Consulting as Gen X: Is being the “Lost Generation” a secret weapon?

Don't ask why (or blame my age), but I was pondering yesterday whether there was any value in being a Gen Xer in the consulting business.

Remember who we are?

Probably not. That's our feature as a generation; always forgotten.

We are the generation that got stuck between two worlds. A world that no longer exists, one of profusion and abundance, and a new world starting to appear; a harder world, economically tougher, where social realities became stronger.

Between two worlds

I think that this experience of being almost locked out, but not entirely, gave us a strange vantage point. We saw the end of the old certainties, but we never had the optimism of Millennials, who grew up fully immersed in this new reality. That split taught us to understand both nostalgia for stability and the pragmatism needed to navigate crisis, making us uniquely effective at bridging different realities.

Learning ambiguity, the hard way

We’ve always been “in between”, an odd generation out. We were the first to struggle finding housing, but we could still access it. Eventually. The first to face job insecurity. Unable to find work easily, but without the job market being completely closed. Not yet. And for sure, the first to understand that no, on average, we won't have only one job for our entire life. I'd wager this gave us an ability to operate without clear rules or guarantees, being cautiously pessimistic about everything and taking the upsides when we find them.

The real digital natives?

When I hear the terms 'digital native' applied to Gen Y or Z, I usually cringe. We were the first proper digital natives to some extent. Not completely immersed in the digital world, true, but our digital world was of the 80s, where you had to change operating systems with floppy disks in beige boxes the size of mini-fridges. That was a proper digital upbringing, but one that depended on understanding what was under the hood, making us pragmatic about technology. Understanding digital power, but never worshiping it.

Distance and perspective

I think we're also pretty good at being on the outside, not necessarily as actors but as spectators, inventing for ourselves a posture, sometimes distant, sometimes curious. That detached curiosity certainly plays a role in many professions, from journalism to consulting. And because our entire adult life has been shaped by transitions we didn’t choose, we are less attached to certainty. We know that a truth today might become wrong tomorrow. And it's OK. Over the years, a form of reinvention has been necessary for all of us.

Getting to the point where...

With all that, there's also the notion for me that I haven't seen it all (not by any means), but I've seen quite a lot to "know things." Something I vividly remember from when I was younger, during my PhD, or later as a junior in the corporate world. Seniors who would just know what to do precisely in hectic moments or difficult juncture points without sweating (much), and knowing with certainty they were really knowing what to do, not just pretending. Feeling I'm genuinely there now, is quite interesting...