Latest / Humanity Working / Bonus Episode: Gen Z and AI: The Generation That Embraces Technology but Fears Being Replaced, Featuring Anjan Kasi Sampath

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Bonus Episode: Gen Z and AI: The Generation That Embraces Technology but Fears Being Replaced, Featuring Anjan Kasi Sampath · Humanity Working

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Hi everybody, today I want to talk about something that has been of huge interest for me for I think several years.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Back when I was running our company Billion Mines, part of the work that we did there was to do some work with early-in-career professionals, as we call them.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: These were typically Gen Z folks who were just entering the workforce and began to see a pattern around then that these Gen Z employees, many of whom obviously had gone through their own unique experience associated with COVID, were also having a unique viewpoint on AI.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is something we've discussed a little bit in previous episodes of Humanity Working, but I really wanted to get an expert in to talk with us today about it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we've got today.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So love to introduce Anjan Cassie Sampath to the podcast today.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, Anjan.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, boss.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're Anjan's got an amazing background.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: We'll throw all of the details about Anjan's background in the show notes.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: But I think one of the things that's most interesting to me is that he's focusing pretty much exclusively in terms of his coaching systems on Gen Z.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it has deep real insight into this generation and of course the generation that are coming into the workforce as well.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so we'll be talking about these exact issues with Anjan today.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: We'll put a bunch of links into the various talks that he's given on this stuff as well.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd urge you to go look at all that stuff.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's very compelling.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: But for today, let's get started on something really simple, Anjam, which is key area of interest for you.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Gen Z is the future, and like every other generation that sparks interest into the previous generation, Gen Z is very different.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first generation that has set a new template for other generations to follow after them.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And because of the uniqueness in the way they think, they expect, and they act, it created interest for me.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh mainly because I see my kids' future and the future workforce, how they're going to be.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I took keen interest in understanding these evolving generations, and that's what makes me passionate about them.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very interesting starting point.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, for folks that are watching the podcast, they'll see that Anjon is not of this generation himself.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess my question would be that your starting point is an interesting starting point.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: When we did our work with Gen Z employees, we found a pretty significant disconnect between the way they thought about work, the way that they approached work, and the people that were managing them.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: And there were a few things that had always been historically true, right?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've always had disconnect with the generations that came before us, but we saw different types of disconnect that were happening between the Gen Z folks and the people that were managing them.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'd love to understand what you've seen, right?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: What have you seen in terms of the nature of the disconnect and how much of that is just what we've been doing for basically centuries, actually, which is the version of kids today, right?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: A particular generation despairing about the future generation not being like them.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: You see that, but I think you see some different stuff as well.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious as to what your take is on that.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, very great question, and this is something that needs to be known to everybody at the workplace, especially the managers, the supervisors.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: First thing is Gen Z will never like authority.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, like in the previous generations, you would come and say, Oh, I'm the vice president, I'm the CEO, I'm the president.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody would think, Oh wow, it's nice to connect with a vice president, with the CEO.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But this generation, like, so what?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's because not that they don't like authority, but for them, authority means something else.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Authority means your ability to connect with them, being more human and being, you know, presenting yourself as somebody who also goes through the regular human nature, which is making mistakes, evolving, and leading.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if the more you do that kind of personality, that's the authority they actually call as authority itself.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a fundamental difference which the other generations never were vocal about.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a generation that's very vocal about that.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Second, this generation also does not like hierarchy in the same sense.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, just because you know we have three managers and then somebody above that, uh, you know, so so what?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of thing that's great.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the hierarchy exists, but I'm not going to be buying into the hierarchy and saying, okay, uh, this is how the hierarchy is set up, and therefore I'm gonna make sure I'm very loyal to each of these levels.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the way they think, so that's another difference.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: The third difference that I notice is the way they expect to be motivated and uh to be in check to ensure they are growing in their career.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's very different, which is one of the main friction points that happens between uh their supervisors or managers and the Gen Z itself.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Can I add a fourth into the mix?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious as to your take on this.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that I've observed is one of the really interesting aspects about this generation versus the prior generation is that there is very little shared frame of reference.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the test that I use for this is I've got a strange name for it.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: I call it the Madonna test, and so I'll explain what I mean by that.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: So when I was a kid, I was you know, when I was like 13, 14 years old, right, I was a huge, huge Madonna fan.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: And Madonna was a very controversial figure at that time.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: And my parents weren't terribly happy that I was a Madonna fan.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that was a source of tension, right?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was a source of tension in terms of like this is my generation's Elvis, if you like, and you don't like that, and that's normal, right?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, each generation has their cultural touchstones that they touch upon, which is different from the parents' generation before.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Go back to my mum's generation, big Elvis fan.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Parents didn't like that she was a big Elvis fan.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Tension, exactly the same tension that we're talking about.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Today, if you have a kid who is 15 years old, there's a very strong chance that the cultural touchstones that are important to your child are people that you don't even have an opinion on because you've got no clue who they are.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know who they are, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: The one thing that united me and my mum was that my mum knew who Elvis was, and her mother knew who Elvis was too.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: They just had a very different perspective on the same person, right?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I knew who Madonna was, my mum knew who Madonna was, and we had a very different perspective on that person.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now it could be some YouTuber that is immensely powerful in their world, but their world is entirely different to the higher generation's world.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we found when that this sort of zeitgeist phenomenon, right, translated into the workforce.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: We would hear a lot from managers who went beyond the, you know, I have this form of disagreement with my employee and all stuff like that, to I literally have no common frame of reference with them at all.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's no common ground.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: I will, if I had a conversation with them about what they did at the weekend, I wouldn't understand the response, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't even know what they were doing, right?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: So do you think there is something to that, this sort of like we're literally living now because of technology and because of the way in which everything is becoming so segmented that we are literally existing, spending a lot of our time existing in an entirely different world to the younger generation, and that makes connection sort of connection that you're talking about, it makes connection more difficult.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think there's anything to that?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it does play a role.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about this.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: No generation before this was exposed to 24 by 7 flooding of information, judgments, identity, as I call identity formation things.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like every day, every second, when they're inundated with Instagrams, TikToks, and YouTube's and whatnot from people you know making money, from creating influence, from being a fashion model and whatnot, it never gives them a chance to take a break and think about themselves.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So because they're constantly surrounded by this kind of information, they go at a faster pace before any other generation can catch up.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why most of the times when they are conversing, it's tough for the other generations to really understand what they are talking about.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Who are these people that you know they're making uh oh, they love this or they love that event or let love that person.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: You just you just can't, you know, only digest or even understand what they're trying to say because that's the pace at which they're ready to consume without breaks.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we in the previous generation, even though we are flooded, we know where to put our controls and saying, No, I don't want to take this much of information.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give a break, I'm gonna pause, I'm not gonna just you know inundate myself with that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: That creates that thing where one is going extremely fast, and for you to catch up is gonna be challenging.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think a really interesting aspect of this is that that's already coming through as we're talking about this, is that your description of them comes from a position of I would suggest respect and admiration and you know, and things like that.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a very interesting thing in its own right.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I will tell you that when I've worked with people that are managing Gen Z and Gen Alpha people, you got two camps, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: And there is the camp that is similar to yours that is like, wow, they can do things I can't, and then there's another camp, and I'm not going to speculate on how large the size is of each of these camps, but there's another camp of look, they won't listen, they can't talk, they can't be useful.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're, you know, and I'll just say it out front because I've heard it many times, right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're screwed.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: This generation is utterly useless, and they blame it on a whole bunch of different things.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them will blame it on parents, some of them will blame it on COVID, some of them will blame it on a bunch of other things.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: But there's definitely this sort of bifurcation of caps.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: But I mentioned COVID there briefly.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: COVID was a massive part of this generation's overall experience.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: It will remain a massive part for a long period of time.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: As was pointed out to me recently, if you think about it, if you look at the generation that is coming into the workforce every year, every single one of those people had a slightly different experience of COVID because, you know, was it happening when they were learning to talk?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Was it happening when they were doing their exams in high school?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Was it happening during college, right?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: These are such formative years that when this shock happened, it's gonna have different effects on different people.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And if you speak to educationalists, that's what they talk about.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: They go, well, it's wrong to think about this as like a monolithic event that had the same impact on all these people.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Every year it has a subtle different impact on them.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: But all that said, I just said we can't generalize now.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna ask you to generalize.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: When you think about this generation, I'm presuming that COVID is a factor in terms of understanding the experience of this generation, just as the financial crisis was, just as any as other sort of events have an impact on generations as they come into the workforce, right?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely true.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you two things here.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting you bring about COVID, and it's a major factor.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the people who have entered the workforce and during the COVID time and everything is not even hybrid, it's completely remote and working at home and all that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: They did not really get an experience of normal interaction at the workplace.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: How do you go and interact?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do you go and talk to your manager?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: How do you interact with your peer?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have that interaction, so the lack of that experience, just the feeling of how a workplace would be, contributes a lot in the way they behave.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: They may sometimes go extremely silent, they may not even speak up, and sometimes they might be very vocal about what they like or don't like.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's because it's not an attitude problem, it's the lack of that behavioral experience they've had.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: If if they had an experience, this is how an office workplace looks like, this is how people interact early on, then that would have helped a quite a bit for them.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, stats show this that most of the people who entered the workforce really had their first chance of you know working on their first job during that COVID time.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that had definitely an influence.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: A, because they did not have a chance to socialize with their own friends, forget any office peers, and B, they did not have a chance to connect with their office peers itself, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So now they don't know many normal things that you would any other generation would expect.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: You would be like, How come these people don't get this?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that creates this, you know, these are basic things.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: How come they don't know that?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the perception that goes into managers' minds.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's more of a behavioral uh, you know, their lack of that experience more than the attitude.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: Digging deeper on that just a little bit, do you have an opinion as to whether it's important to have in person in the office experiences for the generation coming in?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think there is a strong argument for return to office specifically when it comes to Gen Z or Gen Alpha?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the way I'll put it return to office stuff where you are given a certain amount of flexibility is what I vouch for.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not completely in-person or completely remote.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere there's a mix.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason why you want to have in-person you know communication and in-person talks is because for this reason, especially for the new generation, they need to normalize their way of you know communicating, collaborating with their peers, with their mentors, with their seniors.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: That how much can you do over a Zoom call or virtually, right?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Only when you talk in person, you understand the emotions you see in their eyes what they're talking, what their expressions are.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are they frustrated?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are they disappointed?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those things when you be in person, you feel a lot.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And for those aspects, definitely in person should be definitely encouraged for the new generation.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think this is a challenge.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the reasons I think it's a challenge is because the workplace itself has become much more distributed, and we're working, you know, we might be in the same office as somebody else, but working with people that are several thousand miles away all of the time.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: I had an extraordinary experience, I want to say maybe a year ago, something along those lines.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: I was doing some consulting in a workplace, and as part of that, did some ethnographic research.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: I ended up speaking to a couple of people in an office, and they were in office every day, and I asked them how well they knew their colleagues.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And these people would point at the one or two people that surrounded them that they knew, and then typically would say, I don't know anybody else.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say, Well, is that because it shifts and moves all the time?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, I just like they're doing their thing, I'm doing my thing, I never have cause to speak to them.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we've become functionally and geographically distributed in such a way that learning biosmosis from your colleagues, the grizzled veteran over there who says, Kid, I wouldn't do it that way if I were you, you know, through the teams that kind of like swarm around things in person and learn about each other as they do it, a lot of that is going away just as work itself is transitioning.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: So in a world where learning by osmosis is kind of degraded, what other alternatives are there to make sure that we're getting the most potential out of these Gen Z and Gen Alpha employees?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: You raised a you know fabulous point.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, geography, people being in different locations of the world, it's not possible to have those in-person interactions.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: One thing we can definitely do is have more frequent conversations with Gen Z.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: For example, any other generation before them would be probably used to, like most companies have, they have like two years, two uh check-in in a year, right?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just checking okay, mid-year, how did you do what goals did you accomplish and end of the year review and all that?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: But this generation is different, they require frequent feedbacks because, like I said, this is a generation that thrives on 24 by 7 information and judgments.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if they are not getting that feedback frequently, whether they are on the right track or whether they need to course-correct themselves, it's gonna throw them completely off, and they will probably be like, you know, I don't know if I'm doing things correctly, I don't get feedback, and I might just do the way I am doing, and I don't see a growth pattern.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that way, you know, you lose their engagement.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if in-person cannot be there, at least having this frequent conversation maybe once in two weeks, maybe once a month, depending on how it works.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh convenience, right?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: You have these conversations, so you know, you know the pulse of that of that person, whether that person is still motivated, is the work style you know keeping that person interested, and then you will know as a manager, okay, how do I now, you know, take the direction to keep this person engaged?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: So let's shift to AI more specifically.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: There was something that you spoke about that kind of stuck with me, which was really centered around I would call it a contradiction in a way, right?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: This generation is the most fluent generation in technology that there has ever been, including fluency in things like algorithms, for example, which, you know, for even folks that have been in tech have not fully adjusted the way that they approach their life according to the direction of the algorithm, as it were.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is a generation well, if you fast forward to Gen Alpha, right, this will be a generation that has not known a life without AI, without generative AI, which is kind of extraordinary to think about.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: So they're living and breathing a new technology.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: The most fascinating thing about it is that in the past, our general rubric would have been the new generation sees the new technology and gets it in ways that the prior people did not, and that causes them to be able to thrive.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my first job out of college was to teach old people.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: I say old people, it was old people in my life, but you know, like people in their 50s, 40s teach them how to use computers because I'd grown up programming and using computers and you know, my my entire life, it came completely natural to me.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: It did not come naturally to them.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was helping them become fluent in the technology.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's the pattern, right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: The pattern is young people embrace the technology and they help older people who do not embrace the technology.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: This pattern, which I first saw probably two or three years ago when doing the work with new generation employees, this generation is one of the most skeptical generations around a technology that certainly I've ever seen, right?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: They're a generation that deeply understands what AI is, but are very skeptical about the use of it across a whole series of different parameters.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that it feels like a contradiction.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you think of that contradiction?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then we'll get into details about what you do about it.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is a really what do you say?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: The talk of the town right now.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's really a hot topic.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And here's my take on this AI.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: What has happened is let's go back to the example you were giving previous generation.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Every technological revolution we have had, it at least took months to maybe two years for it to adopt, absorb and then apply.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: People had time.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, let me adopt this a new technology, whether it's a tab, a phone, or a computer.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: They had time to absorb, understand the nuances, apply, and then show their expertise and have a grasp on that.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: But AI, the pace at which it's evolved over the past six to eight months itself, forget last year, it's unimaginable, right?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: You and I know that by the time you even think, let me get a handle on uh point A, point B, C, D have already come out.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you really have no way to catching up to speed to reach point D.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So now this has created a unique situation for this generation because that loves technology and always are in the realm of understanding technology.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: For them, also, it is getting overwhelmed.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, I understand today you could do this with AI, tomorrow, suddenly you could do three times more than you do with AI.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: For them, more than a passion to learn something, the market is sending different signals to them.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: The market is like saying, I don't even need you.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because the basic things that college degrees give you, and I'm not generalizing all college degrees, but let's say a majority of them.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: The way the college degrees everything focus on execution, output, and proof.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is how students are molded, that's how the academics teaches you.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: But now everything that you've learned in producing output, AI is able to do it.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a contradiction for them.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: On one side, academics has prepared them to show some output, and AI is ready to do that output, and the companies are not willing to give them the opportunities, the roles, because they feel, well, everything this new entry guy, new grad guy is able to do it, AI is able to do it as well.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you're cutting down the opportunities for this new generation.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: So now that creates a kind of hatred for them, even though they use AI, they love AI, they find the answers, but it's like, okay, what else can I do if none of the jobs, none of the industry requirements ever want me doing this basic stuff?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the contradiction they're actually battling every second.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I suppose, in a sense, they've also sort of seen this movie before, in the sense of social media.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: So let me explain what I mean by that and then get your take on it.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: So when social media launched, you can determine exactly when that happened according to what your favourite one was.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: But let's take the starting point of, let's say, around MySpace launch, or even early days of Facebook or something like that, right?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: There was a promoise associated with this thing, and it was centered around the idea of like deep friendship ties and means of keeping up with, you know, people that it would be almost impossible to keep up with otherwise, right?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was about making it to a certain extent, like helping us be better friends to other people, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that promise has turned into something that has can have enormous positive impacts on people's lives in certain ways and allows us to be able to find people that we would never find before.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Social media is connected to the fact that you're on this podcast today, right?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it's given us the ability to connect and interconnect with others in ways that we would never have done before, and that's great.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, it's come with a whole bunch of challenges.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'd argue that this generation has witnessed the tarnishing, as it were, of a technology that has pretty much always been a part of their life, but it's gradually become tarnished.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so as a result, that's their most recent example of all immersive technology, and the most recent example of all immersive technology is not all positive.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I would suggest that we'll get into the generational aspect of this and the timelines associated with this in a second, but I would suggest that in a sense they're viewing AI in a more rounded and realistic way than some of the older generations who are accustomed to the idea now of like, oh, new technology, cool, I can use it to save time, or new technology, cool, I can use it to send, you know, cool memes to my grandkids, or whatever it would happen to be.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that part of why they're not all positive in how they use AI is because they have more nuance than the people that are older than them.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give my take on this.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the folks have to realize this.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Humans doing machine-like work is gone.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Humans doing human-like work is back.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean by that areas where human judgment, powered by intuitions, emotion, creativity, this is what is creating a demand.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: They realize, okay, whatever jobs that they were looking for in the market, they're not the typical jobs anymore.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Which means they have to level up their understanding.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, you know, they understand those nuances, but how do they make sure they leverage it to their advantage?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: So now, in that sense, they are slowly beginning to understand that the more they are able to understand how they can apply their own human skills, they have an advantage, unlike the previous generation.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if in the previous generation we would be like, okay, we are so much used to you know creating documentation, producing a solution and everything.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: For us, it's an astonishment that AI is able to do everything so quick, right?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: For them, it is not an astonishment, it's a normal thing.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like even in their college projects, when they're given a task, they are not going to spend their time researching.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: They usually find the trends, the data, the stats, and they're immediately off onto their doing their project.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's already part of the norm that they're following.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now they are trying to, they're forced to understand now what else should I do learn and know and apply from this AI that can make me a differentiator anywhere I go.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Really interesting.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: There's also, I guess, a projection forward, which is an interesting thing as well.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: If we again sort of go back to, I don't know, the 1950s, for example.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: If you grew up in the 1950s and you entered into a particular job, I guess your expectation would have been, dunno, wasn't there, but I guess your expectation in the 1950s would be that the job that you were doing when you left school, you'd be doing like a variant of that job when you retired.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you'd be projecting forward 40 years, and maybe you got promoted a couple of times, right?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: If you were an office worker, maybe your office went up a few levels in terms physically in the building and you got closer to the big guy, but ultimately you join the company, you'd stay with the company, you'd climb the ladder if you were so inclined, and that would be your life, right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, as we got into let's say the 80s and 90s, there was less of that expectation, right?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: But you build a set of skills, and then you would continue to leverage and grow those skills over time.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Now, things have worked out differently than we expected, but generally college would give you some skills, maybe you'd have some vocational skills that you would get on top of that, but then you'd use that set of muscles and then continue to do that and work yourself all the way through to a point where you were retiring.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it was multiple companies, but there was a path.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Today, if you're 55 or something like that, you've got to project forward ten years and you want to retire at 65, and say, okay, do I still have a career roughly along the lines of what I have today in 10 years?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: If you're 20 and you're coming into the workforce today, it's probably impossible to project forward and visualize anything that makes any sense, right?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and so you could have been wrong about it in the 90s, but at least you had a yeah, I think I think my life will work out this way.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: For people that are entering the workforce today, I mean, if they think they know what they're gonna be doing in their 50s, then they're kind of kidding themselves, right?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, because there's pattern disruption happening every second.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, every day it's a new news, a new change, and so they cannot really keep up with the patterns they might have in their own mind what they'll be doing 10 years down the lane.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you what's happening is there's a new study that I found where Gen Zers, where they were focusing a lot on the jobs, right?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just the traditional corporate workforce and everything, they're drifting away from that.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because now they're able to have information at their fingertips about starting a new business, starting a new entrepreneurial adventure.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that information is giving the room and the scope and everything to start experimenting, which means they're now trying to diversify their thinking and saying, okay, let me not just, you know, if I'm not getting an opportunity here, let me try three other things.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't have to now rely on talking to 100 people when all of that information I get it in seconds.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let me experiment, let me try where I fall, where I falter.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that is creating that situation for them.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, because I can't predict, let me start experimenting to see what I'm comfortable in.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I think this raises and Jen is something that I try to think about quite a bit, which is how can we be of service to this generation?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of tough, right?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if mentoring people in the next generation is dependent upon wisdom accumulated from lived experience, then how do you deliver that wisdom when your lived experience is so different to what young people are going through today and will be going through in two years' time or three years' time?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the part I'll say Irrespective of how many advancements we see in technology and our lived experiences, one thing that is common at the center of everything is human experience.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: The way we feel our emotions, the way we respond to our emotions, the way we respond to our setbacks and failures still is the one that you can best share with your next generation.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because as a human, nothing is going to alter that path for them.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: They are going to experience failures, they are going to experience frustrations, people reject them, they'll be criticized everywhere, they won't be liked everywhere.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: So shared experiences that are connected to how you become a stronger individual, this is something AI cannot replace, at least in everything we know right now.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is where any generation can pass on to the next one.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a there's nothing like you know, Gen Z versus Gen Y or Gen X versus Gen Z.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Any generation with all the rich experiences centered around this is the best thing they can give to the other generation.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because what makes them undergo these emotions will change.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: It might happen very differently, but it is gonna happen.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's kind of profound.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I guess there's always been an issue where a younger generation might look at an older generation and think, what have you got to teach me?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: I suppose, in a sense, that could be exacerbated here, right?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Go all the way back to the point that I was making about like there's no shared frame of reference, right?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's no two opinions on the same thing.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: You're not even looking at the same thing, and often there's not real understanding of the world in which these different parties live.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: We've always had a challenge as an older generation to sort of like in quotes get through to the young get through to the younger generation, right?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: Have them be willing to open the door for us so that we can help them, right?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: How would you, if you were not if you were mentoring a Gen Z or a Gen Alpha person, but if you were mentoring a person that could be a parent, it could be a manager, it could be an educator, if you were mentoring somebody in the older generation as to how to get the younger generation to open the door for them and then how to actually be valuable for them once that door is open, what would be your guidance as to how to help the younger generation open the door for the wisdom that you can impart?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a manager, supervisor, here's the ground rule: the depth of experience you have, be happy about it, be proud of that.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your depth of experience that you have has to match somewhere with the speed of innovation of the new generation.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: For that, you have to lean into understanding what is their interest, what makes them purposeful in life.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody who comes to your workplace may not feel, oh, this is the only job I have in the planet.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what makes them, even if they are there for six hours or five hours, what is that that can keep them motivated?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is different.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some might love to tackle problems, some might love to collaborate with people, some might like to lead, and some might like to research.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Understand what is their biggest strength they carry and try to lean in how you can get their innovation and their speed of their knowledge and information applied to solve the problem you hired that person for.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because that speed is needed.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Take it from me that the depth of experience you have is not something that's gonna go to them immediately, it's gonna take a lot of time.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, their speed of innovation is not something you can easily go with.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there needs to be a bridge, and that bridge begins when you lean into first what is that that makes them motivated?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Second, give them the real purpose, why they are here.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're here to solve a problem.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: You hire them because you know you have a problem to solve.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Give them a more human angle.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: What will happen if this problem is not solved?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: What would happen if this problem is done in the wrong way?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: What impact is this going to create?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is that they can evolve as a leader if they do something consistently?
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Change the conversation around that.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go into the usual molds of vision, mission, integrity, those kinds of jargon because this is not going to move them.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I suppose one of the more interesting aspects of this discussion that you've got me thinking about is that there are some unique things that we touched on here, and then there are sort of some universal aspects to it as well.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the universal aspects is the idea of human beings feeling like they have value and that feeling like they have something to contribute.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: So as we kind of wrap up our conversation here, that's what I'd like to focus in on.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: I know from looking at some of your work that it is of particular interest to you as to how to handle this apparent contradiction, which is that you've gone through an educational system and you've gone through kind of life where the the idea of your value is generally centered around a couple of things, right?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: One, do you work hard, and two, do you produce good stuff, right?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Good results.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're at a point where you know working hard is probably a lot less valuable than working smart.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: And we're also at a point where a lot of the stuff that traditionally that you would have produced, a machine can produce better than you can.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: So um that if you approach that literally, right, as in, oh my goodness, my value comes from like hard work and stuff produced, and now that's gone and it's getting worse, right?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: Everything I just said is getting worse, right?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because AI will be better at producing the stuff tomorrow than it is today.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: How do you take that sort of existential angst that anybody that is entering the workforce today would be rational to feel?
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: How do you take that sort of like existential angst and turn that into something where they can feel like they can contribute genuinely in the workplace or even more broadly into society?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Very good question.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what I coach and I focus on when I work with Gen Z.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was talking about human judgment and human call being paramount importance in the age of AI, the best way they can genuinely make themselves visible and show themselves they have an impact in the workforce is to question what AI gives them.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if you have something that you're working on and that has an impact, pause for a moment.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Think, did this machine make an assumption that you never asked it to do?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Did it raise any risk or flag that you know as a person because you know the landscape you're working in?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Did it consider that?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Did it raise that risk?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: And third, what happens if the whole solution it is giving fails?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: What's the backup thinking you're going to give?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because a machine can only work on algorithms, but the algorithm you possess, which is deciding on the fly why something would not work based on circumstances, based on the way your company operates, your workplace operates, only you know that.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: The more you know that, you'll be able to question, and that is why your judgment then becomes indispensable for your manager, even as the machine gets upgraded and becomes dispensable.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: That is where you create a unique place in the workplace saying, Oh, I really cannot stop, but ask this guy, hey, what do you think?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Is this correct?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Should we go with this approach?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Something you bring, the lens into that, that is what is going to make you valuable and grow.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's interesting because you're sort of describing a form of wisdom, and there is and one of the things that I've really come to terms with is that we think of we think of wisdom as being the sole preserve of the elderly.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: And actually I would argue that due to many of the things that we've spoken about during the course of today's discussion, due to the idea of being like the first the algorithmic generation, if you like, the idea of growing up and experiencing the particular challenges associated with that COVID placed on young people, growing up and having a way deeper, way richer understanding of social media than anybody than anybody older did.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then now growing up to be a generation that can see AI in all of that context, right?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: That creates a trove of wisdom in our younger people that we're not currently tapping into as well as we could otherwise.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Now, some organizations are uh directly acknowledging this and you know, beefing up reverse mentoring opportunities and things like that.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: What would be your advice to organizations who really start to think about that, starting to think about tapping into the wisdom of the youth?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: What would be your guidance as to how we can do that most effectively?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Most effectively is to have those frequent conversations with your next generation, conveying the mission purpose in a way not traditionally done.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the typical way, you know, okay, here's the numbers, here's the profits, this is how our biggest clients are.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, throw them all out.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go with a more human touch and say, This is where you can grow if you prove these one, two, three impacts.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Change your conversation, change your narrative.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just say, okay, you do these three things, you are next level up, that's how you get a promotion.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Forget all that.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Say, here's the impact, here's the pain problem, and here's the here we have got to approach the solution.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are able to demonstrate through your thinking, with the leverage of AI as well, that here are the things you can do.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: This kind of conversation is where it creates creates the impact where you can start engaging the other generation.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: When you can start learning from them, right?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, yes.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: When I work with managers and Gen Z, that's the bridge I create.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because both are right about their own perspectives, they just need a way to bridge the two.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's a beautiful way to finish it today.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was a fan of building bridges on this podcast, and hopefully, we have today done our little part of that.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: I want to thank you very much for spending time with me to explore this today and Jan.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just a really, really fascinating conversation for me, and I'm sure for our audience too.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Paul.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me on the podcast, and uh, you had wonderful questions, and I too enjoyed the conversation.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
• 45:47
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• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: It makes a huge difference in helping others find us.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And don't forget, you can find all episodes and get our weekly newsletter at humanityworking.net.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: See you next time.