Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Welcome to the Deep Dive, your shortcut to critical knowledge.

• Speaker #1

  Hello.

• Speaker #0

  You're here because you need to understand one of the biggest forces reshaping the European landscape right now.

• Speaker #1

  And that is, of course, Generation Z.

• Speaker #0

  Exactly.

• Speaker #1

  So today we are taking the entire blueprint of corporate life and pretty much flipping it on its head. We're going to dive into the great structural debate. Why the traditional career ladder? Why it seems to be collapsing right under our feet?

• Speaker #0

  And this is such an essential deep dive if you're trying to figure out talent retention, especially why some of your best high potential people are just walking out the door of what seem like perfectly good jobs. So our mission today is to get past the usual generational complaints and really unpack the sources that are proposing a completely different way of looking at this. We're moving from that rigid vertical ladder to something more like a dynamic, decentralized lily pad career.

• Speaker #1

  The lily pad metaphor, I love that. It's so powerful because it just immediately gets to the core of what the modern worker wants. We're looking at research here from people like Benoit van Kouwenberg and a bunch of global studies, and they all point to this one simple disruptive idea. Gen Z, they don't want to climb. They want to move.

• Speaker #0

  They want to move. Flexibility, choice, that breadth of experience, that's the new currency.

• Speaker #1

  Right.

• Speaker #0

  And the sources are, I mean, they're crystal clear on this. This is not just some... Fleeting preference or, you know, youthful idealism. It's a structural necessity now. That ladder was built for one of stability, of predictable, linear growth. That world is, well, it's just gone.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, let's really get into that metaphor then. Section one, the lily pad ecosystem. When you say goodbye ladders, hello lily pads, what does that actually look like? How does it redefine ambition?

• Speaker #0

  Well, the old model was so rigid, right? It was vertical. You started at the bottom, you climbed. You put in the years. And success was just about how high you got. The title, The Bigger Office. The altitude. The altitude, exactly. But the lily pad path is. It's horizontal. It's diagonal. It's completely dynamic. You land on one pad. You explore a project. You master a new skill. You learn what you need to learn. And then you hop to the next one. The goal isn't just climbing. It's this kind of continuous enriching motion.

• Speaker #1

  So if the C-suite isn't the ultimate prize anymore, what are people actually optimizing for? Because this is where it gets fascinating. The very paths that, say, boomers and Gen X saw as stability, as opportunity, the younger generations see them as traps.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, they absolutely feel like traps. I mean, think about it. A traditional career path often demands huge sacrifices of your time. Maybe you have to relocate. You might take on debt for certain credentials. And it's all for a guarantee that, let's be honest, isn't really guaranteed anymore.

• Speaker #1

  Right. They saw what happened in 2008.

• Speaker #0

  They saw what happened in 2008. They saw what happened during the pandemic. They watched older generations sacrifice everything only to see their jobs just evaporate in a round of layoffs. The whole risk-reward calculation has fundamentally changed.

• Speaker #1

  And because of that, we're seeing this total redefinition of career priorities. You mentioned three core shifts in what people value. What are they?

• Speaker #0

  Okay. So first, it's flexibility over rigid hierarchy. A sideways move into something that's really meaningful to them, say, running a sustainability task force. They can have way more personal value than just getting a generic manager title. So organizations have to start valuing that breadth as much as they value depth.

• Speaker #1

  Okay. Flexibility over hierarchy. What's the second one?

• Speaker #0

  The second is experimentation over permanence. You know, the average Gen Z worker, they are not planning a 30-year career with one company. They see their entire career as this ecosystem of short, intense learning cycles. Every lily pad jump is about getting a new skill, getting new exposure.

• Speaker #1

  And the third one feels like the most profound one in the research. Values over status. This is the foundation.

• Speaker #0

  This is the foundation. It's the water in the pond. Then Kallenberg puts it so well. He says Gen Z swims in purpose. So values like sustainability, equity, mental health, that these are not just, you know, HR perks. They are the absolute foundation. If that water is polluted, they will just hop to another pond. It's that simple.

• Speaker #1

  I really want to tackle this misconception head on. The idea that this generation is lazy. The sources just completely tear that apart. Ambition hasn't disappeared at all, has it? It's just been completely reframed.

• Speaker #0

  Radically reframed. It's about impact, it's about balance, and it's about freedom. They're ambitious for their lives.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Not just for a title.

• Speaker #1

  And we have data on this.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, we have hard data. Westdoor's 2024 analysis shows only 3 in 10 workers today even aspire to a C-suite role. Just think about how different that is from previous generations, where climbing to the top was, like, the assumed goal. And then you have other studies showing that For students just entering the workforce, things like balance and continuous learning are consistently ranked higher than hierarchy or getting an authoritative title. They're just defining success on their own terms.

• Speaker #1

  Which brings us right into our second section, why the ladder is structurally dead. It wasn't really a generational choice to kill it, was it? It just, it failed. The structure itself can't handle the world we live in now.

• Speaker #0

  Exactly. And that failure creates this enormous friction in the workplace because, really, for the first time, you have three totally different career cultures all colliding. They're in the same meetings. They're fighting for the same bonus pool. But they're measuring success with completely different yardsticks.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, let's break down that collision. How did each generation see the latter?

• Speaker #0

  Well, you start with the boomers and a lot of Gen X. Their whole career culture was built on loyalty. It was a social contract. You stay long enough, you work hard, and you're pretty much guaranteed to move up. You'd have a secure retirement. Success was titles, authority, tenure.

• Speaker #1

  Put in your time, get the reward.

• Speaker #0

  Put in your time. Then you get the millennials. They were the ones who started to kind of hack the system. They still climbed the ladder. But they were demanding flexibility and purpose while they did it. They wanted the old world's recognition, the title, but also the new world's work style. They were trying to have it all, in a way.

• Speaker #1

  And then comes Gen Z.

• Speaker #0

  And then you have Gen Z, who just abandoned the latter. The sources are pretty clear that they watched the generations before them sacrifice their health, their time. And they realized that prize at the top, assuming you even get there, just wasn't worth the cost. So for them, success is almost entirely about freedom, mental health.

• Speaker #1

  So the big organizational challenge is you have to design one system, one performance review, one compensation plan for three groups using three totally different playbooks. And if you keep designing for that old playbook of loyalty and titles, you're just guaranteed to lose the new talent and you'll lose them silently.

• Speaker #0

  That silent revolt is one of the most interesting parts of the research. You know, when boomers were unhappy, they might join a union. They'd strike. When millennials were unhappy, they might quit loudly or demand a meeting about a raise. But the research notes that Gen Z signals dissatisfaction very differently. It's digital. It's indirect.

• Speaker #1

  Like what? What does that look like?

• Speaker #0

  It looks like ghosting recruiters after three interviews. It looks like disengagement on a team, quiet quitting. It's as simple as just keeping your camera off in every single meeting. It's this quiet, non-confrontational rejection of a system they feel asks for way too much and gives back way too little.

• Speaker #1

  OK, I have to play devil's advocate here for a second because. Any manager listening to this is thinking one thing. If your best people are constantly hopping from one lily pad to the next, doesn't that just destroy institutional knowledge? How do you keep any deep expertise in the building?

• Speaker #0

  That is the $1 million question, and the sources don't shy away from it. The answer isn't to force people to stay on one pad. The answer is in how you structure the movement itself, which brings us right to our next section. If the movement is tracked and valued, that institutional knowledge gets baked into the system. not just stuck in one person's head. The real danger is thinking this is all just temporary. It's not. This is a stable global trend.

• Speaker #1

  That structural thinking is the perfect transition. Let's move to section three, innovative solutions. It's about building ponds, not ladders, creating a lattice structure to bridge these cultures.

• Speaker #0

  Right. And the number one thing innovative leaders are doing is swapping out the ladder for a career lattice. But we have to be really specific about what that means. A lattice isn't just, you know, letting people move around. It's a deliberate framework where your HR system is actually tracking skills gained from lateral moves from project experience, not just titles you get by moving up.

• Speaker #1

  OK, but let's be honest. The idea that a sideways move gets the same prestige as a promotion. It sounds great in a memo, but it tends to fall apart when bonuses are handed out. Are the sources realistic about how hard it is to change compensation to match that?

• Speaker #0

  They're very realistic. It is the hardest part of making this shift. That's why the lattice needs two things. First... Yes, a structural change where pay is tied to competency bands and project impact, not just your title. But second, and this is maybe even more important, organizations have to consciously tell new stories about success. You have to celebrate the senior engineer who mastered three new domains and mentored five junior people. You have to make that role just as aspirational as the management track.

• Speaker #1

  That helps with the movement piece, but what about... leadership. We have a huge crisis brewing there. If only three in 10 people even want the C-suite grind, as the sources say, we're going to have these completely hollow management pipelines. The problem isn't the pipeline. It's the role itself.

• Speaker #0

  It's the role itself. 100%. The innovative solution is to reimagine what leadership even is. So you start using project-based leaders, rotational leadership, or the leader as coach model. The old director role was this impossible combination of deep management Complex admin and technical genius. The sources suggest spoiling that. You have a leader as coach who handles the vision and mentorship and maybe an operational manager who handles the bureaucracy. This lets people develop leadership skills without forcing them onto that traditional high burnout path that Gen Z is actively trying to avoid.

• Speaker #1

  And that connects right back to success metrics. If titles and how long you've been there don't matter as much. How do you measure growth? How do you prove it?

• Speaker #0

  You have to stop rewarding only seniority. The whole focus needs to shift to recognizing high-impact metrics. Things like measurable skill growth, real innovation, your cultural impact, your ability to mentor others. Companies need to pour money into development opportunities without all the pressure. Offer those short-term lily pad projects, co-created initiatives. Let people grow without feeling like they're about to be trapped on a path they didn't choose. if they can grow without risk. They'll engage.

• Speaker #1

  And let's circle all the way back to that foundation, the water itself, leading with values. Let's make this real. What happens when a company puts out a big, ambitious sustainability goal in the morning, and then that same afternoon quietly enhances layoffs or a rigid return to office policy?

• Speaker #0

  That is instant pollution. The sources call it value signaling, and Gen Z has a high-resolution radar for it. They are hyper-aware of that misalignment. If what a company says, the water, doesn't match what it does, the flow, They don't just quietly quit anymore. They talk about it publicly on social media. And that damages the employer brand way more than a resignation letter ever could. Research shows that retention today is tied less to your next promotion and more to your sense of well-being. If those values aren't real, the whole retention strategy just collapses.

• Speaker #1

  So when we zoom out and look at the macro trend, what does this all mean? It feels like we're just watching history repeat itself, just with a different vocabulary for resistance.

• Speaker #0

  We've seen this pattern for decades. Boomers resisted with collective power unions. Gen X resisted with sarcasm and, you know, a sort of institutional cynicism. Millennials came in and demanded flexibility and purpose. And now Gen Z disengages silently, digitally. The method of protest changes, but the underlying message is always the same. The system that was designed for stability no longer fits the reality of a chaotic world.

• Speaker #1

  And the sources frame this so perfectly against this backdrop of. global instability in a world being constantly disrupted by AI, the climate crisis, financial uncertainty. Adaptability is just inherently more valuable than status. Why would you want to climb a rigid, predefined ladder when you know the ground underneath it is constantly shifting? The lily pad model, it's a resilience strategy.

• Speaker #0

  It is absolutely a resilience strategy. Gen Z is just the first generation to really consistently act on that truth. They're prioritizing adaptability and exploration over just financial gain. They're building their own internal resilience through constant learning and movement, because that's the only way to really thrive in a high volatility world.

• Speaker #1

  So if we look to the future, the sources suggest Gen Z is really just the beginning of this, that Generation Alpha, who are growing up even more digitally native, even more socially aware, they're only going to accelerate the shift away from the latter.

• Speaker #0

  And that, I think, raises the most critical question for every leader listening. If the talent pipeline is already demanding ponds instead of ladders, and Gen Alpha is right behind them, what does that mean for your company's stability five years from now if you haven't started building that pond yet? The ladder belongs in a museum. The lily pads, they're the future. And you ignore them at your peril because you'll just be watching your best people quietly hop away.

• Speaker #1

  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive. We hope you feel thoroughly equipped to understand the scope and the power of the Gen Z shift. Thanks for tuning in.

• Speaker #0

  We'll catch you next time.