Why Young People Can Be Great Team Members

Anyone else get email from Bill Gates?  If not, you can sign up here.  Depending on how your day is going, it can either be satisfying or frustrating to see an email from Bill Gates in your inbox every once in a while.

This week's email from Mr Gates had the usual fluff, but also this nice little nugget pointing out the benefit of younger team members in driving team communications.

The communications expectations that young people-and anybody else who has adopted the latest digital communications tools-bring to the workplace are already changing how we do business. To them, the desk phone is an anachronism that lacks the flexibility and range of capabilities that their mobile device can provide. A generation that grew up on text messaging is driving the rapid adoption of instant messaging as a standard business communications tool. Accustomed to forming ad hoc virtual communities, they want tools that facilitate the creation of virtual workgroups. Used to collecting and storing information online, they look for team Web sites, Wikis, and other digital ways to create and share information.