Last Friday kicked off the MBA class I am teaching over the next semester at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business. The brief hour I had with these students reminded me how important it is to continue to push back against the monolithic pop culture portrayal of Gen Z so often shared in media and by “thought leaders,” who simply pick up on the headlines of others.
In my head, I write a rebuttal every day to the articles or news stories I see that are unfair and inaccurate. Most often I set it aside as an unwise use of energy and time. But these students reminded me how important it is for leaders to make decisions based on a truer understanding of who Gen Z is, and what generations as a whole represent.
This desire, to understand and not to put all of Gen Z in the same bucket as was done with Millennials, led me to advocate for the Gen Z segmentation studies I led at EY. First in 2019, then in 2021, and last in 2023 (posted below).
Last Friday in that classroom, I saw each of the five segments detailed in this research. When the most diverse generation in history is minimized to a monolith, we kind of miss the point. And leaders surely miss the competitive advantage that can be gained by understanding a generational cohort from a truer vantage point than the headline.
See my Substack, Cultural Undercurrents, for full article.
