Latest / The Human Factor: Exploring the Intersection of Humanity, Technology, and Transformation / Episode 021| Season 2| When Generations Collide - The Generational Fault Lines of Organizational Transformation

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Episode 021| Season 2| When Generations Collide - The Generational Fault Lines of Organizational Transformation · The Human Factor: Exploring the Intersection of Humanity, Technology, and Transformation

• 0:05
  Think about the last major change initiative your
• 0:07
  organization launched. Now think about who embraced it
• 0:13
  and who resisted. Was there a pattern?
• 0:17
  Did the people who had been with the organization the longest
• 0:21
  push back the hardest? Did the newest employees adopt
• 0:27
  first? Did the people in the middle?
• 0:30
  Those middle managers seem to check out entirely.
• 0:35
  Most leaders explain these differences through personality
• 0:39
  or politics. She's always so resistant to
• 0:43
  change. He's so difficult.
• 0:46
  That group is never on board. But, well, what if the pattern
• 0:53
  isn't about individual or group personality at all?
• 0:57
  What if the way people respond to change in transformation is
• 1:02
  simply shaped by something far more foundational than
• 1:06
  individual or group temperament, Something that's rooted in when
• 1:11
  they entered the workforce, what world they grew up in, and what
• 1:17
  implicit promises they believe their organization made to them?
• 1:23
  That's what we're exploring today, and my guest has spent
• 1:28
  more than 20 years studying exactly this question.
• 1:33
  I'm Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040, digital professor at the
• 1:37
  University of Maryland, and author of the book The Truth
• 1:41
  about Transformation, Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty, and
• 1:47
  Human Complexity, along with the Ideas and Innovations.
• 1:50
  Weekly newsletter. Welcome to the Human Factor
• 1:54
  podcast, the show that explores the intersection of humanity,
• 1:58
  technology, and transformation, along with the psychology behind
• 2:04
  transformation success. This is Season 2, Episode 8, and
• 2:10
  if you've been following this season, we've been building a
• 2:14
  diagnostic framework for understanding why change in
• 2:17
  transformation fails at the very human level.
• 2:23
  Episode 1 explored the identity crisis the transformation
• 2:27
  triggers. Episode 2 with my buddy
• 2:30
  Elizabeth Stewart examined emotional contagion.
• 2:35
  Episode 3 unpacked the structural traps of middle
• 2:39
  management. Episode 4 looked at the
• 2:43
  algorithmic mirrors. Episode 5 with James Elliott
• 2:48
  examined the organization's immune system.
• 2:52
  Episode 6 explored structural silence, the system that teaches
• 2:57
  people not to speak. In last episode, Episode 7, we
• 3:03
  explored the psychological contract, the unwritten
• 3:07
  promises, the change in transformation always violates.
• 3:13
  Today, we're adding a dimension that every previous episode
• 3:19
  touched, but none directly addressed the generational fault
• 3:24
  lines inside organizational change and transformation.
• 3:29
  If you've been with us since Season 1, you may remember
• 3:33
  Episode 2, The Gen. Z Factor.
• 3:37
  I explored how younger generations are rewiring
• 3:41
  workplace psychology and why traditional management
• 3:45
  approaches are failing with nearly 40% of the workforce.
• 3:51
  That episode, it opened the door.
• 3:54
  Today, we're walking through that door.
• 3:57
  Every concept we've explored this season?
• 4:00
  Identity crisis, emotional contagion, structural traps, the
• 4:05
  immune system, silence, the psychological contract, all of
• 4:10
  these play out differently depending on when someone
• 4:14
  entered the workforce and what formative experiences shape
• 4:19
  their expectations of the institution's authority and,
• 4:23
  and, well, the work itself. And the research on this is
• 4:27
  substantial. Karl Manheim's foundational work
• 4:31
  on generational consciousness, which was published originally
• 4:35
  in 1928 and is still cited across social science
• 4:39
  disciplines, establish that people who shape formative
• 4:43
  experiences during their impressional years develop a
• 4:47
  distinct orientation towards the world.
• 4:51
  They just don't have different preferences.
• 4:54
  They hold different assumptions about authority, about risk,
• 4:58
  about loyalty and institutional trust.
• 5:03
  And those assumptions are exactly what determines how
• 5:06
  someone experiences organizational change and
• 5:09
  transformation. To explore today's topic, I'm
• 5:12
  joined by Ryan Vet. Ryan is a generational futurist.
• 5:17
  He is AUSA today best selling author of Cracking the
• 5:21
  Millennial Code. He's a serial entrepreneur who
• 5:25
  started his first business at the age of 14.
• 5:28
  He currently serves as CEO of Boone, an on demand healthcare
• 5:32
  staffing platform. He holds an MBA from Purdue and
• 5:36
  certifications from Harvard Business School and Cornell, and
• 5:40
  he has worked with organizations ranging from startups to Fortune
• 5:44
  500 companies like Samsung and Warner Brothers.
• 5:48
  He's also LED for AI powered startups and also sits on Elon
• 5:54
  University's Advisory Board for the Doherty Entrepreneurship
• 5:57
  Center, which means he works directly with the generation
• 6:02
  that is about to enter the workforce.
• 6:05
  Ryan, welcome to the Human Factor podcast.
• 6:09
  Thanks so much for having me, Kevin.
• 6:10
  Ryan, before we get into the research frameworks, I want to
• 6:14
  ground this in your experience. You describe yourself as a
• 6:18
  generational futurist, which is specific and very deliberate
• 6:23
  framing. What does that mean to you, and
• 6:28
  how did your own experience as a serial entrepreneur, starting at
• 6:32
  the age of 14 and building across multiple industries,
• 6:36
  shape how you think about the way different generations
• 6:40
  experience change inside organizations?
• 6:43
  Thanks for that question, Kevin. I think it's a little bit
• 6:46
  humorous how how I've gotten to each step of the journey.
• 6:49
  But now where I am today, hindsight's 2020 and see how it
• 6:52
  all connects. I was getting on stage speaking
• 6:54
  about AI. Of course I have from human
• 6:56
  hesitation to AI acceleration. And what does that mean for us?
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  I'm not talking about tools and the latest greatest thing
• 7:01
  because dirty new tools will start by the time I'm done and
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  half of them will have shut down.
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  So it's really more what does this mean for society and
• 7:07
  culture and for us as human beings and what's going on?
• 7:10
  So as I'm about to get up, they describe me as a futurist and
• 7:14
  I'd I'd heard the title, but I was like, that's, that's
• 7:16
  interesting. I've, I've never, you know,
• 7:18
  ascribe that title to myself. And so I, I talked to the
• 7:22
  meeting professional afterwards who, who had put this all
• 7:24
  together and wrote my bio. And you never know when you get
• 7:27
  on stage, I've done over 1000 live presentations.
• 7:29
  You get some interesting intros, some are completely fabricated,
• 7:32
  some are not. And so I started unpacking this
• 7:34
  and she was like, well, if you look at all of your work,
• 7:36
  everything you've done is leading to the future.
• 7:39
  You, you're always asking questions about the future.
• 7:41
  So I was like, OK, I'll take it. And that as I processed it, I'm
• 7:44
  not economist. I, I do look at the economy,
• 7:46
  obviously, but that's not what I'm focusing on.
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  I'm really looking at generations.
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  And that did start when I was a teenager.
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  My first legally incorporate incorporated company was 14.
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  And so I've been very entrepreneurial and had some
• 7:58
  successes and, and plenty of failures too.
• 8:00
  That's that's what makes a good entrepreneur.
• 8:02
  And as I I navigated each one of those, especially starting as a
• 8:05
  teenager and millennial managing Gen.
• 8:07
  X and Boomers at the time, there was a lot of conflict.
• 8:10
  And I chalked up a lot of that to my age, which absolutely a 14
• 8:14
  year old manager of people older than themselves is always going
• 8:18
  to create conflict on so many levels just beyond generations.
• 8:21
  But then Fast forward several years to 2009, real estate
• 8:26
  company asked me to come speak to why millennials weren't
• 8:28
  buying houses, which at the time was a flawed question because
• 8:32
  most millennials weren't old enough to buy houses.
• 8:35
  But I answered it because at that point, Twitter was
• 8:37
  thriving. And I had an early Twitter
• 8:39
  account with a lot of followers at the time.
• 8:41
  And I think I have just as many followers now because around
• 8:43
  that time I also got off the platform.
• 8:45
  But but I started to look at the world through how humans
• 8:50
  interact with one another, where we've been as culture and
• 8:52
  society and where we're going in into the future.
• 8:55
  And so from a generational perspective though, because your
• 8:58
  experiences and my experiences, my kids experiences are all very
• 9:01
  different because of where we were raised, when we were raised
• 9:04
  and what was going on in the world and society.
• 9:06
  So that's kind of how it all packages together.
• 9:09
  So how do you on the futurist side, just an additional
• 9:13
  question, how do you process conceptualizing what that that
• 9:20
  next phase is going to be? Yeah, I know we'll get into it
• 9:25
  even more more deeply, but history repeats itself.
• 9:27
  There's nothing new under the sun.
• 9:29
  And if you look at any society, any civilization, whether it's
• 9:33
  recent history or you're going back to the Byzantine Empire,
• 9:36
  there are certain trends that you can see that replicate time
• 9:39
  and time again. And then you go and look at the
• 9:40
  human being. Humans are are fairly
• 9:42
  predictable creatures. I love Danarelli's book
• 9:46
  Predictably Rational, and it's just a fantastic book because at
• 9:51
  the end of the day, we're all searching for meaning and
• 9:53
  purpose and we want significance over success, but we often look
• 9:56
  in the wrong places. So we build something and then
• 9:58
  it comes tumbling down. It's it's a cycle over and over
• 10:01
  again. So as we look to the future, a
• 10:02
  lot of what I do is, is not, I'm not a technological futurist,
• 10:06
  even though I've been involved in AI startups for almost 2
• 10:09
  decades now. That's not been the point of
• 10:11
  saying, hey, we're trying to make humans better, we're trying
• 10:15
  to make society better. We're trying to remove friction,
• 10:17
  which ultimately backfires. But what are those patterns that
• 10:20
  we can see? And how can we get ahead of that
• 10:22
  as leaders, as we're looking into the future, to bring our
• 10:24
  teams, bring our cultures, bring our societies along so that we
• 10:28
  don't lose the humanness that makes leadership great?
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  Ryan, what you're describing connects directly to one of the
• 10:33
  most important and unappreciated concepts in organizational
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  psychology. Karl Mannheim argued that
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  generational identity isn't just about age.
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  It's about shared formative experiences that create what he
• 10:48
  called a generational consciousness, a distinct lens
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  through which an entire cohort interprets the world.
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  The implications for change and transformation are, of course,
• 11:01
  significant. Homers entered the workforce
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  during an era of institutional expansion and upward mobility.
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  Gen. X came of age during economic
• 11:11
  disruption, downsizing, and the collapse of the lifetime
• 11:16
  employment model. Millennials, well, they were
• 11:19
  shaped by the digital revolution and the 2008 financial crisis in
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  Gen. Z.
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  As I explored in Season 1, Episode 2, the Gen.
• 11:30
  Z factor has never known a world without smartphones, social
• 11:34
  media, and institutional skepticism.
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  That episode examined how Gen. Z is fundamentally rewiring
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  workplace psychology and what we're seeing now in those
• 11:46
  rewired expectations that don't exist in isolation.
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  They collide with the expectations of every other
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  generation in the building. Each of these cohorts carries
• 12:00
  fundamentally different assumptions about what
• 12:03
  organizations owe them, what loyalty means, how decisions
• 12:08
  should be made, and how change should be communicated.
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  When a change or transformation initiative enters an
• 12:17
  organization, it doesn't land on homogeneous workforce, it lands
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  on a multi generational landscape where each group
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  filters that change through their own generational
• 12:31
  consciousness. And this is where leaders get it
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  wrong. They assume resistance is
• 12:38
  resistance, when in reality a boomer's resistance often comes
• 12:45
  from a different place entirely than a Gen.
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  Z employee's disengagement. So in your work with
• 12:51
  organizations and writing Cracking the Millennial Code,
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  how have you seen this? How have you seen this all play
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  out when a major change initiative hits a multi
• 13:02
  generational team? And so you've been in a variety
• 13:07
  of different types of organizations, you've started
• 13:09
  your own company, you now run an on demand healthcare service.
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  So what are the distinct patterns you see in how each
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  generation responds? I think one of the things that
• 13:21
  we have to zoom out is, is actually as almost contrarian as
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  this is to my own work, we have to step away and and look past
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  generations for just a minute because I think we have almost
• 13:33
  pigeonholed ourselves into this conversation about generations.
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  When change management comes comes down the line.
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  The reality is, if you look at just basic change management
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  theory, there's always going to be detractors.
• 13:44
  There's always going to be people that are, are thriving in
• 13:47
  change that want the change. There's going to be people that
• 13:49
  think they want and then once it happens, are become a detractor
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  and and that happens regardless of generation.
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  So I think that's the first thing that we have to realize.
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  Whether you have all Gen. X working in your workplace or
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  you got all the generations from silent down to Gen.
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  Z in your workplace, there's going to be people on every side
• 14:05
  of the the conversation. So that's part of the
• 14:07
  conversation. But then the second is we have
• 14:09
  to realize that every single generations lived experience
• 14:12
  their their cohort that they grew up with and the experiences
• 14:15
  that they have in the moments in which they were raised are going
• 14:18
  to shape how they perceive authority, how they perceive
• 14:20
  trust, how they perceive communication.
• 14:22
  And those are all common elements when you're looking at
• 14:24
  change management initiatives in an organization or corporation
• 14:28
  that if you don't have buy in and trust doesn't mean everyone
• 14:31
  has to agree with you, but you have to have the trust that
• 14:33
  you're making the best decision for the organization.
• 14:35
  That's going to look very different between a baby boomer
• 14:37
  and then skip 2 generations and looking at a Gen.
• 14:39
  ZA pretty much the bookends in the workforce right now.
• 14:42
  We do have a couple silent generation.
• 14:43
  It's in there. But when you look at that,
• 14:46
  that's a pretty radical difference in how they perceive
• 14:48
  trust. Baby boomers generally trust
• 14:50
  institutions. They trust titles, education,
• 14:53
  experience. Gen.
• 14:55
  Z is very much against that as a whole.
• 14:57
  They trust authenticity. They they want to know that you
• 15:00
  care about them as a person. They don't want any fluff.
• 15:02
  They don't want corporate jargon.
• 15:04
  They don't want any of that. It's a totally different
• 15:07
  perception of trust. And so when that's communicated,
• 15:10
  you can erode trust almost instantly if you communicate it
• 15:12
  based on one generations perceived idea of what is stable
• 15:15
  and what is not. So do you see leaders who are
• 15:19
  assumed to understanding that? There's definitely some leaders
• 15:25
  that that understand that. And I think honestly, sometimes
• 15:28
  we clutter the conversation too much by talking about
• 15:31
  generations or, or even talking about these differences because
• 15:34
  at the end of the day, you're still human beings leading other
• 15:36
  human beings. And if you look at the recent
• 15:38
  body of work and in recent being, you know, the last two to
• 15:40
  three decades, we've shifted from these management style
• 15:44
  books to leadership style books, back to management style books
• 15:47
  and now managing the different generations.
• 15:49
  And I think there's actually, and even with some of my earlier
• 15:52
  work, even with the book you mentioned earlier, I think there
• 15:56
  it's flawed logic a little bit. The the management techniques in
• 16:00
  there are absolutely rock solid. I stand behind them.
• 16:02
  The myths that we cracked about the millennials, absolutely rock
• 16:05
  solid. But the whole premise is saying,
• 16:07
  hey, because they are millennials at that point or
• 16:09
  because they are Gen. Z, they're going to have these
• 16:11
  characteristics and you have to treat them a certain way.
• 16:14
  Well, the book was written when millennials were still
• 16:16
  graduating college. Now they're all in the workforce
• 16:19
  and many are well past that management roles and having
• 16:21
  kids. And in the book, parts of it
• 16:23
  apply to Gen. Z, but part of it we're looking
• 16:25
  at the age of the individual. And a lot of these snapshots,
• 16:30
  whether it's articles or books, get stuck looking at a
• 16:33
  generation at a certain moment in time that is not indicative
• 16:37
  of their entire life cycle. So Ryan, a question on
• 16:45
  recognizing there's, there's commonality and change
• 16:48
  management, right? And to your point, trust, trust
• 16:53
  is earned differently across the generations based on the values
• 16:56
  of how people have come up and and what they retain.
• 17:02
  And with the research that you're currently doing, do you
• 17:05
  see any significant differences with Generation Alpha?
• 17:12
  So Gen. Alpha, they're turning 13 this
• 17:15
  year at the time of this recording.
• 17:16
  And so we've got a limited subset of data and even less on
• 17:21
  on Gen. Beta being born starting 2026.
• 17:23
  So you've got these two younger generations.
• 17:25
  But what you can't start to do, and this is where kind of the
• 17:27
  futurist hat comes in, is you can look at the parenting
• 17:30
  decisions in the cultural implications of what has
• 17:32
  happened at two other generations at around the same
• 17:36
  age. So one of the frameworks that I
• 17:37
  use is called the generational prism.
• 17:39
  So if you're, you're listening, it's kind of a triangle and on
• 17:42
  one, one arm you've got the age and the other arm you've got the
• 17:45
  moment. And then a prism refracts light.
• 17:48
  So when you shine light through it, the refraction of that is
• 17:51
  usually, you know, some beautiful color on the table or
• 17:53
  whatever, you're refracting the light.
• 17:55
  That's where the label comes. And so you got this age moment
• 17:58
  label framework that I use so often when looking at
• 18:00
  generations. And I, I think we've for the
• 18:03
  longest backwards. We start with the label saying
• 18:05
  millennials are lazy, Gen. Z are anxious.
• 18:10
  While there might be some merit to stereotypes, because
• 18:13
  stereotypes do, whether or not we like it, usually cover, have
• 18:16
  some grain of truth. That's why they stick.
• 18:19
  We, we start at the wrong spot. And so I, I always say, Hey,
• 18:23
  let's, let's take their age, so 13 for, for Gen. alpha right
• 18:26
  now. And let's rewind a generation.
• 18:27
  So when Gen. Z was 13 and yes, some last year
• 18:29
  were 13. But if you go to the middle of
• 18:31
  the cohort, we're, we're looking about 15 years ago.
• 18:33
  What was happening, you know, 10 to 15 years ago when millennials
• 18:36
  were 15, you're looking almost 20 to 30 years ago when Jenna
• 18:41
  and you start rewinding saying what was going on in the 90s and
• 18:44
  early 2000, what was going on in the late 20 teens?
• 18:47
  And you, you start looking at the age that they were and then
• 18:51
  the moment in history that they were.
• 18:53
  And then you can start to see what's sticking.
• 18:55
  So I think, you know, Gen. Gen.
• 18:57
  Z and Gen. Alpha are actually both, and we
• 19:01
  use the term digital natives, but they're actually less
• 19:04
  accepting of change because of that.
• 19:06
  While millennials grew up with technology and, and they saw
• 19:10
  everything from no phones to smartphones and in their growing
• 19:13
  up years, a rapid curve on, on technological adoption from no
• 19:17
  Internet to, you know, social media and Wi-Fi.
• 19:21
  All of those things happen within the millennials every
• 19:23
  single time they logged into thefacebook.com Facebook.
• 19:26
  Before. They dropped the definite
• 19:28
  article there. Every single time it was a
• 19:31
  different thing. They had timelines and they had
• 19:32
  walls and they had pokes and they had, and so they're used to
• 19:37
  change. But by the time Gen.
• 19:39
  Z started getting onto these platforms, and arguably they got
• 19:41
  on too early, that's a deeper conversation.
• 19:44
  But when they start getting on these platforms, there were no
• 19:46
  more changes. So they actually were already in
• 19:50
  the social media era. Gen.
• 19:51
  Alpha's gonna have the same thing with AI.
• 19:54
  You know, all of a sudden from 2022 to today, we saw generative
• 19:58
  AI just take the world by storm. And every single time that now
• 20:01
  could generate images, now could generate video that was shocking
• 20:04
  to Gen. Z and millennials, Gen.
• 20:06
  X and Boomers. Gen.
• 20:08
  Alpha is going to have lived with that.
• 20:09
  So I think we're going to see similar trends with the
• 20:12
  implications that social media the lived for the entire life of
• 20:16
  Gen. Z had on Gen.
• 20:17
  Z. We're going to see the same
• 20:18
  thing. With Gen.
• 20:19
  Alpha, and if we're not careful, we're going to see the
• 20:22
  implications of cognitive erosion and just taking normal
• 20:26
  daily brain practices that you and I have done and we're going
• 20:29
  to see them offload that onto a machine and that's going to be
• 20:32
  really dangerous if we're not careful.
• 20:34
  Yeah, I think what's interesting just to digress, because I see
• 20:38
  this in the class that I teach is the higher levels of anxiety
• 20:43
  because of all that digital interaction.
• 20:45
  And that higher level of anxiety in that interaction permeates
• 20:53
  across decision making. It permeates across any other
• 20:56
  physical interaction. And one would not have predicted
• 21:01
  that that would be an outcome so pervasive around Gen.
• 21:05
  Z. And, and there are a few
• 21:07
  examples I use in the class about about alpha.
• 21:11
  Were there indications that may get even worse.
• 21:14
  So to your example about AI and in essence, being so immersed in
• 21:19
  it from the get go, it will be interesting to see what
• 21:22
  cognitive or just general mental health issues may result from
• 21:28
  that. So sorry to digress, it's a
• 21:31
  patient area of mine that I write a lot about.
• 21:36
  No, I think it's good and I think the implications are, are
• 21:38
  bigger than generative AI, especially with Gen. alpha.
• 21:41
  We, we think about the LLMS like ChatGPT, claw Gemini and and all
• 21:45
  of that. But there there's the component
• 21:47
  that we're not thinking about. A child can hop on and talk to.
• 21:52
  I'm not going to say it out loud, otherwise everyone's phone
• 21:54
  will glow. But you're your Apple friend,
• 21:56
  right? And they can ask what the
• 21:58
  weather is today. They can ask how long is it
• 22:01
  going to take to get to the grocery store at six years old?
• 22:04
  And there's implications to that.
• 22:06
  While it's convenient, while it's beneficial and helpful,
• 22:10
  they can pick up and they can talk to their parents.
• 22:13
  Robot phone character again, won't say it, but they can say
• 22:17
  hey, so and so. Call whomever.
• 22:20
  No longer are they scrolling. They're not learning to read for
• 22:23
  the names or scroll through a phone, books or a Rolodex.
• 22:26
  They'll never know what that is. They'll never have to memorize
• 22:28
  those phone numbers. And we've removed these friction
• 22:31
  points that I don't think we even think about that this
• 22:34
  generation has never seen before.
• 22:36
  Unlocking the door with voice, opening blinds and shades with
• 22:40
  voice, the refrigerator telling you what, when you need to get
• 22:43
  milk. Those little things are, are
• 22:45
  great innovations. And I'm, you know, a living
• 22:47
  paradox because I, I love and have worked towards those
• 22:49
  innovations, but also there's massive implications to that,
• 22:53
  that I don't think we're thinking about the little
• 22:54
  things. We get so sidetracked by these
• 22:56
  LLMS and, and things that there's a lot of other things
• 22:59
  that Gen. Alpha in particular is already
• 23:01
  experiencing as part of their lived life that they're already
• 23:05
  not doing those. They've already removed so many
• 23:06
  friction points that I think are beneficial to formation.
• 23:09
  Yeah. And not to further digress, but
• 23:11
  I mean that really comes down to is there a necessity for any
• 23:15
  knowledge retention when it's so easy to access in the moment?
• 23:20
  And so then that begets a lessening of critical thinking
• 23:24
  skills that they may need. And other situations.
• 23:29
  What Ryan is describing connects to something we explore in
• 23:32
  depth. Last episode, Denise Russo's
• 23:36
  research on psychological contracts established that every
• 23:40
  employment relationship contains an unwritten set of mutual
• 23:44
  expectations that goes far beyond the offer letter.
• 23:49
  But here's what most applications of that research
• 23:51
  miss. Those psychological contracts?
• 23:54
  Well, they're not universal. They are shaped by the
• 23:58
  generational context. A boomer psychological contract
• 24:02
  with the organization often centers on loyalty, reciprocity.
• 24:07
  I give you decades of commitment.
• 24:11
  You provide stability, upward mobility, and institutional
• 24:17
  respect. When change of transformation
• 24:20
  disrupts that contract, the response isn't just resistance.
• 24:24
  It's a sense of betrayal rooted in decades of perceived mutual
• 24:29
  obligation. A Gen.
• 24:31
  X employee psychological contract is often built on
• 24:34
  autonomy. I deliver results and you leave
• 24:38
  me alone to do my work my way. Transformation that centralizes
• 24:44
  decision making or introduces new oversight layers violates
• 24:50
  that contract in a way that can feel suffocating.
• 24:55
  A millennials contract frequently centers on purpose
• 24:58
  and development. I bring my whole self to work,
• 25:02
  and you provide meaningful work, growth opportunities and
• 25:06
  transparent leadership. Transformation that feels
• 25:10
  performative or disconnected from a clear purpose violates
• 25:15
  that expectation. And Gen.
• 25:18
  Z, the 40% of the workforce, has a psychological contract that
• 25:23
  many organizations aren't even equipped to understand yet.
• 25:28
  It's one built on flexibility, digital fluency, and
• 25:33
  institutional skepticism. They're not looking for a 30
• 25:36
  year career. They're looking for alignment
• 25:39
  and authenticity. I want to build on something
• 25:41
  from Ryan's own work that I think is one of the most
• 25:44
  important reframes and transformation thinking.
• 25:48
  Ryan's Catalyzing Change framework positions human
• 25:52
  resistance to change not as opposition to the change itself,
• 25:57
  but as a fear of loss. That distinction shifts the
• 26:01
  entire diagnostic question from why are people resisting to what
• 26:07
  do people believe they're about to lose?
• 26:10
  As you all know, I'm big on William Bridges, and his
• 26:14
  research on transitions makes a related and very critical
• 26:18
  distinction between change and transition.
• 26:21
  Change is the external event transition.
• 26:26
  It is the internal psychological process of letting go of the
• 26:31
  old, navigating the uncertainty of the neutral zone, and forming
• 26:36
  a new beginning. Most organizations manage to
• 26:41
  change, almost none manage the transition, and the transition
• 26:48
  is where people actually live during change and
• 26:51
  transformation. What makes this even more
• 26:54
  complex is that the losses people fear often generationally
• 27:00
  inflicted. A boomer facing an AI deployment
• 27:04
  may fear the loss of institutional expertise it took
• 27:08
  decades to build. A Gen.
• 27:11
  X manager may fear the loss of autonomy.
• 27:15
  Is new systems centralized decisions?
• 27:20
  Well, they may fear the loss of the growth trajectory they were
• 27:25
  promised, and a Gen. Z employee may fear the loss of
• 27:30
  flexibility as change in transformation creates new
• 27:34
  rigidity. The same change initiative or
• 27:37
  transformation 5 different fears of loss.
• 27:43
  And a leader who diagnosis all of them as resistance will
• 27:48
  usually craft a single response to the dresses.
• 27:51
  None of them. Ryan, when you worked with
• 27:55
  leaders on the catalyzing change concepts, one of the most common
• 27:59
  losses that each generation fears during transformation.
• 28:04
  And what do leaders consistently miss about the generational
• 28:08
  dimensions of that fear? Both excellent questions.
• 28:10
  I think the first one, what does each generation fear?
• 28:14
  I think you have to look at what has governed each generation for
• 28:18
  the most part. And for the sake of time and
• 28:20
  brevity, I'm going to generalize.
• 28:22
  And obviously it's much more complex than what I'm going to
• 28:25
  share. So for forgive the
• 28:27
  generalizations, but for the sake of conversation and time, I
• 28:29
  think they're they're generally helpful.
• 28:31
  So you've got baby boomers who believed in institutions,
• 28:34
  believed in stability, believed in climbing the corporate
• 28:37
  ladder, quantity over quality. If they were the first and last
• 28:40
  out, that meant they were going to get the raise, they were
• 28:42
  going to get the corner office. Gen.
• 28:44
  Z listening corner office used to be achievable.
• 28:46
  That used to be the thing that wasn't all desks and bullpens.
• 28:49
  So you know, that was that was the baby boomers mindset.
• 28:53
  And they are working longer than other generations.
• 28:56
  They're still trying to fill up that bank account.
• 28:58
  They're still trying to build wealth.
• 29:00
  All these things that that they sought to do from day one of
• 29:04
  their career change is scary to someone who believes an
• 29:08
  institution should be stable. They're, they're looking at all
• 29:11
  this technology. They've seen enough
• 29:12
  interruptions to know, OK, Internet didn't disrupt their
• 29:15
  jobs that much. It changed how they work, but
• 29:16
  they still had a job. But but they're, we're hesitant.
• 29:19
  Now. You look at Gen.
• 29:20
  X Gen. X has always been skeptical of
• 29:22
  institutions, mainly because their parents trusted them too
• 29:24
  much And you see it flip flop. And I, I talk about the
• 29:27
  generational pendulum and, and so Gen.
• 29:29
  X, they're hard workers though. So they're not going to be the
• 29:33
  first one in and last one out. They're not going to be the
• 29:36
  first one out, first one or last one in and first one out either.
• 29:39
  So they're, they're different than both boomers and
• 29:41
  millennials in that way. And kind of the barbell
• 29:43
  generation, like I say, they're they're a smaller generation
• 29:46
  that kind of are are being weighed down by the boomers and
• 29:49
  millennials on either side. We have more angst, supposedly.
• 29:52
  You do, you do. But it's good and I do, I do
• 29:55
  think. And there's actually data,
• 29:56
  plenty of data to back it up. Gen.
• 29:57
  X is one of the best workers in the workforce.
• 29:59
  They for so many reasons, but they're being on work life
• 30:01
  balance. They saw their parents to sell
• 30:04
  their souls to, to their jobs. And I say parents plural because
• 30:06
  generally it was 2 parents working and, and so Gen.
• 30:11
  X was like, I don't want to do that.
• 30:12
  And Gen. X, not millennials.
• 30:14
  Gen. X is who we have to thank for
• 30:15
  the idea of work life balance. That was their concept.
• 30:18
  They're still, if they haven't a project that they need to get
• 30:21
  done, they'll come in, they'll stay late, they'll get the
• 30:23
  project done, but they also want to protect to some extent,
• 30:26
  their, their family time and, and focus more on their family.
• 30:28
  That's where we get helicopter parents because they want to be
• 30:30
  more present for their kids than their parents were for them.
• 30:33
  So you Fast forward and you look at millennials, well,
• 30:36
  millennials actually are extremely productive
• 30:38
  individuals. And I think this is a big
• 30:40
  misnomer. And we've started to see as
• 30:43
  millennials of age and now, you know, the the youngest
• 30:45
  millennials are turning 30 next year.
• 30:48
  So we've seen the shift. But I think especially when
• 30:52
  millennials first got in the workforce, they seem to be
• 30:55
  disrespectful, lazy and titled, not trusting authority.
• 30:59
  They were skeptical of anything, especially if it involved pen
• 31:01
  and paper, and they cared about the planet.
• 31:04
  So save this e-mail or save the paper.
• 31:07
  Don't print this e-mail, all of that.
• 31:11
  We've seen some of that fall away.
• 31:12
  But what's interesting is millennials output was just so
• 31:15
  much greater than any other generation because they were so
• 31:18
  efficient and proficient using technology.
• 31:21
  And so they could execute tasks at a faster pace, which
• 31:24
  automatically created trust issues with the previous
• 31:26
  generations in the workforce of millennials.
• 31:29
  And millennials would never offer to stay late.
• 31:31
  And again, generalization never offered to stay late for that
• 31:34
  project, Wouldn't offer to come in there.
• 31:35
  If you're paying them to come in at 8:30 or 9:00, they're going
• 31:38
  to come in at 8:30 or 9:00. And if you stop paying them at
• 31:41
  4:00, they're going to leave at 4:00.
• 31:43
  You know, not four O 1. And that was always the joke.
• 31:45
  And there, there's a lot of truth to that.
• 31:49
  There is, there is, yes, and the research is indicative yes.
• 31:52
  Yeah. And so it's, you know, that's a
• 31:54
  minute ago. I said stereotypes stick because
• 31:57
  there is some grain of truth. And we have seen millennials as
• 31:59
  they care more about their work and they get to this management
• 32:02
  level that they are exhibiting more traits of Gen.
• 32:06
  X and Boomers where they will, when necessary, stay late, but
• 32:10
  they're not going to do it unnecessarily.
• 32:12
  And so they've they've got a different kind of trust issue.
• 32:15
  Theirs is all about transparency.
• 32:16
  They want information because they've always had information.
• 32:19
  They started with Ask Geez, then went to Bing, Yahoo, AOL and
• 32:23
  Google and now LLMS. And what's interesting is millennials are
• 32:27
  adapting generative AI faster than any other generation, in
• 32:30
  large part due to the fact that as they were growing up, the
• 32:33
  Facebook did become Facebook. Myspace was no longer existent,
• 32:37
  you know, or barely existent. You didn't want to hang out
• 32:40
  there at least. So you had all these.
• 32:42
  Yeah, you had all of these different changes.
• 32:45
  And so transparency was the big word for for millennials.
• 32:49
  And then Fast forward to Gen. Z, they took transparency to the
• 32:51
  next level. They want authenticity, meaning
• 32:54
  I'm going to show up and I'm going to be my authentic self.
• 32:56
  And if I do not want to be here today, I'm going to wear it on
• 32:58
  my face. And you're going to know that I
• 32:59
  don't want to be here. And I'm going to let you know
• 33:01
  that I don't want to be here. And you better treat me the
• 33:03
  same. And I think that the biggest
• 33:05
  issue for trust that's just really alarming and really
• 33:08
  challenging for most leaders has this idea that Gen.
• 33:11
  Z believes over it's almost 3/4, just shy of 3/4 of Gen.
• 33:15
  Z members believe that their company and their boss should
• 33:18
  take a political stand on current social issues.
• 33:21
  That's extremely shocking and really frightening to a lot of
• 33:25
  leaders, especially older leaders that have been more
• 33:28
  reserved and have always been told that their politics stay at
• 33:32
  home. You know, they check their
• 33:33
  personal stuff at the door that that's become a, a, a tremendous
• 33:36
  issue. Which brings me to the answer to
• 33:39
  your second question is what do you do about that?
• 33:44
  How can you navigate those changes?
• 33:45
  Is it even possible to overcome that?
• 33:47
  And I think it goes back to something really, really simple.
• 33:50
  Somewhere along the line, we got sidetracked by looking at labels
• 33:53
  and by trying to overanalyze all of the data on generations that
• 33:58
  we forgot something really simple.
• 33:59
  As leaders, we need a clear vision and mission of where
• 34:02
  we're going. And when you have that extremely
• 34:04
  clear vision and mission, you can easily kind of stay out.
• 34:08
  And I say easily, it's not as easy as I wish it were, but you
• 34:11
  can stay out of some of the political conversations.
• 34:13
  You can stay out of some of the things and say, this is this is
• 34:16
  where we're going as an organization.
• 34:17
  These are our values. And you bought into this.
• 34:19
  And this is where we're marching forward together.
• 34:22
  And we don't have to answer those questions because it's not
• 34:24
  relevant to our mission. And, you know, not all Gen.
• 34:27
  Z is going to like that. But so often we've just lost
• 34:31
  sight of that because we keep trying to manage problems
• 34:33
  instead of lead people. An interesting element because
• 34:37
  we, we do this on the work with clients where we're focused on
• 34:41
  strategic planning. And to your point on the on the
• 34:45
  mission, right, we, we frame it as a shared purpose and trying
• 34:50
  to have them align and be articulate and not articulate
• 34:56
  simply to what the leadership believes that should be.
• 34:59
  But also as a commutative to the others across the workforce with
• 35:05
  the end aspiration that people do indeed get to rally behind
• 35:09
  that shared purpose. And not to dismiss the political
• 35:14
  statements right of taking a stand, but it does seek to give
• 35:23
  some purpose related to the organization the perhaps the
• 35:28
  younger generations can can better identify with.
• 35:32
  Exactly, exactly. And I think you use the word
• 35:36
  purpose and what's consistent across every generation and it
• 35:40
  manifests itself differently. But what's consistent is every
• 35:42
  single person wants purpose in their life.
• 35:44
  Every, everybody seeks meaning. And, and again, each generation
• 35:48
  has taken that differently. Boomers wanted meaning from
• 35:51
  their, their job titles, that they collected their degrees,
• 35:54
  that they collected things like that.
• 35:56
  Gen. X want a meaning by what their
• 35:57
  family life look like, what their personal and community
• 35:59
  life look like. Millennials wanted purpose to be
• 36:03
  transcendent. That's the first generation that
• 36:05
  that saw the world as effectively becoming 1.
• 36:09
  You could reach out to anyone in the world for almost nothing.
• 36:12
  Whereas before I remember I had aunts and uncles who lived
• 36:14
  overseas have to go get buy a calling card at Walmart.
• 36:17
  Dial in the forever long number from bondage and you would hope
• 36:20
  that they were available next to their phone.
• 36:21
  And if they weren't, you just wasted however much money trying
• 36:23
  to call them. And that's gone, which there's a
• 36:27
  lot of benefit to that and that's exciting.
• 36:29
  But millennials saw the world with all the issues in our
• 36:32
  world. And so they became concerned
• 36:34
  global citizens, which I think it is, is valuable.
• 36:38
  And now what's interesting is we see Gen.
• 36:40
  Z going back and focusing on the self.
• 36:42
  There's a lot of talk right now, Gen.
• 36:43
  Z revival, are they going back to church?
• 36:46
  And the data actually says no, which contradicts a lot of
• 36:50
  headlines. But they are one of the most
• 36:52
  spiritual generations, meaning they're they're seeking some
• 36:55
  sort of transcendent identity beyond organized religion,
• 37:00
  whether that is things as more New Agey as ayahuasca retreats
• 37:05
  down in South America or whether that's practicing Eastern.
• 37:09
  We're seeing a lot of Eastern traditions and faith practices
• 37:13
  come back in as well as, and Gen.
• 37:15
  Z males in particular that do commit to an evangelical or
• 37:19
  Christian based religion are doubling down on it.
• 37:21
  Even though the number is the smallest it's ever been.
• 37:23
  Those that have chosen to to go into organized religion are, are
• 37:27
  going with full force. And the pattern across all of
• 37:30
  that, the fact that Gen. Z is one of the more spiritual
• 37:32
  generations as a whole is were really fascinating because it
• 37:36
  shows that they they want this sense of purpose and they
• 37:38
  thought they could get meaning from likes and instant
• 37:40
  gratification and comments and being connected to all their
• 37:43
  friends. And they figure that that's not
• 37:45
  it. So they're asking, there's got
• 37:46
  to be something more. What is that?
• 37:48
  So Ryan, earlier you talked about what may have been in
• 37:52
  place 15 years ago or so forth, when a generation was forming
• 37:55
  their values. So related to the spiritualism,
• 38:01
  do you see where, and this is related to some of the headlines
• 38:07
  out there. So Gen.
• 38:08
  Z believes the world is ending, right?
• 38:10
  The the climate is going to collapse.
• 38:13
  There is hesitation, documented hesitation both with millennials
• 38:17
  and Gen. Z's about having kids and the
• 38:20
  world those but those kids may actually not have.
• 38:25
  And and so do you see those initial values coming into a
• 38:32
  maturity related to that spiritualism or though those
• 38:36
  even just perspective? Yeah, I think there's a lot of
• 38:39
  things we could go deep with family dynamics and over the
• 38:43
  years, but in fact, I'm going to generalize real grossly here for
• 38:46
  the sake of time, but Boomers basically made divorce not
• 38:50
  taboo. Gen.
• 38:51
  X didn't like that. And so we saw divorce rates
• 38:53
  actually hold fairly steady but declined slightly.
• 38:55
  And millennials, we're seeing this huge drop off in divorce as
• 38:59
  a whole, but we're also seeing a much lower percentage of
• 39:02
  marriage because they have moved to cohabitation.
• 39:05
  And, and so they, they've changed this, this family
• 39:07
  dynamic. And a lot of that we can, we can
• 39:11
  trace, we can trace a lot of this.
• 39:14
  Some of it's the religious constructs of family dynamics or
• 39:16
  what a family looks like, of course, but there is underlying
• 39:20
  fear specifically of Gen. Z, some later born millennials
• 39:24
  was specifically of Gen. Z of I don't want to bring kids
• 39:27
  into this world. I don't want my kids to
• 39:28
  experience this. And I would argue while some of
• 39:31
  that is rhetoric and you know, we're just seeing a slow life,
• 39:35
  adoption of, of marriage and things like that, or even
• 39:38
  cohabitation or, or reproduction in younger generations.
• 39:41
  I, I think a lot of it is they just haven't seen healthy
• 39:45
  relationships modeled in any aspect.
• 39:48
  I'm not talking about romantic necessary, but even platonic.
• 39:51
  They, they haven't had those real life interactions.
• 39:55
  I liken it to going to the mall, Gen.
• 39:56
  X, You know, the mall was their their sanctuary, if you will,
• 40:00
  the arcades, the movie theaters. And it was just a place where,
• 40:03
  yeah, or Pac-Man, exactly where they could go and hang out.
• 40:06
  And millennials caught the tail end of that.
• 40:08
  But I often say when you're walking down the mall with your
• 40:12
  friends and you could smell the popcorn from the the cinema, you
• 40:15
  could smell Mrs. Fields and Auntie Anne's pretzels and
• 40:17
  cookies, You know, you could smell all of those things.
• 40:20
  You found a penny on the ground, you picked it up as a friend and
• 40:22
  you toss it into the the fountain.
• 40:24
  All those little things that you can't achieve in a relationship
• 40:27
  that's digital. You just can't you?
• 40:30
  You might be in constant communication and texting all
• 40:32
  those time, but those little interactions that round out a
• 40:35
  full human experience are, are largely lacking with these
• 40:38
  younger generation. So you look at Gen.
• 40:39
  Z in particular and the loneliness studies are
• 40:42
  unbelievable. The US Surgeon General in 2023
• 40:44
  said that loneliness is now one of the greatest health concerns
• 40:49
  in in our country. We exchanged what we thought
• 40:52
  connectivity was to enhance the human experience.
• 40:55
  We've actually removed the most important elements of the human
• 40:58
  experience from from interacting and communicating.
• 41:00
  And so I think a lot of that Gen.
• 41:02
  Z doesn't know how that translates into deeper
• 41:05
  relationships beyond surface level friendships, platonic or
• 41:08
  even romantic. And so I think you're starting
• 41:10
  to see some of that play out in society.
• 41:14
  Yeah, definitely. But you, I mean, you hit on so
• 41:16
  many great points I have. I have students who bring
• 41:20
  forward how anxious they are when they have a physical
• 41:23
  interview or they have to have a physical interaction beyond the
• 41:29
  headlines. I mean, I think we all see that
• 41:32
  or hear about it on a personal or professional level, which I
• 41:36
  think that element of relationship has impact into
• 41:42
  organizational setting and where in our generations, you know, we
• 41:49
  equated that to organizational politics or this was just the
• 41:53
  way work worked. And they're having so much issue
• 41:56
  with that and the they're not expecting that to be the case.
• 42:01
  But indeed, you know, it is. And then they're getting more
• 42:06
  and more anxious to actually navigate that kind of situation.
• 42:09
  We've diagnosed the problem. Generational identity shapes how
• 42:14
  people experience change of transformation.
• 42:18
  Psychological contracts vary by generation.
• 42:22
  Fears of loss are generationally inflicted.
• 42:26
  Most leaders treat a multi generational workforce as a
• 42:30
  monolith and wonder why their change of transformation.
• 42:34
  Stalls or outright. Fails.
• 42:36
  So what do we do about it? The research points in a clear
• 42:41
  direction. Organizations that successfully
• 42:44
  transform across generational lines do three things very
• 42:49
  differently. First, they segment their change
• 42:52
  communication in a manipulative way.
• 42:56
  But in the same way any effective communication adapts
• 43:00
  to its audience. The message to a tenured
• 43:03
  employee needs to honor the institutional knowledge that
• 43:07
  they carry. The message to a mid career
• 43:10
  professional needs to preserve their sense of autonomy.
• 43:15
  The message to a newer employee needs to connect the change to
• 43:19
  purpose and growth. Second, they create multiple on
• 43:23
  ramps for adoption. Not everyone processes change
• 43:27
  but the same pace or in the same way.
• 43:31
  Research on technology adoption curve shows the generational
• 43:34
  digital fluency creates asymmetric responses to
• 43:39
  technological disruption. Some people need to understand
• 43:43
  the why before they even engage. Others need to experiment with
• 43:47
  the tool before they believe in the strategy.
• 43:51
  Forcing a single adoption path is how you trigger the
• 43:54
  organization's immune system across every generation
• 43:58
  simultaneously. 3rd, and this connects to Ryan's work at
• 44:03
  Ealing University, they invest in intergenerational exchange.
• 44:08
  The organizations to transform best are the ones where
• 44:12
  generational differences become a strategic asset rather than a
• 44:17
  source of friction. Just sort of bring this a bit
• 44:21
  back. You've LED for AI powered
• 44:24
  startups across different industries.
• 44:26
  AI is, arguably, you mentioned this earlier, the most
• 44:29
  significant transformation pressure right now.
• 44:32
  And it carries a unique generational dimension because
• 44:35
  assumptions about technology, automation, and the nature of
• 44:39
  work itself change dramatically across age groups.
• 44:45
  So how are you seeing generational fault lines shape
• 44:48
  the way organizations adopt or resist AII?
• 44:52
  Think the first and most important thing to realize is
• 44:55
  which generations are leading the charge on AI and which are
• 45:00
  not. In studies time and time again
• 45:02
  are are showing millennials are leading the charge, which is
• 45:04
  really really fascinating. So let's look at some of the
• 45:06
  other generations in the workforce.
• 45:08
  Gen. X.
• 45:08
  Would you equate? That to being of the age to be
• 45:11
  more middle management at that point.
• 45:14
  Yes. And so I think that that's
• 45:15
  absolutely a part of the equation is the fact that
• 45:17
  they're in places where they can adopt it.
• 45:19
  But a lot of these studies are showing independent use too, so
• 45:22
  not company sanctioned if you will or or using it for for
• 45:25
  certain projects. So I think there's, I really
• 45:27
  think the biggest thing is if you look, and we talked about it
• 45:29
  a moment ago, this, this trend line that Jen, that millennials
• 45:33
  always were changing in technology.
• 45:36
  They started with, you know, a car phone to a Nokia phone that
• 45:41
  they could play snake on to a razor flip phone to now iPhone,
• 45:45
  you know, and, and just think about the massive change in
• 45:48
  technology in that short amount of time from having to plug in
• 45:52
  with your gateway, those, those cow checkered boxes.
• 45:55
  And you had a separate monitor that you had to buy that two
• 45:58
  people had to carry to a uniformed 1 computer like an
• 46:02
  iMac or emac and then finally a laptop like.
• 46:05
  So they've, they've never seen technology be the same.
• 46:09
  And so they're, they're early adopters.
• 46:10
  Naturally, they've been trained and conditioned to say, hey, new
• 46:13
  technology, it's not going to, it's not going to break us.
• 46:15
  Let's try it. So I think that's one of the
• 46:17
  things. And then you you brought up the
• 46:17
  other point of where they are in their career.
• 46:19
  What's interesting, if you look at whether it's the political
• 46:22
  landscape in Congress or even the White House or you look at
• 46:28
  companies, you see baby boomers and millennials as the primary
• 46:32
  leaders across these institutions.
• 46:34
  And yet Gen. X makes almost a third of the
• 46:36
  workforce right now. I'm not saying they're not in
• 46:38
  leadership roles, but disproportionately they're not.
• 46:41
  And the question is, why is Gen. X not in in those leadership
• 46:43
  roles? I think part of it's the way
• 46:45
  they're raised. Part of it's the stage of life.
• 46:47
  They're being pulled in tension. Their parents are old and aging
• 46:49
  and living longer than humans have ever lived.
• 46:50
  So there's a lot of elder care. And then you've got their kids
• 46:54
  that are in college or just having families and they're
• 46:57
  they're more concerned about being grandparents.
• 46:59
  And so part of that is the stage of life and where they found
• 47:01
  themselves. They're not so concerned about
• 47:04
  climbing the the corporate ladder.
• 47:07
  So when the with the adoption of AI, millennials know that
• 47:10
  they've got a they've got to be relevant and it's their moment
• 47:13
  in in their life cycle, their corporate life cycle to prove
• 47:15
  themselves and they're not afraid of technology.
• 47:17
  So it's kind of the perfect storm for them and Gen.
• 47:19
  Z, you're seeing mixed reviews. A lot of them are skeptical of
• 47:23
  AI and yet using AI and a lot of them are using it for their
• 47:27
  personal lives. I just saw even on Valentine's
• 47:31
  Day I wrote a piece on how about 1/3 of Gen.
• 47:34
  Z had admitted to being in a romantic relationship with
• 47:38
  technology. Just yesterday I saw a headline
• 47:40
  that we're up to three quarters 3/4 have engaged and doesn't
• 47:44
  mean that they're currently in a relationship, but they're
• 47:46
  defining it to be in a relationship with some sort of
• 47:49
  LLM or generative AI robot girlfriend or boyfriend.
• 47:53
  Really, really fascinating to look at that.
• 47:55
  So they distrust it for corporate use, and yet they're
• 47:58
  engaging it in their their personal use.
• 48:00
  And it's very much like social media.
• 48:01
  They think there's no business for social media in in the
• 48:04
  workplace, which makes boomers happy, right?
• 48:07
  Gen. Z doesn't like that mixing of
• 48:10
  work and and pleasure. But we're seeing the same
• 48:13
  resistance in AI in the workplace with Gen.
• 48:14
  Z because they're afraid, like anyone's been afraid that's
• 48:17
  going to take their jobs. Just like we thought when Gen.
• 48:19
  X was coming out. Oh, we're not going to have jobs
• 48:21
  because computers are are are the main thing.
• 48:23
  And before that it was XY and Z. You know, go back, rewind 5000
• 48:27
  years. The assembly line has gotten rid
• 48:29
  of jobs. And yes, it absolutely
• 48:31
  eliminates jobs. But technology has also
• 48:34
  increased more jobs because you need more people to make more
• 48:36
  efficient assembly lines and monitor the data on those
• 48:38
  assembly lines and build the factories that those assembly
• 48:40
  lines go in or fix computers or develop software for computers
• 48:44
  or work on this thing called the Internet.
• 48:46
  So yes, AI is absolutely going to eradicate some jobs, but it's
• 48:49
  also creating new job market. And we saw growth this past
• 48:52
  quarter in the job market amongst Gen.
• 48:54
  Z in particular, meaning that they're getting placed in jobs.
• 48:57
  So where we saw a bunch of corporations stop hiring those
• 49:01
  entry level roles. We're, we're seeing it already
• 49:04
  that rapidly. I wouldn't say swing back, it
• 49:06
  was nominal increase, but we're, we're we're seeing some trends
• 49:09
  positively. Yeah.
• 49:10
  And I think that's, there's a bit of reality, Chuck, that's
• 49:13
  happening and that companies, So with the millennials who are
• 49:19
  driving a lot of the implementation and use inside
• 49:23
  organizations at the middle management layer, I think
• 49:27
  there's the hype and the translation of the hype to
• 49:31
  reality, but it's more so on the applicability to the actual
• 49:35
  business problems trying to be solved.
• 49:38
  And so we've seen a few instances where CEO was using AI
• 49:45
  to make decisions, but then when the questions about that
• 49:50
  decision making came from others, that CEO could not
• 49:53
  explain what the rationale was for the decisions, what the
• 50:00
  information was based on, was it, was it valid information and
• 50:04
  so forth. So I think there's obviously
• 50:07
  that relates to hallucination, but that you're seeing some of
• 50:09
  that natural organic output come and then question.
• 50:15
  So there there is a rationalization so to speak on
• 50:20
  what companies and organizations believe is possible.
• 50:24
  And I think to your earlier point that that's just as simply
• 50:27
  a maturation of a technology as people adapt to it and see where
• 50:33
  the true value is. You sit on Elon University's
• 50:38
  Advisory Board and you work directly with the generation who
• 50:41
  is now 40% of the workforce. What are you seeing in that
• 50:45
  generations relationship to institutions and the authority
• 50:49
  that should shape how leaders think about building
• 50:51
  organizations capable of sustained change and
• 50:55
  transformation? I think there's a lot of.
• 50:57
  We're going to see a lot of disruption in the upcoming
• 51:00
  workforce. So even zooming out to kids not
• 51:03
  in in college and university yet, you've got Gen.
• 51:05
  A13 this year. They're going to be able to work
• 51:08
  within the next two to three years depending on their state,
• 51:11
  and they'll be in college within the next 5.
• 51:14
  I think you're already starting to see the trend.
• 51:16
  We've seen tremendous dips in college enrollment in the last
• 51:21
  several years, and there's a lot of reasons for that.
• 51:24
  Gen. Z staying at home longer, Gen.
• 51:25
  Z saying college is too expensive and they don't want to
• 51:28
  have the the debt burden that even their older siblings did or
• 51:32
  their parents did. And we're seeing this return to
• 51:36
  manual labor, more blue collar work, which I actually think is
• 51:40
  really good. That's what the American economy
• 51:42
  was built on, was Main Street business and manual work.
• 51:45
  I'm not saying that's the only thing that's going to build our
• 51:47
  economy. I'm not an economist, but I
• 51:50
  think there's some really positive trends that we're
• 51:53
  seeing in these younger generations.
• 51:55
  But that also means that that could be devastating for higher
• 51:58
  education institution. And I think one of the big
• 52:02
  trends that we're seeing, So baby boomers in particular,
• 52:05
  again, gross generalization, but statistically we're the first
• 52:07
  generation where both males and females could go and graduate
• 52:10
  from college generally. So that's where we started to
• 52:13
  see that trend. And it became even more
• 52:14
  prevalent with Gen. X and then by millennials, it
• 52:17
  was required if you wanted a job.
• 52:19
  Baby boomers in earlier born Gen.
• 52:22
  X are now parents of those applying to school and they're
• 52:25
  trying to say, you know, what was that debt worth?
• 52:27
  It was all that worth it? And I think by the time you get
• 52:29
  millennial parents with now having Gen. alpha and even Gen.
• 52:33
  beta kids, they're going to be pushing back against
• 52:36
  institutions and institutions better pull it together real
• 52:40
  quick and figure out what does the new 4 year education look
• 52:43
  like? Because so many people are going
• 52:44
  to freshman year of freshman, sophomore year of high school,
• 52:48
  and then junior and senior year of high school, they're
• 52:49
  splitting between the Community College and and high school
• 52:52
  credit. So by the time that they
• 52:53
  graduate high school, they're already, you know, a quarter or
• 52:56
  halfway into their four year education.
• 52:59
  And that's changing the landscape of the student that's
• 53:01
  attending. Used to have students that
• 53:04
  wanted to go, and I was one of them that wanted to go as far
• 53:06
  away from home as possible to get away from mom and dad and
• 53:08
  experience that four year education.
• 53:10
  Now you're seeing a students look more and more closely to
• 53:14
  home. I think the other thing that has
• 53:16
  always been the case, but is even becoming more the case is
• 53:20
  students are looking for universities that already
• 53:24
  support their ideas. And I I think there's a lot of
• 53:28
  danger in that it that that scares me.
• 53:31
  We know as statistically speaking, that that liberal arts
• 53:34
  four years education lean, lean far liberal and and lean far
• 53:37
  left as a whole. And and it's actually increasing
• 53:40
  more and more. But what used to be so amazing
• 53:42
  about a four year education, which a lot of schools have have
• 53:45
  lost this discourse is you could go with someone that was super
• 53:49
  right wing and super left wing and a university was a place
• 53:52
  where you were supposed to talk about those things on the quad
• 53:54
  and you could still be friends and have dinner.
• 53:56
  And now we're seeing almost this ideological sorting with
• 53:59
  universities. I'm going to go to a school that
• 54:01
  teaches conservative policy because that's what I believe
• 54:04
  in, or I'm going to go to a school that teaches more liberal
• 54:08
  left-leaning policy because that's what I believe in.
• 54:10
  And while I think that's absolutely OK to some extent, we
• 54:13
  naturally gravitate towards people that think like us.
• 54:16
  The beauty of a four year education, in my opinion, one of
• 54:19
  the beauties of it is, is that discourse is that experience.
• 54:22
  That rooming was someone that you don't agree with on
• 54:24
  anything, but you still room together and you get along and
• 54:26
  you figure out how to talk about the things in life that your
• 54:29
  lived experiences make you who you are and that makes you a
• 54:32
  well-rounded individual. So I see a lot of those things
• 54:35
  changing and I think, you know, Elon in particular, I'll brag on
• 54:40
  them, has been on the forefront of AI.
• 54:41
  They've had some great AI teams, but they're also so strict on
• 54:45
  how it's used. So while they have been cited
• 54:48
  early in research and a lot of research around AI and how
• 54:51
  higher edge should be using AI as out of their university in
• 54:53
  conjunction with others, it's not just them, but they're
• 54:55
  they're on these think tanks. They're also really promoting
• 54:58
  critical thinking. And that is that is ultimately
• 55:02
  what we need to do. Otherwise we're going to be
• 55:04
  George Orwell's in 1984. We're going to be, you know,
• 55:07
  have new speak and we're going to, you know, Disney's Wally
• 55:10
  even I think is a great example where we're, we're programmed by
• 55:13
  the machine. And I think the institutions
• 55:16
  that that still encourage those conversations will be so
• 55:19
  helpful. I'll give one, one personal
• 55:21
  example. We've got young kids at home and
• 55:23
  everyone's like, oh, are you teaching your kids how to use
• 55:25
  ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever you're using today?
• 55:28
  And I, I said I did and then I didn't.
• 55:31
  I let my son after he graduated before he started kindergarten,
• 55:35
  graduated preschool. That that in and of itself is a
• 55:37
  joke, but we're not going to unpack that.
• 55:42
  I I said I would love you to plan a trip.
• 55:46
  I want you to be responsible for the trip.
• 55:48
  Here's the budget and everything so good parenting move, right,
• 55:50
  giving responsibility and I let him do it on on ChatGPT.
• 55:53
  He planned a great trip. We went to Asheville, NC, went
• 55:56
  to some caves that he wanted like he planned exactly what we
• 55:59
  did with help of AI. After that, I've never let him
• 56:02
  use AI again. And the reason being is there
• 56:05
  was no critical thinking involved.
• 56:07
  Not at all. He didn't have to budget the
• 56:09
  money we had said that he could use or the distance from our
• 56:12
  house or I should have gone to AAA if they even have physical
• 56:16
  AAA locations and gotten him a map as a 5 year old, he probably
• 56:20
  could have done it. And yet we have outsourced so
• 56:22
  much of this thinking because we, we think they're not able to
• 56:26
  do it. And that is so incorrect.
• 56:27
  That is so incorrect. And could he have driven us
• 56:29
  there and gotten an accurate? Absolutely not.
• 56:32
  But we could have pointed him in the right direction.
• 56:33
  So I tell people when they ask me, you know, are your kids
• 56:37
  using AI and stuff? I say they're absolutely not.
• 56:39
  And they say, well, they're going to be behind.
• 56:41
  I said, no, they're not. If they can talk to a human in
• 56:43
  logic and be reasonable, that's how they can talk to AI better
• 56:46
  than anyone else. They're not.
• 56:47
  They're going to be able to think creatively.
• 56:49
  And when AI hallucinates or fails or even the, you know, the
• 56:52
  executive outsourcing something can't even defend their own
• 56:55
  reason that they outsourced it. If you teach them logic and how
• 57:00
  to talk, they can talk to a machine.
• 57:02
  What I think so it's interesting that the parent decision you
• 57:07
  made right and across my students, many of them being
• 57:11
  Gen. Z, they have based on taking the
• 57:15
  class I teach and doing some research made the decision that
• 57:20
  their kids will not have the phone as early as they did.
• 57:24
  And the recognition of now late in later years of what they were
• 57:29
  exposed to that and their own understood consequences of that
• 57:36
  use. And I think the critical
• 57:39
  thinking element is still preserved in some regard.
• 57:42
  And it may be more of the social psychological elements that
• 57:47
  they're they're speaking to at times.
• 57:49
  But you know, it's an interesting output of to your
• 57:55
  earlier point in the beginning of history and many ways offers
• 58:00
  a pattern and there are some things that come in and out as
• 58:05
  far as a revolving door and that can be indicative to the future.
• 58:10
  Exactly, exactly. I think one of the biggest
• 58:12
  detriments that we have to be aware of is we are seeing these
• 58:15
  positive trends. A younger millennials and Gen.
• 58:17
  Z are saying they're not giving their kids phones and yet they
• 58:20
  are still living in the phone world, which, you know, they're
• 58:24
  outsourcing parenting to ChatGPT.
• 58:26
  My kid got bit at school. What do I do?
• 58:28
  Write the letter to the principal.
• 58:29
  Those are friction points that we cannot remove.
• 58:31
  And I think, you know, taking screens away is great.
• 58:34
  I, I'm all for that. We don't have our kids don't
• 58:37
  have screen time at all. Like my friends are talking
• 58:39
  about how many minutes I'm like, ours are 0.
• 58:40
  Like, yeah, we'll watch a family movie every once in a while.
• 58:42
  We can't even get through a full 90 minute Disney movie, which is
• 58:44
  great. I'm OK with that.
• 58:46
  I'm I'm thrilled with that. They'd rather be outside and the
• 58:52
  number of started Disney movies is pretty significant on our,
• 58:54
  our Disney Plus. But what, what I think is really
• 58:58
  concerning is yes, we're telling our kids not to do this, but
• 59:01
  we're still outsourcing our thinking, our parenting to these
• 59:04
  LLMS and and other things. And I think that is a bigger
• 59:08
  trap in a more detriment because you're removing the emotion from
• 59:12
  being a parent. And parenting is hard.
• 59:14
  And we're talking about a lot about parents, but it also has
• 59:16
  to do with leaders, right? We can't outsource leadership.
• 59:18
  Either we we can't outsource the difficult decisions in the
• 59:20
  workplace or the HR situation to LLMS. Think about it first.
• 59:24
  Come up with your solution. And if you absolutely must use
• 59:27
  AI, put your solution in there and help them poke holes from a
• 59:30
  legal perspective, from a compliance perspective or
• 59:32
  something like that. But my goodness, go sit down
• 59:35
  with someone on your team and hash it out and do a whiteboard
• 59:38
  session. It seems like a waste of time,
• 59:40
  but I can tell you those exercises, putting those
• 59:42
  friction back into the decisions are actually going to be much
• 59:45
  more beneficial long term. Agree.
• 59:47
  Agree. So after 20 plus years of built
• 59:50
  building companies, advising leaders, and studying how
• 59:54
  generations shape organizational behavior, what have you learned
• 59:59
  about change and transformation that surprises people?
• 1:00:04
  I think it's that it hasn't changed.
• 1:00:07
  I think everyone's like, what's why is change so hard right now?
• 1:00:10
  And I said because we've gone away from the roots of what
• 1:00:13
  makes change important. And a lot of it is leaders being
• 1:00:16
  afraid to lead. And it is a scary time to lead.
• 1:00:19
  But leadership was never an easy calling.
• 1:00:21
  And I think for a season, leadership might have been
• 1:00:23
  easier than it was early on and than it is right now.
• 1:00:28
  I think there's definitely a sweet spot of leadership when
• 1:00:31
  not saying it was ever easy, but when it was easier and now
• 1:00:34
  leadership's hard again. If you aspire to that, that
• 1:00:37
  office, to that title, you have to take on responsibility.
• 1:00:41
  And that means not everyone's going to be your friend.
• 1:00:43
  And I think that that is countercultural.
• 1:00:45
  Older generations knew that he often had abuse of power and
• 1:00:49
  other issues. And I'm not saying you have to
• 1:00:51
  go back to that route, but it also means you you have to be
• 1:00:54
  decisive and make decisions that are best for the company and and
• 1:00:57
  best for your team. That's part of your company.
• 1:00:59
  It's the main part of your company, but you've got to do
• 1:01:01
  them decisively and with integrity and move forward even
• 1:01:05
  if you don't want everyone over. So in change management, I just
• 1:01:10
  see so many leaders apologizing. They they have all these caveats
• 1:01:14
  and why I'm doing this. And if this, and I understand
• 1:01:16
  that it's just like, this is the decision we made and this is
• 1:01:19
  where we're going. And This is why I think it's
• 1:01:21
  best for our company and shut up.
• 1:01:24
  Shut up and stop talking. You know, it's, it's an
• 1:01:28
  important point because did an episode a few episodes ago and
• 1:01:34
  it was, and I write a lot about this as well, is, you know,
• 1:01:39
  there's more picked up in the body language and there's more
• 1:01:46
  insecurity that comes by virtue of the body language.
• 1:01:48
  If the leader, to your point, is not definitive and it's OK to
• 1:01:54
  say I don't know what I don't know, I'm not quite sure that
• 1:01:58
  these outcomes are going to happen, but I believe with some
• 1:02:03
  level of confidence this is the right direction.
• 1:02:06
  There is a human element to that that people respect, but there
• 1:02:09
  is also authenticity that permeates those that are needing
• 1:02:17
  to rally around that and move those balls forward.
• 1:02:21
  And to your point, I think, you know, there are people who are
• 1:02:24
  afraid to be leaders. I am in the school of there are
• 1:02:28
  people who are natural leaders and there are people who just
• 1:02:32
  can't be leaders even even with training.
• 1:02:37
  But there there is something deep down of that authenticity
• 1:02:42
  that is necessary and I think that will remain so.
• 1:02:47
  If the CEO ask you for one piece of advice before leading a major
• 1:02:51
  change of transformation across particularly a multi
• 1:02:55
  generational workforce, what would you tell them?
• 1:02:58
  Yeah, I think rewind, rewind 40 years, 30 years to when you were
• 1:03:02
  sitting around and you pulled in key stakeholders, you
• 1:03:05
  interviewed them, you ask them their opinion and you realize
• 1:03:08
  that not everyone was going to be on board.
• 1:03:10
  And that's part of change. And how can you most graciously
• 1:03:14
  and kindly lead an organization through change realizing you're
• 1:03:17
  not going to have 100% buy in? I can think.
• 1:03:20
  And this is a leader I greatly admire and I've watched him for
• 1:03:25
  many, many years and been a part of, you know, a voice in his
• 1:03:28
  organization for many years. They, they went down an
• 1:03:33
  initiative that was generally controversial.
• 1:03:36
  It, it took a political stand almost in an organization that
• 1:03:38
  they, they had never taken a political stand before.
• 1:03:40
  They, they'd had no reason to and in their type of
• 1:03:43
  organization. And they took a very political
• 1:03:45
  stand on the higher they made and a division that they spun
• 1:03:47
  up. And the entire time this leader
• 1:03:50
  was, hey, we're doing this because there's a group of our
• 1:03:54
  employees are members that don't feel heard.
• 1:03:56
  And then he started apologizing and he then apologized for each
• 1:04:00
  side of an argument. And I was like, he didn't
• 1:04:02
  definitively say this is what we're doing cuz it's best for
• 1:04:04
  our team and our company moving forward.
• 1:04:05
  And that's it, full stop. And he had gotten a lot of
• 1:04:09
  insight and a lot of wisdom. That was the interesting thing.
• 1:04:11
  He approached the change management probably the best
• 1:04:14
  like if you could, Cornell has a great, you know, eight week
• 1:04:17
  program on unchanged management. And if you follow their
• 1:04:20
  framework, like he probably did all the things right.
• 1:04:21
  The right papers found out the detractors had the individual
• 1:04:24
  conversations trickle down, conversate like beautiful until
• 1:04:28
  he stood up in front of his organization and started
• 1:04:31
  apologizing him hard body language was not lacked
• 1:04:34
  confidence. It was like a as a leader, if
• 1:04:37
  you didn't think this was the right decision, you shouldn't
• 1:04:39
  have done it. You're leading and that means
• 1:04:41
  sometimes you have to do things that are unpopular or if you
• 1:04:45
  thought it was the right decision, don't apologize for
• 1:04:47
  it. Just lead with confidence.
• 1:04:48
  Because then what what happened was the group he was trying to
• 1:04:51
  UN alienate became alienated. He had a mass exodus from his
• 1:04:54
  organization and it totally backfired, even though on paper
• 1:04:58
  his whole change management strategy was was appropriate, I
• 1:05:00
  would say. And so I to leaders, I say, hey,
• 1:05:03
  understand where you're going, understand why you're going
• 1:05:06
  there. Bring in stakeholders, have real
• 1:05:09
  one-on-one conversations, ideally in person, so you can
• 1:05:12
  see what makes someone uncomfortable.
• 1:05:13
  Ask them about it. Ask the hard questions, asked
• 1:05:16
  the hard questions. Don't be so defensive in those
• 1:05:20
  conversations. Be open to new ideas.
• 1:05:22
  And then when you do make your decision, lead, just be a
• 1:05:24
  leader. And again, it sounds
• 1:05:26
  oversimplified, but I think we've we're so afraid of, you
• 1:05:30
  know, young employees posting on Indeed or a subreddit or chewing
• 1:05:35
  us out on the Internet that we're afraid to make difficult
• 1:05:37
  decisions. But leadership is a difficult
• 1:05:40
  role. And you're not going to win 100%
• 1:05:42
  of the time, but you got to you got at least lead confidently.
• 1:05:45
  Yeah, definitely, definitely. So Ryan, thank.
• 1:05:48
  Thanks so much for coming on the Human Factor podcast and joining
• 1:05:52
  us today. So your work is a generational
• 1:05:55
  futurist combined with your experience building and scaling
• 1:05:59
  organizations from the ground up at the age of 14 brings a
• 1:06:04
  practitioner steps to this research that I think our
• 1:06:07
  audience is going to find genuinely valuable.
• 1:06:11
  So thank you and please mention your newsletter and then your
• 1:06:15
  research and your and your book as we close.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah. Well, I appreciate that, Kevin.
• 1:06:19
  Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for having this
• 1:06:21
  conversation. I think it's important one as
• 1:06:23
  leaders, just remembering that we've got to put the human back
• 1:06:25
  into what we're doing. We can't outsource the human.
• 1:06:28
  We just can't. So a lot of my a lot of my work
• 1:06:32
  recently has been on a newsletter called Collide.
• 1:06:36
  It's completely free. You can find it at
• 1:06:38
  ryanvet.com/collide. And every single week it's an
• 1:06:42
  essay on trends. Everything from, you know,
• 1:06:45
  topics we covered today like are, is Gen.
• 1:06:47
  Z actually going to church or are they just more spiritual?
• 1:06:50
  You know, why did Justin Bieber, why is he the quintessential
• 1:06:52
  millennial to much heavier topics to what's loneliness or,
• 1:06:56
  you know, what's going on in the world with, you know, certain
• 1:06:59
  generations and, and behaviors. So it covers a lot of different
• 1:07:03
  things that helps and equips leaders to to give a mirror of
• 1:07:07
  where we are in the world today and and hopefully shed light on
• 1:07:10
  where we're going. And the world doesn't have to be
• 1:07:12
  as scary as we're making it out to be.
• 1:07:14
  We just have to remember that leadership is a high calling.
• 1:07:17
  And as leaders, we have to make difficult decisions and lead
• 1:07:20
  well. Treat people with dignity as we
• 1:07:23
  lead, and you'll win more people over than you think you will.
• 1:07:29
  Excellent. Thank you, Ryan.
• 1:07:31
  You're awesome dude. I enjoyed this.
• 1:07:34
  Well, thanks Kevin. I appreciate it.
• 1:07:36
  Fun conversation. The generational dimension of
• 1:07:39
  change and transformation is not a nice to have consideration.
• 1:07:44
  It is a structural factor that determines whether your change
• 1:07:48
  initiative generates alignment or it generates fracture.
• 1:07:53
  When you understand that each generation carries a different
• 1:07:56
  psychological contract, fears different losses, and responds
• 1:08:01
  to different communication approaches, you stop designing
• 1:08:05
  change and transformation for a monolithic workforce while you
• 1:08:09
  start designing it for actual human beings in the room.
• 1:08:15
  Every episode of this season has been building towards a more
• 1:08:18
  complete picture of why change and transformation sales at the
• 1:08:23
  human level. Identity contagion, structural
• 1:08:27
  traps, algorithmic blind spots, the immune system, structural
• 1:08:32
  silence, the psychological contract, and now generational
• 1:08:36
  fault lines. These aren't separate problems,
• 1:08:39
  they are dimensions of the same underlying reality.
• 1:08:43
  Change in transformation is very much a human process, and the
• 1:08:48
  organizations are treated as a technical process.
• 1:08:51
  You continue to. Fail at the rates the research
• 1:08:54
  predicts. If you found today's episode
• 1:08:57
  valuable, subscribe to the Human Factor Podcast.
• 1:09:01
  Wherever you watch or listen the podcast, leave a rating.
• 1:09:05
  And a comment. And share this episode with your
• 1:09:08
  leadership team, especially if your organization is navigating
• 1:09:13
  change and transformation across a multi generational workforce.
• 1:09:18
  Also, subscribe to my Ideas and Innovations newsletter on 2040
• 1:09:23
  Digital's website or on Sub Stack.
• 1:09:26
  You may need the weekly frameworks and research on why
• 1:09:29
  change succeeds or fails. Lastly, connect with me on
• 1:09:34
  LinkedIn while I post regularly about the psychology of
• 1:09:37
  transformation. Next episode, we're going to
• 1:09:41
  continue the journey. Until then, remember, change in
• 1:09:44
  transformation doesn't fail because of technology, strategy
• 1:09:49
  or market conditions. It fails because of people.
• 1:09:55
  And the more deeply you understand the human factor, the
• 1:09:59
  more likely your change or transformation is to succeed.
• 1:10:04
  I'm Kevin Novak, thanks for watching or listening.