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Tim Staton: Hey, and welcome back to another episode.
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Speaker 1: Imagine a workplace where Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha aren't clashing;
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they're colliding in the most powerful way possible.
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That's exactly what today's guest helps leaders and brands master.
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He's a USA Today bestselling author, serial entrepreneur who started his first company as a
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teenager, and he's one of the world's leading generational futurists.
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Please welcome the man who turns generational friction into a competitive advantage: Ryan Vet.
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Ryan, welcome to the show.
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Tim Staton: This is Tim Staton with Tim Stating the Obvious.
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What is this podcast about?
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It's simple: you are entitled to great leadership everywhere you go.
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Whether it's a church, whether it's to work, whether it's at your house, you are entitled to great leadership.
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And so, in this podcast, we take leadership principles and theories and turn them into everyday, relatable, and usable advice.
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Speaker 3: And a quick Disclaimer: this show, process, or service by trademark, trademark manufacturer,
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or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply the endorsement of anyone that I am employed
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by or favors them in representation.
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The views I express here in my show are my own expressed and do not necessarily state or reflect those of any employer.
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Ryan Vet: Thanks so much for having me, Tim.
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Tim Staton: I'm glad we were able to make this happen.
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If you don't mind, take a little bit and tell us a little bit more about yourself.
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Ryan Vet: Yeah. My background—I like to go all the way back to the lemonade stand—is really how I got my start.
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In the suburbs of Chicago, making lemonade and selling anything I could, charging people to
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pet my guinea pigs and turtles.
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That was kind of my journey, and that ultimately, as a teenager, actually kind of got me into the venture-backed startup world.
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I got curious about it and did that for the next 20 years or so throughout college and after college.
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All the while, I had this interest, and other people saw that interest in me, of, "What's going on with different generations? Why?
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What's wrong with Millennials?" was really the question I was getting asked at the time.
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I was a Millennial—a proud Millennial, not at the time, a little bit embarrassed at the time.
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I started to do research on it in the background of my day jobs and working in some of these different startups and companies.
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After an exit in 2021, I really sat back and tried to figure out what was important.
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I feel like there's different phases in life.
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You've got your grinding phase, where you're just cranking, trying to get things going.
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Then you've got your growing phase, where you're learning, but you're, you know, it's a little bit more smooth sailing.
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It's up and to the right.
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You're not grinding as much, but that's sometimes more of the emotional burdens in life.
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And then you get to a phase where you're giving, and you want to give back.
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As I was looking at all the opportunities and experiences, it was like, I'm really passionate
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about helping leaders stay relevant in a rapidly changing world, with a rapidly changing workforce, with rapidly changing technology.
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That's what brought me here to where I am today.
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Tim Staton: Which is an amazing story in itself, going from selling lemonade stands all the way up to startup ventures.
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I love the fact that you focus on people, especially on the generational or the intergenerational gaps that we have.
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And you're right, you know, you heard—I heard all the time, "What's going—what's wrong with
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these Millennials and everything else?" I didn't know if I was a Millennial or not because I
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fall in that weird age range.
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And then now it's like, "What's wrong with these Gen Z folks?" I'm like, "Well, I don't—I don't
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know if there's anything wrong with them.
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I think it's just us at a different phase in life, and we all have these different things."
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So from your experience and your background, what is the biggest generational gaps that you see?
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Ryan Vet: I think there's a few, and that's a really solid question.
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I think the biggest issue that we've seen—not even a gap so much as the biggest friction point—is
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this idea that generations are labeled.
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When you have a label, whether it's a generational label or whether you have a label against
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people from a certain region or whatever it is, when we label people, our minds start to categorize that.
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It's this bias creeps in where, I don't know if you've ever seen the scientific study done in
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1999, they say, "Hey, watch how many times someone in a black T-shirt catches a basketball and
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passes a basketball." And so everyone's counting, you know, one pass, two passes, three passes.
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At the end, they asked, "How many people saw the gorilla?" And there was only like 10% of the
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people—or I forget the exact statistic—but a very, very few number of people saw the gorilla
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because you're so focused on watching the people in the black shirts, not the white shirts.
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The black shirts catch or pass the ball.
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I have this video available on my YouTube if you want to do the test yourself.
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It's so fascinating because we do the same thing with generations or with people as a whole.
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It's like, "Oh, those—those Gen Z, they're lazy, they're glued to their phone, they're antisocial,
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they have the Gen Z stare, they say weird things all the time, they have their own vernacular."
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And so when one of those things does pop up, it just solidifies what we already believed, even
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if our belief wasn't true.
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So I think the biggest gap isn't even a realistic gap as much as our own perception, the lens
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through which we view the different generations.
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Tim Staton: With the startup industry, what do you see in the startup industry with the different generations and how that goes?
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Ryan Vet: I think traditionally, the startup generation, especially when you look at like the dot-com
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boom, bubble burst in the early 2000s, and then those that followed right after, you saw these big tech companies.
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A lot of Millennials were always the poster children for a lot of these companies, even though
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a lot of the CEOs were Gen X or even Baby Boomer.
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Some of the bigger companies that still are around today.
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So that in and of itself is an interesting statistic.
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To see this like, "Oh, they want to flexible work schedules, they want an unlimited PTO, they
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wanted to write around on their hoverboards, they wanted to, you know, adulting is hard," and
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all the linguistics and things that came out when Millennials entered the workforce in this technological era.
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And so I think a lot of those stigmas stuck.
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But the other thing that was happening simultaneously around that time was that the Millennial
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generation was the first generation to grow up with a label on it.
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What I mean by that is everyone else was named well after the generation was being born, but
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from basically year one or year two of Millennials being born, they were called Millennials.
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And so you see articles dating back to the years when Millennials were still being born, and
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the oldest ones were barely teenagers.
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You see articles labeling them.
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You can't label someone that's two years old, not effectively or efficiently.
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And so I think we got really sidetracked with these labels because it was convenient, and that
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convenience caused all sorts of friction in the conversations and in the workplace and how we
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treated Millennials instead of just, "How do you treat our new team members?"
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Tim Staton: That's a great point because I do remember growing up never, ever really hearing about generations
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and generational gaps or, you know, what's going on with this generation versus that generation.
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The only generation you really heard about was like the greatest generations, like World War
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II, you know, those veterans and those fighters who went in.
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Other than that, everyone was just people.
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So why do you think we started putting a label on different generations?
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Ryan Vet: I think it's convenient and it's easy.
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I think, again, as human beings, we like things neat and orderly, whether or not we admit that.
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And a label gives us—a stereotype gives us something neat and orderly.
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I'm not saying it's good, but it's easy.
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And so it's easy for our mind to just kind of rest there, and it's easy to explain away or dismiss
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cultural trends, which have always happened and will always happen with a changing world.
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Dismiss them by saying, "Oh, kids these days." But instead of, "Oh, kids these days," it's, "Oh, Millennials. Oh, Gen Z. Oh, Gen Alpha.
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Oh, Gen Beta." And we're just going to keep doing this.
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And it's always the new kids—and I'm using that in air quotes—but the newest people that enter
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the workforce that we always blame for whatever trend is different.
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In recent history, in the last three generations, it's different because new technology exists
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when they enter the workforce that didn't exist when the previous generation entered the workforce.
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Tim Staton: When we talk about the technology advancements that have been happening in the startup world,
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what is probably one of the most significant things that you've seen happen with technology
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that has probably hindered our communication with each other?
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Ryan Vet: I think it's the idea that technology itself helps communication.
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And I think it's really interesting.
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If you look at really any advancement—and I'll go back to the 1950s and 1960s advertisements,
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and you can pull them up that were in magazines or in newspapers for the dishwasher and the washing machine.
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If you look up these innovations at the time, it was always a mother in a dress and an apron
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with a curly permed hair.
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You know, it was very stereotypical.
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And it basically said, "Now you have the time to spend with your kids." That was the whole punchline of these ads.
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And is that what happened when mothers installed dishwashers and washing machines? Well, no.
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We started to see mothers actually go to work in the workforce, and we saw a shift in society.
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And it's what we call the productivity paradox. It's not just there.
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It's with many different things.
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To your question about communication, we think technology is aiding us in communication, but
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really what we want is this: you and me dialoguing back and forth.
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You can challenge me on something I say, and hopefully I'm respectful back, and have this discourse
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and maybe have shared ideas, or even our conversation promotes new ideas.
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But technology doesn't do that.
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It's actually, even though there's two people involved, it's still fairly one-sided.
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Even the phone, which is great, kind of puts up a barrier that wasn't there before.
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You can't look at someone face-to-face anymore.
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Obviously, as social media came around, and there's tons of statistics, and the Anxious Generation
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book by Jonathan Haidt is a fantastic encapsulation of the science and research on the impacts
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for Gen Z and social media.
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But you have a whole generation—and again, now we're labeling—but a whole generation by cohort
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that was born at a time where social media and smartphones hit math adaptation, and we see significant
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mental health rates and loneliness and suicide rates increase during this generation when they're
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the ones that are most connected.
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They don't need a calling card to call a different country.
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They don't need a payment plan. They have unlimited minutes. They have unlimited data. They have unlimited text.
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And yet they have the worst communication.
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And so I think a lot of times we get so reliant on technology that we forget what is actually
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removing from our world when we rely on technology that's supposed to be making us better.
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Tim Staton: There's an interesting paradox with that, though, because each generation thinks they're building
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upon the other one, right?
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I'm kind of reminded of the time where it says like, you know, "Weak men create hard times,
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and hard times create strong men, and strong men create weak men, and weak men create hard times
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again." We always think that we're helping the next generation out by this new technology thing.
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We've talked briefly about how it may or may not be true, but in your experience, how has this
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generational perpetuation either helped or hindered the next generation?
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Ryan Vet: Yeah. Let's take technology aside for just a second. Let's look at parenting.
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I think it's one of the clearest illustrations of what I call the generational pendulum.
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This is one of the areas of research where I've spent a lot of time is the generational pendulum.
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And it examines seven accelerating factors that are external.
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But what you look at is those seven accelerators, just like a pendulum swings back and forth,
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can change how fast the momentum goes and how fast those changes happen between generations.
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When you look at it, let's start with the silent generation.
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So the silent generation are almost all kids of the Great Depression.
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Whether they lived through it or their parents lived through it, they all were the Great Depression. So they wanted stability.
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You see them working a lot of mainstream jobs. They're working long hours.
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In many cases, both the husband and the wife worked, interestingly, because of the world wars,
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again, depending on exactly where they were born.
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So you have this interesting generation here, and they were very authoritarian, extremely religious
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in the United States, and very disciplined.
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They had certain ways of doing everything.
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The kids did not ever speak out of line.
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They did exactly what they were told.
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They were always nice and orderly in public.
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Well, then you have the Baby Boomers.
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The Baby Boomers were the kids of the silent generation for the most part, and generalizing
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here for the sake of brevity.
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But the Baby Boomers didn't like that strict lifestyle.
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The Baby Boomers didn't like the rigidity of a lot of what they experienced with their parents,
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and they didn't like the frugality of their parents.
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They would share their Christmas gifts or their birthday gifts with four siblings.
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And the Boomers wanted something different.
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So when the Boomers had the opportunity to go to college, they were more exploratory with relationships,
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premarital relationships for the first time, ended up higher in divorce, which you almost never saw before.
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But also, when they're working, they were the first generation to have two household incomes
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because they wanted to provide for their kids.
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And provision was no longer coming home and having dinner around the family table.
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It was making sure your kids had the money, the latest brands, that they would be able to go
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to college, that you had the 2.2 kids with the Golden Retriever and the white picket fence.
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Well, that came—that bore the latchkey kid generation, Gen X.
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Latchkey kids would come home to an empty house because their parents were trying to provide
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monetarily and provide resources, but they weren't providing emotionally.
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And again, generalizing here, but Gen X, which makes up 50% of the parents of Millennials, they became the helicopter parents.
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They're like, "I'm not going to do what my parents did.
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I'm going to make sure I'm at every game, and I'm going to make sure my kids have every experience,
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and my parents are hyper-present." So this is the generational pendulum.
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We could keep going way more in depth, but I think even removing technology for a minute and
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just think about how you were raised and your parents and where they fell and where you fell
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and what you're doing for your kids, there's four phases of the pendulum. First, you experience it.
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That's what a teenager does, right?
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They experience something their parent says, "Go clean your room." Then they're going to challenge
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it because that's what teenagers do.
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They're going to always push back.
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Finally, they're going to overcorrect.
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So that means shove it all in their closet, sweep it all under their bed, or just throw it out
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the window in a fit of rage.
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And finally, at some point, they're going to recalibrate because they're going to lose their
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homework and they need to end up back on track.
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Same thing is true with generations.
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They experience it, they challenge it, they overcorrect, and then they ultimately recalibrate
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to whatever the new normal is in light of the times, technology, and trends.
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Tim Staton: Yeah. And I see that as well.
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And I was thinking about my great-grandmother.
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So she was part of that silent generation.
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She grew up in Northern Virginia, and she had her own farm.
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She literally would grow her own vegetables, everything else. Amazing vegetable soup.
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I'm just going to say that right there, like the freshest vegetables ever.
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And, you know, every generation after that, you know, kind of was like, "Well, this isn't more important.
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These things we can give up." And I'm looking at the future, and I'm wondering what our generation,
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you know, with the helicopterism, what are the side effects of that that you're seeing?
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Ryan Vet: Yeah. I mean, you see the term failure to launch a lot of meaning, you know, we're slowing down life milestones.
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And not so much for our generation, but we're seeing that with Gen Z more so, where they're
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just not opting for a driver's license.
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I was clamoring when at 14 and a half in the suburbs of Chicago, when you could take driver's
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ed in 15, the day I turned 15, I was in the, you know, the DMV getting my permit. Like, I couldn't wait.
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And now you're having people not drive at all.
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And that's just one milestone, but it's an easy milestone. Same with delaying marriages.
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You see Millennials, fascinatingly enough, cohabitating at almost the same rate as other generations
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married, but they won't actually commit to marriage.
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So it's not that they're not having kids.
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It's not that they're not living with someone or getting involved in a romantic relationship,
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but they're not taking the step of marriage.
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The same with buying houses and just delays across the board.
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And part of that's, you know, people are calling that failure to launch, but we're seeing that swing.
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And now the good thing is Millennial parents are starting to be parents of Gen Alpha and Gen
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Beta kids, as well as some of the Gen Z.
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Gen Z is actually, in some respects, it's a big divide.
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So we don't have enough time to go into it, but some Gen Z is actually speeding things up and
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almost resembling like silent generation principles with extreme conservativism, getting married
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young and early, having kids right away, whereas the other ones are like putting it out and
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saying they're never going to have kids.
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They don't want to populate this earth. So a great polarity.
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But you're also seeing that fracture happen with Gen Z right now.
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And so the swing is might be one of the first times we see kind of a split.
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And that might be part of the recalibration is two really different paths.
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And at some point, there has to be a middle ground.
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And I think we'll see that as Gen Alpha and Gen Beta come of age.
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Tim Staton: Do you think that split is because there are folks in Gen Z, and I hate to put labels on things
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again, like you had said, but they're looking for stability?
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Because I find in the leadership realm, people are like, "Hey, what is the path? What is the goal?
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Like, what do I got to do?" They're eager to do it.
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They just don't know what to do.
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And they're looking for that guidance.
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And then you have other folks who are like, "I don't want any guidance.
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Just leave me alone and let me do my own thing and live my own life and be me." So what are you seeing?
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Ryan Vet: I think a lot of what you're seeing with Gen Z in particular is they have always had access
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to any information that they want and any guidance that they want.
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So they have their social media, their TikTok, you know, idols that they follow, their YouTube
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channels that they're watching, and those are their mentors.
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And I think, again, the element that's missing is, yes, they have more information and they
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probably are more knowledgeable on more topics deeply than any previous generation.
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I think that's a fair assessment.
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I think the concern is there's something, again, like this dialogue you and I are having.
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If you have that with a mentor that's teaching piano, for example.
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So I remember, you know, I had piano lessons from a very, very young age, and it was strict.
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Incredible piano teacher, but she was trained at some of the best, you know, the best musical academies in the world.
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I was learning Suzuki, which is very complicated piano.
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I pulled out a book recently to teach my son.
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And I was like, "Oh, you know what?
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I'm sure there's a class on YouTube or something." And I'm like, "Wait, wait." Part of what
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made me learn piano was, and this didn't actually happen, but I felt like, you know, the proverbial
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hands were getting slapped because they weren't upright enough and not curved enough and sit up straight.
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Again, it didn't actually happen that way, but that's what made me learn.
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Could I learn potentially the same songs from YouTube? Absolutely.
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But the posture, the dynamics, and things that had that real-time feedback loop, I think that's what's missing.
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So when you have Gen Z with this unlimited access to information entering the workforce, they
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feel equipped and empowered and emboldened, and yet they've never experienced that friction of correction.
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And so when you correct someone of this generation, oftentimes, not always, they take it as
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like earth-shattering because the correction I was getting at five years old sitting on a piano
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bench, not sitting straight enough, is correction they never got for many, many reasons.
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But it creates a really interesting culture inside a generation.
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Tim Staton: You brought up some things that really made me think, and I was like, "You know what?
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That's a great point." When you're talking about the human-to-human connection, it's the soul.
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And when you have a mentor next to you teaching you how to play the piano sip, straight, curl
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your fingers, you know, yes, you're hitting that key right, but maybe you could play a little
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bit more pressure on it and help get that soul back into the music.
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And I think people are yearning for a soul connection because you can learn anything.
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You have access to it.
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And I would debate that just because I have access to information doesn't mean I learn it.
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It just means I can read it, I can digest it.
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But it's different than going to the library, reading 20 different books, and then retaining
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that information and rewriting a one-page summary of something I had to manually read versus
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asking ChatGPT or whatever AI is, "Hey, where can I get this information and give it to me so
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I can recite to somebody else?" Having access to information is not knowledge.
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And so I think that they may know, right, but they understand they're missing that connection, that guidance.
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And so you bring up a really good point with that. So I appreciate that.
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It really made me think about it.
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You talk a lot about friction, though.
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So what are we missing in a frictionless society?
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Ryan Vet: Yeah, I love that question.
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I think it's one of the most challenging things that's ever happened in our world for all of humankind.
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From the dawn of time, we have always tried to remove friction in our lives.
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I always mentioned the idea of the pyramids.
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Yes, they had slave labor that helped build the pyramids, but more than that, they had to move
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2,500-pound bricks to build these pyramids.
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And how did you move? You didn't have bulldozers. You didn't have cranes.
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Well, they invented simple machines. They used log rollers.
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Even as recently as 2024, they found new information that they might have used hydraulic lifts
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and used water-powered lifts to hoist these 2,500-ton—or not 2,500-ton, that'd be really heavy—2,500-pound bricks up into place.
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So we see machines all the way from there and early tools to the computer and cell phone and everything else.
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But what's happened is what I call the velocity gap.
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And the velocity gap is this.
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We saw it most prevalently so far with social media.
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Let's get the world connected.
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We're going to have the best generation ever because they're going to be able to meet with peers
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around the world, be more cultured, more experienced, more access to everything, which are all,
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I think we could agree from a human experience, those are theoretically good things.
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However, what we didn't know is that created more isolation because your feed and your best
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friend's feed that might have the same political leanings that might like the same musical artists
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are going to be slightly different because you like something slightly different.
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It's going to be more and more tailored to what gets your reaction.
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So now you have isolation, even amongst friends, and then you upload the picture and you need
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that dopamine hit, and if you don't get enough likes in enough amount of time, you're feeling
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like no one loves you.
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And so it creates this vicious cycle where we saw so many young girls in particular, but young
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males too, take their own lives.
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As a result of this, we saw eating disorders skyrocket.
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We saw so many other real measurable things happen.
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And you can argue causation and correlation all day.
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There's more than just social media, but it is a defining moment in time where we started to
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see all these things happen.
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It's just now, so that was about 2012.
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It's just now where we're, you know, 15 years, a decade and a half removed from that, that we're starting to see legislation.
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This week, even more states started implementing either cell phone bans on buses or cell phone
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bans in classrooms or limiting ages to social media because we know the harms.
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But that's the velocity gap between technology and morality.
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And now it's shrinking faster and faster and faster.
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With AI, I think the velocity gap is like in reverse.
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If the lines could go backwards and invert each other, I think we're there because you have
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AI, which is a great tool when used responsibly, and it does speed things up, just like the
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washer and dishwasher we're supposed to do.
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But now you have this issue where you're not just speeding up processes that are manual and
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not necessarily something you have to do for life, but thinking. You're outsourcing thinking.
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I wrote an article on Gen Beta being born in 2026, and it's the future of parenting.
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I think parents already are outsourcing parenting.
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And they're not outsourcing it to the parenting books that took storm in the '70s and then again
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in the '90s, but they're outsourcing it to AI and getting prescriptive data on how to treat their kids.
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And anyone that has kids knows that you cannot treat two children the same way, even if they're identical twins.
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They're unique individuals and they have unique personalities.
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So when you outsource that, you remove the emotion from parenting.
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And I think the velocity gap here is causing what I call cognitive erosion.
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And it's the idea that we're eroding.
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We're eliminating the things that make us think and thus eliminating the friction.
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And in so doing, we're really impeding our whole human experience, the things that make us grow
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and stronger and be better, you know, no pain, no gain.
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We're eliminating that whole friction, and it's really, it should be scary.
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Tim Staton: I was thinking about a budget philosophy, and when you brought up the washing machine again
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and technology, and as our budgets increase, oftentimes so does what we fill it.
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And then we were like, "Wait a minute, I'm at capacity again.
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How is that?" And so like with technology and we're like with filling it with AI, what are some
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of the things that you see people filling in that time that we're given back that we're probably
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not using it wisely enough on?
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Ryan Vet: Well, it's the productivity paradox, and it's an economics term.
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It's the idea that with more, with faster output, you'll have higher productivity, meaning you have more free time.
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But we've always tried to buy time.
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We have always tried to buy time as human beings, and every time we do, we figure out how to fill it.
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You know, Henry Ford once said, "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster
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horses." And yet he came up with the car, and everyone's like, "Oh, the car is going to save
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me so much time," but now we have time to go to soccer practice and ballet.
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And you just, all of a sudden, we just shove things in.
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And I think entertainment is a big part of it.
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I think when people actually look at their true screen time on how long they're doomscrolling
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on TikTok or whatever it is, and I'm not just picking on the younger generations, I think some
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of the older generations are like, "That's a younger kid thing." And if I think they look at
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their screen time, they'd be horrified to know that they're competing, you know, minute for
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minute with some of these younger generations.
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I think that's a big part of it.
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And a lot of it's being alone, doing activities that you're doing alone.
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I mean, you and I right now could open up, you know, Claude and Claude Cowork.
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You and I could create some sort of object that we wanted to be 3D printed with our voice and
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have it printed by the time we're done with this conversation. That power is frightening.
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Now, someone that's, you know, Gen Alpha 13 turns 13 this year, I mean, they could be doing that as a 13-year-old.
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And I think it's really, really, we need to slow down and think about the implications of these.
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Yes, these are good tools.
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Yes, they can be used for good, but also a lot of scary things are happening out there, and
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we're not stopping and slowing down.
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We're just going faster and faster and faster.
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Tim Staton: Yeah, and developmentally, we haven't changed as human beings.
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Like, there are certain mile markers and milestones that happen along the way.
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I'm not quite sure a 13-year-old is equipped enough, baby sub, to 3D print and run a business
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from their house, but they think they can because they have the access to it and the opportunity to it.
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00:25:01,470
What is the damage that we're doing that we don't know?
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Like, if you had a crystal ball and you could see in the future, what do you predict that we're
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going to see, you know, 5, 10, 15 years down the road?
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Ryan Vet: I think we're going to develop a generation that can't think.
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And the early studies out of MIT, I believe in 2023, with what AI was doing to the mind, we're
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already starting to see that.
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We're starting to see just tasks that, again, are required for us to process and just operate as human beings.
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We're outsourcing because it's easier, it's faster, it's more efficient, we can create more
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content, we can have better marketing materials.
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But what's happening is we're losing the ability to think. It's so fascinating.
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It's almost like we're being programmed to think like a machine.
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00:25:45,210
Machines still, even with generative AI and agentic AI, you go back to the very core, it's more
398
00:25:45,270 -->
00:25:47,730
or less gross generalization, but it's ones and zeros.
399
00:25:47,850 -->
00:25:49,230
It's still, if this, then that.
400
00:25:49,290 -->
00:25:51,570
It's just at rapid pace, rapid scale with rapid data.
401
00:25:51,810 -->
00:25:54,630
Immense power being used to fuel and fund all of that.
402
00:25:55,410 -->
00:26:01,470
But if we rely so much on outputs that are so binary, a lot of our thinking process becomes so binary.
403
00:26:01,710 -->
00:26:04,350
We might eliminate the ability to think critically.
404
00:26:04,410 -->
00:26:09,450
And for the longest time, I did really well in school until handwriting.
405
00:26:09,990 -->
00:26:13,650
And handwriting, I always, you know, had to be called in, and my parents were called in because
406
00:26:13,650 -->
00:26:14,970
I was such a sloppy handwriter.
407
00:26:15,030 -->
00:26:16,050
And I never saw the point.
408
00:26:16,050 -->
00:26:18,750
It was when computers were early, and you still had MS-DOS, right?
409
00:26:18,810 -->
00:26:21,570
So you were like typing to actually open Word documents.
410
00:26:22,650 -->
00:26:25,230
So you had to program the Word processing before you could even type.
411
00:26:26,130 -->
00:26:27,270
And I just didn't see the point.
412
00:26:27,270 -->
00:26:29,130
But now looking back, it's like those little things.
413
00:26:29,250 -->
00:26:34,050
The ultimate thing, but I was even having a conversation with Kevin Steinhart, who did a lot
414
00:26:34,110 -->
00:26:38,790
of the play-based research and showed that so much executive function and other things that
415
00:26:38,850 -->
00:26:41,730
are critical for human beings happens on the playground.
416
00:26:42,330 -->
00:26:46,530
And when we're removing the playground or putting screen time in classrooms and you're having
417
00:26:47,190 -->
00:26:52,050
helicopter parents stopping kids from falling, not that you don't, no one's advocating that
418
00:26:52,110 -->
00:26:55,650
kids get hurt, but there's something to be said, like a kid's got to scrape his knee and come find help.
419
00:26:56,070 -->
00:26:57,330
And you don't want to leave them out there.
420
00:26:57,330 -->
00:27:01,110
And again, we know more than we did and we have more information, so we're more fearful.
421
00:27:01,530 -->
00:27:05,610
But there's something to learning to play with others, learning to play with others of different
422
00:27:05,910 -->
00:27:08,010
ages, and learn how those dynamics work.
423
00:27:08,370 -->
00:27:10,530
And so much of that has been stripped from modern childhood.
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00:27:11,670 -->
00:27:16,890
Tim Staton: To the folks listening to this today, let's say they're in executive leadership roles, for the
425
00:27:17,010 -->
00:27:22,050
workforce, what is something that they could implement today to make their leadership style
426
00:27:22,170 -->
00:27:24,930
more effective to reach that younger generation?
427
00:27:25,110 -->
00:27:27,390
Ryan Vet: Great question, Tim. And I think it's actually really easy.
428
00:27:27,390 -->
00:27:31,470
I think if you zoom out, you have to go back to the very basics of leadership.
429
00:27:31,530 -->
00:27:35,010
We had so many leadership books for a while, then it turned to like management strategies.
430
00:27:35,070 -->
00:27:37,410
And I would say go back to some of those leadership principles.
431
00:27:37,710 -->
00:27:40,230
Why is it that you are in the role that you're in?
432
00:27:40,230 -->
00:27:42,750
Why is it that your company exists? Really plain and simple.
433
00:27:43,470 -->
00:27:50,190
Because whatever your why is, is often why, A, your employees want to come, but often, B, why
434
00:27:50,250 -->
00:27:54,330
your whoever buys it, whether it's, you know, customers or businesses, why they're buying from you.
435
00:27:54,570 -->
00:27:57,810
And so many companies are getting sidetracked by the shiny squirrel syndrome.
436
00:27:57,810 -->
00:27:58,890
And I have that terribly.
437
00:27:58,950 -->
00:28:00,690
Like, yes, I did buy the 3D printer.
438
00:28:00,750 -->
00:28:02,970
Yes, despite all I talk about, I wear a smart watch.
439
00:28:03,210 -->
00:28:07,530
And I subscribe to every AI tool because I am curious, but at the same time, it's like, at the
440
00:28:07,590 -->
00:28:10,770
end of the day, what is my mission? What is my purpose? Where are we headed?
441
00:28:10,890 -->
00:28:14,130
And help bring your team back to that core idea.
442
00:28:14,550 -->
00:28:16,350
Jeff Bezos once asked a profound question.
443
00:28:16,770 -->
00:28:20,850
He was on a panel and he's like, "I'm so sick and tired." The question was, asked to him was,
444
00:28:20,910 -->
00:28:23,250
you know, "What are you seeing the next five years?" or something like that.
445
00:28:23,310 -->
00:28:26,730
And he's like, "I'm so sick and tired of people asking that question." Instead, you have to
446
00:28:26,790 -->
00:28:27,750
ask what's not going to change.
447
00:28:27,810 -->
00:28:31,950
And I know people are going to want faster, delivery, and cheaper prices, and convenience.
448
00:28:32,130 -->
00:28:36,750
That's what my model has been from the beginning and will be forever, and nothing is going to change that.
449
00:28:37,170 -->
00:28:41,670
And I think as leaders, this is our opportunity to go back and not say ignore technology because
450
00:28:41,670 -->
00:28:44,370
it's here, and if you ignore it, you're going to get blockbustered.
451
00:28:44,550 -->
00:28:46,650
If that's a verb, you know, you're going to get blockbustered.
452
00:28:46,710 -->
00:28:48,030
But instead, what are those things?
453
00:28:48,090 -->
00:28:50,010
What are those human elements that are never going to change?
454
00:28:50,010 -->
00:28:54,030
And how does everything we do, whether implementing technology or not, align with that?
455
00:28:54,090 -->
00:28:58,410
So as we move forward, a leader's job is to still motivate and gain followers on their mission.
456
00:28:58,530 -->
00:29:02,250
And that mission needs to be consistent regardless of what's going on in the world.
457
00:29:02,310 -->
00:29:06,810
And then force your team to do tasks the hard way and critically think.
458
00:29:07,170 -->
00:29:11,130
And I think there's going to be a lot of pushback on that, especially with how easy things can be done.
459
00:29:11,370 -->
00:29:15,510
But I think that the companies that win aren't the ones who don't, aren't the ones who neglect
460
00:29:15,570 -->
00:29:21,330
technology, but who also adapt technology while simultaneously forcing critical thinking in the process.
461
00:29:21,630 -->
00:29:23,670
Tim Staton: Points that I was thinking about hospitals, right?
462
00:29:24,570 -->
00:29:27,630
Hospitals should still do downtime in different locations.
463
00:29:27,750 -->
00:29:33,090
So there's this theory that you pick a day a month and you say, "All technology doesn't work.
464
00:29:33,150 -->
00:29:34,290
Go back to pen and paper.
465
00:29:34,410 -->
00:29:38,910
How do we still operate, you know, the hospital?" And in the military, we do the same thing, right?
466
00:29:39,090 -->
00:29:41,970
Let's say all technology goes down, we're in the middle of nowhere.
467
00:29:42,150 -->
00:29:46,410
How can we still communicate and still push the ball forward and achieve the objective?
468
00:29:46,590 -->
00:29:47,790
And I agree with you.
469
00:29:47,910 -->
00:29:52,650
We still need to push people to, "Hey, maybe today we say, you know what, no technology day today.
470
00:29:52,950 -->
00:29:56,130
How do we communicate with each other?" Maybe you get up and you walk around the cubicle and
471
00:29:56,190 -->
00:30:00,870
talk to your buddy next door and say, "Hey, bud, my name's Tim and nice to meet you.
472
00:30:00,930 -->
00:30:05,370
I know I usually call you, but I have a question today." I think that would go a long way.
473
00:30:05,490 -->
00:30:07,650
So I really appreciate your insights on that.
474
00:30:08,010 -->
00:30:11,490
For the younger folks listening to this, I would like you to flip that question.
475
00:30:11,850 -->
00:30:13,410
What do you say to the younger folks?
476
00:30:13,710 -->
00:30:18,870
Ryan Vet: Yeah, I think be aware of the technologies that are going on, for sure, but also find those things.
477
00:30:19,050 -->
00:30:23,130
And it might be as simple as asking your parents, "What did you have to do when, you know, X,
478
00:30:23,190 -->
00:30:27,810
Y, and Z?" Whether that was, as some people were telling, analog time, I love this.
479
00:30:27,930 -->
00:30:32,010
And so if you ever hear me talk and you're a millennial and I do a generational talk, I'll pull
480
00:30:32,250 -->
00:30:33,810
someone from each generation from the audience.
481
00:30:34,290 -->
00:30:37,170
And I say, "I'm going to put objects from each generation on," and someone from a different
482
00:30:37,350 -->
00:30:39,870
generation has to ask it, or answer it, rather.
483
00:30:40,050 -->
00:30:43,050
And so the first thing I always put up is a clock, an analog clock.
484
00:30:43,170 -->
00:30:45,690
And there's no numbers on it intentionally, but the lines are there.
485
00:30:45,750 -->
00:30:48,630
So anyone that knows how to tell an analog clock can do.
486
00:30:48,690 -->
00:30:53,490
So I ask the millennial or Gen Z, I say, "What is that?" They're like, "Oh, that's easy.
487
00:30:53,490 -->
00:30:56,130
It's a clock." I say, "Oh, I say, good job. Everyone applaud.
488
00:30:56,610 -->
00:31:01,770
What time is it?" And they just, like, every single time completely go white?
489
00:31:01,770 -->
00:31:05,610
Because most of them, especially if they're a younger millennial or older Gen Z, have no idea
490
00:31:05,670 -->
00:31:06,810
how to tell analog time.
491
00:31:07,110 -->
00:31:11,250
I use that as an example, but I say there's so many things in our life that we can add little
492
00:31:12,030 -->
00:31:16,350
areas of friction that aren't that hard and just go analog, just use our minds.
493
00:31:16,470 -->
00:31:18,990
Don't ever use a calculator to do a tip at a restaurant.
494
00:31:19,110 -->
00:31:22,890
You know, even hitting the 20% button has removed friction in our lives.
495
00:31:22,890 -->
00:31:24,870
We're not even calculating what 20% is on that.
496
00:31:25,530 -->
00:31:27,570
And little things like that every single day.
497
00:31:27,570 -->
00:31:31,470
What are those simple processes that aren't, I'm not saying like, get out the washboard and
498
00:31:31,470 -->
00:31:35,670
go down to the river, but what are those things that you can use your mind for or handwrite? Journal.
499
00:31:35,790 -->
00:31:37,950
Like, that's good for so many reasons.
500
00:31:38,130 -->
00:31:40,230
But what are those things that you can do every day?
501
00:31:40,350 -->
00:31:41,790
And how can you be a critical thinker?
502
00:31:41,790 -->
00:31:45,150
And then, again, for the younger people, go sit down and have conversations.
503
00:31:45,270 -->
00:31:50,970
Have conversations not just with your peers, but go look an adult in the eyes and have a real
504
00:31:51,090 -->
00:31:53,130
conversation with them and ask them questions.
505
00:31:53,250 -->
00:31:56,850
Ask some of the questions I always like to ask, like, "Hey, when you were in high school, what
506
00:31:56,850 -->
00:32:00,750
was the song that everyone was singing?" And someone will be happy to tell you and you'll be
507
00:32:00,750 -->
00:32:02,790
like, "I didn't even know that band existed," you know?
508
00:32:02,910 -->
00:32:07,590
Or, "What would you do after school when you were a sophomore in high school?" And you ask a
509
00:32:07,650 -->
00:32:09,090
Gen Xer, they were going to the arcade.
510
00:32:09,210 -->
00:32:11,370
And you ask a boomer, they were riding around their neighborhood.
511
00:32:11,370 -->
00:32:15,930
And, you know, you ask a millennial, they were probably on their computer or watching TV, depending
512
00:32:15,990 -->
00:32:17,370
again where they were born in the cycle.
513
00:32:17,490 -->
00:32:23,010
So you start asking questions about that, clothing styles, just like, you can ask questions about the stereotypes.
514
00:32:23,370 -->
00:32:24,690
It's not going to make you stereotype.
515
00:32:24,750 -->
00:32:31,530
And all of a sudden you start to see, like, "Wow, Jurassic Park was the most revolutionary. Jaws was impressive.
516
00:32:31,590 -->
00:32:33,150
There wasn't even CGI in it.
517
00:32:33,210 -->
00:32:34,710
It was a big animatronic," you know?
518
00:32:34,950 -->
00:32:37,710
And these things just start to help you realize we're all humans.
519
00:32:37,830 -->
00:32:42,630
We all are amazed at new technology and new movies and new music and new ways of doing things.
520
00:32:42,750 -->
00:32:47,070
And it allows us to go and just have a more holistic conversation with people.
521
00:32:47,250 -->
00:32:51,810
Tim Staton: My last question is, is there anything that I didn't ask you or we didn't talk about that you
522
00:32:51,810 -->
00:32:55,110
were like, "You know what, I really wish you would have asked me this question," or, "We wish
523
00:32:55,230 -->
00:32:56,790
we would have talked about this one thing"?
524
00:32:57,210 -->
00:32:59,790
Ryan Vet: Yeah, I think to labels, we've talked a lot around labels.
525
00:32:59,790 -->
00:33:04,110
I would love to just have one closing thought on labels is I always use this idea of a generational
526
00:33:04,350 -->
00:33:07,230
prism, a prism you shine light through it and refracts light.
527
00:33:07,590 -->
00:33:13,350
And I say the generational prism, the one side is age, the other side is moment, and then the refraction is the label.
528
00:33:13,770 -->
00:33:16,830
So often we start with the label Gen Z or lazy or whatever it is.
529
00:33:16,950 -->
00:33:20,850
But when you look at the age and you look at the moment, it helps us ask better questions.
530
00:33:20,910 -->
00:33:25,770
So a quick example is everyone says millennials were job hoppers and Gen Z are job hoppers.
531
00:33:26,130 -->
00:33:30,330
But if you look at the age, let's say let's take every generation at age 25 and whatever era
532
00:33:30,570 -->
00:33:36,030
they're in, boomers at age 25 had worked an average of 5.3 jobs, but there weren't any child
533
00:33:36,210 -->
00:33:38,370
labor laws, so their first job was at 10, 11, or 12.
534
00:33:39,150 -->
00:33:45,750
Gen X also worked an average of 5.3 jobs by age 25, and there started to be some child labor laws.
535
00:33:45,750 -->
00:33:49,470
So their first jobs were 14 or 15, so they hop jobs more closely together.
536
00:33:49,830 -->
00:33:55,770
Millennials' average first job was at about age 20 because of college, and they still hopped 5.6 jobs.
537
00:33:55,770 -->
00:33:59,850
So yes, in a shorter period of time, they hop more jobs, but when you zoom out and you look
538
00:33:59,910 -->
00:34:03,450
at age 30 for all three of those generational cohorts, it almost flatlines.
539
00:34:04,110 -->
00:34:08,490
And so there's just certain things that you have to ask, say, "Hey, when I was that age and
540
00:34:08,550 -->
00:34:12,870
in that moment in history, does this label still stick?" And if not, it helps leaders to really
541
00:34:13,050 -->
00:34:17,010
process like, "Oh, when I was 22 and in my first job," which might have been 12, "when I was
542
00:34:17,070 -->
00:34:21,210
in my first job, in that moment in history, these were the things I was experiencing." And it
543
00:34:21,210 -->
00:34:24,750
might help you be able to see the generation a little bit more clearly.
544
00:34:25,590 -->
00:34:29,430
Tim Staton: Thank you for stopping by, and Ryan, I really appreciate you being here and being on the show.
545
00:34:29,550 -->
00:34:30,150
Ryan Vet: Thank you, Tim.
546
00:34:30,990 -->
00:34:34,590
Tim Staton: As always, thank you for stopping by and checking out this episode and listening to it.
547
00:34:34,650 -->
00:34:35,970
I really hope that you enjoyed it.
548
00:34:36,030 -->
00:34:38,670
Before we go, I'd like to ask a favor of you if I could.
549
00:34:38,730 -->
00:34:43,290
If you could please share this episode with one or two people who you think might like this topic.
550
00:34:43,470 -->
00:34:47,430
If you haven't followed or subscribed on the platform that you're listening to and hit all the
551
00:34:47,610 -->
00:34:52,530
bells and icons and all the whistles so that you know that when we post another episode, you'll
552
00:34:52,530 -->
00:34:55,110
be alerted, please go ahead and do all that before you go.
553
00:34:55,110 -->
00:34:58,890
If you got some value out of this episode, please leave a review or a comment so we can help
554
00:34:58,950 -->
00:35:03,030
spread the show to other people who might be interested in the topics that we've talked about
555
00:35:03,210 -->
00:35:05,310
here today, but may not have found our show yet.
556
00:35:05,430 -->
00:35:06,810
Again, thanks for stopping by.
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00:35:06,930 -->
00:35:08,850
I'm Tim Staton, Staton the Obvious.
