Ryan Vet on The Human Factor Podcast: The Generational Fault Lines of Organizational Transformation

Thanks so much for having me, Kevin.

Thanks for that question, Kevin. It's a little bit humorous how I've gotten to each step of the journey, but now where I am today, hindsight's 20/20, and I see how it all connects. I was getting on stage speaking about AI, a course I have from human hesitation to AI acceleration, and what does that mean for us? I'm not talking about tools and the latest, greatest thing, because 30 new tools will start by the time I'm done, and half of them will have shut down. So it's really more, what does this mean for society and culture and for us as human beings, and what's going on? So as I'm about to get up, they describe me as a futurist. And I liked the title, but I was like, that's interesting. I've never ascribed that title to myself. So I talked to the meeting professional afterwards who had put this all together and wrote my bio. And you never know, when you get on stage, I've done over a thousand live presentations, you get some interesting intros, some are completely fabricated, some are not. So I started unpacking this, and she was like, well, if you look at all of your work, everything you've done, it is leading to the future. You're always asking something about the future. So I was like, okay, I'll take it. And then as I processed it, I'm not an economist. I do look at the economy, obviously, but that's not what I'm focusing on. I'm really looking at generations, and that did start when I was a teenager. My first legally incorporated company was at 14. So I've been very entrepreneurial, and had some successes and plenty of failures, too. That's what makes a good entrepreneur. And as I navigated each one of those, especially starting as a teenager, a millennial managing Gen X and boomers at the time, there was a lot of conflict. And I chalked up a lot of that to my age, which, absolutely, a 14-year-old manager of people older than themselves is always going to create conflict on so many levels just beyond generations. But then fast forward several years to 2009, a real estate company asked me to come speak to why millennials weren't buying houses, which at the time was a flawed question, because most millennials weren't old enough to buy houses. But I answered it, because at that point Twitter was thriving and I had an early Twitter account with a lot of followers at the time, and I think I have just as many followers now because around that time I also got off the platform. But I started to look at the world through how humans interact with one another, where we've been as culture and society, and where we're going into the future. And so from a generational perspective, because your experiences and my experiences, my kids' experiences are all very different because of where we were raised, when we were raised, and what was going on in the world and society. So that's kind of how it all packages together.

Yeah, I know we'll get into it even more deeply, but history repeats itself. There's nothing new under the sun. And if you look at any society, any civilization, whether it's recent history or you're going back to the Byzantine Empire, there are certain trends that you can see that replicate time and time again. And then you go and look at the human being. Humans are fairly predictable creatures. I love Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational. It's just a fantastic book, because at the end of the day, we're all searching for meaning and purpose, and we want significance over success, but we often look in the wrong places. So we build something and then it comes tumbling down. It's a cycle over and over again. So as we look to the future, a lot of what I do is, I'm not a technological futurist. Even though I've been involved in AI startups for almost two decades now, that's not been the point of saying, hey, we're trying to make humans better, we're trying to make society better, we're trying to remove friction, which ultimately backfires. But what are those patterns that we can see, and how can we get ahead of that as leaders as we're looking into the future, to bring our teams, bring our cultures, bring our societies along, so that we don't lose the humanness that makes leadership great.

I think one of the things that we have to zoom out on is, actually, as almost contrarian as this is to my own work, we have to step away and look past generations for just a minute, because I think we have almost pigeonholed ourselves into this conversation about generations when change management comes down the line. The reality is, if you look at just basic change management theory, there's always going to be detractors. There's always going to be people that are thriving in change, that want the change. There's going to be people that think they want it and then once it happens become a detractor, and that happens regardless of generation. So I think that's the first thing that we have to realize. Whether you have all Gen X working in your workplace, or you've got all the generations from silent down to Gen Z in your workplace, there's going to be people on every side of that conversation. So that's part of the conversation. But then the second is, we have to realize that every single generation's lived experience, their cohort that they grew up with, and the experiences that they had in the moments in which they were raised, are going to shape how they perceive authority, how they perceive trust, how they perceive communication. And those are all common elements when you're looking at change management initiatives in an organization or corporation, that if you don't have buy-in and trust, it doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you, but you have to have the trust that you're making the best decision for the organization. That's going to look very different between a baby boomer and then, skip two generations and looking at a Gen Z, pretty much the bookends in the workforce right now. We do have a couple of silent generation in there. But when you look at that, that's a pretty radical difference in how they perceive trust. Baby boomers generally trust institutions. They trust titles, education, experience. Gen Z is very much against that as a whole. They trust authenticity. They want to know that you care about them as a person. They don't want any fluff. They don't want corporate jargon. They don't want any of that. It's a totally different perception of trust. And so when that's communicated, you can erode trust almost instantly if you communicate it based on one generation's perceived idea of what is stable and what is not.

There's definitely some leaders that understand that, and I think honestly, sometimes we clutter the conversation too much by talking about generations, or even talking about these differences, because at the end of the day, you're still human beings leading other human beings. And if you look at the recent body of work, and recent being the last two to three decades, we've shifted from these management style books to leadership style books, back to management style books, and now managing the different generations. And I think there's, even with some of my earlier work, even with the book you mentioned earlier, I think it's flawed logic a little bit. The management techniques in there are absolutely rock solid. I stand behind them. The myths that we cracked about the millennials, absolutely rock solid. But the whole premise is saying, hey, because they are millennials at that point, or because they are Gen Z, they're going to have these characteristics and you have to treat them a certain way. Well, the book was written when millennials were still graduating college. Now they're all in the workforce, and many are well past that in management roles and having kids. And in the book, parts of it apply to Gen Z, but part of it we're looking at the age of the individual. And a lot of these snapshots, whether it's articles or books, get stuck looking at a generation at a certain moment in time that is not indicative of their entire life cycle.

So Gen Alpha, they're turning 13 this year at the time of this recording. And so we've got a limited subset of data, and even less on Gen Beta being born starting 2026. So you've got these two younger generations, but what you can start to do, and this is where kind of the futurist hat comes in, is you can look at the parenting decisions and the cultural implications of what has happened at two other generations at around the same age. So one of the frameworks that I use is called the generational prism. If you're listening, it's kind of a triangle, and on one arm you've got the age, and the other arm you've got the moment, and then a prism refracts light. So when you shine light through it, the refraction of that is usually some beautiful color on the table or whatever you're refracting the light onto. That's where the label comes. And so you've got this age-moment-label framework that I use so often when looking at generations. And I think we've had it backwards for the longest time. We start with the label, saying millennials are lazy, Gen Z are anxious. While there might be some merit to stereotypes, because stereotypes, whether or not we like it, usually have some grain of truth, that's why they stick, we start at the wrong spot. And so I always say, hey, let's take their age. So 13 for Gen Alpha right now. And let's rewind a generation. So when Gen Z was 13, and yes, some last year were 13, but if you go to the middle of the cohort, we're looking about 15 years ago. What was happening 10 to 15 years ago? When millennials were 15, you're looking almost 20 to 30 years ago. And you start rewinding, saying, what was going on in the '90s and early 2000s? What was going on in the late '20s? And you start looking at the age that they were, and then the moment in history that they were, and then you can start to see what's sticking. So I think Gen Z and Gen Alpha are actually both, and we use the term digital natives, but they're actually less accepting of change because of that. While millennials grew up with technology and they saw everything from no phones to smartphones in their growing-up years, a rapid curve on technological adoption, from no internet to social media and Wi-Fi, all those things happened within the millennials. Every single time they logged into the Facebook dot com...

Before they dropped the definite article there. Every single time it was a different thing. They had timelines and they had walls and they had pokes. And so they're used to change. But by the time Gen Z started getting onto these platforms, and arguably they got on too early, that's a deeper conversation, but when they start getting on these platforms, there were no more changes. So they actually were already in the social media era. Gen Alpha's going to have the same thing with AI. All of a sudden, from 2022 to today, we saw generative AI just take the world by storm, and every single time that now it could generate images, now it could generate video, that was shocking to Gen Z and millennials, Gen X and boomers. Gen Alpha's going to have lived with that. So I think we're going to see similar trends with the implications that social media, lived for the entire life of Gen Z, had on Gen Z. We're going to see the same thing with Gen Alpha. And if we're not careful, we're going to see the implications of cognitive erosion, and just taking normal daily brain practices that you and I have done, and we're going to see them offload that onto a machine. And that's going to be really dangerous if we're not careful.

No, I think it's good, and I think the implications are bigger than generative AI, especially with Gen Alpha. We think about the LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and all of that. But there's the component that we're not thinking about. A child can hop on and talk to, I'm not going to say it out loud, otherwise everyone's phone will go off, but your Apple friend, right? And they can ask what the weather is today. They can ask how long is it going to take to get to the grocery store, at 6 years old. And there's implications to that. While it's convenient, while it's beneficial and helpful, they can pick up and they can talk to their parents' robot phone character. Again, won't say it, but they can say, hey, so-and-so, call whomever. No longer are they scrolling, they're not learning to read for the names or scroll through phone books or a Rolodex. They'll never know what that is. And they'll never have to memorize those phone numbers. And we've removed these friction points that I don't think we even think about, that this generation has never seen before. Unlocking the door with voice, opening blinds and shades with voice, the refrigerator telling you when you need to get milk. Those little things are great innovations, and I'm a living paradox because I love and have worked towards those innovations, but also there's massive implications to that, that I don't think we're thinking about, the little things. We get so sidetracked by these LLMs and things that there's a lot of other things that Gen Alpha in particular is already experiencing as part of their lived life, that they're already not doing. They've already removed so many friction points that I think are beneficial to formation.

Exactly.

Both excellent questions. I think the first one, what does each generation fear? You have to look at what has governed each generation for the most part. And for the sake of time and brevity, I'm going to generalize, and obviously it's much more complex than what I'm going to share, so forgive the generalizations, but for the sake of conversation and time, I think they're generally helpful. So you've got baby boomers who believed in institutions, believed in stability, believed in climbing the corporate ladder, quantity over quality. If they were the first in, last out, that meant they were going to get the raise, they were going to get the corner office. Gen Z listening, the corner office used to be achievable. It used to be the thing. There wasn't all desks and bullpens. So that was the baby boomer's mindset. And they are working longer than other generations. They're still trying to fill up that bank account. They're still trying to build wealth. All these things that they sought to do from day one of their career. Change is scary to someone who believes an institution should be stable. They're looking at all this technology. They've seen enough interruptions to know, okay, the internet didn't disrupt their jobs that much. It changed how they work, but they still had a job. But they're hesitant. Now you look at Gen X. Gen X has always been skeptical of institutions, mainly because their parents trusted them too much. And you see it flip-flop, and I talk about the generational pendulum. And so Gen X, they're hard workers though. So they're not going to be the first one in and last one out. They're not going to be the last one in and first one out either. So they're different than both boomers and millennials in that way. They're kind of the barbell generation, like I say. They're a smaller generation that kind of are being weighed down by the boomers and millennials on either side.

You do, you do, but it's good. And I do think, and there's actually data, plenty of data to back it up, Gen X is one of the best workers in the workforce today for so many reasons. But they're big on work-life balance. They saw their parents sell their souls to their jobs. And I say parents plural, because generally it was two parents working. And so Gen X was like, I don't want to do that. And Gen X, not millennials, Gen X is who we have to thank for the idea of work-life balance. That was their concept. They're still, if they have a project that they need to get done, they'll come in, they'll stay late, they'll get the project done. But they also want to protect to some extent their family time, and focus more on their family. That's where we get helicopter parents, because they want to be more present for their kids than their parents were for them. So you fast forward and you look at millennials. Well, millennials actually are extremely productive individuals. And I think this is a big misnomer. And it started to be seen as millennials have aged, and now the youngest millennials are turning 30 next year, so we've seen the shift, but I think especially when millennials first got in the workforce, they seemed to be disrespectful, lazy, entitled, not trusting authority. They were skeptical of anything, especially if it involved pen and paper. And they cared about the planet. So save this email, or save the paper, don't print this email, all of that. We've seen some of that fall away, but what's interesting is millennials' output was just so much greater than any other generation because they were so efficient and proficient using technology. And so they could execute tasks at a faster pace, which automatically created trust issues with the previous generations in the workforce, of millennials. And millennials would never offer to stay late, and again, generalization, never offer to stay late for that project, wouldn't offer to come in. If you're paying them to come in at 8:30 or 9:00, they're going to come in at 8:30 or 9:00. And if you stop paying them at 4:00, they're going to leave at 4:00, not 4:01. And that was always the joke, and there's a lot of truth to that.

Yeah, and so, you know, a minute ago I said stereotypes stick because there is some grain of truth. And we have seen millennials, as they care more about their work and they get to this management level, that they are exhibiting more traits of Gen X and boomers, where they will, when necessary, stay late, but they're not going to do it unnecessarily. And so they've got a different kind of trust issue. Theirs is all about transparency. They want information because they've always had information. They started with Ask Jeeves, then went to Bing, Yahoo, AOL, and Google, and now LLMs. And what's interesting is millennials are adopting generative AI faster than any other generation, in large part due to the fact that as they were growing up, the Facebook did become Facebook, MySpace was no longer existent, or barely existent. You didn't want to hang out there, at least. So you had all of these different changes. And so transparency was the big word for millennials. And then fast forward to Gen Z. They took transparency to the next level. They want authenticity. Meaning, I'm going to show up and I'm going to be my authentic self, and if I do not want to be here today, I'm going to wear it on my face and you're going to know that I don't want to be here. And I'm going to let you know that I don't want to be here. And you better treat me the same. And I think the biggest issue for trust that's just really alarming and really challenging for most leaders is this idea that Gen Z believes, it's almost three quarters, just shy of three quarters of Gen Z members believe that their company and their boss should take a political stand on current social issues.

That's extremely shocking and really frightening to a lot of leaders, especially older leaders that have been more reserved and have always been told that their politics stay at home. You know, they check their personal stuff at the door. That's become a tremendous issue, which brings me to the answer to your second question, which is, what do you do about that? How can you navigate those changes? Is it even possible to overcome that? And I think it goes back to something really, really simple. Somewhere along the line, we got sidetracked by looking at labels and by trying to over-analyze all of the data on generations, that we forgot something really simple as leaders. We need a clear vision and mission of where we're going. And when you have that extremely clear vision and mission, you can easily kind of stay out. And I say easily, it's not as easy as I wish it were. But you can stay out of some of the political conversations. You can stay out of some of the things and say, hey, this is where we're going as an organization. These are our values. And you bought into this, and this is where we're marching forward together. And we don't have to answer those questions because it's not relevant to our mission. And not all Gen Z is going to like that. But so often, we've just lost sight of that because we keep trying to manage problems instead of lead people.

Exactly, exactly. And I think, you used the word purpose, and what's consistent across every generation, and it manifests itself differently, but what's consistent is every single person wants purpose in their life. Everybody seeks meaning. And again, each generation has taken that differently. Boomers wanted meaning from their job titles that they collected, their degrees that they collected, things like that. Gen X wanted meaning by what their family life looked like, what their personal community life looked like. Millennials wanted purpose to be transcendent. That's the first generation that saw the world as effectively becoming one. You could reach out to anyone in the world for almost nothing. Whereas before, I remember I had aunts and uncles who lived overseas. I had to go get a calling card at Walmart, dial in the forever-long number, and you would hope that they were available next to their phone, and if they weren't, you just wasted however much money trying to call them. And that's gone, which there's a lot of benefit to that, and that's exciting. But millennials saw the world with all the issues in our world, and so they became concerned global citizens, which I think is valuable. And now what's interesting is we see Gen Z going back and focusing on the self. There's a lot of talk right now, Gen Z revival, are they going back to church? And the data actually says no, which contradicts a lot of headlines. But they are one of the most spiritual generations, meaning they're seeking some sort of transcendent identity beyond organized religion. Whether that is things as more new-agey as ayahuasca retreats down in South America, or whether that's practicing Eastern, we're seeing a lot of Eastern traditions and faith practices come back in, as well as Gen Z males in particular that do commit to an evangelical or Christian-based religion are doubling down on it, even though the number is the smallest it's ever been. Those that have chosen to go into organized religion are going with full force. And the pattern across all of that, the fact that Gen Z is one of the more spiritual generations as a whole, is really fascinating because it shows that they want this sense of purpose. And they thought they could get meaning from likes and instant gratification and comments and being connected to all their friends, and they figured that that's not it. So they're asking, there's got to be something more, what is that?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of things we could go deep with, family dynamics and over the years, but in fact I'm going to generalize really grossly here for the sake of time. Boomers basically made divorce not taboo. Gen X didn't like that, and so we saw divorce rates actually hold fairly steady but decline slightly, and millennials, we're seeing this huge drop-off in divorce as a whole. But we're also seeing a much lower percentage of marriage, because they have moved to cohabitation. And so they've changed this family dynamic. And a lot of that we can trace, some of it's the religious constructs of family dynamics or what a family looks like, of course, but there is underlying fear, specifically of Gen Z and some later-born millennials, but specifically of Gen Z, of, I don't want to bring kids into this world, I don't want my kids to experience this. And I would argue, while some of that is rhetoric, and we're just seeing a slow life adoption of marriage and things like that, or even cohabitation or reproduction in younger generations, I think a lot of it is they just haven't seen healthy relationships modeled in any aspect. I'm not talking about romantic necessarily, but even platonic. They haven't had those real-life interactions. I liken it to going to the mall. Gen X, the mall was their sanctuary, if you will. The arcades, the movie theaters, and it was just a place where, yeah, Pac-Man exactly, where they could go and hang out. And millennials caught the tail end of that. But I often say, when you're walking down the mall with your friends and you could smell the popcorn from the cinema, you could smell Mrs. Fields and Auntie Anne's pretzels and cookies, you could smell all of those things, you found a penny on the ground, you picked it up as a friend and you tossed it into the fountain, all those little things that you can't achieve in a relationship that's digital. You just can't. You might be in constant communication and texting all of those times, but those little interactions that round out a full human experience are largely lacking with these younger generations. So you look at Gen Z in particular, and the loneliness studies are unbelievable. The US Surgeon General in 2023 said that loneliness is now one of the greatest health concerns in our country. We exchanged what we thought connectivity was, to enhance the human experience, we've actually removed the most important elements of the human experience from interacting and communicating. And so I think a lot of that, Gen Z doesn't know how that translates into deeper relationships beyond surface-level friendships, platonic or even romantic. And so I think you're starting to see some of that play out in society.

I think the first and most important thing to realize is which generations are leading the charge on AI and which are not. And studies time and time again are showing millennials are leading the charge, which is really, really fascinating. So let's look at some of the other generations in the workforce. Gen X, who...

Yes, and so I think that that's absolutely a part of the equation, is the fact that they're in places where they can adopt it. But a lot of these studies are showing independent use too. So not company-sanctioned, if you will, or using it for certain projects. So I really think the biggest thing is, if you look, and we talked about it a moment ago, this trendline that millennials always were changing in technology. They started with a car phone, to a Nokia phone that they could play Snake on, to a Razr flip phone, to now an iPhone. And just think about the massive change in technology in that short amount of time. From having to plug in with your Gateway, those cow-checkered boxes, and you had a separate monitor that you had to buy that two people had to carry, to a uniform one computer like an iMac or eMac, and then finally a laptop. So they've never seen technology be the same, and so they're early adopters naturally. They've been trained and conditioned to say, hey, new technology is not going to break us. Let's try it. So I think that's one of the things. And then you brought up the other point of where they are in their career. What's interesting is, if you look at whether it's the political landscape in Congress or even the White House, or you look at companies, you see baby boomers and millennials as the primary leaders across these institutions. And yet Gen X, who makes almost a third of the workforce right now, I'm not saying they're not in leadership roles, but disproportionately they're not. And the question is why is Gen X not in those leadership roles? I think part of it's the way they're raised. Part of it's the stage of life. They're being pulled in tension. Their parents are old and aging and living longer than humans have ever lived, so there's a lot of elder care. And then you've got their kids that are in college or just having families, and they're more concerned about being grandparents. And so part of that is the stage of life where they found themselves. They're not so concerned about climbing the corporate ladder. So with the adoption of AI, millennials know that they've got to be relevant, and it's their moment in their life cycle, their corporate life cycle, to prove themselves. And they're not afraid of technology. So it's kind of the perfect storm for them. And Gen Z, you're seeing mixed reviews. A lot of them are skeptical of AI and yet using AI. And a lot of them are using it for their personal lives. I just saw, even on Valentine's Day, I wrote a piece on how about a third of Gen Z had admitted to being in a romantic relationship with technology. Just yesterday I saw a headline that we're up to three quarters. Three quarters have engaged. It doesn't mean that they're currently in a relationship, but they're defining it to be in a relationship with some sort of LLM or generative AI robot girlfriend or boyfriend. Really, really fascinating to look at that. So they distrust it for corporate use, and yet they're engaging it in their personal use. And it's very much like social media. They think there's no business for social media in the workplace, which makes boomers happy, right? Gen Z doesn't like that mixing of work and pleasure. But we're seeing the same resistance in AI in the workplace with Gen Z, because they're afraid, like anyone's been afraid, that it's going to take their jobs. Just like we thought when Gen X was coming out, oh, we're not going to have jobs because computers are the main thing. And before that, it was X, Y, and Z, go back, rewind 50, 100 years, the assembly line has gotten rid of jobs. And yes, it absolutely eliminates jobs, but technology has also increased more jobs, because you need more people to make more efficient assembly lines, and monitor the data on those assembly lines, and build the factories that those assembly lines go in, or fix computers, or develop software for computers, or work on this thing called the internet. So yes, AI is absolutely going to eradicate some jobs, but it's also creating a new job market. And we saw growth this past quarter in the job market amongst Gen Z in particular, meaning that they're getting placed in jobs. So where we saw a bunch of corporations stop hiring those entry-level roles, we're seeing it already, that rapidly. I wouldn't say swing back, it was a nominal increase, but we're seeing some trends positively.

I think we're going to see a lot of disruption in the upcoming workforce. So even zooming out to kids not in college and university yet, you've got Gen Alpha, 13 this year. They're going to be able to work within the next 2 to 3 years, depending on their state. And they'll be in college within the next five. I think you're already starting to see the trend. We've seen tremendous dips in college enrollment in the last several years, and there's a lot of reasons for that. Gen Z staying at home longer. Gen Z saying college is too expensive, and they don't want to have the debt burden that even their older siblings did or their parents did. And we're seeing this return to manual labor, more blue-collar work, which I actually think is really good. That's what the American economy was built on, was Main Street business and manual work. I'm not saying that's the only thing that's going to build our economy, I'm not an economist, but I think there's some really positive trends that we're seeing in these younger generations. But that also means that that could be devastating for higher education institutions. And I think one of the big trends that we're seeing, so baby boomers in particular, again, gross generalization, but statistically they're the first generation where both males and females could go and graduate from college, generally. So that's where we started to see that trend, and it became even more prevalent with Gen X. And then by millennials it was required if you wanted a job. Baby boomers and earlier-born Gen X are now parents of those applying to school, and they're starting to say, you know what, was that debt worth it? Was all that worth it? And I think by the time you get millennial parents, now having Gen Alpha and even Gen Beta kids, they're going to be pushing back against institutions. And institutions better pull it together real quick and figure out what does the new four-year education look like, because so many people are going to freshman and sophomore year of high school, and then junior and senior year of high school they're splitting between a community college and high school credits. So by the time that they graduate high school, they're already a quarter or halfway into their four-year education. And that's changing the landscape of the student that's attending. You used to have students that wanted to go, and I was one of them, that wanted to go as far away from home as possible to get away from mom and dad and experience that four-year education. Now you're seeing students look more closely to home. I think the other thing that has always been the case, but is even becoming more the case, is students are looking for universities that already support their ideas. And I think there's a lot of danger in that. That scares me. We know, statistically speaking, that that liberal arts four-year education, they lean far liberal and lean far left as a whole. And it's actually increasing more and more. But what used to be so amazing about a four-year education, which a lot of schools have lost this discourse, is you could go with someone that was super right-wing and super left-wing, and a university was a place where you were supposed to talk about those things on the quad, and you could still be friends and have dinner. And now we're seeing almost this ideological sorting with universities. I'm going to go to a school that teaches conservative policy because that's what I believe in, or I'm going to go to a school that teaches more liberal, left-leaning policy because that's what I believe in. And while I think that's absolutely okay to some extent, we naturally gravitate towards people that think like us. The beauty of a four-year education, in my opinion, one of the beauties of it, is that discourse, is that experience, that rooming with someone that you don't agree with on anything, but you still room together and you get along, and you figure out how to talk about the things in life that your lived experiences make you who you are, and that makes you a well-rounded individual. So I see a lot of those things changing. And I think, Elon in particular, I'm bragging on them, has been on the forefront of AI. They've got some great AI teams, but they're also so strict on how it's used. So while they have been cited early in research, and a lot of research around AI and how higher ed should be using AI is out of their university, in conjunction with others, it's not just them, but they're on these think tanks, they're also really promoting critical thinking. And that is ultimately what we need to do. Otherwise, we're going to be George Orwell's 1984. We're going to have newspeak, and we're going to, you know, Disney's Wall-E even, I think, is a great example, where we're programmed by the machine. And I think the institutions that still encourage those conversations will be so helpful. I'll give one personal example. We've got young kids at home, and everyone's like, oh, are you teaching your kids how to use ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever you're using today? And I said I did, and then I didn't. I let my son, after he graduated, before he started kindergarten, graduated preschool, that in and of itself is a joke, but we're not going to unpack that, I said, I would love you to plan a trip. I want you to be responsible for the trip. Here's the budget and everything. So, good parenting move, right? Giving responsibility. And I let him do it on ChatGPT. He planned a great trip. We went to Asheville, North Carolina, went to some caves that he wanted, he planned exactly what we did. Stayed on budget with the help of AI. After that, I've never let him use AI again. And the reason being is there was no critical thinking involved. Not at all. He didn't have to budget the money we had said that he could use, or the distance from our house. I should have gone to AAA, if they even have physical AAA locations, and gotten him a map. As a 5-year-old, he probably could have done it, and yet we have outsourced so much of this thinking because we think they're not able to do it, and that is so incorrect. That is so incorrect. And could he have driven us there and gotten us there accurately? Absolutely not. But we could have pointed him in the right direction. So I tell people, when they ask me, are your kids using AI and stuff? I say, they're absolutely not. And they say, well, they're going to be behind. I said, no, they're not. If they can talk to a human and use logic and be reasonable, that's how they can talk to AI better than anyone else. They're going to be able to think creatively, and when AI hallucinates or fails, or even the executive outsourcing something can't even defend their own reason that they outsourced it, if you teach them logic and how to talk, they can talk to a machine.

Exactly, exactly. I think one of the biggest detriments that we have to be aware of is, we are seeing these positive trends. Younger millennials and Gen Z are saying they're not giving their kids phones, and yet they are still living in the phone world, where they're outsourcing parenting to ChatGPT. My kid got bit at school, what do I do? Write the letter to the principal. Those are friction points that we cannot remove. And I think taking screens away is great, I'm all for that. Our kids don't have screen time at all. My friends are talking about how many minutes, I'm like, ours are zero. We'll watch a family movie every once in a while, we can't even get through a full 90-minute Disney movie, which is great. I'm okay with that, I'm thrilled with that. They'd rather be outside. And the number of started Disney movies is pretty significant on our Disney Plus, but what I think is really concerning is, yes, we're telling our kids not to do this, but we're still outsourcing our thinking, our parenting, to these LLMs and other things. And I think that is a bigger trap, and of more detriment, because you're removing the emotion from being a parent. And parenting is hard. And we're talking a lot about parents, but it also has to do with leaders, right? We can't outsource leadership either. We can't outsource the difficult decisions in the workplace or the HR situation to LLMs. Think about it first, come up with your solution, and if you absolutely must use AI, put your solution in there and help them poke holes from a legal perspective, from a compliance perspective, or something like that. But my goodness, go sit down with someone on your team and hash it out and do a whiteboard session. It seems like a waste of time, but I can tell you those exercises, putting that friction back into the decisions, are actually going to be much more beneficial long term.

Agree.

I think it's that it hasn't changed. I think everyone's like, why is change so hard right now? I said, because we've gone away from the roots of what makes change important. And a lot of it is leaders being afraid to lead. And it is a scary time to lead, but leadership was never an easy calling. And I think for a season, leadership might have been easier than it was early on and than it is right now. I think there's definitely a sweet spot of leadership, not saying it was ever easy, but when it was easier. And now leadership's hard again. If you aspire to that office, to that title, you have to take on responsibility, and that means not everyone's going to be your friend. And I think that that is countercultural. Older generations knew that. They often had abuse of power and other issues, and I'm not saying you have to go back to that route, but it also means you have to be decisive and make the decisions that are best for the company and best for your team. That's part of your company, it's the main part of your company, but you've got to do them decisively and with integrity, and move forward even if you don't win everyone over. So in change management, I just see so many leaders apologizing. They have all these caveats, and why I'm doing this, and if this, and I understand that. It's just like, this is the decision we made, and this is where we're going, and this is why I think it's best for our company. And then shut up. Shut up and stop talking.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think rewind 40 years, 30 years, to when you were sitting around and you pulled in key stakeholders, you interviewed them, you asked them their opinion, and you realized that not everyone was going to be on board. And that's part of change. And how can you most graciously and kindly lead an organization through change, realizing you're not going to have 100% buy-in? I can think, and this is a leader I greatly admire, and I've watched him for many, many years and been a part of, a voice in his organization for many years, they went down an initiative that was generally controversial. It took a political stand, almost, in an organization that had never taken a political stand before. They'd had no reason to, in their type of organization. And they took a very political stand on the hire they made in a division that they spun up. And the entire time, this leader was, hey, we're doing this because there's a group of our employees or members that don't feel heard. And then he started apologizing. And he then apologized for each side of an argument. And I was like, he didn't definitively say, this is what we're doing because it's best for our team and our company moving forward, and that's it, full stop. And he had gotten a lot of insight and a lot of wisdom. That was the interesting thing. He approached the change management probably the best. Like, if you could, Cornell has a great eight-week program on change management, and if you follow their framework, like he probably did all the things right. The right papers, found out the detractors, had the individual conversations, trickle-down conversation, like beautiful, until he stood up in front of his organization and started apologizing, hemmed and hawed, body language lacked confidence. It was like, as a leader, if you didn't think this was the right decision, you shouldn't have done it. You're leading, and that means sometimes you have to do things that are unpopular. Or if you thought it was the right decision, don't apologize for it. Just lead with confidence. Because then what happened was the group he was trying to un-alienate became alienated. He had a mass exodus from his organization. And it totally backfired, even though on paper his whole change management strategy was appropriate, I would say. And so to leaders I say, hey, understand where you're going. Understand why you're going there. Bring in stakeholders. Have real one-on-one conversations, ideally in person, so you can see what makes someone uncomfortable. Ask them about it. Ask the hard questions. Ask the hard questions. Don't be so defensive in those conversations. Be open to new ideas. And then when you do make your decision, lead. Just be a leader. And again, it sounds oversimplified, but I think we're so afraid of young employees posting on Indeed or a subreddit or chewing us out on the internet, that we're afraid to make difficult decisions. But leadership is a difficult role. And you're not going to win 100% of the time, but you've got to at least lead confidently.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that, Kevin. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for having this conversation. I think it's an important one. As leaders, just remembering that we've got to put the human back into what we're doing. We can't outsource the human. We just can't. So a lot of my work recently has been on a newsletter called Collide. It's completely free. You can find it at ryanvet.com/collide. And every single week, it's an essay on trends. Everything from, you know, topics we covered today, like is Gen Z actually going to church, or are they just more spiritual? Why did Justin Bieber, why is he the quintessential millennial, to much heavier topics, to what's loneliness, or what's going on in the world with certain generations and behaviors. So it covers a lot of different things that help and equip leaders to give a mirror of where we are in the world today, and hopefully shed light on where we're going. And the world doesn't have to be as scary as we're making it out to be. We just have to remember that leadership is a high calling. And as leaders, we have to make difficult decisions and lead well, and treat people with dignity as we lead, and you'll win more people over than you think you will.

Well, thanks, Kevin. Appreciate it. Fun conversation.