Mind the Gap: The ‘Einstein of management’ has advice for Gen Z

‘The manager and the moron’ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

CURATED READS FOR GEN Z—AND THEIR Z-CURIOUS COLLEAGUES

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Brought to you by Liz Hilton Segel, chief client officer and managing partner, global industry practices, & Homayoun Hatami, managing partner, global client capabilities

first up

An image linking to the web page “The human side of generative AI: Creating a path to productivity” on McKinsey.com.

Welcome back! This week, we look at whether a nearly 60-year-old article predicted Gen Z’s role in the workplace.

“Any business that wants to stay ahead will have to put very young people into very big jobs—and fast,” Peter Drucker, the management expert and author who has been called the “Einstein of management,” wrote in a McKinsey Quarterly article called “The manager and the moron,” back in 1967. “The age structure of our population is such that in the next 20 years, like it or not, we are going to have to promote people we wouldn’t have thought old enough, a few years ago, to find their way to the water cooler,” he noted.

Despite being wisdom from nearly 60 years ago, that excerpt sounds like something that could be published today. The data backs it up: Gen Zers were appointed to management positions more quickly in 2023 than they were in 2019 and at nearly the same rate as baby boomers.

Gen Zers may make up only a small share of the managerial labor market today, but their presence in leadership roles will affect how an organization functions well into the future. A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that Gen Z managers are less hierarchical, more informal, and more focused on catering to employee mental health than older managers might be.

How successful that approach is may depend on the unique culture of a given workplace, but there are standard skills that any manager should embody. These include being able to design and execute plans, solve complex problems, communicate effectively, and coach reports in an emotionally intelligent way, according to research from McKinsey partners Emily Field and Bryan Hancock and coauthors.

When it comes to catering to employee mental health, empathy is a workplace superpower as it allows direct reports to feel more connected (and therefore to work more efficiently). A word of caution for new Gen Z managers: compassion fatigue—in which managers sacrifice their own mental well-being or too much of their time to cater to others’ feelings—can be detrimental to effective management.

Back to that 1967 Drucker article, which was more prescient than anyone might have expected. Drucker wrote that managers need time to understand their teams and the environment around them, but they don’t have that time, because they are too busy working on things that the computers could do. (Seriously, was this guy a psychic?)

One could substitute the mention of “computers” with generative AI (gen AI) in Drucker’s article and it would be talking about today. Gen AI is a whole lot smarter than the clerical computational power of the 20th century. But the lesson remains: managers should use the tools available to them to free up time to think.

But before that can happen, managers will need to learn how to use gen AI tools themselves. From there, they can effectively manage their people and the use of gen AI to enhance performance. “In other words,” McKinsey senior partner Aaron De Smet and coauthors write, “gen AI will become another member of the team to be managed.”

“Most middle managers are doing essentially the same things they did on their entrance jobs: controlling operations and fighting fires,” Drucker said back then. “It isn’t difficult for us to get people into middle management today. But it is going to be, because we shall need thinking people in the middle, not just at the top.”

VISUALIZE IT

Around 400,000 employees in the United States will retire from the oil and gas sector in the coming years, putting a squeeze on the industry’s aging workforce.