Gen Z Doesn’t Want To ‘Postpone Joy’: Suzy Welch

Joining us now, Suzy Welch, NYU Stern School business professor, which barely describes her impact. The book is 10 to 10, a life transforming idea, and we'll talk about their path to academics and all that. I can give you the exact date here, folks. September 24th, 2025. I said, yeah, Susie Welch said, Is Gen Z unemployable? And it's just as simple as a blistering essay in the Wall Street Journal about the kids. What how damaged are the kids out of? Let's do this. This is the morning. Must read here. The money must be there, I should say. This is from the essay. And it's just simple. The message is often that with the pushback that business needs to change, what has the focus on achievement gotten us but anxiety? Oh, woe is me. And who wants a life of scope with action and a decent paycheck with the world is already unstable, have damaged where the kids out of Covid. Uh, I don't know if I'd use the word damaged. I have to say, you know, I love Gen Z. I think that they were changed. Or, I mean, maybe they were changed even before Gen Z, but what gen what the pandemic reinforced for them is that they do not want to postpone joy. They did not want to earn their happiness, which is actually a very ancient concept. If you go all the way back to the Stoics, the idea is that you work very hard and then you earn your gold watch and your relaxation in your retirement, basically that you play, you work very hard, then you get to play hard. And I think what happened and what the research would show is that they came out of the pandemic and they said, we don't really like that arrangement. We would like not to postpone joy. And look, maybe the reasons are the bottom can fall out at any time. Maybe there's no joy at the end of the working. So why would we buy something? Or is the steam coming out of your scorching? Yeah, a little bit. You know, it feels like they've subscribed to YOLO in like a very, very extreme way. Yes. What do old people like Tom like me get wrong? Well, what do we get wrong about the skills that you need and how to build a career today for this cohort of Gen Z ers who don't want to delay joy, who, you know, want to live life. I think that people from the older generations have the former kind of array of values, which is they they value achievement more. And they have also this, uh, equation in their heads that you have to work to get your, um, your period of pleasure. Uh, you know, I want to say maybe they're right. Okay. I mean, I don't subscribe to it. I work all the time, and I love working, and I've always said that, but, um, I would say that what if you were managing Gen Z and you cannot put your finger on why they are driving you crazy? Um, but there are words for it, and that is that their values are very different than yours. And either depending on how much power you have, how much hiring power you have, you can decide whether or not you want the Gen Z with that attitude. Or you can go get the other two groups, because I got Eli on Bloomberg Money who works nothing under a 60 hour workweek, maybe even seven. He knows the King's English. He can do math To me, there's two parts of Gen Z. There's a Gen Z that you and Mr. Welch, Jack Welch knew and Scalia grew up with and I grew up with. And then there's this cohort you're talking about. But I think it's okay. So they're not everyone in Gen Z the same. But if you actually look at the numbers, 2% of Gen Z have the values that we would typically ascribe to 2%. So yeah, they exist. And what happens is there's like a there's a cage match of organizations and individuals who are trying to hire that 2%, and the rest are have a different set of values. Their top value is self-care and wellbeing. Their second value is agency, which is like wanting to make all the decisions. They are very, very self deterministic and then they would like voice is their third value which is authentic self-expression. This is how do you say this with a straight face? So my question here is sorry to interrupt, but my question is how do you how much of the responsibility lies with schools? I mean, you have to have the knowledge, the skill set base, in order to kind of move forward with these kinds of demands. Universities and professors don't appear to be equipping these young people with the right. These are formed by the time they get to school. Okay. I mean, I don't think the professors all feel the same way about this. I don't think this is happening in school. Okay. Schools have learned to cater to it because they're getting in students who have a certain set of values. But those students didn't arrive with totally different ideas and then have them change. I think it's happening a little earlier than that. And I want to just say I have one little piece of data, which I think you're going to lighten, because I've just got this data recently we went in and book labs, which is the lab that I work in, um, and we, um, gave our test the values bridge to 300, the top 300 executives at a large bank that you'll rename, um, uh, remain nameless, except for to say it is an wildly successful, extremely large bank. Okay. Based in New York. Okay, so we gave the values bridge test to their top 200 executives. Why? Because the CEO asked me to, um. And we looked at their values. There was 91% value overlap with this group. That's unbelievable. 91% of them had the exact same values. Their top values were wildly different than the Gen Z people that they were managing. But what was fascinating is they didn't have Gen Z's top to top values agency and voice, self determination, self-expression. Those were down at number 14 and 15 for them. So they had risen up to the top. So we've got this very successful cohort of banking executives and they are managing people with radically different values. This is what's causing them attention. Yeah. Well, Susie, we wanted to ask you about the worst career advice you ever got. Not the best, but the worst. And I know that something that drives you absolutely bananas is something that Steve Jobs used to tell everyone, which is follow your passion. Uh, hold it on here. Look, I think maybe you should, but maybe you shouldn't, because passion, which is often really your interest, is just one part. There's sort of a three legged stool when you're going to try to build a career that's sustainable. And what you're interested in, your passion is one leg of the stool, but you also have a set of values. Everyone has a set of values, but also you have aptitudes like fine, follow your passion if you're good at it and you know, like I, you know, I would be up there like with Beyonce if I was just following my passions. I would like to perform, but I'm terrible, terrible at it. So, I mean, I think that what students want is like this wonderful answer. And I understand why people give this advice. Because if, you know, technically, first of all, it feels very good to say, just follow your passion. And everybody goes, yeah, I should just follow my passion. I would see another piece of it is sometimes people don't know what their passions are. I mean, there's we've got kind of a generational cohort who will say with dead seriousness, like some days I want to, you know, be a veterinarian. That's what I hear all the time. Afternoon. I want to like it's not a technology based on I, it's like, well, you got to choose between those. And I'm afraid, Suzy, I'm going to dovetail this all together with your claim. And why you you had a father in law, uh, uh, who has voice. You have a voice when you're a Boston and Maine Railroad conductor. So Jack Welch, his father, was a conductor on a train. Yeah, a million years ago. Yeah. That heritage wasn't about a voice. It wasn't about all the stuff you've brilliantly studied here. What did you learn from Jack Welch about grinding through the investment day of retirement? I have to say, I've often thought about what Jack's values. If we'd had the values, I would have loved to know what his values were. But Jack actually, um, believed in enjoying your work. I mean, and I don't want people to take out what they find to be an enjoyable thing. Um, but Jack believed in hard work. I mean, he was one of these people who was, like, very driven to, uh, you know, he we we left our honeymoon early because we missed work so much. I mean, that's that was that was our shared personality type. And so I think that, uh, he believed in work and, um, the term fun employment probably would have driven him just about as crazy as it drives me when my students say they're going to have some fun employment, which is purposely not work to have fun. And I'm like, but work is fun. Um, so I think that, uh, he would have some thoughts. So his attitude was work, hard work. His value was working directly of the value of work centrism. His aptitudes were, uh, too many to list.