If you want to understand the extraordinary combined power of the mid-life GenXers and the young adult Millennials of our nation, look to the response effort to the American Airlines, DCA-Wichita crash.
Look to the coordination, the capacity and the can-do of the diverse group of local, state and federal responders. Look to the thoughtfulness and the thoroughness with which each team does what it does, and how they both let each group have its own expertise and how they work together. Look to the leadership, the clarity of direction, the technology at hand and the training practices held to get these emergency-response teams as ready as they are.
In 2025, GenXers, who are currently in their mid-40s to early 60s, are in the phase of life and primary age range of those who are in power and in charge of a nation’s institutions, organizations, businesses, schools and the many functions and needs of society.
When GenXers were in their early 20s to early 40s, (during the mid-’80s to mid-oughts), they came to military and para-military organizations as young warriors and “An Army of One.” They were the “do what needs to be done,” Rambo-y, take-on-suicide missions type of soldier. Time passes. They are now solidly the nation’s midlife population and its primary generals, leaders, business owners and those directing organizations of all sizes.
Millennials, now in their early 20s to early 40s, are in their peers’ age-range and role of vitality and service. That’s what most people’s earlier careers (and raising kids) are all about: vitality and service.
The combination of Xers and Millennials is amazing.
Midlife GenXers now lead the charge — and in earlier decades put in much of the legwork and service — to create a world of vastly more capacity, communication and coordination than was even conceivable in their younger years.
Now, we witness the results of the GenX mindset. These first-responder teams, these various agencies and departments, these various people from various city, state and federal agencies … all of them. What is possible now — this level of technology, this level of coordination, this level of capacity — is not simply a matter of years going by and things getting better over time … because, well, that would have happened anyway.
No, no, no. These changes — this societal capacity — is very, very, very much influenced by the worldview created during GenXers’ childhood experience: a perspective that sees the world as very broken and in which none of the adults around seem to be in 1) noticing, 2) in charge, or 3) doing anything about it and 4) even worried about doing anything about All The Brokenness.
See, every generation, when it’s in midlife — as Xers certainly and solidly now are — does its darnedest to correct the real or perceived excesses and deficiencies of its collective childhood.
Such actions require no vote.
Such responses require no committee.
Such commitment requires no acknowledgement of, nor interest in, your generation.
Yet, you — and everyone else who was a child in the same nation and in same era as you were when a child — has a natural need to correct what was “wrong” from their child’s eyes worldview.
You — and your peers — naturally, intuitively, longingly strive to Make The World Better.
So, I invite you to ask yourself (especially those of you 44 or older), when you think about —
The capable response effort to the American Airlines plane crash at DCA …
Or the lightning-speed correction of the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse less than a year ago …
Or the overall and general VAST INCREASE IN CAPACITY of EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF SOCIETY– every single organization, government department and business or organization — to respond to your needs and wants is NOTHING SHORT OF AMAZING.
This is GenX midlife leadership as it expresses: pragmatic, gritty, resolute, hands-on, courageous, no-nonsense and utterly concerned with the safety of the children, and by localized effect, the citizenry.
Millennials in young adulthood bring cohesiveness, friendliness, a desire to build a better and brighter world. They lean toward larger organizations and careers with hierarchy, safety and support. They’re more aligned with rules, doing what authority (doing what leaders tell you to do), structure and collaboration.
Add those factors up. X + Millennial. There’s a picture there.
I invite you to look at the nation now — and at the emergency-response to this plane crash, if nothing else — with the lens of seeing how it is that what you now call normal is nothing short of miraculous in how transformed and more capable EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS, ORGANIZATION and GOVERNMENT agency is than it ever was, or ever could have been even just 20 years ago.
Just as the nation’s societal focus was different when it was midlife Boomers directing most of the organizations with young adult GenXers for support, the nation’s focus will be change, once again, when midlife Millennials insert their influence more powerfully on institutions and have the Not-Yet-Named-or-Identified generation (born in 2006, plus about 22 years) as the juniors in the workforce to support their goals as leaders.
But we’re not there yet, nor is it time, for we still have THE BIG CRISIS to arrive (those in the know say around 2028) and be responded to. And, legit, you want hardscrabble GenXers at the helm when things are really, really rough.