Author and anthropologist Grant McCracken has a thoughtful perspective on the conventional wisdom about the generational divide: "The other day I found myself thinking that every time I hear Millennials described, 1) the tone is that of a smug outsider, and 2) the speaker is not a Millennial." [1]
As a Gen X executive coach who works with Millennial students at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, I find that Grant's observation is a useful reminder of the dangers of over-generalizing, a view reinforced by a Millennial commenter on Grant's post: "We have such fine control over our own identities that we don't need to resort to big, poorly-defined memes like generational labels." [2] Point well taken. So while acknowledging that I'm discussing a "big, poorly defined meme" here, I want to talk about a concept of Grant's that isn't a generational difference per se but that has implications for Millennials and anyone who works with them.
Last year Grant published Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture, and it's one of the most thought-provoking books I've read on the subjects of individual identity and the process of change. [3] Grant writes from the perspective of a cultural anthropologist who's actively engaged with the business world, while maintaining a critical distance from it.
One of the book's most striking concepts is the "swift self," an increasingly common type of individual in the professional world, and one that I see everywhere in places like Stanford and San Francisco and Silicon Valley (and, to an extent, one I identify with.) I quote Grant at length to illustrate what he means by a "swift self":
Some cultures treat the self as something that can define itself best by removing itself from the world. The swift self offers a different orientation, a self that defines itself by rushing into the world, which is itself relatively inchoate and emergent (and doing some rushing of its own)...
The mobility of the swift self comes partly from our individualism, from a stripping away of the connections, contexts and constraints that surround the traditional and status transformation self. Individuals are now capable of extraordinary mobility, in part because they have been released from certain domestic, social and other constraints. Like Saul Bellow, they refuse or revise the definitions imposed by history and culture, especially those of ethnicity, gender and class. These definitions both complete the self and slow it down. Swift selves throw them off and rush into the world to find new ones.
The mobility of the swift self also comes from its instrumentality. The swift self is driven by purpose. It makes itself a means to an end. This instrumentality stands in opposition to the powerful tradition that says that the individual must cultivate the self for the self, that the most noble creation of a self is the self. The swift self is cultivated only to make it more effective in the world, upon the world... Swift selves suspend internal accomplishments for external ones. They endure difficulty, they suspend satisfaction, they forego cultivation of the self for cultivation of the world...
Swift selves flock well. For all their voracious individualism, they are prepared to enter into associations if these will aid them in the world. Indeed, swift selves delight in strapping on the instrumentalities and powers that corporations put at their disposal. Institutional augmentation is generally regarded as a good thing. But the swift individuals are unsentimental about their ties to the corporation. They do not expect to give or receive thoroughgoing loyalty. The corporation uses them; they use the corporation. Something is accomplished beyond the trade of salary for services. Both selves and corporations get swifter.
Swift selves, especially the business versions, are prepared to be treated as modular... They are happy to fulfill a fixed set of responsibilities, to adapt themselves to the demands of a position. And they are not surprised or affronted when the corporation decided to put someone else in their place. They do not believe that their value comes from their uniqueness as individuals or the distinctness of the self...
The swift self comes, in part, from the marketplace, from an Adam Smithian understanding of human behavior as gain-seeking and the rise of capitalism that so inspires and rewards this particular performance of the self... [The swift self] is responsive to the demands of competition, to the inducements of opportunity. Indeed, marketplaces and swift selves are mirrors of one another. Both define themselves through their responsiveness. Both are not very particular about form and are pleased to go with what works. Swift selves and marketplaces flourish together...
But it would be wrong to associate the swift self only with Smith's economic man. The mobility of the swift self comes, finally, from the willingness to give the self over to what happens next. This is the fundamental orientation at work. Certainly, many swift selves prefer markets, but not all of them do. Swiftness does not need a free market. It merely needs indeterminacy...
Inhabiting a swift self is thrilling, but difficult. Popular culture is cluttered with survival strategies. The most radical is simple repudiation. Hollywood likes this theme particularly, and frequently declares the swift self bad and the slow self good. Swift selves, it insists, are inauthentic, ungrounded and opportunistic. Another survival strategy is to distinguish between the demands of Christ and Caesar: swift selves for the marketplace, something else for the home, Internet, family, lifestyle, church and community... A third strategy is to do selves in sequence. We caught a glimpse of this as Generations X and Y took to the New Economy, some of them choosing start-up over selfhood. It was common to hear members of the dot.com world say that they would figure out who they were when they had made their fortune. In the meantime, swift selves...
Many people with swift selves believe that their suspension of the self is temporary, that the swift self is a means to an end. Eventually, they believe, the enterprise will pay off, the career will mature, rewards will come. But sometimes, perhaps often, this is not the full truth of the matter. Many swift individuals fear stasis. They are happiest when in motion. They don't want ever to "arrive." They prefer to be a means; they fear becoming an end. The pleasure of this self is precisely its swiftness and momentum, the bracing sense of power and safety that comes from being on the move...
Swift selves are so dedicated to action and an exterior world that they are not very contemplative or self-aware. This can mean, for instance, that they do not see emotional difficulty coming until it is upon them, and they are disinclined to study their own complexity. The trope here is movement, and swift selves solve many problems by just "getting on with it." This works well enough for some purposes. But when it does not work, there can be no outcome but crisis...
And this is why swift selves are brought low by illness, the departure of a spouse who is tired of waiting, a sudden collapse of an enterprise or change in the economy, or, not infrequently, alcohol or drugs that they've been using as braking devices. Now they must figure out what their life could be beside forward motion...
There is something tragic, in the classical definition of tragedy, about the swift self. Its contradictions mean that, left to their own devices, things will end badly... The swift self knows it can't keep moving indefinitely. It is neglecting its needs and exhausting its resources. But it also knows that it cannot stop without crashing... At worst, the swift self suspects there is no stopping, only failing. Swift selves rarely end with grace. [4]
Even if we agree that Grant's concept of a swift self is a "big, poorly-defined meme," I still find it a compelling picture of many of the high-achieving Millennials I work with at Stanford, and, I see aspects of myself and some of my forty-something contemporaries in it as well, suggesting that it's something much more more complex than a mere "generational label."
So what are the implications of "swift selfhood"? How are we to respond to this dynamic in ourselves and in those around us? The first issue that comes to mind for me is: When should we embrace the swiftness, and when should we resist it? When should we keep our foot on the accelerator, and when should we hit the brakes?
Some swift selves don't even realize that they have brakes, or that slowing down and reflecting can be useful--and even necessary--practices. I worked with a twenty-something woman a few years ago--a prototypical swift self--who felt anxious whenever she saw unscheduled time on her calendar. It wasn't simply that she felt obligated to be as productive as possible, although that was one of her values. She also felt that unstructured time was an indulgence, something that she couldn't afford and didn't need. She had too many things to do and was determined to push through them without being deterred, without wasting thought or energy on the frustration and other feelings that sometimes accompanied her struggles.
This strategy served her well on the upward path that led her to Stanford, but when life suddenly became tougher and more complex than she expected it to be, she lacked the excess capacity--in her calendar and in her self--that she needed to handle these new challenges. And this wasn't a matter of finding more time in the day to work, to execute. What she needed was to give herself permission to to stop working and to take some time to just be with herself, to reflect on her responses to these challenges, to understand her feelings and to decide how to move forward. She needed to step on the brakes, and that's what I tried to do in my work with her.
It's also noteworthy to me that in contrast to Hollywood's stereotyped view of swift selves cited by Grant above--one that's shared by many Gen Xers and Boomers [i.e. the people who run Hollywood], this particular young woman also had a strong social conscience, a commitment to public service, and a deep religious faith.
Ultimately, I appreciate Grant's overall analysis of the swift self, but I don't necessarily share his gloomy conclusions: "Left to their own devices, things will end badly." This may be a function of the different roles we've played when interacting with the swift selves among our students. Grant has taught at Harvard Business School, and I suspect that the role differentiation between a professor or lecturer and a student is still sufficient, even in our ever-flatter organizations, to make open communication difficult. In contrast, I act primarily as an executive coach, and my role is fundamentally that of a challenging and supportive adviser, which allows me to communicate with them very openly and candidly on deeply personal subjects.
So I disagree with Grant's assertion that swift selves are "not very contemplative or self aware." They may not make much time or space in their lives for contemplation, and they may not naturally understand the value of self-awareness, but I work with people who fit this description every day, and I'm constantly impressed by their capacity for growth and personal development. And they don't have to relinquish or repudiate their swiftness to undergo this transformation--they simply need to be encouraged (and occasionally compelled) to slow down, to reflect, to breathe.
It's possible to read Grant's analysis as a warning, as an expression of fear or disdain for a new world full of swift selves (and, equally, as an expression of nostalgia for a fading, slower world), but I don't see it that way. The synergy among swift selves, the market for human capital, and the contemporary corporation certainly has a dark underside, and swift selves would do well to understand the risks of economic swiftness as well as its benefits. But as Grant notes, "[I]t would be wrong to associate the swift self only with Smith's economic man. The mobility of the swift self comes, finally, from the willingness to give the self over to what happens next. This is the fundamental orientation at work. Certainly, many swift selves prefer markets, but not all of them do. Swiftness does not need a free market. It merely needs indeterminacy..." I find something quite hopeful and encouraging in that perspective. There's a healthy vibrancy in the swift self's ability to embrace change, to take what comes, to move fluidly in the world. Swift selves need to learn when to slow down, but all of us can benefit from occasional lessons in speeding up as well.
Footnotes
[1,2] Millennials: who gets to define and design this generation? (Grant McCracken, 2008)
[3] Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture (Grant McCracken, 2008)
[4] Ibid, pages 123-128.
