Thought Box: On Gen Zs and Synergies
A thought article by Katrina Barrios
The workforce has seen a new generation of workers, with Generation Zs (born between 1996 and 2012) being the latest entrants. According to McKinsey (2020), this generation is expected to constitute about 25%, as much as the Millennials (born between 1980 to 1995), of the Asian workforce by 2025. Yet the bias against young leaders persists– stereotypes such as inexperience and lacking wisdom continue to fester in mainstream thinking.
This reminded me of our team’s meeting when we discussed the company’s next direction. I was only a few years into handling my first managerial position then. While listening to my colleagues, it suddenly occurred to me that our situation was similar to a mobile game I was playing.
Nervous that my seemingly outrageous idea would be shrugged off, with some hesitation, I shared: “Guys… building a business is like a game of Magic Chess.”
A short pause. Then an intrigued smile spread across my colleague’s face. “Go ahead.”
Magic Chess is a fast-paced 8-player game where you are the magic Chessmaster. As such, you possess certain powers, and the objective is to defeat your opponents in a series of duels with the lineup of heroes (your chess pieces) you place on your magic chessboard. Every loss takes a hit on your “life,” the HP, and once it runs out, it’s game over for you.
The game gets pretty complex, but with the numerous Magic Chess games I’ve played, I noticed striking similarities between the dynamics of the online game and the real-life business game. For one, just like in business, the goal in Magic Chess is to stay longer in the game - that is, long-term sustainability.
The similarities become more apparent when we look at the strategies needed for each game stage. Essentially, there are three primary phases – early game, mid-game, and late game. My strategy in the early game is to capitalize on my existing resources. Similar to how you might approach a business’ infancy, the main priority is upgrading the heroes you have onboard while still keeping an eye out for possible heroes who can add value to your lineup. Essentially, the idea is to keep your current lineup strong enough so you can postpone purchasing heroes and save for later expenses.
However, come the mid-game, where most of the competitors have already started strengthening their defenses in various ways, I need to re-strategize to reinforce my defenses. There are multiple ways to go about it, but at this point, I would aim to build my first six-hero synergy, my A-team, and my main damage dealers. In Magic Chess, six-hero synergies are the strongest. In business, its equivalent is that mid-game, you would have to expand the team to accommodate more demands eventually. But to stay competitive, you need to start thinking more of your business’ focus - your core product - and strengthen your capabilities to deliver that. For example, suppose your core product is analytics. In that case, your goal must be building your analytics synergy, your collection of heroes skilled in all things analytics: data cleaning, data processing, data visualization, and so on.
Then during the late game, I would move on to building more synergies to complement my core heroes. It is comparable to gradually building up your company’s other departments in the business. You’re solidifying your company’s foundations. However, your competitors are likely doing the same. Some may even have unique boosters strengthening critical areas of their defenses. Thus, competition is tighter at this stage. This is akin to companies offering the same products with the same target markets and marketing strategies in business. Others get ahead with greater connections and partnerships. But as Magic Chess demonstrates, sometimes staying on top and lasting longer could all boil down to how you position your heroes on the board.
Though the metaphor I used looked odd at first, our team could understand our position better using this mental image collectively, and we were able to set our next strategic moves forward.
This led me to a series of realizations about us, Gen Zs, and how businesses can unleash their potential.
First, Gen Z young leaders do not entirely lack wisdom or capability; they think from a different context, and the disparity of context becomes a barrier hindering them from sharing their ideas. Recalling my initial hesitation to share, I realized that the barrier that almost crushed my creativity was the fear of being consigned to the stereotype that kids these days only care about phones and computers. I was afraid that exploring unconventional topics such as mobile games would lead my audience to discard my insights. But in retrospect, this experience proved that the key to gaining fresh insights is to be willing to lower those barriers by looking at the deep structural similarities of the ideas rather than their surface-level disparities.
Thus, the key to unlocking Gen Z's real potential is to create an environment that encourages openness to ideas and growth. I am glad our team has permanently established such a culture, allowing me to explore freely and perform better. In my case, my team already knows I find inspiration from movies, puzzle games, and the like. Thus, when they see me fumbling with a couple of Legos, they already know there's probably an idea I'm trying to get to work. Our favorite analogy is this — when a plant isn't thriving, you do not blame it for being the way it is. You change the environment and place it in conditions suitable for its growth. The same applies to younger talents. Encourage them to contribute. Assess what works and what doesn't and act immediately on it.
But building such a kind of environment entails actively and openly learning from each other. As much as the younger generations can learn from the older ones, the old can learn from the young too. While the young may learn a lot from the old regarding technique or strategy, the old can learn from the young regarding perspective. This specific experience showed us just how changing lenses and analyzing things in different contexts could help you understand your situation better, or in other words, a sociocultural approach.
As a young Gen Z leader, I think our generation holds a lot of potential. While I concede that we may be relatively inexperienced in terms of tenure, I reiterate that it does not mean an inability to bring in value. Our generation's value comes out as unconventional because they come from a different context - a different perspective. And the key to unlocking it is to be open, see Gen Zs as one of the critical pieces of the puzzle, and use multiple contexts to find the existing idea that will fit it. This way, we can find synergies that will serve as the bedrock of team collaboration and improvement.
*Katrina Barrios is the Director of Operations of Fourth Wall. She is an alumna of the University of Asia and the Pacific, graduating from BS Applied Mathematics in 2019.
Fourth Wall is the pioneer sociocultural research firm in the Philippines. We enable consultants and organizations to leverage behavior to make optimal decisions that lead to adaptation and growth.
