The Wall Street Journal
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Opinion: Potomac Watch
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2025
9/29/2025 5:01:00 PMShare This Episode
What Does Gen Z Want From the Workplace?
「Z世代は職場に何を求めているのか？」
Does Generation Z have the values employers are looking for, or has the culture shifted to individual happiness that has less to do with monetary success and career achievement? NYU Stern School of Business professor Suzy Welch talks to Paul Gigot about what her research has found about what younger workers want, and how companies may have to change as a result.
- Generation Z /ˌdʒɛnəˈreɪʃən ziː/ Z世代（1990年代後半～2010年代前半生まれ）
- workplace /ˈwɜːrkpleɪs/ 職場、勤務先
- values /ˈvæljuːz/ （個人や集団の）価値観、理念
- culture has shifted /ˈkʌltʃər hæz ʃɪftɪd/ 文化が変化した、価値観が移った
- individual happiness /ˌɪndɪˈvɪdʒuəl ˈhæpinəs/ 個人の幸福、自己の満足感
- monetary success /ˈmɑːnɪteri səkˈsɛs/ 金銭的成功、財務的な成功
- career achievement /kəˈrɪr əˈʧiːvmənt/ キャリア上の達成、職業的成果
- research has found /rɪˈsɜːrʧ hæz faʊnd/ 研究によって明らかになった
- as a result /æz ə rɪˈzʌlt/ その結果として、従って
Speaker 1: From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.
Paul Gigot: Welcome to Potomac Watch, the daily podcast of Wall Street Journal opinion. I'm Paul Gigot, and today my special guest is Suzy Welch. She is a journalist and author, former editor of the Harvard Business Review, and now a professor of management practice at New York University's Stern School of Business. She is also the author of, among other books, Becoming You: the Proven Method for Crafting Your Life and Career. She's here today to talk about a provocative research into the different values and experiences of generation Z, which she teaches that generation at Stern, and what employers want in employees. She distilled these findings in a very provocative essay in the Wall Street Journal. Headlined is Gen Z Employable, may be a too provocative headline.
- management practice /ˈmænɪdʒmənt ˈpræktɪs/ 経営学実践、マネジメントの実務
- distill findings /dɪˈstɪl ˈfaɪndɪŋz/ 調査結果をまとめる、要点を抽出する
- provocative research /prəˈvɑːkətɪv rɪˈsɜːrʧ/ 挑発的・刺激的な研究（注目を引く、議論を呼ぶ内容）
Suzy Welch: Yeah, no, don't tell me. Very provocative. I think Is Gen Z Unemployable? is the headline. It was like a lightning bolt.
Paul Gigot: Yeah, it was the most read essay of our opinion pages in the last month. So congratulations on that, and welcome.
Suzy Welch: An honor. Thank you.
Paul Gigot: So why don't you start by summing up what you found in your research because it really is striking.
Suzy Welch: Absolutely. We have a tool at Becoming You Labs, which is the lab that I am very happy to run at NYU Stern. And the tool called the Values Bridge allows people, individuals to have their values ranked from one to 16. There's 16 human personal values. And after we made this tool available to the public in May, it ended up that, now, at this point, today, 70,000 people have taken it, but about-
Paul Gigot: 70-
Suzy Welch: ... (inaudible) thousand people, people are curious about what their values are, it turns out. But about a month ago, about 45,000 people had taken it, and we were aware that we had enough data, then, to start looking at values by generation. Now, I had strongly suspected what the values of Gen Z were already, because I'm teaching them all the time. And because I had been using this tool in beta with my classes for several years now. So we finally got that data put together and we had Gen Z's values ranked from one to 16. And I could see it was really kind of no surprise to me that their number one value is eudaimonia, which I'll explain. This is a Greek term. It's the Greek term for flourishing. And what goes into this term is really self-care, pleasure, recreation. And the reason why we don't call it self-care is because I try to be non-judgmental, and I didn't want people's heads to explode by saying, "Look, Gen Z, their number one value is self-care." This piece already got enough sound and fury associated with it.
- strongly suspected /ˈstrɔːŋli səˈspɛktɪd/ 強く予想していた
- beta /ˈbeɪtə/ （ソフト・ツールの）試用版、ベータ版
- ranked from one to 16 /ræŋkt frʌm wʌn tuː sɪksˈtiːn/ 1位から16位までランク付けした
- eudaimonia /juːˌdaɪməˈniːə/ エウダイモニア（ギリシャ語で「繁栄、充実した幸福」）
- flourishing /ˈflɜːrɪʃɪŋ/ 成長・繁栄・充実していること
- self-care /ˌsɛlf ˈkɛr/ 自己管理、自己ケア、心身の健康維持
- non-judgmental /ˌnɑːnˈʤʌdʒməntəl/ 判断的でない、中立的な
- sound and fury /saʊnd ənd ˈfjʊri/ 騒ぎや激しい論争（シェイクスピア由来の表現）
Paul Gigot: Yeah, it sounds like narcissism.
Suzy Welch: Yes, it does. And in fact, this value has been tested before by previous generations. There's another academic construct that has tested and they call it hedonism, but we use this other term-
Paul Gigot: Hedonism has a more negative connotation-
Suzy Welch: Exactly.
Paul Gigot: ... than eudaimonia.
- narcissism /ˈnɑːrsɪsɪzəm/ 自己愛、自己中心的な傾向
- academic construct /ˌækəˈdɛmɪk ˈkɑːnstrʌkt/ 学術的概念、理論的構築物
- hedonism /ˈhiːdəˌnɪzəm/ 快楽主義、享楽主義
- negative connotation /ˈnɛɡətɪv ˌkɑːnəˈteɪʃən/ ネガティブな含意、否定的なニュアンス
Suzy Welch: Sure. I don't want a negative connotation. So the number one value is eudaimonia. Their number two is what we call voice, which is individual, authentic self-expression, to allow their insides on the out, just that they can be themselves. And then their third value is what we use a Latin term non sibi, not for oneself, to mean sort of like altruism, but they like helping people. After I saw these results come in, I was like, "Yeah, I get it. I've seen it." Not surprised at all by the eudaimonia, which is a predominant, 75% have that as a top value. I said, "I wonder, just out of curiosity," since my students are MBAs, and because young people are generally looking for jobs, what are the values that are being sought after most by hiring managers? So at the lab we conducted a second study, of 2100 hiring managers with more than five years of experience. And we looked basically for jobs in business, so in the knowledge industries, and we gave them a list of the values and their definitions and we said, "Please pick your top value." And when it was all done, we crunched the numbers. And what came out of the crunching was that hiring managers are looking for the values of achievement, learning, and work-centrism, which is the desire just to work-
- voice /vɔɪs/ 個人の自己表現、自分らしさを出すこと
- authentic self-expression /ɔːˈθɛntɪk ˌsɛlf ɪkˈsprɛʃən/ 本物の自己表現
- non sibi /nɒn ˈsɪbi/ 「自分のためではない」というラテン語概念、利他主義
- altruism /ˈæltruˌɪzəm/ 利他主義、他者のために行動すること
- predominant /prɪˈdɑːmɪnənt/ 支配的な、最も優勢な
- hiring managers /ˈhaɪərɪŋ ˈmænɪdʒərz/ 採用担当者、マネージャー
- achievement /əˈʧiːvmənt/ 達成、成果
- learning /ˈlɜːrnɪŋ/ 学習、知識習得
- work-centrism /wɜːrk ˈsɛntrɪzəm/ 仕事中心、働くことを重視する価値観
Paul Gigot: Work hard.
Suzy Welch: ... work hard, which I happen to have that value. So no shade on it. I happen to love that value. And if you put it all together, what ends up is that only 2% of Gen Z have the values that hiring managers most prize, that they're most seeking, 2%. And at the lab, we're human beings. So when the data was being crunched, we were all sort of placing bets on what we thought the number would be. And I said, "Look, I'm with these Gen Z, day in and day out, I think it's going to be 10%." And everybody said, "That's very low, Suzy." And I said, "I think it's going to be 10%." And then it came back, 2.04%. And I thought, "Wow." So we replicated it, because we thought, "That's a very, very low number." It was 2.03% when we replicated it. And so we knew that the data was strong, and there you have it.
- no shade on it /noʊ ʃeɪd ɑːn ɪt/ 批判する意図はない、悪気はない（口語表現）
- replicate /ˈrɛplɪˌkeɪt/ 再現する、再度実験して確認する
Paul Gigot: That's remarkable. Now, is there a potential issue with the selection of the data set that is the people? In other words, are these 45,000, now 70,000, people who have relatively affluent upbringings? Who therefore feel more comfortable, and they don't have that sense of desperation that a lot of people who live on the margins have?x
Suzy Welch: Yes, of course. This is an excellent question. And we were worried about selection bias. So we made sure we didn't have selection bias in the data. And so we used a system called Prolific to make sure that the data represented the American public in terms of age, income level, gender, and race. So we took out the selection bias, to make sure that we didn't have exactly what you described.
Paul Gigot: Yeah. Because in my experience of hiring, and just in life, the hardest workers overall tend to be the people from middle class and working class backgrounds, those who rise, and they go to college. I hire people who have gone to college, and what they have going for them is they're a little bit looking over their shoulder and saying, "Geez, I really have to work hard, because I don't know what's going to happen to me. I haven't had an easy life."
Suzy Welch: That's right.
Paul Gigot: And so they're the ones that work hard, and others who have, feel they have a cushion, and therefore they may not be as achievement-oriented.
Suzy Welch: Yes. I mean, I think that you make a good point, and I think the next step for us is to cut this data. The first way we're going to cut it is by first generation and immigrants, and compare it to people who (inaudible)-
Paul Gigot: Interesting.
Suzy Welch: Right, so we're doing that right now, to look at the data that way. So I do think it's hard to make generalizations on what that might look like, because look, I'm in the classroom and this desire, this motivating eudaimonia, is strong across all the students. And of course, in my NYU classroom, I have students who come from middle class and working class backgrounds, and first-generation immigrants. I have to say, "Okay, I don't want to make generalizations. The data will tell us." That's what I'm going to say right now.
Paul Gigot: All right, we're going to take a break, and when we come back we will talk about whether there's a socioeconomic difference in values of American young people when we come back. Welcome back.
- socioeconomic difference /ˌsoʊʃioʊɪˈkɑːnəmɪk ˈdɪfrəns/
社会経済的な違い、格差
I'm Paul Gigot here in Potomac Watch, I'm talking to Suzy Welch, professor at the Stern School of Business, specializing in management practice, about her research on generation Z. To what do you attribute this shift in values across generations? Because I think it is a shift.
Suzy Welch: Yeah.
Paul Gigot: What has happened to this generation that causes them to have these values?
Suzy Welch: I first want to have a disclaimer here. So in my field, which is values, social science, there are two different fields of it. And one is values formation, how you come by your values. And that's filled with psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists. And then the field that I'm in is values expression, what values we have, and then how we express them. So I want to say I'm stepping out of my field, which is values expression. I study what people's values are, and how much they're living them or not. All right? And so I can only, like you, as a lay person, say, "How did they come by these values?" Well, I can just look at my own four children. They came by their values, by their society, by culture, by their parents, by their friends. And I think there's a big stew. Now, if you ask my students, "Why do you have these values?" They would say two things. They would say the pandemic.
- disclaimer /dɪsˈkleɪmər/ 免責事項、前置き
- social science /ˈsoʊʃəl ˈsaɪəns/ 社会科学
- values formation /ˈvæljuːz fɔːrˈmeɪʃən/ 価値観の形成（どのように価値観を持つに至るか）
- values expression /ˈvæljuːz ɪkˈsprɛʃən/ 価値観の表現（価値観を持ち、それを表すこと）
- step out of my field /stɛp aʊt əv maɪ fiːld/ 自分の専門分野を超える
- lay person /leɪ ˈpɜːrsən/ 一般人、専門外の人
- big stew /bɪɡ stuː/ 多くの要素が混ざったもの（比喩的表現）
Paul Gigot: Big, big impact,
Suzy Welch: Big impact. And then they would say, "You created a world for us, you oldsters, where there's terrorism, and school shootings, and climate change, and you've created this terrible world, and we don't want to work hard in your terrible world, and then find out we're at age 40, where we've killed ourselves to climb the corporate ladder and then we're just going to be fired or we're going to be out of a job because you created this terrible no-win economy." So that is what my students would say, my students would say, "The pandemic made us realize that you cannot postpone joy." That's what my students would say.
Paul Gigot: So no postponing your spending money, or sacrifice, take a job you might not love because you're going to develop a skill set that will help you when you're 35.
Suzy Welch: I mean, it's a kind of nihilism, where they basically say, "None of us know what's going to happen tomorrow. There could be a pandemic, there could be a technology who takes my job. I refuse. There's no bargain anymore, where if you work hard, you're going to get a payoff from it. You're going to be rewarded for it. So why would I buy into a deal that doesn't exist anymore?" And when they say it, look, maybe they're right. I mean, when I was coming up and along, I saw with my own eyes that if you were like my parents and you worked incredibly hard, then your kids went to college, and it was a deal I was willing to make. I was willing to buy into that deal, and I postponed a lot of joy by working eight days a week when I was coming up and along. But then again, I still do that. And so I think it's actually an authentic value of mine. I know it is, because I took the test. But it is, it's like my third value.
- nihilism /ˈnaɪɪˌlɪzəm/ 虚無主義、価値や意味の否定
- buy into a deal /baɪ ˈɪntuː ə diːl/ 取り引きや考え方に賛同する、受け入れる
- payoff /ˈpeɪˌɔːf/ 努力の報酬、結果
- coming up and along /ˈkʌmɪŋ ʌp ənd əˈlɔːŋ/ 成長期に、人生の過程で（口語的表現）
Paul Gigot: So I want to ask you about one particular kind of commentary on your article, which I've heard from many, many people, which is that, well, what do you expect? They're young people. Young people have this sort of sense of they can afford to indulge these values because they don't have to work for a living yet. Once they work for a living, and they realize that if they don't have achievement as a goal, if they don't have working hard as a goal, never mind what ... They could lose their job at 40 if they don't work in this job hard, they're not going to have any chance to succeed.
Suzy Welch: So this is the bucket of comments I would say is like, "Don't worry about them. They're going to get their butts kicked anyway, just hang in there for a few years. They're going to learn this the hard way."
Paul Gigot: Exactly.
Suzy Welch: Okay. I think that there's a portion of that. I think that that is too facile a response to it. I mean, 2% is a very small number. I mean that probably applies to some portion of them, but we're talking about a 98/2% split. So I don't think 98% just need to grow up a little bit. I think maybe 10% are going to change. I think the rest, I think there's a cultural phenomenon going on, and I think the magnitude is, you just can't write off the magnitude of this result.
- facile /ˈfæsɪl/ （議論・説明などが）安易な、表面的な
- apply to /əˈplaɪ tuː/ ～に当てはまる
- cultural phenomenon /ˈkʌltʃərəl fəˈnɑmɪnən/ 文化的現象
- magnitude /ˈmæɡnɪˌtud/ （重要性や規模の）大きさ、重大性
- write off /raɪt ɔːf/ 無視する、軽視する、見捨てる
Paul Gigot: Okay. So you say in your piece that you tell your students about this disconnect between what their values are and what the workplace hiring manager's values are, even if they don't want to hear it. So how do they respond?
Suzy Welch: They don't like it very much. Now, I want to say, because I am teaching at a very good business school, my students actually skew higher than this actual number. If I pulled out Stern's, there's probably no Stern students in the data that I have, because this is a general population study.
- skew higher /skjuː ˈhaɪər/
（数値・傾向が）高めに偏る、上方に偏る
Paul Gigot: Higher than 2%, you're saying?
Suzy Welch: Yeah. I'm going to say, because these are MBAs, the Sternies are. But I would say when I tell them this, they are grim. Because the job market's hard, even for MBAs today, it's hard. And they're like, the last thing they want to hear from me is, "And none of you have the values that hiring managers want anyway." And so when I say it, it's grim. There's kind of a quiet unhappiness in the room, and they don't like it. And then I say to them things like, "Look, you have two choices with what I'm saying. You can go into job interviews and identify yourself as being part of the 2%, 'Hi, I'm part of that 2%. I have everything you want. I've got achievement, I've got learning, and I've got work centrism,' and use it to your advantage. And the other is that you can go look for a company that is going to accommodate your current values." What I don't suggest they do is change their values. I think it's asking someone to change their personality. I mean, okay, maybe they can go repress their values for a while, but that's very uncomfortable. When you're not living your values, you're like wearing a suit that's the wrong size. So I think that their choice is to go find companies that don't have the kind of hiring power. Now, the companies with really big hiring power, the Goldman Sachs, the JP Morgans, the Disneys, the Sonys, I mean, the really big brand names, they can go find those 2%. And I've been hearing from CEOs since the article was published, and they say things like, "We spend all our time looking for the 2%," or as one executive said to me, "This is a cage match worth fighting. It's whether we win or lose is whether we get the 2%." But if you don't have leverage in hiring, then maybe you're going to be a company that is going to accommodate the 98%, and those companies and the 98% need to find each other.
- grim /ɡrɪm/ 厳しい、沈んだ、暗い（雰囲気など）
- cage match /keɪdʒ mæʧ/ （比喩）熾烈な競争、真剣勝負
Paul Gigot: You write in your piece, that's one reaction from the students you give this message to is that they say, "Oh, well, business must change." Well, across my career, business has changed. I mean, we have much more family leave, generous family leave. It's for fathers as well as mothers. It's extensive weeks, certainly at the Journal it is. Long vacations, I mean, personal days. And I know in my own role as a manager, I try to be very accommodating particular to young parents. Those are very intensive, time-consuming years, and I know they're going to come out of it and be productive in the future. So business has changed.
Suzy Welch: It has.
Paul Gigot: How else do they want business to change? When they say business must change, well, what do they want?
Suzy Welch: Okay, so business has changed. My son just took six-month paternity leave after his son was born, and he got tired of me saying ... I had a case team meeting for Bain in the hospital. I was working at Bain when my fourth child was born, and my case team came to the hospital and we had a case team meeting in the hospital. And he's like, "I don't want to hear it anymore, mom." And I said, "Yeah, but six months is so gorgeous." So how much more can they can change? I don't want to sort of make a generalization, but now I'm about to do that, is that they would like a mindset that is more thoroughly focused on the well-being of employees, and so much less on the shareholders. And what I teach a class, I teach a management class called Management with Purpose. And in the first day in class, I say to my students, "What I'm going to teach you in this class is about the big win. The big win is when you're a manager who's beloved by your team, and you're also beloved by the shareholders. This is the most unspeakably hard thing you'll ever do. And this, is when you work your whole career to be at the center." I show a little Venn diagram and I say, "This is where you want to be. In some weeks you're going to be loved by your team, but then results may not show for it, and to find that balance." And so I think what they'd like is, in their perfect world, is that the shareholders would, and by shareholders I mean customers, your boss, your boss's boss, whatever, that they would diminish. It wouldn't be a 50/50 split. That it wouldn't be 50% beloved by your team, 50% beloved by shareholders, but it would be something more like 90% beloved by your team, 10% beloved by your shareholders. I think that that's the frontier that they're looking for. And maybe they're right.
- paternity leave /pəˈtɜrnəti liːv/ 父親の育児休暇
- well-being /ˈwɛlˌbiːɪŋ/ 健康・幸福・生活の質
- shareholders /ˈʃɛrˌhoʊldərz/ 株主、利害関係者（文脈により顧客や上司も含む）
- beloved /bɪˈlʌvɪd/ 愛される、大切にされる
- Venn diagram /vɛn ˈdaɪəˌɡræm/ ベン図（共通点や重なりを示す図）
ベン図。数学者ジョン・ベン（John Venn）にちなんだ図。円や楕円の重なりで、集合や共通部分を視覚的に表す図 - frontier /frʌnˈtɪr/ 最先端、未踏の領域、挑戦的な課題
- skew /skjuː/ 偏る（数値や傾向がある方向に偏る）
Paul Gigot: Would they be willing to accept less compensation? Because obviously the relationship between shareholders, and customers, and corporate performance relates to the ability to pay.
Suzy Welch: Well, very often I get a student who comes up to me and says, "Professor Welch, I have eudaimonia as my number one value, but my second value is affluence, the desire to be rich." And they say, "Is that a problem?" And I say, "Do you promise not to shoot the messenger?" I have to sort of break it to them.
Paul Gigot: If you want the house in Nantucket, you've got to do certain things.
Suzy Welch: So I think that's, you ask, this is the billion-dollar question, will they take less compensation? Look, they're young, and so they don't want to. They would like both.
Paul Gigot: I would like both.
Suzy Welch: Maybe we did too when we were young, maybe. Maybe we just didn't think it was possible.
Paul Gigot: Yeah, I didn't.
Suzy Welch: Yeah, I didn't get it. I understood the tradeoff, I thought, maybe because my parents told me.
Paul Gigot: All right, so when you are talking to business people who've read this, I mean, what's the message to them? Hiring managers, CEOs, HR departments, people who have to hire?
Suzy Welch: Okay, I have not yet received any communication from somebody in business who's been surprised by this data. What they've said is, "Yep, this is exactly what I've been experiencing. Thank you for actually quantifying it." And I've heard everything from, "Gee, I thought it was 5%," to "Gee, I thought it was 1%." Okay, but most people in business who I've heard from have been like, "Yes." And I think it goes back to what we said earlier. The implications for them are, how do we find the 2% earlier? I don't hear anybody saying, "How do we accommodate the 98%?" But maybe it's the people I'm talking to. I think people want, they want the 2%.
- quantify /ˈkwɑntɪˌfaɪ/
数値化する、定量化する
Paul Gigot: Well, sure, everybody would want, I mean, anybody who wants to succeed as a manager and as a corporate executive would want the 2%, because they're going to be self-sacrificing, they're going to work the 70-hour week or the 60-hour week, they're going to say to their family, "Sorry, I got to be away today." Managers are going to want that, but if only the companies with the most leverage can get that, then what do the others have to do? They have to provide a four-day work week? Is that what people want? Do they have to give ownership, partial ownership shares as a form of compensation?
Suzy Welch: All they're already doing it. You're lowering your standards for what you expect, and you're kind of quietly groaning about it, and complaining about it with other people your age saying, "This is driving me out of my mind." I received an email from a person who identified themselves as being Gen Z and said, "Look, I get wanting people with achievement. I get wanting people with wanting to learn," which we call scope, "but is work centrism really even a value? Who could possibly want to work? I think you've made up this value and it doesn't actually exist." And I think, "Okay," I looked at it and I tried not to be judgmental about it, and I think that that kid is going to end up working someplace, and his bosses are going to have to learn to live with it, because what choice do you have? You have to have jobs done. I think there's going to be what's going on right now, which is just, there will be a kind of emotional accommodation for it, and not happily.
- quietly groaning /ˈkwaɪətli ɡroʊnɪŋ/ ひそかにため息をつく、内心で不満を漏らす
- scope /skoʊp/ ここでは「学習意欲や成長意欲」の概念として使われる指標
- work centrism /wɜrk ˈsɛntrɪzəm/ 「仕事中心主義」の価値観、働くことを人生や価値の中心に置くこと
- emotional accommodation /ɪˈmoʊʃənl əˌkɑməˈdeɪʃən/ 感情的に折り合いをつけること、受け入れる対応
Paul Gigot: Do these young people understand that with artificial intelligence arriving on the scene, and corporate executives all over the country looking for ways to substitute AI for salaries, let's be blunt.
Suzy Welch: Yes.
Paul Gigot: Do they realize they're not going to have the same leverage that maybe they might like?
Suzy Welch: Not yet. I don't think they understand it yet. When I speak to my students about this, I say, "This is urgent, because jobs are going away." So it was already hard for you to get a job. Now it might even be harder for you to get a job. Do you want to be in the bucket of people who have a higher chance because you have the values that they want? Or are you going to stay where you are with your values? And I understand that people don't want to change their values. Why would they? It's like asking you to, as I said, change your personality,
Paul Gigot: Well, if you have to, you have to.
Suzy Welch: Right? Eventually, they're going to want to pay for their kid to go to school, or they're going to want to buy a new car. But I think, I don't want to catastrophize, but I definitely think a reckoning is coming, because this is a very big number, and there has to be some kind of conversation. A bridge has to be built between both these two groups.
- catastrophize /kəˈtæstrəˌfaɪz/ 最悪の事態を想定して大げさに考える
- reckoning /ˈrɛkənɪŋ/ 精算、報い、重要な問題に直面すること
reckon /ˈrɛkən/
1. （意見として）～だと思う、考える
2. （古・文語的に）計算する、数える
3. （米口語）～に対処する、清算する（「reckoning」として使う場合）
Paul Gigot: We are going to take another break, and when we come back, we'll talk about what are the implications of this research for hiring managers and CEOs as they try to compete in the American economy, when we come back.
Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker, "Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast." That is, "Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast."
Speaker 1: From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. This is Potomac Watch.
Paul Gigot: Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigot here on Potomac Watch, and my guest is Suzy Welch. Let's broaden this out a little bit. What are the implications, not just for business, but for a larger American society? We're competing against a culture in China, which I can guarantee you, eudaimonia is not the first (inaudible)-
Suzy Welch: Oh, there was a whole wall of comments who came back and said, "You should do this with Chinese students and Indian students. Go take your test." It actually, they could take it. I mean, "Go take your test to India and China. You're going to see a different set of values."
Paul Gigot: I think you would.
Suzy Welch: And so this is why politicians have been calling me since the article came out in the Journal, saying, "Can we talk about this? Because maybe this is something we should put into education." I do think some of this falls at the feet of parents. I say that as a parent, is like, are you having this conversation with your kids around the dining room table? Because I do think that for American competitiveness, this data has relevance.
Paul Gigot: It absolutely has relevance. I mean, you can see it in the education results more broadly, where our achievement levels are just going down for decades.
Suzy Welch: So maybe it's not so much about education as it is about values, because it's not that the kids aren't learning, it's that they are not wanting to, that's a piece of it, because they don't see the equation where doing incredibly well in school is going to get them the bargain that used to exist. I think that bargain does not exist anymore.
Paul Gigot: Is that truly the evidence that that bargain doesn't exist for graduates of the Stern school?
Suzy Welch: But again, these are not my Stern students. I mean, this is a very large study. I don't want to put this on Stern students-
Paul Gigot: Understood.
Suzy Welch: ... because Stern students, they're special, and like many ... I mean, of course I feel that way, but I think it's still exists, but maybe they tell me I'm wrong. I remember I was working with a young woman on my team, very young, 22 years old, and she said, "Can you do a social media thing," she said, "a reel on burnout?" She's 22. And I said, I was stunned. I could barely speak. And I said, "On burnout?" She goes, yeah, My friends and I, we're just so burned out."
Paul Gigot: Did you tell her, "Wait until you're 52?"
- burnout /ˈbɜrˌnaʊt/ 燃え尽き症候群、過労やストレスによる心身の疲弊
- reel /riːl/ （ソーシャルメディア用の）短い動画
- stunned /stʌnd/ びっくりして呆然とした、言葉を失った
- barely speak /ˈbɛrli spiːk/ ほとんど話せない、言葉が出ない
Suzy Welch: I said, "Let me tell you what it was like when I was 22. I was working at the Miami Herald. I worked seven days a week. I never took a vacation. I loved it so much. I would've worked eight days if I could have." And I went on and she said, "Yeah, but you had hope." But you had hope. And I thought, "Is that what it is? We had hope and they have no hope?" I still think you can have hope. Because I see the people on my team, of course, I hire all two percenters and we're going to grow all together. And so I think the deal's still there, but maybe I'm wrong.
Paul Gigot: You and I both work in New York City. We've got a mayoral election coming up. The front-runner by far is Zohran Mamdami, self-avowed socialist, overwhelmingly supported by young people-
Suzy Welch: By children, yes.
Paul Gigot: And relatively affluent young people. I mean, the people who come in into New York and work for Google, or, they work for Amazon, or they work for all kinds of companies. Are there any implications in your research about how young people feel about capitalism versus socialism?
- self-avowed /sɛlf əˈvaʊd/ 自ら公言する、自己申告の
- overwhelmingly /ˌoʊvərˈwɛlmɪŋli/ 圧倒的に、非常に強く
- affluent /ˈæfluənt/ 裕福な、経済的に余裕のある
- implications /ˌɪmplɪˈkeɪʃənz/ （研究・行動・状況などの）示唆、含意
Suzy Welch: We're actually going to start adding a question to get that. I think that, in a way, they've answered with these values, Paul.
Paul Gigot: It sounds like, yeah.
Suzy Welch: To be honest with you. So let me just get very, very specific about that. Achievement, which is the desire for seeing success, sort of the capitalism value, is number 11 out of 16 for Gen Z. Number 11 out of 16. And then we measure how much more or less of it you want in your life, and 60% want less of it in their life. It's number 11, and 60% would like less of it. So I think that they've answered already with their values.
Paul Gigot: All right, so when you talk to your business school students about, because you focus so much of your research and your own instruction on personal flourishing, personal success, what you need to do to really have a fulfilling life and success. What do you tell your students what they need to do?
Suzy Welch: I tell them there's a methodology for this. I say to them, "Don't go live your passion. Listen closely." I say, "You have to-"
Paul Gigot: Don't live your passion.
Suzy Welch: No, no, no, because okay, I like to sing, but I mean, I'm told in church to stop singing. That's how bad my voice is. So I think, and that's the passion for me, but I can't do it, that makes it a hobby. So I say, "Look, excavate three datasets, know what your values are, then find out with ruthless precision what your aptitudes are, what you're good at. Go be tested. Don't guess, don't ask your mother, don't ask your roommate. Find out what your cognitive aptitudes are. Are you specialist or a generalist? Are you inductive reason or whatever? Find out your aptitudes, you can test for it, and then discover your economically viable interests." This third one is very hard, because what happens is the aperture of students gets smaller and smaller. They kind of think, "Ph, there's three conveyor belts. Either I go to consulting, banking, or tech," or whatever. There's sort of three jobs in front of them, teaching. And they don't know that there's 135 industries, that there's 12 megatrends, that there are so many jobs they don't think of. When I wrote for you for the Wall Street Journal two, three years ago about how my students don't go into industry, the CEOs called me up from industry and said, "Suzy, we've tried to recruit MBAs. They want nothing to do with us." And what they think is they got to get a high paying job right out the gate. And they don't realize that with industry, if you just plug along, at age 40, you're running a country or you're running a region and you can really build an amazing career. And it's all sorts of industries, and either they know it's not there, or they don't have the imagination for it. So I say, "I want you to find your purpose. Your purpose is not your passion. Your purpose lies at the intersection of your values, which you may or may not be able to fulfill completely, your aptitudes, which may not be what you like." Okay? You may want to be in product, but you may not be a 3-D visualizer. I'm sorry,
- excavate /ˈɛkskəˌveɪt/ 掘り下げる、詳細に調べる
- ruthless precision /ˈruːθləs prɪˈsɪʒən/ 容赦のない正確さ、徹底的な精度
- cognitive aptitudes /ˈkɑːɡnətɪv ˈæptɪˌtjudz/ 認知能力や理解力に関する適性
- specialist / generalist /ˈspɛʃəlɪst/ /ˈdʒɛnərəlɪst/ 専門家 / ジェネラリスト（幅広い分野をこなせる人）
- inductive reasoning /ɪnˈdʌktɪv ˈriːzənɪŋ/ 帰納的推論（個別の事例から一般的結論を導く思考法）
- aperture /ˈæpərtʃər/ （比喩で）視野や選択肢の幅
- plug along /plʌɡ əˈlɔːŋ/ コツコツやる、淡々と進める
Paul Gigot: You may want to be in sales, but you may be-
Suzy Welch: An introvert.
Paul Gigot: ... don't have the personality-
Suzy Welch: Yes.
Paul Gigot: ... for it.
Suzy Welch: Right. We test personality, because your personality can make or break your job.
Paul Gigot: Oh, without question.
Suzy Welch: So we test for that as well. So you got to get tested and find out who you are.
Paul Gigot: All right, well that's excellent advice, and we'll end it there today. Suzy Welch, thanks so much for being here. We are here on Potomac Watch every day. Thank you for listening. Hope to have you with us tomorrow.