesn't mean that it's not true for the majority of people. With that, I want to turn over to Will for a little bit to talk about each one of these generations and talk a little bit about their shared life experiences and the common values that bring those-- kind of group those generations together.

WILL IKERD: Thanks, Michael. So one of the things as I look at this, the whole notion of grouping things in generations is really on this bell curve. And I'm a little contrarian in some of the stereotypes. That is what we're going to be doing. We're going to be doing a lot of stereotyping here.

But of that stereotype of Millennials, I would suggest to you that the building industry naturally weeds out a lot of the typical Millennials. What do I mean by that? If you have at 4:00 AM concrete pour, it's going to happen at 4:00 AM. And you cannot get there at 4:15. You've got to be there early, because if you're not early, you're late.

And this is an industry, one, due to construction litigation, but it has no forgiveness for some of the stereotypes that are common to most Millennials. With that said, that's what I want to say, that I think architecture, engineering, construction, facility management, particularly with mission-critical facilities, is going to pull out the outliers when we talk about this generational stereotyping. With that, there is some lessons learned. It comes from shared life experiences, common values.

There is a really good book here we're going to provide in references. There is a number of books. We're going to be talking about in this. This is Sticking Points by Haydn Shaw. I'm going to use most of the terminologies he used in this book, because I think it's overall a great general reference on the topic-- Traditionalists, some will say the greatest generation, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, busters, lost generation, sometimes called.

In this book he talks about Cuspers. And I like this. And I'm going to elaborate on it. That's someone that's in between these generations. They really adapt the traits of both.

And then as we look at Millennials, sometimes called Gen Y-- you'll see that as well, Echo Boomers, and then Gen Z that's coming online. And what I did really, borrowing some from Haydn Shaw, you kind of see here, where I've got rotary dial phone, touchpad, wireless phone. You know in the house for my generation, I remember how amazing it was when I first saw one of those-- cordless, and so as we go into mobile phones down here.

I went with Y and Z for these simply because they fit better in my PowerPoint. So but that's kind of it. And as you go through this, we'll highlight one of those phone systems, just kind of keep a visual cue of where we are.

So let's talk about this. Do not get hung up with the exact dates here. They're ranges. Keep in mind, you've got cuspers. So when we go with Traditionalists, we're really in that range. You can look at the age brackets there. You go into Boomers, moving on into X, Y, and of course Z.

And so keep this in mind. Why do I say, don't worry too much about those ranges? Remember, we're dealing with a stereotype of a bell curve. And there is always outliers. And so this whole discussion is just finding patterns and learning to listen to people as we go.

So these slides, I'm going to go through quickly, because I want to get more time for the Q&A. But I've included the demographics from 2013, 2014, '18. I'm going to end here on '17. Needless to say, those are in your slides.

You can see how our Traditionalists are thinning out, unfortunately, in my opinion. And as we look at this, you're really seeing-- you've get easily four, soon to be five generations in the workforce. We've never had this many in the workforce. We're dealing with new team dynamics that we normally have not had, is what I would submit to you. If you want to push back on that, please do so.

So what I'm going to do quickly is go through, remember, those shared values and common experiences. Traditionalists, I think of, technology side, telephones coming online. This is a very dear friend of mine. I invite him to all our company team members, Leroy He Williamson. He lives in the town where our office is.

He joined the Army when he was 16-- didn't have Air Force at the time. Went in Army Air Corps. He got shot down over Germany, spent 14 months in a prisoner of war in a Nazi POW camp and survived.

He was liberated by the Russians. 70 years later, they invited him to come to Russia. He actually met some of the liberators from the Russian Army that liberated his POW camp in Germany.

He knows what a problem is. I've never really experienced a problem. I might get laid off. That's not a problem compared to what his generation faced. I have inconveniences.

And so I'll often-- he's invited to all our company team dinners. We normally do them once a quarter. And I always-- we have a lot of Millennials coming on, young interns. And I'll typically take one of them and sit them next to Leroy and ask them to ask Leroy about the first time he used a parachute.

When he joined the Army, they didn't train them how to use parachutes. He's only used a parachute one time in his life. And that's when his plane was on fire over Germany.

And it's funny. I'll look over and halfway through the dinner, the intern has quit eating. They're just, their eyes are about the pop out of their heads. And it's different perspectives.

When I look at Boomers, major technology might be television. For my generation-- I put a few up here. I distinctly remember seeing on TV the Berlin Wall.

And most shocking for me was probably that-- I think I was in fifth or sixth grade, and seeing the Challenger blow up. We were watching it. Our science class got together. And the teacher turned the TV off. And it was just seeing it in real time, that was something that was new.

So personal computers, my graduate work was on a 486DX. I had 64 megabytes of RAM trying to do a 15-story 3D model on. It was painful. It took 13 hours to analyze. And today my smartphone has 1,000 times the amount of RAM. So Michael, how about you from your perspective as a Millennial? Thanks.

MICHAEL PERDUE: Right, so from the Millennial perspective, some of the things that Mr. Shaw talks about in his book here are a more child-focused world, 9/11, social networking. The one that I really wanted to point out here is the internet. I mean, that's obviously a game changer, the access to data that the internet brought.

Prior to the internet, something that I didn't really experience, whenever you needed to do research, you had to go to the library. You had to look for the book. You had to read through the book, find what it is you wanted from that book. Google makes that so much easier.

WILL IKERD: Who had to use card indexes at the library? So what I do, and this whole presentation came out of-- my firm does consulting with Autodesk Consulting. And we help implement technology initiatives and organizational development in firms.

And I will draw a line down the upper management if they got out of school before '93 versus after. If they graduated after '93, Marc Andreessen had created Mosaic, which in '94 became Netscape. You expected research and problem solving to be digital with relational databases. If you graduated before '93, you expected an analog approach to problem solving. It was your natural common paradigm.

So I started college in '92. And then we had Pendaflex file folders from the dean's office. All our communications from the university were paper dropped in our file folders.

If you saw someone nice in one of the classes, you'd go look at where they walked over their Pendaflex folder. And you'd drop a note in their Pendaflex folder, hey, I'd like to study with you, that kind of stuff. But it was quite different than digital as we go.

MICHAEL PERDUE: And then lastly, we wanted to quickly look at Gen Z here. This is really the next generation to start coming into the workforce. These are people that are graduating high school now.

We've had actually interns. This last summer, we had one 16-year-old and one 17-year-old intern from a local STEM program. They came and already knew how to do load diagrams, shear diagrams.

WILL IKERD: They had an engineering class in a high school level. I was blown away how much access to knowledge they had, and learning, and how great, one, the STEM-- these were two ladies. They did really well on learning laser scanning registering.

Unfortunately, we couldn't let them go to the job site, because they weren't 18 years old yet. But they did the registration of the scanning, so of some notable jobs. So at 16 and 17, they left that summer internship with real applications on-- you know, if we mentioned the jobs, you would easily recognize them.

One is the NFL football stadium. We did about 2 million square feet of laser scanning. And they jumped in. They had a good two months or so of scan registration. So this generation learns quickly.

So as we look at Traditionalists, core value, hard work. I'm going to go through these quickly. They're in your slides. Boomers live to work. Let's push back on that when we get to Q&A if you disagree. Gen X would be work to live.

I hired a few in here that I think were common to my cohort as we got into college, expected their careers to keep moving forward or they'll get left behind. That gave me the impetus to start my own firm. I felt like I had a comfortable position. I had founded a Department of Integrated Project Delivery.

But I was in a 65-person firm. And I didn't feel like the ownership was going to let me move at the speed of industry. And so that was common for me. That resonated with me-- familiar with technology, result-oriented. What stuck out to you on the Millennials from the book, Michael?

MICHAEL PERDUE: Yeah, you talked a little bit about work to live, Will. One thing that I wanted to highlight here was live then work. You know Millennials, we-- will and I were talking before the presentation.

And we were thinking of some examples of seeing employees who their shift ends at 5 o'clock. At 5 o'clock, they're walking out the door. They've got other things to do in life. And that's one of the characteristics that we wanted to point out here, is that increasingly you see people who are Millennials define themselves more by what they do outside of work than what work they actually do.

Also prefer instant or text messaging-- again, like Will say said, is something, if you want to push back on, we can talk about in the Q&A. But in general, we see a lot more instant messaging, text messaging than wanting to do a phone call. And then the concept of parallel careers-- Will, I don't know if you wanted to talk about that.

WILL IKERD: There is definitely one that sticks out, in the interest time I want to jump to, is informal. That one resonated for me. For when I got out, the engineering firm I was at was not a jacket, but you definitely wore a tie. And maybe on Fridays, you went without the tie.

But if you went to a client meeting, it was a blazer and a tie. And depending on the client, it might be suit and tie. If it was an interview, suit and tie. And that was very different.

So right now, I would say most Millennials, much more informal as it looks like. And myself, I've lost my tie. I'm reforming. I left mine off.

So what we've done here in this is put a table in here for you. I'm not going to read the whole thing. It's in here as a reference point. But if you looked at just job strengths, leadership, I see a much more-- if you come down here, there is some good ones that stick out. Pulling together is really a Millennial leadership style.

As we look at these-- let me go over to the next one. Feedback, firm when I started out as an Xer. I felt like it was a great week if I didn't get chewed out. And once a year, we'd get an annual review.

And that was pretty good. And so what I would say, Millennials typically are wanting a lot of feedback. And this varies. But how are you seeing that, Michael, as far as yourself and then others?

MICHAEL PERDUE: Yeah, absolutely. What I'm seeing more and more are wanting to know how am I doing? You asked me to do this task. I completed this task. Is this what you wanted?

And not just at the end of the project, but as time goes-- you know, every day, as they're completing those tasks, wanting to know in real time, is this what you wanted? Did I do a good job? What can I do to make this better next time, and not so much the once-a-year approach.

WILL IKERD: So this has taken some adjustments for me. The-- we'll call him Harry. He's the person that I originally started working for in '98. Harry had a private consulting engineering firm. And he was a Boomer, but ran a very tight office.

Monday morning 7:45 was when we started. And you were in your chair at 7:45, not pulling in the parking lot, not getting coffee. The idea is your pencil was moving at 7:45. And there was a big clock on the entry.

And Monday mornings, we would have a team meeting. And it was in the front office. And you could hear a pin drop if someone was coming in late. You did not want to be that person.

And you only heard about it once. Anyone that heard about it twice would be transitioned to the competition. And they'd be at some other firm. And so it was a very tight ship. We called him Captain Harry. He had a sailboat. It fit. But he ran a very tight ship.

I started realizing when I was running a department at another firm, this IPD department, I saw that things were changing. And I needed to run things differently. What helped me the most is I started a class.

I taught adjunct faculty one class one night a week in 2006. It was the first Revit Structure class at an engineering school in the US. I based it on Revit Structure Version Two. I needed a farm league. I could not find modelers to model structure.

And so I had 40 students, 40 Millennials one night a week. And what I realized looking back, it was a 16-week interview with 40 people. And since that time, I've had over 600 Millennials I've interacted with while I was doing this. I've done a graduate class at the University of North Texas.

But looking back, they taught me more than I taught them. I started really seeing the collaborative problem solving. I started seeing that it was not just one typical bell-curve stereotype of all Millennials are in one box. And it really started changing the way I looked at how I structured my department and later led to starting our firm.

And there are some things we're doing in our firm that are catered. I think the majority of our firm are Millennials. We're probably 80% Millennial, as I look at it.

So as I look at this, I want to predict to you that I could tell you what the first construction delay claim case is you've heard of. And I'd submit to you it's the Tower of Babel. Who knows why construction stopped on the Tower of Babel? Communication-- their languages were confused. Construction stopped because their languages were confused.

Now, whether you believe that to be a true story or a fable, I'd submit to you there is truth in that story. And today, virtually, our modeling technology and all is great, but 90% of sociology is what will stop virtual construction. Our languages are confused. We're not communicating.

For our firm, we have been on expert witness on four BIM litigation cases. One of them, the claim amount went to $18 million for the BIM claim. While BIM is at the center of it, I'd submit to you that all of these, what we're going to see growing as BIM litigation cases are really communication cases.

The technology works. It's just I worked with the wrong model. The software works. It's just, you've got to get the right information. You've got to pull the team together.

So I want us to keep this idea of the Tower of Babel and how we stopped construction in there. And as I look at that, this is really-- some of you all may have done track. This is great. They're doing a relay race.

I got it. No, you got it. Where is the BIM execution plan? How are we handing off this model? What's the model good for? I wanted to do all estimating. Oops, I didn't model it for all estimating.

Wait, what happened? How could this happen? I run my leg of the race perfectly. Everyone works with their technology perfectly. It's when they hand it off, this is where we're going to find all the troubles. That's why this is so critical and important, is what I would submit to you.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

WILL IKERD: What?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

WILL IKERD: 90% sociology.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

WILL IKERD: Yes, well, good point, good point-- so you see, it could be, like, where is the origin. How many of you all had a project where it just got messed up because people didn't understand the origins of these modeling. I see some hands going up.

So poor communication, decreased productivity, quality, and innovation, misunderstood attitudes, relationships, less engaged volunteers and co-workers, lack of motivation-- so let's look at a few of these. These are some typical ones. Michael, did you want to speak to this one?

MICHAEL PERDUE: Absolutely. And before I do that, I just want to acknowledge, we are getting some questions in. And a lot of them are talking about recruitment, how do you keep Millennial talent. And that'll be addressed here a little bit later as well.

But talking about the challenges here, one of them is just in the method of communication. You know, Traditionalists and Boomers generally aren't going to question authority. You know, the boss comes in and says, I need you to do this this way. And done, and that's it.

Whereas Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, they've been taught to speak up. So as you think about that, I think that you might be able to see, there could be a little bit of friction here. If you've got upper management, a boss, a principal who is a Traditionalist or a Boomer giving instructions to a Millennial and they have both got these different approaches to when is it appropriate to speak up, that's going to cause some friction in there.

WILL IKERD: That's a good one. I worked at other engineering firms. And they would talk, in the late '90s, 2000s, we have an open-door policy. And some did, but you knew you didn't walk through that door.

Whereas I finally realized I was succeeding when one of my first-year engineers just walks right into my office. And I thought, now I've arrived. Not only do I have an open door, but it's working. And to my own-- I annoy myself with that sometimes.

But while we're talking about this, if we want to take the attitude that this incoming generation is all messed up, and over my dead body are we going to do it differently, then actuarilly speaking, you are correct. You will die. And the next generation is going to do it how they're going to do it.

And so there is no reason to the inevitable. There is going to be some differences here. And while we think about this-- this comes out really well and Sticking Points. If I told you you have to go and do business with another country, and you have to get a team together, and your livelihood depends on it, are you going to lament that when you go to do business with that other country, they dress differently, they don't wear a suit and tie like I was trained to, they communicate differently, they use texting instead of my native communication methods, which might be calling someone or email?

What I want to submit to you is, even though a lot of these demographics we're talking here are focused on US demographics-- and that's what this, a lot of the research done in Sticking Points focuses on-- if someone was born in the same town and worked in the same industry but came at different times, I would submit to you it's as if they'd come from a different country. And we can lament why Traditionalists, Boomers, Xers, and Ys don't have the same culture as our country of generational origin, but it's kind of pointless. Our livelihood and our business depends on us getting these four countries together.

And so I want you to be thinking about that country analogy, and just think, if you want to dig in and say, over my dead body, it'll be that way. And things will change. And the new generation is going to do it the way they're going to do it. You mentioned communication methods.

MICHAEL PERDUE: Yeah, for the sake of time, we might just go over this really quick, because we've already talked about a little bit. But you know, Traditionalists and Boomers, they're going to prefer face-to-face communication, whereas Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, they're going to prefer electronic communication, whether that be email, text messages. So again, this could be a source of friction.

If I'm not used to talking, if I like to send the email, I might say, well, why are we having all these meetings when you could just email me and tell me the same message-- so again, another source of friction here between the two. And we're not saying that one way is the right way and the other ways the wrong way, but we have to acknowledge that there is a difference. And then once we acknowledge that, we can see how are we going to overcome this challenge.

WILL IKERD: And you had mentioned listening skills, developed listening skills.

MICHAEL PERDUE: Right, yeah, and part of that is the listening skills. I know that can cause a lot of Millennials to kind of flinch a little bit and say, well, I don't-- I can listen. And I think, yes, that's true, but part of what we've seen develop is, as text communication has become more common, I can come back to my conversation whenever I want. And if I forget a piece of it, well, I can just scroll back up and see what he said, what she said.

You know, what was that email they sent over? Oh yeah-- and so I really have to work a little bit more at listening when we're talking face to face, and realize this is my chance to get all the information. I have to be playing an active role in this communication we're having.

WILL IKERD: How many of you had speech classes in high school? How many of you had listening classes in high school? What? We don't train. We don't teach it. There is an art form to it. There is a science to it. And this is some of the stuff we've helped-- we've found benefit in our teams by reviewing.

I'm going to go into some of the things we do to retain staff to get to some of these questions. This is a-- someday I'm going to write a book, The Age of Ignorance, the least-read book ever sold. This is important to me for-- this is a whole 'nother presentation. But if you can read but you choose not to, then you're no better than the ignorant illiterate person who can't.

And this concept I have of the Age of Ignorance is that ignorance and the depth of ignorance is proportional to the ease of access of information. I had to fight long and hard in the library to find the books and read all through it. I had to read the entire book to find the subject matter I was being tested on.

There was no search engine. There was no PDF to it. I felt robbed when I got out of graduate school and I saw my first PDF and I hit Control F. I had to read 14-- actually, 24 inches of building codes to sit for my professional engineering licensure exams. And I had to read all the pages to learn them, and highlight them, and put Post-it notes.

And today we have engineers learning on very deep topics very rapidly, and being able to search it. But what I'm finding is, they don't-- if they don't know the keyword to search, they're not in a good place. So this is where it's more important to bring in Gen X and Baby Boomers to collaborate, because there is a lot of power in Millennials with the technology, but it's so easy to get the information that they don't have to sweat to get it into their brain.

So one of the things we have is, in the first 90 days, there are five books everyone on our team has to read. Most of them are 45 minutes or less. I want everyone to reading one book a month in my company.

My philosophy is, we're going to live with this brain we have I for a long time. And the more we feed it, the funner life gets, the more problem solving. Some of these books are history books.

The Art of War-- has anyone read The Art of War? It's very short, right? So Sun Tzu talks about supply lines, and don't wage wars in foreign countries where you can't feed the supply line. When I'm talking to our young project coordinators, some will see a project that's maybe further away from the office. And we got out of town travel. And we've got lodging. Immediately they click in, oh, Sun Tzu, Art of War.

And so there is a lot of rich things in here. So some of the books we have that we found helpful-- and what these do is, it allows us to take a touchy topic, put her on the table, and talk about it in a team lunch. Another thing we strive to do is, about every two weeks, get the team together. And it may not be a team lunch. It might-- we may only have 30 minutes, but we're going to talk about our core values and why we're doing what we're doing.

Another important thing we use on interview, one of our core values is integrity. And we use a definition adapted from Dr. Tom Peyton, integrity theory. And it would be, integrity is the alignment of five things. It is what I believe. It's what I feel. It's what I think. It's what I say. And it's what I do. And this side of heaven, my world view is I'm not going to get perfect on it here, but integrity is getting those five things in alignment as close as I can each day. And it's continuous improvement.

What's interesting in that is the first three are internal. And so even in the interview, we talk about this integrity model, because I want to make it explicit and invite the Millennial I'm interviewing to start having that dialogue. And their beliefs may be, I don't need to wear a suit and tie to do exceptional work. One of our other core values is exceptional work. And so having this model allows us to have that conversation.

The other two-- the last two are external. And I can see those. And I would submit to you a lot of your staff turnover is in the first three. It's a misalignment, because we'll deal with thoughts. It's messy to deal with feelings, and deep down what someone is believing. And that's what takes hard work and trust. And you can't contractually create trust with an employee contract. Trust is fought and won through putting time into a relationship. And that means older generation is going to have to spend time with the others that is not in a forced work. You go to lunch, go to breakfast, do something where you can develop that trust.

How many of you have heard of Simon Sinek Start With Why, here, 18-minute video. The book is good too. I got almost as much out of just watching the free 18-minute video. So that's there. If you really want a deeper dive, read the book. It's a good book.

I'm going to show you other books. And so if your book reading time is limited, watch the video. Share it with your team. How many of you have been around little kids? What do they always ask?

AUDIENCE: Why?

WILL IKERD: Why? And then you hire Millennials. And they say, why? Why do we have this work schedule? Why do we do the job set up this way? Why, why, why?

And then I realized, when I started my career, I was asking the same of Harry, the Boomer who owned my company, the company he was at. Harry, ironically, I hired him three years ago. He and I have now worked together for 25 years.

He is 65? And Michael handles his contracts. And so Michael will handle the invoice on Harry's jobs. Harry works about 20 hours a week.

And my question to Harry when I got out was, why? And some might say that Boomers asked that of Traditionalists. I think we're going to find that a lot of this is just-- there is nothing new under the sun.

And so this is a good-- Simon Sinek's content, there is a really good background. What we have in our core procedures on how we do things, how we enter time, how we set up jobs, we start with a section that talks about why. We want to do quality work. We want to make profit.

That's why we want everyone to set up the job this way. And then we talk about what. And then we show how. Too many of your procedural stuff just starts with how I want you to do it.

Work into your core of your company that you start with why. Why are we doing this? Because what you'll find, if you ask that, you realize there might be something you're procedures that don't make any sense and you need to pitch them.

This is another book, about 45-minute read. Has anyone read this book-- came out in the '80s. Our firm, to retain staff-- we are multidisciplined. So I started first 10 years of my career as a monolithic structural engineer consultant under an architect.

Today we do shop and fab drawings for the entire building-- MEP, enclosures, interiors, structures, sub-grade civil. And we work in all four time zones. In Texas we're a licensed engineering firm, and in Washington. But in other parts of the country, I team with other engineering offices, design side, and then work with GCs construction side.

And part of this is because some of the Millennials we're hiring, they like variety. And what I'm going to tell you is, they will change perspectives and careers five times over their career. And previous generations did not change as much. And so the rate of change is drastically increasing.

So everyone on our team learns Navisworks and learns how to coordinate. And they are cross-trained in multiple disciplines, because to the structural engineer on our team, I tell them that sometimes throughout this year, you're going to be running clash detection on MEP. And it's going to make you a better structural engineer because you're going to know how MEP systems mess you up in your structure. And you're going to know the importance of getting those rooftop locations, impressing the MEP designer on unit loads so you can figure out where curbs need to go and get your miscellaneous steel detailed.

But to the mechanical engineers, I tell them, sometime throughout this year, you're going to be doing coordination on structure. You're going to be doing concrete lift drawings, and understanding where concrete breaks are. And it's going to make you a better mechanical engineer.

You're going to understand why they want the sleeve drawing so early, because they've got a pour concrete. And they want to know where to put the hole. And then want to drill it later.

So change is a common one. Here, Iceberg Is Melting is another good book, fun read. How many have read Good to Great? Some in here-- this is related to business. Research was based on publicly traded companies, long read. We don't have people read this in the first 90 days.

In the interview, I talk to them about the three circles from that book, though. And I apply it to the individual. Our goal when we bring someone in is we tell them, we look forward to working for you. They don't work for me. Leadership works for them.

And our goal that first year is to find out what they truly enjoy doing, what they can be the very best in the world at, and what they can be profitable at. And When i get the sweet spot of those three, they're going to make the firm money. And some people are introverted and do not like public speaking. It's outside their three circles.