As I tend to do with a lot of Friday’s 27gen posts, I try to look at the world around us through the lens of the five generations currently in my immediate family of 20: 2 Boomers, 2 Gen X, 6 Millennials, 2 Gen Z, and 8 Alpha Generation (the “unofficial,” but popular name for those born since 2010).
Today, a quick dive into a fascinating book: Zconomy, by Jason Dorsey and Denise Villa. Dorsey and Villa are the president and CEO, respectively, of the Center for Generational Kinetics (CGK). The insights in Zconomy are based on the authors’ extensive global research, presentations, and consulting work.
Gen Z’s expectations are so different because they are so different from other generations. They are the first to lead fully digital lives. They are being raised by parents affected by past events such as 9/11 and the Great Recession, as well as contemporary realities from the COVID-19 pandemic to online gaming, Brexit, and presidential politics.
They are connected to the world, and one another, across continents and across town using technology that for them has always been available. They have strong and vocal opinions about social issues from student load debt and gun control to equality and climate change. And for the first time in history, digital media has given a generation this young the power to instantly bolster (or derail) global brands, become activist, and influence how companies do business – sometimes with a single tweet, post, or cell phone video.
We’ve heard loud and clear from Gen Z that they are not Millennials 2.0.
Gen Z is older than most people think, with the oldest members already up to age twenty-four in 2020. This large, diverse, connected-from-birth generation is soon to be the fastest growing generation in the workforce.
To understand just how different Gen Z worldview are from even Millennials, take these two quick examples:
Gen Z does not remember 9/11. They learned about it in history class, from a parent recalling the experience, or on a YouTube video. As a result, Gen Z can’t recall the feeling of fear and uncertainty that came as this event was unfolding – which made it the defining moment of the Millennial generation.
Gen Z has come of age with the COVID-19 pandemic creating fear, uncertainty, vulnerability, and confusion. The pandemic has caused massive disruption in schools, work, travel, politics, family, and much more. While the long-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic remain to be seen, it is already clear that this is the defining moment of the generation thus far.
With the pace of change and breakthroughs accelerating, the future in which Gen Z will navigate adulthood for the next fifty-plus years will be unlike any that previous generations experienced.
Looking ahead twenty- and thirty-plus years, here are 10 Disruptive Trends the Center for Generational Kinetics thinks will likely influence Gen Z for decades to come:
Car and Transportation Evolution
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Aging Population and Generational Transition
AI, IoT, Connected Devices, and Consumer Tech
Workforce Automation
Medical Breakthroughs
Consumer Space Travel
Global Challenges
Blockchain
College Transformation
All of the trends, breakthroughs, challenges, and innovations will dramatically shape and alter the beliefs and expectations of Gen Z. This will happen in a much deeper, faster, and more integrated way than when personal computers altered Gen X or smartphones connected Millennials or the web and social media bridged continents instantly.
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
Judge Taylor in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
People are blind to the unexpected, the unusual, the periphery.
That’s all 2020 has been.
We’re at an unprecedented juncture in history: several generations of relatively similar size are sharing the stage and competing for influence. Generations matter because they behave in specific ways related both to when they came of age and to their situation at the current moment. “The creation of a world view is the work of a generation rather than of an individual,” wrote novelist John Dos Passos. “But we each of us, for better or for worse, add our brick to the edifice.”
I’m beginning a deep dive into current and future intergenerational dynamics, and the six books below are my starting point.
The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe
William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict its future.
Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that last about twenty years and that always arrive in the same order. In The Fourth Turning, the authors illustrate these cycles using a brilliant analysis of the post-World War II period.
First comes a High, a period of confident expansion as a new order takes root after the old has been swept away. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion against the now-established order. Then comes an Unraveling, an increasingly troubled era in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. Together, the four turnings comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth.
The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for America’s next rendezvous with destiny.
Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam
Twenty years, ago, Robert D. Putnam made a seemingly simple observation: once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolized a significant social change that became the basis of the acclaimed bestseller, Bowling Alone, which The Washington Post called “a very important book” and Putnam, “the de Tocqueville of our generation.”
Bowling Alone surveyed in detail Americans’ changing behavior over the decades, showing how we had become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether it’s with the PTA, church, clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. In the revised edition of his classic work, Putnam shows how our shrinking access to the “social capital” that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing still poses a serious threat to our civic and personal health, and how these consequences have a new resonance for our divided country today. He includes critical new material on the pervasive influence of social media and the internet, which has introduced previously unthinkable opportunities for social connection—as well as unprecedented levels of alienation and isolation.
At the time of its publication, Putnam’s then-groundbreaking work showed how social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction, and how the loss of social capital is felt in critical ways, acting as a strong predictor of crime rates and other measures of neighborhood quality of life, and affecting our health in other ways. While the ways in which we connect, or become disconnected, have changed over the decades, his central argument remains as powerful and urgent as ever: mending our frayed social capital is key to preserving the very fabric of our society.
The Gilded Age, Alan Axelrod
The Gilded Age—the name coined by Mark Twain to refer to the period of rapid economic growth in America between the 1870s and 1900—offers some intriguing parallels to our own time. Prolific historian Alan Axelrod tackles this subject in a fresh way, exploring “this intense era in all its dimensions. . . . This book will reveal it . . . as, truly, the overture of the ‘American Century.’” He also looks at how it presaged our current era, which many are calling the “Second Gilded Age.” Photographs, political cartoons, engravings, news clippings, and other ephemera help bring this fascinating period into focus.
Zconomy, Jason Dorsey and Denise Villa
Gen Z changes everything. Today’s businesses are not built to sell and market the way Gen Z shops and buys, or to recruit and employ Gen Z the way they find and keep jobs. Leaders need answers now as gen Z is the fastest growing generation of employees and the most important group of consumer trendsetters.
The companies that quickly and comprehensively adapt to Gen Z thinking will be the winners for the next twenty years. Those that don’t will be the losers or become extinct. Zconomy is the comprehensive survival guide on how leaders must understand and embrace Generation Z.
Researched and written by Dr. Denise Villa and Jason Dorsey from The Center for Generational Kinetics, the insights in Zconomy are based on their extensive research, they’ve led more than 60 generational studies, and their work with more than 500 companies around the world.
In Zconomy, Dr. Villa and Dorsey answer: Who is Gen Z? What do employers, marketers, and sales leaders need to know? And, most importantly, what should leaders do now?
This is the critical moment for leaders to understand and adapt to Gen Z or become irrelevant. Gen Z is already reshaping the world of business and this change is only going to accelerate. Zconomy is the definitive manual that will prepare any executive, manager, entrepreneur, HR or marketing professional to successfully unlock the powerful potential of this emerging generation at this pivotal time.
The Upswing, Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism—Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times.
But we’ve been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became—slowly, unevenly, but steadily—more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, these trends reversed, leaving us in today’s disarray.
In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an “I” society to a “We” society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam’s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.
2030, Mauro F. Guillén
Once upon a time, the world was neatly divided into prosperous and backward economies. Babies were plentiful, workers outnumbered retirees, and people aspiring towards the middle class yearned to own homes and cars. Companies didn’t need to see any further than Europe and the United States to do well. Printed money was legal tender for all debts, public and private. We grew up learning how to “play the game,” and we expected the rules to remain the same as we took our first job, started a family, saw our children grow up, and went into retirement with our finances secure.
That world―and those rules―are over.
By 2030, a new reality will take hold, and before you know it:
– There will be more grandparents than grandchildren
– The middle-class in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will outnumber the US and Europe combined
– The global economy will be driven by the non-Western consumer for the first time in modern history
– There will be more global wealth owned by women than men
– There will be more robots than workers
– There will be more computers than human brains
– There will be more currencies than countries
All these trends, currently underway, will converge in the year 2030 and change everything you know about culture, the economy, and the world.
According to Mauro F. Guillen, the only way to truly understand the global transformations underway―and their impacts―is to think laterally. That is, using “peripheral vision,” or approaching problems creatively and from unorthodox points of view. Rather than focusing on a single trend―climate-change or the rise of illiberal regimes, for example―Guillen encourages us to consider the dynamic inter-play between a range of forces that will converge on a single tipping point―2030―that will be, for better or worse, the point of no return.
2030 is both a remarkable guide to the coming changes and an exercise in the power of “lateral thinking,” thereby revolutionizing the way you think about cataclysmic change and its consequences.
27gen.com 