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At 2 billion strong, Gen Z is rewriting the rules for how we live, work, and play. 2015 was an extraordinary year; it’s the first year that Gen Z, individuals born in 1995 and beyond began entering the workforce. At two billion strong globally Z is the single largest cohort to ever sweep through civilization.
Gen Z is going to slam a whole new set of behaviors onto the table; behaviors, built on technologies, such as social media, wearables, implants, augmented reality; behaviors that seem strange and alien to older generations, which ironically built the technologies that have shaped Gen Z’s behavior.
These behaviors are driving six forces that are shaping the future of business; pay attention and you will seize the opportunity of the century.
1. Hyperconnecting
This is the defining force driving Gen Z. Soon every person, machine, and object will be connected–creating a near frictionless engine of innovation. If you can’t use the abundance of data and sensors to intimately understand a customer’s behavior and personalize every interaction something is very wrong with your business.
This is the defining force driving Gen Z. Soon every person, machine, and object will be connected–creating a near frictionless engine of innovation. If you can’t use the abundance of data and sensors to intimately understand a customer’s behavior and personalize every interaction something is very wrong with your business.
2. Breaking Generations
By 2100 there will be a global 1:1 ratio of toddlers to 65 year olds. In 1950 that ratio was 10:1. Today it’s 3:1. The result of this shift in population distribution will disrupt virtually every business and social institution, locally and globally. Learning to deal with and leveraging this disruption will be the most critical factor for the success of all businesses in the 21st Century. What this Means to you:
3. The Shift from Affluence to Influence
Your advertising budget is no longer the most critical element in influencing the decisions of Gen Z. Z-ers are powerful influencers and they respond to meaningful conversations and personalized messaging. They have a built-in media channel to billions in the form of the Internet.
4. Slingshotting
Perhaps the most invisible force, is slingshotting, which is what happens when the vast majority of a potential audience suddenly takes up technology that was only available to a select few. For example, people who had sworn off of PCs are now diving into the deep end of the technology pool by going directly to a tablet and mobile technologies. Within the decade any human being, without regard to geographic or political location and economic status, will be able to connect to the Internet. The result will be the single greatest period of value creation and innovation humanity has yet to experience.
5. The World as My Classroom
Massively Open Online Classrooms promise to disrupt higher education and create a globally educated workforce. With the next decade we are likely to see more graduates of online education than in the entire history of traditional classroom education. Gen Z expects that if it’s worth learning it’s online, it’s free, and it’s a lifelong process.
6. Lifehacking
The final force is one of the most powerful shifts in how Gen Z values and views the world. There is a deep sense of purpose that drives Gen Z to game the system in whatever way is best suited to make it serve their view of what is fair, sustainable, and socially conscious. Z despises the protection of intellectual property, believes that innovation should be boundless and instantaneous, and access to capital should be democratized and available to all good ideas. In short they believe in the ultimate efficiency of a free market unfettered by the constraints of the past.
These six forces are not subtle generational shifts. Instead they challenge some of the most basic beliefs about how we build and operate our businesses. Collectively they fuel a revolution on a scale unlike anything the world has yet experienced. It’s disruptive, powerful, and often frightening, but here is the good news; we are all Z if we choose to be. Generations are no longer about age but about behaviors. Better yet, the leaders of this revolution are already giving us the playbook with all of the rules we need to survive and thrive–you just need to pay attention.
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Deloitte has started a major debate in diversity circles by turning its approach upside down. The firm is ending its women’s network and other affinity groups and starting to focus on…men. The central idea: It’ll offer all managers — including the white guys who still dominate leadership — the skills to become more inclusive, then hold them accountable for building more-balanced businesses.
This is a reversal from the strategy large companies have been trying for decades: focusing on empowering “out groups” through dedicated networks, known as affinity groups or ERGs. The overarching objective and promise of these groups never quite materialized: that they would help out-group employees reach the top echelons of leadership. This was never achieved in part because of a flawed underlying assumption that the ERGs’ unspoken purpose was to help out-groups figure out how to assimilate, and assimilation was a prerequisite for promotion.
Over the decades, these efforts too often became a convenient excuse for a lack of progress. Their continued presence today allows in-group men to say they “support women” (or people of color, or LGBTQ employees) and then explain the lack of representation at the top as a lack of will or skill or ambition.
In the end, as Deloitte rightly points out, these networks divide people up into artificial subgroups and isolate them from the networks of power and influence that are such a key part of how leaders identify and promote people.
As the American population — and corporate talent pools — grow ever more diverse, the meaning of “diversity” is shifting. The sum of all the groups considered to be minorities ends up being something entirely new: the majority. In this context, what was a radical idea in 1970 seems especially backward. Why tell the out-groups they have to figure out how to fit in, instead of teaching the in-groups how to reach out?
Today’s diversity challenge isn’t getting more people to adapt to obsolete norms of leadership preferred by Baby Boomer white men. The challenge is to get all managers — and especially current leaders — skilled and ready to lead vastly more-diverse businesses and respond to increasingly diverse customer groups.
Deb DeHaas, Deloitte’s chief inclusion officer, sums it up clearly: “The key to unleashing the power of our diversity is inclusion. To us, inclusion is leadership in action…. It’s everyone’s responsibility, every day and at every level, to create the culture that can make that happen.”
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Recent research shows creativity takes a hit when you’re constantly busy. Being able to switch between focus and daydreaming is an important skill that’s reduced by insufferable busyness. As Stanford’s Emma Seppälä writes:
The idea is to balance linear thinking—which requires intense focus—with creative thinking, which is borne out of idleness. Switching between the two modes seems to be the optimal way to do good, inventive work.
In 2011 Americans consumed five times as much information as 25 years prior; outside of work we process roughly 100,000 words every day. This saps us of not only willpower (of which we have a limited store) but creativity as well.
Engaging creatively requires hitting the reset button, which means carving space in your day for lying around, meditating, or staring off into nothing. This is impossible when every free moment—at work, in line, at a red light—you’re reaching for your phone. Your brain’s attentional system becomes accustomed to constant stimulation; you grow antsy and irritable when you don’t have that input. You’re addicted to busyness.
How to disconnect in a time when connection is demanded by bosses, peers, and friends? Seppälä makes four suggestions:
1. Make a long walk—without your phone—a part of your daily routine2. Get out of your comfort zone3. Make more time for fun and games4. Alternate between doing focused work and activities that are less intellectually demanding
Research shows that the fear of missing out (FOMO) increases anxiety and takes a toll on your health in the long run. Of all the things to suffer, creative thinking is one of our greatest losses. Regardless of your vocation a flexible mindset open to new ideas and approaches is invaluable. Losing it just to check on the latest tweet or post an irrelevant selfie is an avoidable but sadly sanctioned tragedy.
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