The Minority Majority

Back in the late 1990s, I did a lot to talk about the generational aspects of the workforce. I talked about the impending retirement, the Greatest Generation and the older Boomers and the new generation was becoming clear to hit the workforce. Thereafter, interest in the topic faded. Well, what's old is new again. With the "millennial" entering the workforce en masse, and even step into supervisory positions, this issue creates a lot of new interest.

Another point I used to do in these demographic presentations was the increase in minorities in the U.S.. Simply stated, the U.S. was and is becoming less white. Somewhere around 2040, said the estimates, we would be a minority nation. The current minority groups would be a majority. But back in the '90s, 2040 was half a century away and a lot could happen in the intervening period. So people were not interested in how this might affect their business. Are they now? You should be!

The other day I read an AP report that said nearly half the children born in the U.S. each year belong to an ethnic minority. The report continued by saying, "This year could be the turning point when the number of children born to the minority exceed the number of children born to white." America will become a "minority majority" in the middle of this century. When you are numbers person, here is what the Census Bureau reports:

# Children Born / Ethnicity of Mother

2.99 / Hispanic

2.04 / Asian

2.13 / Black

1.87 / W

I'm not a numbers person. I'm a people person, and leadership is about people and relationships, so I consider these to be important statistic.

What is the meaning of all this? Well, it's simple. You must prepare to lead a more diverse workforce, which is likely to think and act differently than you do, because of different backgrounds. How will you build relationships with people with whom you have less and less in common? Although you may have to work harder at it, the keys to success are the same as they always have been. As head are your keys trust and respect. If you show yourself to be trustworthy, and show your people you trust them and respect them (and their culture), you have a chance of being effective. To do otherwise would almost certainly doom you mediocrity from the beginning.

I understand that nostalgia can creep in times like this - longing for the "good old days" when things were different, because American Capitalism ruled the free world. The problem with nostalgia is that you can get caught in it and deny the current reality. Billy Joel wisely sang that "the good old days were not always good and tomorrow is not as bad as it looks."

Today we are a global economy where goods are produced more cheaply abroad, we have strong competitors for the products we produce here. To succeed, you must learn to manage a workforce development. The colors of the quilt of America is changing. By mid-21st century, we will be a minority majority nation.