Steve Pruneau and Asher Black consider changing attitudes about job fulfillment and the value of life in an organizational structure have changed. Differences of opinions. Shared view = a #bossrebellion will be required engage the newest workforce generation as it strives to align life goals with work context.

Discussed

• The cost of failed accountability (2008 Financial Crisis)
• The locus of value in a work relationship
• Is the vagabond response sustainable or more of the same?

I saw a piece in Fast Company magazine called The Making of Gen Z. The subtitle is Why so many of the approximately 72 million Americans born between 1996 and 2010 have different ideas about jobs and fulfillment. Well, already that's got my attention. This is an opinion piece by someone named Kyla Scanlon.

She goes through What their life experience has been, which is essentially the big punch, you know, the exclamation points were the financial crisis of 2008, which as children watch their parents navigate all of that uncertainty and reminds us, which we all know, essentially nobody was held accountable for that, for all of the pain that was injected into the economy, except for one guy who went to jail.

Um, And then she moves on to some of the other events, uh, like, like the COVID pandemic and the sort of reflection that went on there. Why, you know, why am I going to the office? What is it for? So, this is something where I connect with people who point this out, uh, younger people. Is, uh, yeah, you, you do question, why am I working in this company?

Why do I want to participate in the workforce in this way when it's part of the system that brought down the economy in the past? And um, you know, it won't be the same thing going forward, but it's probably going to repeat. So I get it. This laying out the history. Of it. And this questioning of why participate in the workforce the way we have in the past works with me.

And so, um, there's there's there's more to it. But I that really connected with me. Yeah, I, I'm a little more skeptical about something like this. You know, having, um, grown up in a time period that overlapped the slacker generation, I heard the same narrative in, in different ways. You know, well, and, and you heard it.

from kids at home about their parents. Well, I'm not gonna do this stuff. I'm not gonna pull my weight around here. I'm not gonna take out the trash and mow the lawn because you, when I was 15, you didn't, you know, come to my ballgames. You did this. You did this. So that's gonna choose what I do. So now it's a.

I blame people victim narrative for not holding up their end, for being less than perfect, for falling short, for being corrupt, any number of things. So therefore, here are my choices. And first, I don't make my choices based on what other people's choices are. But, but secondly... You know, where's that accountability?

So if we're going to say companies should be accountable for any number of things, for their ethics, for the work environment they create, for the pay equity, where's the accountability of the complainer generation blogging and ranting and tick talking about how this is unfair? I would love to see those standards held up.

And my question is, what are you doing about it? You know, what, marching across the Brooklyn Bridge? In essence, I think the problem here is that, um, we're not distinguishing between company and context. So just writing off a whole, you know, class of people in essence by saying the American company is jacked up, the American corporation is jacked up.

We missed the possibility of what a company could be. Is it really endemic to the whole structure? Or do we have specific complaints? Like, alright, well there are ethics issues that companies need to address. Fair enough. Uh, we can work to improve that. Is there an environment of management, unnecessary bullshit management and bureaucracy that needs to be addressed?

Fair enough. Is this a, a, is there a relative disparity of the amount of work you extract? You say 40 hours a week, you really mean 60 hours a week, plus you want to be able to call me whenever and come at barge in and tell me to work on Sunday, versus what you pay me. Fair enough, you know, and I think companies can make a lot of these things better, and I think it's a lot harder work to, to pitch that, to say, You need to be better to attract me.

Here's the ways you need to be better. I can articulate that. Than it is to just go, Well, I'm going to opt out because you people aren't any good, so I'm just going to sit on the sofa, and I guess I'll blog, and Try to make my money off of selling self published books, e courses, giving advice to small businesses who will buy it from me, and TikTok videos.

So I'm a little more skeptical about that because, frankly, the American corporation has added, minus the consulting arms of the American corporation, has added a greater Higher, greater net value of prosperity and meaningful work, uh, to this culture than any other form of engagement on the planet. As much as we want to go back and say, well, there's the noble farmer.

If we just go back and look at rural England and rural Ireland for a couple of centuries. There was no greater source of misery, infant death, thankless toil, starvation, than that noble, sort of, oh, well, we reject corporate hierarchies approach. Being on your own is not as glamorous as it looks like. So I'd love to have a solution rather than just a rant.

Well, so certainly what's in common with Europe. Uh, from hundreds of years ago to now is work is still done, at least in a public corporation, primarily in service of creating shareholder value. And this is what I'm being questioned is, and this is the punchline, stuck with me. Why work 50, 60, a hundred hours a week, which is getting sp down to it for, for someone else to siphon off all the value, meaning, okay, we go to work, we create value.

Why are we participating in this? And this is what the whole ESG movement was about. Uh, which is... Well, it's not just shareholders. It's all stakeholders that is everybody getting value out of this equation. That's what being questioned here is. Hey, we're questioning participating in work in this way. Yeah, well, I would argue that that's.

Participating in an ecosystem. So the statement that if I generate value, I want to keep all the value. Um, that's solipsism. And in the end we live looking around at every other, you can't say we're ruining the planet and then say, I'm completely self involved and I'm only going to live for myself. The reason we're running the planet is not operating like we need a, a system where we all contribute something and we all extract value.

So, ideally, I live in a world in which I do add value to shareholders and to my clients and to the people I work with. And it is an ecosystem. The notion that I should get all my value back, that's just not how value works. But on top of this, I would argue that we're missing a point here. The value of your work is...

is never exists in a vacuum. I mean, even if you make art, it may be valuable to you or you want to keep a diary or something like that. Or this is a hobby, but the economic and the social value comes out of it participating in a particular context in which we work on that together. So from my point of view, the greatest value is being added by the founder, because without a founder starting a business, creating an enterprise, having that initial big idea, we don't need your work.

Nobody does. On top of that, the shareholders are the ones that essentially enable it to happen with their financial investment. The other layers, yes, there are many layers within the average corporation that are probably unnecessary. The asshole boss, the extra layers of bureaucracy and management, half the HR department.

Sorry for you HR guys, but I think you know it. But my point of view, all of the consulting firms that we hire that just document the stuff that we're already doing, give PowerPoint presentations and, you know, for a living and stuff like that. There's a whole lot of unnecessary baggage there, right? You don't actually need pretzels on a two hour flight to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

either. You know, the pretzels are wasted cost and we probably don't need to serve, you know, sodas and beers just to get you there. And we could cut down on the price of plane tickets and make it and maybe just increase the leg room. Then, you know, there's lots of things we could change about it. But in the end, nobody's going to fly themselves on that flight unless they're a trained pilot and have the money to buy a plane, etcetera.

So what I'm looking at here is it's easy to claim that somebody siphoning all that value away without the Recognizing that my value only has value in the context of the other people in that same system that are adding value and the proof of that is really simple. If my opt out solution is I'm going to leave and I'm going to start a blog and do a book and I'm going to teach courses and I'm going to consult with people.

Am I earning? Uh, what I would have earned in the corporation if it's roughly the same. Hey, I get 125, 000 as a salary as a W 2 person working 40 hours a week. Now I work for myself for 50 hours a week, but I get 175, 000 of value. I'm thinking, eh, it's roughly equivalent. So why are you whining about? You know, you're trying to essentially criticize the, the job.

Uh, as though those of, those people that have a W 2 job and have elected to do it that way are somehow missing the boat, but you're pristine and pure and more ethical. And I look at it like, you're just telling other people how to run their business, and a business that you don't want to be a part of.

You're giving advice on how to do something you're not doing. And in the, in essence, that's just the consulting model of, yeah, I don't actually do anything, but I teach courses, give advice, write books, tell other people what they should be doing. Hey, look at the value I'm adding. If you want to add value, do something, found something, start something that actually creates a thing.

That's what we're missing that you're criticizing with these kind of ranks. So I, I yeah. Okay. Thank you. I need to understand, though, um, her statement was why work this way when someone else is siphoning off all the value. She didn't say, um, she wants to siphon off all the value. But are you saying yes, that's inappropriate.

You agree that it's fine for founders and investors. To siphon off all the value. I couldn't quite tell if yes, you support that model. I could answer that question when you're ready. So the, I never said that, I'm disagreeing with the notion that founders are siphoning off all the value. So, you're telling me that she goes to work and doesn't get a salary?

Are you telling me, how, how are they siphoning off all the value? From my point of view, the value of your work is the money you got paid for it and the contribution to the company. And in the end, frankly, if you don't, if you don't Let's say that my job is to be, um, an HR professional and I work in a company and I'm getting a 175, 000 salary.

Well, no one needs, an HR professional doesn't have value outside the company. So nobody's siphoning off all the value, they're paying you for it. And in the end, if you want to go home and sit on your sofa and be an HR professional, you'll get no money. You can have that wonderful life where you get to keep all the value of absolutely nothing because you're not adding any.

The value being added is you showing up to work and doing something in the context of a team. And outside of that team, it's valueless. So, nobody's siphoning off all the value. They're paying it. They're siphoning off the value of their investment. They're siphoning off the relative value of their contribution.

So I disagree with the equation. So, in a feudal system of indentured servitism, servitude, um, the landowner provides land on which workers can not only grow crops and grains and raise cattle for the nobility, but they also have arable land which they can feed, with which they can feed themselves. And essentially it's saying, if I didn't provide you that land, You would have no land to provide for your family.

Is, is that what you're saying? I'm sorry, that's what they were saying. So, what's your point? You're saying that, you're saying that, Are you saying that the Lord is wrong that they would be able to farm land that doesn't exist, somehow? Without the, I think the context is without the corporation you would not have a corporate job and therefore you wouldn't provide value in, in this particular job.

There are some jobs that have no value outside of a company of other people. Yeah. So if your option is, I'm going to go be a CEO by myself in my home, work from my garage and be a CEO with no other people, there's no such thing. You can call yourself that. I'm going to go be an HR director alone on my sofa with a blog.

You're not an HR director. The value that you're adding only has value in the context of a team, a group of people Yes. Which we call a company. And companies get built by a founder who has an idea for how this company is going to distinguish itself for other companies, add value in a way that's not being added, fix, offer some sort of solution, fill a gap, something like that.

That founder, that's a higher value. Without him... Yes, it's as though the Lord not only gave you the land, but the Lord invented land. Whoever did that added the most value. The second amount of value is, the Lord comes up with the idea of land, but nobody has any. So how do we get it? The investors add value by purchasing the land.

Do they not deserve to get paid for this? Investors and CEOs and executives are extracting all the value. It doesn't line up with reality, it just creates this sort of socialist system where we have the noble farmer who's the true source of value and really he should own everything he touches because he does the work.

Aside from the fact that... That guy might have worked himself up from, I don't know, cleaning toilets in his 20s to become the founder of a company. The investor might have, you know, starved themselves by eating Salisbury steak and canned corn for 25 years in order to come up with a nest egg to invest in the company, to enable it to come into existence.

Are we saying those people don't deserve to get paid for it? So this equation where I add the real value, the proof of that would be, go home and do it on your sofa then. If you can sit on your sofa and you can do it by yourself with none of these other participants and create value, why are you doing that?

Why aren't you doing that instead of blogging? Well, doing it by themselves, uh, alone is, is not being said. I think this notion of the only way to create value, even as a group, uh, is, is the model that we've followed for over 100 years, which is a founder investors. I think that is, is not necessarily going to remain the case.

And I think that's what's being suggested, of course, not explained. Uh, and it's, and it's under this premise of If work is not a place to fulfill life goals, or a stable place to create growth, then Gen Z is going to conclude that it's something that feels viscerally disappointing. And I get from that, maybe not everybody does or will, I get from that of, we don't know what it's going to be, but we're going to invent something that replaces that.

It's sort of like the last scene of The Matrix, where he says, I don't know how this is going to go, but I know I'm going to build a world without you. And so, okay, one could say, I don't know if it actually can be pulled off, because I only see the world through one model of founders, investors, and everybody else works there.

But I hear her saying, we're going to figure this out. Yeah, I, I don't. Uh, first, the reason you don't hear her saying, I'll go off and do it alone, because she doesn't say anything. She just has a complaint. And at the end she says, it's not going to be this way anymore. Really? Because the traditional model is either you work in a company, you found one, or you live as a parasite in a consulting firm, telling companies what they ought to do.

Without doing it yourself. Those are the two traditions. What has she done? She's writing a book, giving financial advice. She's got a practice, giving financial advice. She's got a blog talking about the world and giving financial advice. In the end, you either do something and add value that way, Or you tell other people what to do and call that adding value.

I don't hear a big answer here. I hear a victim narrative. I hear a persistent complaint with a fixed way of being and no other answer than tradition. I like what Heinlein said. If in doubt, you can bet on tradition. The ape is a creature of habit. He'll go right back to the same stuff he's been doing. Not for the last hundred years.

Not since the Industrial Revolution. Since he stood up on two legs and walked out of the cave. From my point of view, all I'm hearing is, Look, I was wrong. You people are bad. Look what you've done. I'm going to walk away from all of this. I'm not actually hearing I'm going to go off and fulfill my life goals in a way that fulfills me personally.

I'm going to do something to add something substantive to the world and the environment. I'm hearing I'm going to go away and complain about it in my blog, diary, journal. Uh, and while I'm doing that, I'm going to find a way to make a living by telling other people. that what they ought to do in these groups that I don't want to be a part of.

And I, I look at this as fundamentally hypocrisy. So I'm not cheering on, you know, I don't believe this person represents Gen Z just because she's a member of it. Like if I just stood up and said, Hey, all Gen X white males, I am your leader and I can explain what we're all doing here. There'd be any number of guys that go, man, don't speak for me.

Talk for yourself. So I'm not looking at this as an argument against Gen Z or about Gen Z. I'm just hearing one blogger, like many other bloggers and TikTok video stars and influencers telling us what their generation is doing and how their generation feels. And I think there's a lot more gaps there that need to be filled than what I'm getting out of, you know, this context.

Yep. I'm, I'm betting that. We're going to see, maybe not from this person's particularly, but this sentiment I'm betting is going to generate something that we don't yet imagine, uh, in terms of different ways to work. Yeah, and I'm betting on tradition. I bet we will not only have imagined it, but it'll be 10, 000 years old, and it will, we'll just look and go, yep, same day, different group of people.