Terms of Engagement—What If Millennials and Gen Z Leaders Replaced the Gerontocracy?

Archon Fung: Hey, you’re listening to terms of Engagement, episode 30. I’m Archon Fung a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Faculty Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Stephen Richer: And I’m Steven Richer. I’m the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, and I’m now a senior fellow at the Ash Center.

Archon Fung: Great. Terms of engagement is a weekly live conversation about the latest developments in American politics and democracy. We welcome your thoughts. We are live, so type in your comments, questions, reactions in the chat, and we’ll try to get to as many people as we can.

Stephen Richer: And as always, Archon and I are speaking on behalf of ourselves only, not on behalf of the Ash Center, the Kennedy School or Harvard University.

So. Archon. What is the appropriate term for describing what’s going on in Iran? It’s not war. It’s a military engagement, a military conflict. It’s this conflict that’s ongoing for at least a few weeks.

Archon Fung: I guess it remains to be seen how long it’s ongoing for. I think it’s a war. A rose by any other name. I guess Korea was a police action. I’m not sure what Vietnam was. But,

Stephen Richer: But Congress has not authorized a war since, I think 2002

Archon Fung: with…

Stephen Richer: Afghanistan.

Archon Fung: Yeah.

Stephen Richer: And then Iraq.

Archon Fung: And then the Global War on Terror with the AUMF. And Congress did less to authorize this conflict than most of the prior military engagements that we’ve been in. Right? It didn’t authorize anything so

Stephen Richer: Seemingly were fairly unaware of the fact that this, these, some of these strikes were going to happen. I think even members of certain armed services. Yeah. Armed forces committee. So yeah. Interesting situation. I know they’re not the topic at hand, but I want to know the nomenclature to describe what’s going on in the United States for at least the past three days?

Archon Fung: I’m a small “d” Democrat, so I defer to the people who are most affected and I think that would be the soldiers and then the people suffering from the conflict. And I’m guessing they would call it a war, so I’m going with war.

Stephen Richer: Yeah. And Courtney’s reminded us in the chat that it’s called Operation Epic Fury, which in and of itself is a pretty epic name. So we’ll, just go with Epic Fury. Alright. Turn us to the topic at hand.

Archon Fung: Okay. Yeah. So, we are not talking about Iran. We’re talking about generations in American democracy. And we’ve got a great guest on this show. As people know, we talk a lot about the very, very messy parts of our democracy.

Today’s guest is looked at that, mess, and she sees it as a generational problem and as a recruitment problem. Amanda Litman is co-founder and co-executive director of Run for Something, which is a great organization that has already changed American politics by recruiting over 250,000 young, no 250,000, 250,000 young people to run for office.

It was hard for me to say ’cause that’s such an incredibly large number. So, if you’ve noticed a surge of Millennial and Gen Z leaders taking seats on school boards, city councils, and state legislatures, there’s a pretty good chance that Amanda had a hand in that. She is a veteran of the Clinton and Obama campaigns, and one of the most creative thinkers about the structural changes that our politics needs.

She’s the author of a great recent book: “When We’re in Charge.” While her first book was about how to get people in the room, the most recent book is about what to actually do once you’re sitting at the head of the table, if you’re a Gen Z or Millennial leader. And in particular, how to build organizations that are effective and durable, but also humane and accountable.

Amanda, welcome to the show.

Amanda Litman: Thank you for having me. What a generous introduction.

Stephen Richer: So I, I got to confess, when Archon recommended that we read this book, I had assumed that we were going to read about the politics of millennials and the politics of Gen Z, but we’re not in fact talking about that.

We’re talking in fact, about when Gen Y and Gen Z are the leaders of different organizations and of different offices and how they are going to structure those workplaces to be more compatible with what people want of those generations and maybe be more successful.

But before we get to that, Amanda brass tacks. How are we defining these generations? Because I want to fence Archon out and I want to make sure that I’m still in that group.

Amanda Litman: Generational divides are pretty fuzzy, but generally speaking, millennials are like 1984, ’85-ish through about 1996-ish, maybe 1980 to 1996-ish. Pretty fuzzy on either end. And then Gen Z is like ’95-, ’96-ish through like 2010-ish.

But I think it’s important to note no generation’s a monolith. I’m going to caveat this all the time. Like, obviously some millennials and Gen Z don’t fit these stereotypes. Obviously everyone experiences things differently based on race and class and where you grew up and how you grew up.

All of that is true. And there’s a lot of really interesting research that shows that, like, especially the way that technology exists, the media that happens, the politics that happens through your pivotal ages as a teenager, as like entering adulthood really do shape some particular ways in which you view the world.

So. Yes and no. Generations are not defining, but they are informed.

Stephen Richer: Okay. Alright. Happily, you included me in that definition of millennial. I’m also very happy that you said earlier when we were chatting that your organization works with anyone 40 and younger. Which I happen to be 40, so just made it, appreciate that. You will not be invited next year, unfortunately. But the book goes pretty hard after boomer CEOs, boomer leaders of organizations. and I, guess first question is, it just that every generation says about the generation that came before it, that. They didn’t do things the right way, and when we’re in charge, we’re going to do something different.

Or is this different from past generational divides in how these generations are thinking about the workplace?

Amanda Litman: Yes and no.

Stephen Richer: Okay.

Amanda Litman: Yes, there’s always, like, you know, younger people have different demands out of work. There’s always the older folks who are like, get off my lawn kind of mentality where they don’t, they think that younger people don’t understand what they’re complaining about.

And we are seeing across basically every industry, in every sector. Boomers are holding onto power for longer than ever. We are spending more money as United States government on older people than we do on young people. Basically, every part of our tax code is incentivized to support older leaders. We’re seeing this in politics where you have, you know, an average age in the United States Senate that it’s in, it’s mid-to-late sixties and the House, it’s late fifties. You know, the average age of a CEO in Fortune 500 companies is in the early sixties. We’re seeing this in Hollywood where, you know, your movie stars of the nineties are basically still your movie stars of today.

Stephen Richer: I’ve got to pause here, guys. Yeah, because one of, one of the great passages in the books was when you were describing the amazing stars of movies in the 1990s or something like that, and you said Tom Cruise, and then you said. The amazing movie stars of 2025, and you said again, Tom Cruise. Yeah.

Amanda Litman: The Boomers are in charge, or near-Boomers, I should say. Gen X too to a certain extent are in charge basically everywhere in all kinds of spaces, and that has real consequences for how young people experience the world.

Archon Fung: Yeah, so I think there’s a couple things going on there.

One is just a basic justice argument. We should get a shot. You guys have been there too long and one of the things you say in your book is sorry, Gen X. I’m at the part of Gen X is like, you don’t get your turn ’cause the Boomers mm-hmm. Have stayed there forever and now it’s our turn. Well, okay, I accept that. That’s okay. But so one argument is about, well we should get a turn and like you guys are blocking it up and, but you also think something more is you think. Does younger generations would lead different and better. So, what is the different and better?

Amanda Litman: First I should say the number one feedback I’ve gotten about the book is, why don’t you talk about Gen X—which is the most Gen X complaint I’ve ever heard.

Archon Fung: Yeah. What about me?

Stephen Richer: On that point, yeah, one of the things that made me laugh about when the Trump-JD Vance ticket had been rolled out. Mm-hmm. They said, this is so fitting, it’s going straight from Boomer to Millennial and JD Vance, and we’re just gonna skip over Gen X.

Amanda Litman: There’s a Wall Street Journal article from earlier this year that talks about how in all of these Fortune 100 companies, they’re going from Boomer, CEO as they’re starting to do succession planning to Millennial CEOs because Gen Xers, you know, God bless you, you missed your moment. And it’s not our fault. Yeah. There was a time period, and because Boomers held into power for so long, an entire generation got left out of control.

Stephen Richer: Yeah.

Amanda Litman: So, yes, there is a real. Problem here in terms of justice and equity and deserving a seat at the table.

But I also think that we are at a moment where being able to communicate effectively to understand the challenges that people are experiencing in politics and work in business, to be able to market in this moment, to be able to tell a story of the work and to create a workplace that meets the demands of the majority of the workforce, which will be millennials and Gen Z by 2030.

You can’t do it if you’re operating from an old playbook. You just can’t, and I think that is one of the challenges that people are experiencing at work right now. You’re seeing this in return to office mandates, and you know, conversations about diversity and equity at work, in conversations about how we’re using technology and AI at work.

Part of that is coming from a generation of leaders who fundamentally do not understand how to operate in this moment.

Stephen Richer: Okay, so reminder that you can put your questions in the comment box, and I’ll take be watching those. But for Amanda, what are some of the hallmarks of Gen Y, Gen Z leadership that represents this transition?

I know you talk a lot about four day work week, for instance.

Amanda Litman: So, I think one is balance. This idea that your job will never love you back. You can love your work. It can be meaningful and important and make up a huge part of your identity. But I think especially for millennials who graduated in many circumstances into the recession, who have experienced layoffs and COVID and war and, you know, economic crisis after crisis and have in many certain industries constantly layoffs and a sense of instability, you cannot derive your full professional identity from your occupation.

Your job has to be a place where you get financially well compensated. You get benefits, you get dignity. It cannot be the place where you get all of your sense of self and your wellbeing.

Now that as a challenge, because over the last 20 years or so, a lot, especially in the tech space, have wanted to be more than just a workplace. They wanted to deliver, you know, your food, your laundry, your workout, your social life. And then as it turns out, those are not the right places and delivery systems for those things. So they are failing and the employees are being failed.

Archon Fung: So that’s part of your book I found super provocative and challenging because it challenges so many other ways of leading.

Yeah. So, I direct a center, a university center here at the Kennedy School, and it’s pretty important. For me to create a sense of community in the center among our staff and the faculty and the fellows. And your thesis really has made me rethink that. So, there’s like the, and I think probably my ethic comes from, probably a lefty 1960s.

Mm-hmm. Kind of participatory organization ethic. There’s the tech version of that, and then there’s kind of what I think of as a maybe millennial. Gen Z bring your whole self to work ethic, which you, so you reject all of that? I do. And so have you gotten pushback on this idea that, look, don’t try to make the workplace everything for people because you’ll you’re bound to end up disappointing lots and lots of people. I think that’s like a core part.

Stephen Richer: Yeah. Lemme just quickly say that Archon, when I showed up at the Ash Center and we didn’t have laundry service I was pretty disappointed.

Amanda Litman: You know, I think part of the challenge here is that it’s really hard, like you want work to be a place where you can have community, but you have to have really strong boundaries about what that community can and cannot hold. You have to have really clear norms and expectations about what kind of communication, what version of yourself you’re bringing into work with you. Like I think one of the challenges in particular Gen Z is experiencing on the employee side, and I’m hearing it from bosses of every age. On the leadership side, it’s like, I don’t wanna hear about your personal bullshit at the office. This is not the right place for it. And then Gen Z is like, well, I thought I was supposed to bring my full self to work with me.

Archon Fung: Right?

Amanda Litman: But we, we didn’t mean that part of your full self. And this is where the conflict comes in, is we are trying, I think, to build workplaces that are more than what they were 20 years ago with more different communication channels, with more spaces, with more poorest boundaries between work and home. Like, I’m coming to you from my living room, my little desk corner in my living room. And we don’t yet have the tools and processes in place to make them effective. So what I hope the book is, like a beginning of a conversation about how you create the guardrails such that people can work, be good at their jobs, be effective at their jobs, and then have time outside of them to have a life.

Stephen Richer: Okay? So I’m gonna be that guy throughout this program that’s gonna be like, you guys just need to work harder. We need to maximize profit, stop complaining, yada, yada, yada. But before we get to those points…

Archon Fung: Amanda’s not so far from… I mean she’s not…

Amanda Litman: No, I agree with you. I think we should work hard.

Stephen Richer: It’s she’s, in terms of how she behaves, but in terms of what she writes and preaches is a different story. She has a lot of text on like her own challenges with sort of living. What she wants to see in her employees.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Right,

Amanda Litman: right. Yeah. Well, and I think this is the thing that I come back to is that this is really, difficult and it’s especially difficult for people in positions of power.

But we have to try and we have to create guardrails for our team, and then we have to actually model them. So I really like, I agree with you, you should be effective. You should aim to be profitable. I just reject the premise that you have to do that at the expense of being an asshole to your employees.

Stephen Richer: Okay. So, I’m gonna, I’m gonna push on those later. But before we get to that and I know that this is nascent. Obviously, people in Millennial and Gen Z generations have just started stepping into leadership positions. But to Heather’s question in the chat, like is there any measurement so far of this leading to healthier, happier, more productive employees when they are in companies, led by this type of Gen Z or gen Millennial leader?

Amanda Litman: So, there’s not a ton of pure research on that as like an overarching question, although I would love to partner with someone if they’re interested in doing that. I will say we have seen on different components of this, the numbers indicate pretty highly. For example, a four-day work week Run for Something participated in a global pilot on this, and the people who have run the four-day work week pilots have tested this pretty clearly.

When you ask people, give people some base and time to have lives outside of work and pay them well, yeah, every number you’d want to see go up in terms of productivity, impact, revenue, outcome goes up and every number you want to see go down about, work like sense of stress, balance, burnout exhaustion job satisfaction, like the dissatisfaction numbers rather go down.

Similarly, we see this on places where you have you sort of see it in quote, in anecdotal feedback. When you have a really clear understanding of what success and failure looks like, and you have a manager who’s transparent about the why on what they’re looking for and who communicates that in a way that you can really understand. Retention goes up. We’ve also seen, when it comes to remote work, the numbers are pretty clear on this. When you provide remote or I would argue flexible work environments where people have a little bit more ownership and autonomy over how and when they do their job, as long as they know what the job is, retention goes up.

Women, especially moms, stay in the workforce longer, or the flip actually is true when they do return to office. Women leave the workforce. There are some pretty clear numbers here, especially when you start to look at benefits around like paid family leave. yeah, like all of that. When you compile that together, that is what next generation leadership looks like.

Archon Fung: Can I just, a mechanical question. I don’t remember what you said about this in the book, but when you guys move to a four-day work week, is the idea that people work 10 hour days and they just get the same pay that they would in a five day work week, but they’re, or you don’t even think about it that way.

Amanda Litman: We think about it as outcomes, not time in.

Archon Fung: I see.

Amanda Litman: What’s, what is the result doing? So generally speaking, for us, Fridays are weekends. Most weekends you have yourself to, it’s your time to run with as you see fit. The expectation is that you know what you are doing. That we as leadership, have given you really clear definitions of what success looks like and helped you prioritize accordingly.

And we’re really rigorous about what we say yes and no to in the workplace. And if you find that you need more time outside of work to get things done, then it’s on you to have a conversation with your manager about whether you’re prioritizing appropriately and what we could do to relieve that.

Stephen Richer: Yeah. So a lot of the things that you said as benefits, whether it’s retention, whether it’s productivity, whether it’s wellness, manifest in the bottom line. And if that’s the case, then why aren’t more companies. Who care deeply about the bottom line might be led by Boomers, but Boomers still know how to read bottom lines.

Why aren’t more companies shifting to this?

Amanda Litman: Because managing to that effective bottom line is more, is harder because it takes more time, more intentionality, more thoughtfulness like. And I write through this in the book of like, you have to be really, intentional about how you run a remote workplace and how you are rigorous at prioritization when you have a four-day work week, and how you create systems so people can take paid family leave and actually take it.

It is harder, like it is just, it requires more out of leadership.

Stephen Richer: Okay.

Amanda Litman: And then it also, I would say, requires an understanding of like how to use modern technology, you know. I’d be curious for you, how many times have you had a boss who like the whole company is on Slack and the boss does not?

Stephen Richer: Yeah, I might be guilty of that myself.

Amanda Litman: Well, yeah, one of the organizations that had…

Archon Fung: No excuse given.

Amanda Litman: … everyone do things over email, but the boss still needs things printed and handed to them.

Archon Fung: Yeah.

Amanda Litman: This is, it’s a skills gap and it’s not a moral failure. It’s a skills gap, and if you’re not eager and ready to learn and to adapt, which I don’t blame you, if you’ve been in your like corner office for 30 years and served you pretty well, why would you are not eager to, adjust to what the modern workplace demands.

Stephen Richer: Yeah. Okay. But what do you say—and this is from George Doyle in the chat—what do you say to somebody who says: Why four day work week? More flexibility, more work from home? They feel better, but the truth is like everyone in these two generations is going to leave our company after three years anyways. Why would we not just do what big law does, which is my background, and squeeze every drop out of these people for the, you know, we’re gonna have them three years or five years, no matter how well we treat theem. Why not just squeeze every drop outta ’em? So how do you account for sort of that incongruity between like Millennial leaders wjp wanna make the workplace better and happier? Millennial employees are also like two years later. See you later.

Amanda Litman: Well, one, they might not be see-you-later if you make it a little bit of a better workplace. But two, I sort, again, I reject the premise that just because it sucked for you needs means it needs to suck later. Why would we be perpetuating that?

Stephen Richer: Yeah. I don’t know. But that happens in lots of driven cultures. If you look at like baseball, Played baseball a lot. Like everyone hated being hazed and all the stuff that you had to do as the freshman on the high school team. But then like you turn around and nine out of 10 people do it to the next freshman.

Amanda Litman: I mean, I think about this the same way I think about parenting, which is actually one of my jobs as a parent, is to break the generational cycle of drama. Like I need to be, I need to make different mistakes than my parents made with me. Yeah. That doesn’t mean I’m not gonna make different mistakes, but I wanna make different ones.

Stephen Richer: Alright, Archon, bring in some Gen X wisdom.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Well, I have very little of that to offer. I do wanna pick up on, on George’s question though, because like I do read your book… at first, it’s obviously a management book.. But I also read it as really a political book. In that, like a starting point, which we should get on the table, which you described beautifully at several different, in several different passages is it’s a low trust generation. I mean, the millennials, it’s the financial crisis. And then Gen Z, it’s the pandemic and school shootings. And you say at one point, like, we don’t trust institutions, we don’t trust leaders. And increasingly we don’t trust each other.

And what I see you doing is trying to be really realistic about building organizations that can do a little bit better. Don’t aim for everything but a little bit better on the kind of the ashes of that distrust. And a big part of it is honesty and not overpromising. Because if you overpromise and break the promise, then it’s just going to make that distrust worse.

How is that? Is that working right? George says: My sons are millennials and organizations clearly feel no loyalty to their employees. So why should millennials feel loyalty back? And you’re trying to, I think, create just a little increment of a little more loyalty both ways, maybe is one way to think about it.

Amanda Litman: Not even necessarily loyalty. It’s like a relationship. And that doesn’t mean that you like have to stick with them. I would, again, why should I be loyal to a company? I want to be loyal to a manager. I want to be loyal to a leader and not even loyal, maybe isn’t even the right word for it. I want to trust them and know that they have honest expectations of me and are holding me to a high standard., that I was also given me the resources to meet that standard. I want to feel like we’re in a relationship that has dignity and maybe that’s actually it. It has dignity, more dignity than loyalty. More dignity than loyalty.

And you know, when you said up top, Stephen, though it wasn’t a political book. I think it is in the sense that like politics is about power and how we treat each other. And this is a book about how in the space where we spend most of our waking time, how can it be a little bit less crappy? Like how can it suck less to go to your job day to day?

And for leaders who have influence over that core space, whether you are running a massive company or a tiny, small business or three people in your team, or you’re like an influencer or a content creator who’s got like a web of, people that you engage with, which I think those are also small business owners in a way and something we should talk about. Because that’s a generational divide in and of itself. Why not do your best to make those spaces where people feel like they are part of something, like they can succeed, like they want to be part of it, but also like they have clear boundaries within it.

Stephen Richer: Okay, so since you opened that door. So I want you to say more about how this is a political book because we normally talk about politics. We normally talk about theories of democracy or how that manifests elections.

Archon Fung: We got a lot about elections,

Stephen Richer: and democratic regime change potentially, and the status of American democracy. How is this reflect on this American moment. How does this inform our politics?

Amanda Litman: Well, part of it is a lot of what I talk about that leaders should be doing or things government should be doing. Like I, in a dream world, businesses would not be responsible for providing paid family leave or childcare benefits or healthcare. Like government should do this. And in some ways, and this is something I actually struggled with in writing, I think it’s. It’s hard if companies provide it. It sort of absolves the government of a responsibility to do it, and I think you should do both.

As a leader, like we should be providing as many good benefits for our employees as we can and be pushing government to do more and more broadly. I think we are at a moment where if you are, job doesn’t suck your soul dry. If you have time outside of it. Like if you have a four-day work week, Monday through Thursday, what could you do on Fridays to make your community better? Like, how could you show up differently for your neighbors? How could you be a better parent, a better partner, a better friend, a better citizen?

If you knew that perhaps you could leave work early for an hour to go to that school board meeting? Yeah. Would you? And could you, like what could it free up to give back more to your community if your job didn’t make you hate yourself at the end of the day?

Stephen Richer: So setting aside the role of government, which you and I might have a different perspective on, but isn’t that sort of your comparative advantage? Doesn’t somebody say, Amanda, that’s what makes you and Run for Something awesome? Is that like some of this stuff, this isn’t a blanket provision of being a citizen of the government, you gotta go to a cool place like Run for Something where some of these services are provided and then it will happen naturally that there will be more people who wanna work at Run for Something or similarly situated companies.

Amanda Litman: Totally. And I think that’s great. We get a thousand applications for every job we post, and I would like it to not be limited just to the people I can afford to employ.

Stephen Richer: Yeah.

Archon Fung: I think that’s one of the sea changes, certainly from my generation of work to to yours, is that a lot of that, some of that dignity, a fair amount of that dignity and comfort was provided through some kind of career ladder. Usually within an organization, but sometimes across organizations. That’s pretty hard to deliver now. Yep.

And so it feels like a lot of the.Managerial creativity and work that you’re having to do is relational work in trying to establish that, no, you can’t create a lifetime job ladder for anyone. That’s not within your capability. But to provide something of, a little bit of a substitute for that, but like how do you even do that? Like probably what’s the average tenure at Run for Something? I mean, you guys haven’t been around for that long.

Amanda Litman: Our voluntary retention rate, or like attrition rate I suppose, is incredibly low. It’s actually been a challenge over the years as people really don’t want to leave.

Archon Fung: That’s a four-day work week.

Stephen Richer: You can’t, because they, like, you can’t let people rise up if there’s not sort of, or

Amanda Litman: Yeah, like, well, there’s only so many positions at the top. I mean, this is, you know, when the Boomers stay in the CEO office for 30 years, no one else can become CEO.

Stephen Richer: No one else can. So you’re the boomer now.

Amanda Litman: Yeah. Such a compliment.

Stephen Richer: For me it is, yeah.

Amanda Litman: You know, I think more broadly, this is something that we’re seeing a lot with young people where they are leaving institutions and creating their own thing. You’re seeing it in media where people are leaving legacy media to start their own, you know, whether it’s newsletters or podcasts or content creation.

Something like 60% of Gen Z-ers say their aspirational career is influencer. Or content creator, which is divorced from any company. And I actually think this is the generational divide. You laugh at that, but that makes so much sense to me. Do I wanna do that? No, I have two little kids. But I understand. Right?

Archon Fung: But how can anybody have a little kid trying to, I mean, very few, unless you’re, you know, Joe Rogan or has

Amanda Litman: Well, I mean like, the thing is actually you can make a pretty good living if the… the people at the top can make a very good living.

Archon Fung: Yeah, Most people cannot. But that’s true in a lot of businesses.

Amanda Litman: Yeah. I think that understanding that impulse, even if I question the like practicality of it, makes a lot of sense of, it helps understand where Gen Z in particular is coming from. They think institutions are not gonna serve them. They think there’s no upward mobility. They want to be in control of their own life.

I think especially in the context of an economy where they don’t have the agency probably to buy their own home or to decide where they want to live. Depending on where they are, they may not have agency over their healthcare or who they can marry or what books they can read like. They are feeling an incredible lack of ownership over their life.

So if the only thing they can take ownership of is their career through the form of content creation or, I don’t know, predictive marketing game, predictive marketplace gambling, or whatever it might be. I don’t agree with it in every choice, but I understand the impulse of that. Yeah.

Stephen Richer: Yeah.

Amanda Litman: And I think you’re seeing how that plays out into, in leadership and employee battles.

Stephen Richer: Okay. We got, this is a, quick take from a friend of ours Professor Marcus. Does AI blow up all of this?

Amanda Litman: It’s an interesting question and what I’m grappling with in real time. I actually think the answer is no, because in a moment of AI’s, sort of, we’re seeing how it affects like the economy and how it affects people’s relationships, but nothing can take the place of human connection. And we’re seeing this in the marketing space in particular right now, where AI slop—it crowds out things and people don’t want it like they might make it. And the more it’s made, the less value it is the things that break through our authenticity and human relationship.

Stephen Richer: Are people who work at Run for sSomething nervous about any aspect of their job as a result of AI…

Archon Fung: getting downsized..

Amanda Litman: not that I have heard. I mean, we are, and I’ll say one of the things we had to do in the last year was come up with an AI policy for our team. Yeah. and which we say like, you can use AI tools. You, the person are ultimately responsible for the outcome. You cannot blame the tools for a bad product. And I think helping distinguish that. Tt’s like being a manager. Like if my team doesn’t perform well, I’m the manager. I’m responsible for that.

Stephen Richer: Yeah.

Amanda Litman: There is, I think, some changes and see as these models are getting better and better, I’ll be interested to see what happens. But I also think what it does is again, force leadership to be really intentional about how can I use this to treat people better, not cut their jobs.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Can I wind back to the distrust in institutions? So, I’m at the Kennedy School. Steven’s, a fellow at the Kennedy School. We’re like deeply institutionalists and have been for whatever, half a century, right? That we’re all about the institutions.

Stephen Richer: Yeah.

Archon Fung: And Run for Something… Like when I first heard of Run for Something, I thought, well, you’re really running uphill because you’re trying to recruit people in a generation that really doesn’t trust institutions. And you’re treated by them and you’re asking them to participate in those institutions and improve them.

So how does that ask go? But now in this conversation, I’m thinking maybe that’s not what you’re asking them to do.

Amanda Litman: So it’s a little bit of yes and no. As many of my answers are, all of this is complicated. Institutions are made up of people. When you have different people in charge of them, you get different outcomes, which I know like is an argument often again, that people will make against, like you can’t, can’t reform a police department by getting different police officers in it.

Sure. I think in particular we are seeing like the Democratic party. Is made up of the people who are elected as Democrats. And if you change who those people are, you change how people feel about the Democratic Party. In business—and we see this like in, Silicon Valley companies and you know this—is the mythos of the founder. The founder, and I say this as myself, the founder shapes what the business looks like. The leader shapes what the container looks like. If you can change the person in charge. It’s hard, it takes time and you’ve got to manage your expectations accordingly. But you can actually change what comes of it. If. Yeah, you’re willing to go through some discomfort.

I think that is the thing that people are often unwilling to experience or unwilling to engage with. Changing institutions requires often shedding job loss in some ways, or job reconfiguration. It requires fight. It requires tension, it requires conflict, and it requires a vision to what you want that institution to become.

Stephen Richer: Yeah, I have a bunch of follow up questions to that, but I’ll go with do you think that institutions have an identity independent of the people who work there? Like is there something about being in the Congress or in your state legislature that isn’t just a composition of 435 unique individual people, but that outlives all of those people And same with the company, I guess.

Amanda Litman: I think the fact that you could say like. The way that people felt about Congress 20 years ago or 30 years ago versus the way people feel about Congress today and what it means to be a member of Congress has changed so rapidly. It is, it exists, but it is defined by the people within it, and I think it supersedes the any individual, but it is also shaped by that individual.

Okay. Does that answer your question? It’s a good question and I think it’s like, yeah. One of the challenges of like, I would think about Harvard, like Harvard is an institution defined by the legacy of, whatever. 250 or 200 years of Harvard..

Archon Fung: Three or four hundred.

Amanda Litman: Yeah, I didn’t graduate from Harvard. Like, and the current Harvard president, the people who are like the students at Harvard, the faculty at Harvard can change what that means in real time, over time.

Archon Fung: Yeah. I think it’s like Steven, I think probably a bunch of senators you know, boomer senators are looking at the Senate and it’s like unrecognizable from institution that they know. So it is both in that way I guess.

Stephen Richer: But Archon and I appreciated your conservative moment. We will make one out of you yet. The way I was going to frame this is there’s a famous—hailing from the right I’m supposed to like GK Chesterton—and there’s a famous sort of GK Chesterton parable like thinking about why is a fence. And he says it’s folly to just go to a field and remove a fence without first asking: why was the fence there? And so I guess when I see some of these transformations and when I see an earnestness for change, I guess I always want to temper that with, you got to understand the company first. You gotta understand the institution first.

And maybe we have to understand like, why did this model that worked well for boomer CEOs. Why did it work when we’re changed? When before we change it. And so do you ever have like those moments of like, I’m coming in and I’m writing something that’s a little bit radical. I hope that’s not unfair to say.

Amanda Litman: No.

Stephen Richer: But like where like, I, should I be changing things or am I just gonna break something? Break it when we actually need it?

Amanda Litman: You know, it’s so funny to ask. I do think it’s a little bit radical and also I think we’re seeing in real time. The things that got us to this moment cannot get us to the next one. So bear with me for a moment.

There was a New York Times interview with Anna Wintour, who’s the editor in chief of…

Stephen Richer: Yeah, of course. I’m a huge Devil Wears Prada fan.

Archon Fung: Yeah, the Devil Wears Prada.

Amanda Litman: Aren’t we all? As an aside, everyone knows the true villain of that movie is the boyfriend.

Stephen Richer: That is a  whole conversation in and of itself.

Amanda Litman: True villain of that movie is the boyfriend. So you’ve got Anna Wintour and you’ve got the new editor-in-chief, Chloe Malle. Anna Wintour is a Boomer in her seventies. I believe Chloe Malle is late thirties, early forties. A mom of young kids. Like very different vibes around how they lead.

And in this interview, there’s this moment. Where you can see in their body language, you can see in the way that they answer the questions. Anna Wentworth is guarded. She is careful. She is very almost defensive of like, well, “Our budgets are healthy enough. I don’t need to think about what we would do with an expansion.” And Chloe says something much more broadly about, I would bring on more social people and pay people more and I would, you know, expand our vision for how we’re engaging in these different spaces.

And you know, I never wanna be this like robot leader who’s unapproachable to the moms at kindergarten pickup. And I said something online like this is actually embodying Boomer leadership versus next gen leadership. And I got a lot of feedback being like: “Well, Anna went to her, had to behave that way because she was coming up at a moment where women in positions of power operate in a very particular way.

Archon Fung: Right, right.

Amanda Litman: And the answer is, yes, she did, but because she did that, we don’t have to do that anymore. The things that have gotten us to this point do not serve us to get us to the next one.

Archon Fung: Yeah, I’ve got to read that interview; to, I think, see the video.

Amanda Litman: It’s fascinating.

Archon Fung: I gotta see that. So, an answer to Steven’s point in that might be, she really… the new leader probably does really understand the essence of Vogue and what it’s about. And wants to carry that forward. But given how much things have changed, it has to continue in a slightly different way, but she probably wants to make Vogue even more of what it was in the new generation.

Right? She’s not giving up on those values, I’m guessing.

Amanda Litman: Well, my mantra for so much of the last year has been that the way we did things yesterday should shape the way we do them tomorrow, but does not have to be the way we do them tomorrow.

Stephen Richer: Okay. I’ll settle for that compromise. Yeah. And incidentally, I’ll put a flag out there for Devil Wears Prada II is coming out soon. Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, they’re all back in it.

Archon Fung: That’s like a Tom Cruise story right there.

Stephen Richer: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I know. Meryl Streep’s still dominating the game.

Amanda Litman: Yeah, the only Boomer allowed to get another Oscar.

Stephen Richer: So, some people asked about. What you do outside of this book and what you do outside of this theory. And I think it’s important that we spend at least a little bit of time on that. So, it says, how does Amanda, this is from Lester: “How does Amanda measure 200,000 people recruited to run?” But more broadly, just tell us a little bit about what you’re doing and if this is… is this year like going to be a bellwether year for organizations like yours?

Amanda Litman: So, Run for Something, for those who are not familiar, recruits and supports young people running for local office all across the country. We started in 2017, and in the last nine years we’ve built what we believe is the largest pipeline in politics on either side of the aisle, a list of more than a quarter million young people who’ve raised their hands to run for office. We’ve endorsed more than 4,000 campaigns and helped elect more than 1,653 people in 49 states plus DC to things like State House, state senate, city council, school board, library board.

We have now have six of them currently serving in Congress, a half dozen running for Senate, a half dozen running for governor, a couple dozen running for house and other statewide offices. This year we have absolutely transformed the bench of the Democratic Party in particular. You see that in real time in Texas today where both Jasmine Crockett and James Tallarico on the Democratic side are Run for Something alum who came through our program.

Archon Fung: Oh, really? Wow. Wow. I’d love to see that.

Archon Fung: Pay attention tonight, folks. Yeah.

Amanda Litman: No, and I think what we are seeing this, year in particular, and I won’t say I told you so, but I did tell you, so this is going to be year of generalist general change in the Democratic Party in particular. We’re seeing challengers against democratic incumbents, especially those explicitly on generational lines. We are seeing new leaders step up to run in big offices.

We got millennials on the ballot for Senate in a number of states that are going to like wildly lower the eight average aging the United States Senate next year. I believe that no matter what happens—you know, my sphere of influence in particular is on the left side—I believe that the Democratic Party in particular is going to look, sound, feel, be different at the end of this year in no small part because of the work Run for Something has does to change who runs and change the definition of leadership. That’s what I do outside of the book.

Archon Fung: I, I saw some data, I, don’t have it off the top of my head, but it was members of Congress and in the Senate, Republican and Democrat, and the Republicans are quite a bit younger than the Democrats. Is that true? And yeah. Why is that? I mean, the Ds are supposed to be a little bit more progressive and forward looking. So what’s up?

Amanda Litman: You know, there’s a few exceptions to this. Like Chuck Grassley is, I think the oldest member of the United States Senate right now. But generally speaking, the average age of the Republican caucus is a couple years younger on both chambers. This is true in part because Democratic rules up until this year have privileged seniority. So, if you wanted to become the chairman of a committee, you needed to stay there as long as humanly possible. You did not become a chairman. Until you were like the old, the longest tenured member.

You had, say, Jerry Connolly, who I knew. I interned for him in college. He was my representative growing up. At one point, he was elected to chairman of the oversight Committee against Robert Garcia and AOC, in part because he had the tenure. And then he died in office, which was a tragedy and so sad for his family, and also was, I believe, the third or fourth Democratic incumbent member of Congress to die in the last year. Not great if we are trying to present the optics of a party that is willing to fight and can meet the moment. So I think part of this is because of the rules in the Democratic caucus, in particular, and the Republican Party went through their generational change over the last 10 years. You saw this in the Tea Party fight, which brought in some younger leaders. You saw this in house challenges. Trump, I, you said this earlier, Stephen, like Trump’s handed the baton to the millennials of the Republican party. He’s not giving it to the Gen Xers, sorry, to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on the rest of them. I think that is an indication of, they’ve been a little bit ahead in terms of seeing where the puck is going.

Stephen Richer: Okay.

Amanda Litman: Catching up.

Stephen Richer: So, so we’re sort of on or bound to ask, to probe a little bit more on this because we have two colleagues who work on this topic, Tova Wang, is one in particular. And I think she would ask about, what do you make. The right word shift of the 18 to 29-year-old demographic, at least in the last election, sort of, if you could pin that on three phenomena, especially men under the age of 30 really, shifted right in this last presidential election session. so, so what do you attribute to that to, and do you think it’s going to be sticky?

Amanda Litman: I attribute to deep frustration with the economy. In a sense, you know, we were talking about earlier, like, young people can’t buy homes, they can’t get jobs, they can’t have ac like they have graduating student loan debt if they can even go to college at all. It is a frustration with the system that has not worked for them, and Trump is promising to blow up the system they want change the. He promised to deliver change. I also think Joe Biden was not a compelling messenger. he was too old saying that for 10 years. He’s too old. And the things that he did, which were good, many of the good stuff that he wanted to do that would’ve directly affected young people got watered down in Congress.

You know, I think the child universal childcare, which was originally in the build back better, bill got screwed. In part by moderate Democrats in Congress because they didn’t want to deliver that, and that could have really made the difference, especially for people in their twenties and thirties thinking about family planning. So, one, I think the economy was in a bad place for them. Two and young people who are disproportionately renters experienced inflation at one percentage point higher. So, housing in particular I come back to a lot.

Second, I think the Republican Party has built a media infrastructure that reaches young people, especially young men, where they’re accessing information. Again, this is I think, a messenger problem as much as it is a message issue. There are so few, or at least in 2024, there were so few Democratic members of Congress who could go on Joe Rogan and have a normal conversation or go on these spaces and have a conversation and not sound like robots. Part of the reason I think we are now seeing a surge of, you know, normal people running for offices because they’re like, man, I have to be a normal person if I want to communicate in the way people break through.

Archon Fung: Yeah.

Amanda Litman: You know, the third thing is that I think we are at a moment where when you want change, you want the person who’s like going to speak about it the loudest and going to do something even if they’re not going to do the thing you want. Now you asked Steven, is it sticky? No. We have already seen Trump’s polling numbers. The young people drop dramatically. He is underwater. Even, and especially with young men and with young women we have seen in democratic primaries over the last six months and the special elections, young voters showing up in record numbers.

We are also seeing his approval rating on the economy, on immigration, on the war that we were promised not to get into. Young people do not like this. He rented them in 2024. He did not buy them forever. That does not mean Democrats will win them back. This is the opportunity for us. We get a chance to make our case and present an affirmative mission, and my God, actually deliver something people can feel, which this is my final point, and, because I think we’re running out of time, Congress is not the place to do that.

It is really important that we win Congress in 2026. We’ve got to flip the house. We got to flip the Senate. I say this as a Democrat. Gotta do it. We got to do accountability and oversight. Congress, even with a Trump presidency, especially with a Trump presidency, is not going to be able to govern.

Stephen Richer: Is this your pitch for state and local?

Amanda Litman: This is my pitch for state and local.

Stephen Richer: Alright.

Amanda Litman: If you want cheaper housing.

Stephen Richer: I agree. I agree.

Amanda Litman: Yeah. If you want cheaper housing

Archon Fung: Work, access to votes…

Amanda Litman:. If you want childcare, like I’m seeing this as a New York resident. Yeah. My daughter is in free Pre-K because I live in New York City and have a mayor who cares about that. That is the, like the thing that I want to get into every person’s head. The most important thing we can do over the next two years is build back trust with the Democratic party. And to do that, we need the largest possible megaphones to be with the people who can actually deliver. And then we need them to deliver as fast as they humanly can in a way that people can feel.

Stephen Richer: Yeah,

Amanda Litman: Congress, God bless em. Really important. Is not going to be the ones to do it.

Stephen Richer: It sounds like I heard at least one cheer for federalism in there too, if I can read that in there.

Amanda Litman: Absolutely. I think.

Stephen Richer: Alright. Thank you. Good one.

Archon Fung: Very good. Well, we, are about out of time, but I really want to thank you for this conversation, Amanda, and for the, occasion to read your book. You know, I got to say I think a lot about distrust in leaders and institutions is this like fundamental condition and challenge that we’re in right now. And I really feel like your book is one of the most thoughtful and creative. Efforts to try to figure out what to do about that. Like a lot of us have basked in the problem endlessly.

But then as far as like, actual ideas about how to make it a little bit incrementally better. And I think it has to begin where people live and where people work, which is what you do. And then maybe it bubbles out to the political arena and to leaders. I mean, let’s hope so. We’re all in trouble. If it doesn’t. But it was great to read, like you really careful throughout about how you’re thinking about rebuilding that trust and honesty and accountability within your organization and then write this book so others can learn from it. So thank you very much for that.

Amanda Litman: Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think. And it is my hope, and I’ve thought so much about how do you present as authentic? How do you show up as yourself and how do you do it in a way that doesn’t l like make you as the leader lose your mind? My hope is that people in every space, political business, community, one, I hope they read the book, buy it wherever you get your books, and I hope that they translate that in a way that makes sense for wherever they are because it is so necessary to be beginning to rebuild, trust, rebuild the ties that we need to ultimately restore democracy.

Stephen Richer: Cool. Well, again, the book is called “When We’re In Charge.”Excellent. Yeah, hold it up to the camera. “The next Generation’s Guide to Leadership.” “When We’re in Charge,” by Amanda. You can check it out—I got it on Amazon and I’m sure you can find it there. It’s not every day you get a chance to think about leadership. And so, this book encourages you to think about your own type of leadership and it, I think place like the Kennedy School, it’s the rare place where you think about leadership.

I think mostly we think about functional skills like. If you’re good at engineering, you’ll become the head of the engineers, but that doesn’t necessarily develop your leadership skills. So, thanks to everyone who provided for a lovely, a lively and lovely comment section. And thanks, as always to the production team that made this possible and we really appreciate you being here. And Archon closing thoughts.

Archon Fung: Just, we’ll be back next week, same time. And of course you can get, this on any of the big podcast platforms and on YouTube. And please send us suggestions and comments at info@ash.harvard.edu. Have a great week and we’ll see you next Tuesday. Thank you, Amanda.

Amanda Litman: Thanks.