Just before Labor Day 1993, Bruce Tulgan began conducting in-depth interviews with employees about work attitudes. For ten years now, Bruce and his company, RainmakerThinking, have continued that research: We have interviewed more than 10,000 workers and developed hundreds of individual case studies. We have collected detailed management practices questionnaires from senior executives from 700 different companies (over six years 1997-2003). We have led more than 1,000 interactive seminars, logging tens of thousands of hours with hundreds of thousands of managers. As well, we conduct ongoing surveys and focus groups with thousands of respondents every year.

Our research has been the subject of fifteen different books and numerous articles. Most of you know of our work on the different generations in the workplace. We've found that looking through the lens of different generations has helped us crystallize the fundamental changes we're observing.

During the ten years since we began our research---1993 to 2003---there has been a revolution in the workplace: Globalization and technology---those great drivers of history---have placed all working people inside an extremely uncertain, rapidly changing, highly inter-connected, fiercely competitive, worldwide marketplace. Institutions are in a state of constant flux, information is everywhere all the time, and the pace of everything continues to accelerate. The potential workday is now 24 hours. The potential workplace is anywhere. All the traditional boundaries of the workplace are now in question. Meanwhile, constant downsizing, restructuring, and reengineering has simply become the norm. Job security has long ago been given up for dead.

Most individual employees feel they have no choice but to think and behave like free agents. They must take care of themselves and their families. The average employee struggles to balance the desire for long-term security with short-term concerns about opportunities, work-conditions, credit, and rewards. The old-fashioned norms and values of the workplace---stability, hierarchy, dues-paying, climbing-the-ladder, seniority, job-security---have become obsolete, replaced by flexibility, performance, productivity, quality, and short-term rewards.