Work-life expectancy is expanding. While we worry about working with five generations in the workplace by 2020—only 5 years from now—we are now looking at even more as we look 10, 20, or 50 years from now. As work-life expectancy, the number of years we have available to spend working, expands we may find ourselves still employed at 75, extending the overlap between generations. There could be as many as seven different generations at work at a time and crash into each other. The challenge for businesses becomes more about this crash than about integrating each generation with others.
We need to shift our thinking on the future of work to a post-generational mindset. Think beyond generations at a time to the transformative forces that reshape work on continuous vectors. This is the spirit of The Gen Z Effect: The Six Forces Shaping the Future of Business by Thomas Koulopoulos and Dan Keldsen (Bibliomotion, 2014). As the authors state and I tend to agree, “Generational thinking is like the Tower of Babel: it only serves to divide us. Why not focus on the behaviors that can unite us?” The book is not as much a discussion of Millennials or Gen Z as much as the changes that reverberate across generations.
The Gen Z Effect by Thomas Koulopoulos and Dan Keldsen (image: Rawn Shah, based on originals by... [+]
Breaking Generations with a Hyperconnected Future
I entered the world of multi-user virtual communities, worlds, and games when I was 19 and consequently spent endless hours in them. I saw these as more a place where people from across the world came together for hours on end to interact with each other. After a while, you start to understand each other—even if people never use their real name, age or other descriptive characteristics about them. You feel they are in the same space as you even when they may be on an entirely different continent.
It has little to do with age. I have friends who are closer to retirement who work and live this way. While more common today, there are still many who find it strange. When they see teens’ texting on their phones, not verbally speaking to friends right next to them, they do not feel they many other friends also in that same environment, but physically miles away. The teens feel their friends right there with them. The many thought leaders who investigate enterprise process design, collaboration and social business, do the same thing regardless of location, and certainly of age.
As the authors say:
“One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to make slow technology adoption on a generational divide by assuming that the entire generation the trait of technology avoidance; this is exactly what we have done historically when we stereotype ‘older’ workers when we say they don’t ‘get’ technology.”
This is hyperconnected behavior that breaks age-based generations, and instead unites them by behavior. The authors share a similar story of toddler Julia, who so used to interactive cards on a tablet computer, consider a physical world equivalent of the same card game, simply deficient. She shares this same trait with many age groups. It is the norm and expected user experience that matters going into the future.
In all, the authors, Koulopoulos and Keldsen, describe the Gen Z effect as propelled by six forces:
- Breaking generations;
- Hyperconnecting;
- Slingshotting technology;
- Shifting from Affluence to Influence;
- Adopting the World as my Classroom;
- Lifehacking.
I’ll only explain just one more idea here from the book to illustrate the impact they describe.
Slingshotting Value
Slingshotting is the idea that late adopters or laggards can jump well ahead of the early adopters of a new behavior or technology, when they feel it ready. When people can see that their work will be easier as a result of a technology, that piece of tech is 50% more likely to be successful, as compared to one that is just easier to use. People therefore pivot on the usefulness (the former) rather than the usability (the latter) of the technology. The authors point to research conducted by Fred D. Davis (now at Univ. of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of business) in the International Journal of Human-computer studies. You can’t ignore usability, but the design of making it easier to use should fall in step to showing how the value.
From my experience in technology adoption and innovation, I have seen enterprise programs oversimplify Everett M. Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations theory—you may also have heard it as Roger’s Curve—as the guiding principle how companies should set their adoption strategy. This model segments people as inherently being innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Most adoption strategies focus on drawing the early adopter. Rather than setting strategy in program or product to draw early adopters, slingshotting poses a contrarian view to focusing instead on the late majority and laggards.
To design for slingshotting, the authors suggest three principles:
- Simplification: the user experience fits the tolerances of ordinary people, rather than exclusivity and complexity sometimes desired by leading edge adopters
- Accessibility: in terms of connectivity to others, people, location or technology alike.
- Datafication: capturing and showing the details of how people interact with it in a way that reveals information about themselves
I find the authors description of slingshotting perhaps too focused on technology. Here’s an alternative view that describes the same concept. Many hotel chains have been updating their experiences with HDTVs, better Wi-Fi, and more conveniences. This is incremental improvement to a known behavior for people who need a place to stay. They never predicted the behavior change where people were willing to stay with strangers in their homes a la
This trend can slingshot the industry from focusing on improved experiences into something else entirely, by that tilt in behavior change. The technology of finding and booking rooms, on the other hand, doesn’t change very much in comparison. The usefulness catalyst as the authors indicate is still the deciding factor here.
How impactful is this particular slingshot? AirBnB now has 1 Million rooms available—and continues to grow—as compared to about 700,000 available in each of the three largest hotel chains (Marriott, Hilton, and InterContinental Hotel Group). Barclay’s predicts AirBnB had an estimated 37 million room-nights booked in 2014, which will triple to over 100 million by 2016.
AirBnB does support the enabling tenets of simplification, accessibility and datafication of the experience through their technology. But what is important to consider is the desire to accommodate behavior change, if they see the usefulness in it.
The authors mention how helping to keep people at work in a state of flow, the ‘goldilocks’ zone where things are just right between the extremes being under-stimulated and bored, and over-stimulated and anxious. This is where datafication has a role. Today’s application of this appears in one form as gamification of work tasks, designing systems that motivate people based on the use of data and game mechanics to keep them interested.
Summary
The Gen Z Effect suggests we transpose the discussion from the focus on supporting characteristics of each generation to one that is independent on age demographics and instead on behaviors. These identified behaviors describe a psychographics of the population regardless of the temporal setting today or in the future. It may be too soon to say if these psychographics will stand the test of time, but resetting our mindset is just as important. Inside the company it changes how programs such as for HR or Technology deployment can be designed and operated. Beyond the company, it changes how products can be designed, how to interact with the outside world, and even the perspectives of who a visible organizational leader may be. For that alone, the book is worth its value.
Rawn Shah will be speaking about employee culture and advocacy next at London HR Tech Europe, on March 24-25th.
