When Jason Dorsey last spoke to the Dental Trade Alliance (DTA) in 2021, the industry was still in the thick of COVID protocols. Five years later, he says, three shifts matter most to dental leaders.
In this episode of The DrBicuspid.com Podcast, in conjunction with the Dental Trade Alliance and sponsored by Overjet, host Kevin Henry talks with Dorsey, president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, a researcher and the bestselling author of Zconomy, ahead of his opening keynote at this year’s DTA meeting in Arizona.
The first shift is the rapid rise of Gen Z, now up to about age 30 and, in Dorsey’s words, the fastest-growing generation in the dental industry. He urges leaders to treat generations as “clues, not a box” and says Gen Z often communicates differently and enters the workforce later. He also points to mental health challenges he traces to the pandemic years. The top benefit Gen Z wants, he says, is free, virtual, and anonymous mental health services, and offering it can raise retention, loyalty, and engagement.
When Jason Dorsey last spoke to the Dental Trade Alliance (DTA) in 2021, the industry was still in the thick of COVID protocols. Five years later, he says, three shifts matter most to dental leaders.
In this episode of The DrBicuspid.com Podcast, in conjunction with the Dental Trade Alliance and sponsored by Overjet, host Kevin Henry talks with Dorsey, president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, a researcher and the bestselling author of Zconomy, ahead of his opening keynote at this year’s DTA meeting in Arizona.
The first shift is the rapid rise of Gen Z, now up to about age 30 and, in Dorsey’s words, the fastest-growing generation in the dental industry. He urges leaders to treat generations as “clues, not a box” and says Gen Z often communicates differently and enters the workforce later. He also points to mental health challenges he traces to the pandemic years. The top benefit Gen Z wants, he says, is free, virtual, and anonymous mental health services, and offering it can raise retention, loyalty, and engagement.
The second shift is boomers beginning to transition out. Dorsey pushes back on the idea of “knowledge transfer,” arguing AI is essentially that. What organizations need, he says, is wisdom and context, and he wants leaders to value boomers and keep them in the workforce as long as possible. He says “mentor” is a loaded word and suggests asking older colleagues to share lived experience, not to be gurus.
The third shift is AI. In his new study, Dorsey says Gen Z is the most concerned about AI at work, worried about lost jobs, lost learning opportunities, and environmental costs, yet it is often the generation that uses it the most. He says AI efforts fail because of people, not technology, and he’s hearing “change fatigue” in pre-event calls.
Dorsey describes his approach as grounded in data, which separates myths from facts. He says the insights he finds are the “why” behind the tracking numbers, and he says executives are often confident and wrong when he asks them to guess.
Listeners can download his "Leading the Human Side of AI Adoption in the Workforce" and "State of Gen Z" studies for free at jasondorsey.com, as well as watch additional videos. Reach Dorsey on LinkedIn, and check out his books here.
Listen to the full conversation below.