How to Stay Ahead/ Keep Up with Gen Z in Business

You have all the experience, but the Gen Z are challenging you. They know technology better than you do and are faster at using it. They are coming to get you, and steal your job….right?

Is it all about focus?

I’m reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. In this brilliant book it talks of concentration levels across generations. With younger people there is far more exposure to distraction. Take TikTok, Snapchat, BeReal, Twitter, Emails, WhatsApp etc (not Facebook “that’s for cringy old people”). Whilst Gen X and the famous Boomers are still using some of the above tech, it’s not in the same way. My Mum, for example (A Boomer), will get her phone and sit down with a cuppa to go through her WhatsApp messages. She will reply hours later, not seconds later but she will be focussing on something for a period.

Children and Young Adults are thought to have concentration spans lasting merely a few seconds as these apps have trained them to be flitty. Older generations can get up to 3 mins of concentration without anything distracting them.

So could this be an advantage. Does it mean that Gen Z wouldn’t be great at getting a very complex piece of work done accurately as they will be constantly distracted. Possibly yes.

Does it mean that your focus could be an advantage. Yes, absolutely. How about board meetings. If you are Gen Z, do you ever spend an hour or two with no tech near you?

Reading the book made me look at how I do things. I have known for a while that my concentration levels have been waning but I hadn’t looked into how I could improve things. I used to have 3 monitors with emails in the middle, LinkedIn to the right and Twitter or BBC news to the left.

I made subtle changes. I changed LinkedIn to LinkedIn Recruiter – it’s our headhunting tool, but it doesn’t have a live feed which I can constantly be checking. Twitter had to go. I’ve replaced it with Spotify. So, now I have no immediate temptations there to steal my focus. But there are other areas. I have my phone out of reach, but with the only sounds being if someone calls me……no WhatsApp alerts.

I’ve also added some discipline to my day to make sure I’m focussing at home too by reading each night. It’s brilliant and I love to have this time before bed. I just need to work out a way to not fall asleep and wake up at 1am and then have to drag myself up to bed with one eye shut.

A calm mind in this very uncalm world, could just give you an advantage over those being confused by all the tech.

#stolenfocus #technology #recruitment