You've Met the Millenials, Now Get Ready for Gen Z

Brazen Careerist has a great post on what Generation Z (born from the mid-1990s onwards) will be like at work. It's so interesting it's worth a full read, but here's a summary:

1. Gen Z won't be team players. The argument is that the tendency to certain traits is cyclical and skips a generation, so the team-centric Gen Y employees will be followed by individualists.
2. Gen Z will be more self-directed than Gen Y. Parents, apparently, are less inclined to enrol their children in all sorts of improving classes and are allowing Gen Z'ers more unstructured time.
3. Gen Z will be even faster at processing information. According to neuroscientist Dr Gary Small, who has written about the 'iBrain', technology's kick-started the evolution of the human mind that is 'creating new neural pathways and altering brain activity at a biochemical level.'
4. Gen Z will be smarter. Experimentation with neuro-enhancers such as ADHD medicine could also contribute to their capacity to learn -- although Brazen's quick to point out that continued use will do damage. She quotes a much-quoted British Medical Association view that "universal access to enhancing interventions would bring up the baseline level of cognitive ability, which generally seems to be a good thing." Brazen predicts that Gen Y, not wanting to be left behind, will "be getting on the Adderall bandwagon to stay competitive the way Baby Boomers today get on Facebook."

The team-work question. What drives team work? Is Gen Y really "so team oriented that they often feel that nothing is getting accomplished at work unless there has been a team meeting about it"? Is it possible that organisational culture (first in schools, then at work) is the reason we are more, or less, team-driven? (In which case, our ability to work remotely bears out the argument that Gen Z will have to be more self-directed and individualist.) Belbin's study of team roles include 'types' that are more and less people-centric and suggest the tendency to teamwork is personal rather than generational.

The clever question. If Gen Z is to be smarter, workplace hierarchies -- already going the way of the Dodo -- will not hold up. But does more homework equate to more education, and does this translate into a smarter generation? Is the human mind altering as significantly as suggested, or do we just learn different things in a different way? How does this square with Malcolm Gladwell's demystification of 'genius' in favour of hard work, or Geoff Colvin's arguments about talent vs. 'deliberate practice'? If people are getting smarter, why is there talk of wider access to neuro-enhancers to bring up baseline?

The big question. How different is one generation from another? Does human -- and workplace -- behaviour alter fundamentally from one age to the next? Arguably, our behaviour is shaped by work and by the people surrounding us in that environment and not the other way around.

(Image: lulugal0870, CC2.0)