LOOKING FOR GEN Z 2.0

 

…and the Gen X and Y Leaders Who Must Guide Them

Every generation comes with its strengths, weaknesses, and habits. Today, much has been said about Gen Z — that they are entitled, distracted, quick to move on, and hard to manage. But we must be careful. It is too easy to point fingers and blame our young. If Gen Z is impatient, who raised them on instant gratification? If Gen Z struggles with resilience, who created the environment that shielded them from difficulties?

In truth, Gen Z is our reflection. Their habits and attitudes are the fruits of what parents, teachers, leaders, managers, and society at large have sown. They are our children, our colleagues, and the future of our nation. Their success is not only theirs — it is ours. Their failure is not only theirs — it is ours too.

The Current Challenge

Across workplaces, managers often tell me the same things: Gen Z tends to get bored quickly, they want promotions too fast, they prefer flexible arrangements, and they are glued to their phones. Many feel these young people lack loyalty, staying only a short time before moving on. At the same time, Gen Z is the most educated, connected, and socially aware generation in history. They care deeply about issues that matter, from the environment to social justice. They are creative, tech-savvy, and bold.

In Malaysia, however, we face a pressing concern. Too many of our young are underemployed or unemployed. Some are caught in the gig economy without a long-term career path. Others graduate with degrees but struggle to find jobs that match their qualifications. We cannot afford for our Gen Z to drift. They make up more than a third of our population. If they are not productive citizens, Malaysia cannot move forward.

Introducing Gen Z 2.0

This is why I propose the idea of Gen Z 2.0.

Gen Z 2.0 are those who rise above the noise. They are self-aware, disciplined, and resilient. They know their strengths, talents, and creativity, but they also acknowledge their weaknesses and bad habits — and work on them. They balance productivity at work with growth in their personal lives. They manage their digital life with discipline, practice financial responsibility, and see social issues not only as topics to post about but as challenges to contribute to meaningfully.

Gen Z 2.0 is not another generation. It is the better version of Gen Z — the young people who choose to upgrade themselves.

A Collective Responsibility – Preparing Good Seeds

But Gen Z cannot do this alone. Gen Z 2.0 is not simply a matter of their own willpower. It is a collective responsibility. Parents, educators, managers, leaders, Gen X, Gen Y, and even Baby Boomers — we all play a role.

Here, I like to use the metaphor of the seed. A seed has potential, but it will remain just a seed if left in a bottle. It needs the right soil, the right water, the right sunlight. Likewise, our young need the right environment, the right guidance, and the right leadership to grow. As the Malay proverb goes: “Benih yang baik, jatuh ke laut menjadi pulau.” A good seed, even if it falls into the sea, will become an island.

Our task is to ensure our Gen Z are prepared as good seeds — seeds that, when planted in any environment, can grow, thrive, and contribute. This preparation is not theirs alone; it is ours. Their character, their resilience, and their productivity are reflections of how we nurture them today.

Preparing Gen X and Y as Bridge Leaders

This is why it is not enough to only ask Gen Z to upgrade into Gen Z 2.0. Their seniors — the Gen X and Y who lead and manage them — must also upgrade. They must become Bridge Leaders.

Bridge Leaders do not command and control; they coach and guide. They do not dismiss Gen Z’s ideas; they channel them. They give short, frequent feedback instead of waiting for annual reviews. They are humble enough to learn through reverse mentorship — picking up digital skills from their juniors. And most importantly, they translate the organization’s mission and goals into values that Gen Z understands and finds meaningful.

Without these changes, even the best Gen Z 2.0 will remain underutilized. With them, we can build workplaces where creativity meets discipline, where youthful energy is guided by experience, and where generations complement one another instead of clashing.

A Malaysian Imperative

For Malaysia, this is not optional. It is a national imperative. With our economy facing global competition, with education and healthcare costs rising, and with unity more important than ever, we need our Gen Z to become productive citizens. We need them to succeed — at work, at home, and in society. Their success will drive our economy, strengthen our families, and unite our diverse nation.

If we fail to guide them, we risk creating a lost generation. But if we succeed, our Gen Z — as good seeds — will grow into strong trees, bearing fruit for themselves, their families, and the nation. And wherever they are planted, they will thrive, just as a good seed becomes an island even when it falls into the sea.

A Call to Action

At zubedy (m) sdn bhd, we are working towards this goal. Just as we once introduced the idea of Gen Y 2.0, we are now upgrading our Managing Across Generations Workshop to help both the young and their leaders rise to the challenge. Gen Z must be helped to become Gen Z 2.0. Gen X and Y must be equipped to become Bridge Leaders. Together, with Baby Boomers still playing their role, we can nurture a culture where every generation contributes to a meaningful Malaysia.

Gen Z 2.0 is not just their responsibility. It is our responsibility. And when they succeed, the whole world succeeds.

Let us add value.

Anas Zubedy,

Managing Director,

zubedy (m) sdn bhd

 

THE LEADER-MANAGER

 

A Leader-Manager is someone who can lead and manage himself, others, processes, and change—often all at the same time.

He must have the capacity and ability to perform the essential tasks of both leadership and management with excellence. He sets clear goals and deliverables and helps his team connect to them by making them meaningful. At the same time, he exercises discipline, holds people accountable, is willing to have tough conversations, and when necessary, takes firm action to manage performance.

In fulfilling these roles, the Leader-Manager embraces several core responsibilities:

1. Economic Performance as the Central Mission

A Leader-Manager must first understand how his responsibilities serve the organization’s overall mission. Since a business is an economic organ, every decision, action, and deliberation must be measured against its ability to deliver economic performance. A business justifies its existence only by producing results: supplying goods and services customers want at a price they are willing to pay, while ensuring profit. The Leader-Manager must therefore be clear that his foremost duty is to safeguard and grow the wealth-producing capacity of the resources entrusted to him.

2. Human Capital as the True Resource

Economic performance is only possible if people perform. The true resource of any enterprise is its human capital. A Leader-Manager must be skilled at bringing out the best in people. He does this by enabling achievement—because achievement is both fuel and reward for self-motivation. To unlock this, he must see subordinates as human beings first, not merely as resources. He takes into account their dreams, aspirations, personalities, skills, motivations, and reasons for action or inaction.

3. Building a Culture of Duplication and Best Practices

A Leader-Manager multiplies success. He is quick to transfer knowledge and make best practices part of the organization’s culture. He ensures that top talents share insights across teams—in innovation, marketing, operations, and management. He encourages collaboration, discourages silos, and builds systems where success is celebrated, codified, and replicated. In this way, ordinary people are lifted to do extraordinary things, and the organization keeps moving upward.

4. Balancing Administration and Entrepreneurship

The Leader-Manager is both an efficient administrator and an entrepreneur. He reallocates resources from declining areas to those with greater potential, ensuring both effectiveness and efficiency—doing things right while also doing the right things. As an entrepreneur, he creates and grows tomorrow’s business through systematic analysis, foresight, and hard work today.

5. Managing the Short Term and the Long Term

One of the Leader-Manager’s most critical skills is managing two time dimensions simultaneously. He must balance short-term results with long-term sustainability. He cannot chase immediate profits at the expense of the company’s long-range health, nor can he dream of a distant future while neglecting present demands. His responsibility is to harmonize the two—running today’s business while preparing the changes needed for tomorrow.

6. Stewardship of Social Responsibility and Brand

Finally, the Leader-Manager is custodian of the organization’s wider social responsibilities. He safeguards its reputation, ensures its brand is trusted, and manages its impact on society. In doing so, he positions the company not only as an economic institution but also as a respected member of the community.

Anas Zubedy
Kuala Lumpur

Ref: Inspired by Peter Drucker’s management insights

 

HAVE A MEANINGFUL HARI MALAYSIA - What We Want Our Leader-Managers to Lead and Manage

In politics, government, business, and social institutions, Leader-Managers must be able to lead and manage in four key areas:

1. Lead and Manage Oneself

Before leading others, a leader must first lead and manage himself. He must be clear about his goals and vision, and live by them. He must ‘cakap serupa bikin’—walk his talk. If his vision is integrity, he cannot compromise with corruption. When a leader fails to manage himself, organizations fail, and even nations and civilizations can collapse.

2. Lead and Manage Others

A Leader-Manager must be effective with people. He sets clear goals and deliverables, and makes them meaningful to the team. He removes uncertainties, holds people accountable, and is willing to have tough conversations —and take tough actions—when needed. His aim is always to build and sustain a high-performing team.

3. Lead and Manage Execution and Processes

A Leader-Manager makes things happen. He does not just make speeches or set lofty goals without substance. Promises are commitments, backed by well-thought-out plans. He ensures processes run, plans are executed, and results are delivered.

4. Lead and Manage Change

Change breeds uncertainty. Leader-Man
agers must remove confusion, clarify direction, and help people adapt. They can either guide their organizations through change and emerge stronger—or succumb to it, dragging everyone into failure.

Talk to us if you want to strengthen your leaders and managers—especially when your strategy involves moving technical specialists and individual contributors into people-management roles. We help them first lead and manage themselves, then others, while ensuring processes and goals are executed effectively, all while guiding their teams through change.

Let us add value,

Have a Meaningful Hari Malaysia.

Peace.

Anas Zubedy

UNITY IN DIVERSITY : CHOOSING INTEGRATION OVER ASSIMILATION

Our forefathers, Tunku and his team, were optimistic leaders. They carried with them a deep trust in the future of the Malayan, and later Malaysian, people. Because of that trust, unlike many other nations that emerged from the colonial yoke, we chose integration over assimilation.

We did not erase our differences or pretend they did not exist. We did not aim to be colour-blind. We did not choose to be historically deaf. Instead, we embraced all the colours — every shade, every story, every tradition. We created a nation of many colours with the shared goal of becoming one Malaysian race, anchored in the land’s history — the Malay Sultanates and traditions with Islam as the official religion — while at the same time safeguarding the other cultures. We etched this commitment in our social contract through Article 153, which protects the special position of the Malays and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak while also guaranteeing the legitimate interests of other communities.

This is what our Unity in Diversity truly means.

We decided we are many colours, but one race. Yet when we speak of the Malaysian race, we are referring to the word bangsa, not kaum. Bangsa speaks of citizenship. Bangsa Malaysia means our ethnicity remains Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban, Kadazan, Melanau, Senoi, Semang, Kelabit, Murut, Kayan, and so on — but our citizenship is one: Malaysian.

Take language, for example.

While Bahasa Malaysia is our National Language — our shared tongue that binds us — we respect the mother tongues of our many communities. We did not impose uniformity. Instead, we anchored ourselves in the Malay language while allowing and encouraging every other language to grow and flourish. This is why we agreed to and encouraged the vernacular schools.

To me, this decision to integrate, rather than assimilate, is not only wise but crucial for humanity.

Across the globe, more than 3,000 languages have already disappeared, and the number continues to rise. Each language lost is a piece of humanity gone forever. Here in Malaysia, we have chosen not to be part of this loss.

We are a nation that treasures culture — and by extension, the cultures of the world.

We want to preserve, promote, and protect the major languages and traditions — Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, English — while also ensuring that smaller and lesser-known ones like Kelabit, Kristang, and Temuan continue to be heard, spoken, and celebrated.

Every culture, every dialect, every dance, song, and proverb adds richness to the Malaysian story. We must never allow even one of our many cultures or languages to vanish — because the loss of one is the loss of all.

To lose a culture is to lose a whole conceptual understanding of a people. We would be losing thousands of years of knowledge and wisdom embedded in language, tradition, and practice. It is like losing a species of animal — only worse.

As a Star Trek kaki, I am reminded of Star Trek: Insurrection (1998). Captain Picard and his crew uncover a plan by the Federation and the Son’a to forcibly remove the Ba’ku from their homeworld to exploit its life-restoring radiation. Recognizing that this would mean the loss of the Ba’ku’s simple, agrarian way of life and the destruction of their culture, Picard and his team refuse to allow it. Even against Starfleet orders, they stand firm to protect the Ba’ku’s right to preserve their identity and way of living.

We too must be like Picard and his team. We must ensure that we lose none, and instead grow all.

“And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge.”

(Qur’an 30:22)

Peace.

Anas Zubedy

Penang

SNIPING IS COWARDICE. HYPOCRISY IS COMPLICITY.

Sniping is cowardice.

Charlie Kirk snipes with words. Rightly or wrongly, he debates and ruffles feathers. Instead of sniping back with words, the coward sniped with a bullet.

But the IDF sniper who shoots Palestinian babies is the ultimate coward and wicked.

Hiding at a distance. Taking life from those who cannot speak, cannot fight, cannot even walk. Their only weapon is a cry—for food, for safety, for family.

And hypocrisy?

It is to weep for Charlie Kirk and his family—yet feel nothing when Palestinian babies are killed.

If our hearts choose who deserves compassion, then our humanity is already wounded.

Nothing is more inhuman. Nothing is lower.

Peace.

Anas Zubedy

Penang.

CHARLIE KIRK - Did he, in the end, die exactly as he believed fit?

The irony is this: Charlie Kirk was a staunch supporter of gun rights and consistently opposed most forms of gun control. A gun owner himself, he championed the right to bear arms. Even in the aftermath of mass shootings, he resisted calls for stricter regulations, preferring to point instead toward mental health, cultural decline, or the need for “armed guards and gun detectors” in schools.

Yet, he once admitted that some gun deaths are an unfortunate but acceptable cost of preserving the Second Amendment.

Did he, in the end, die exactly as he believed fit?

Peace,

Anas

UNITY IN DIVERSITY: SIGNIFICANCE OF AUGUST 31ST AND SEPTEMBER 16TH

On August 31st, 1957, we lowered the Union Jack and took our first breath as an independent nation. On September 16th, 1963, we took our second—when Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore came together to form Malaysia. Though Singapore would later chart its own path, this formation remains one of the most significant moments in Southeast Asian history.

Hari Merdeka marks our political independence. But Hari Malaysia is about something deeper—it is about the choice to unite across land, culture, and sea.

At the heart of Merdeka was a miracle of trust.

The Malays opened their arms and offered a place in what was then Tanah Melayu. The Chinese and Indians, many of whom were still closely tied to their ancestral lands, gave up foreign citizenship to plant roots in a new home.

This was not merely a political agreement—it was a profound act of faith, cooperation, and shared destiny.

Hari Malaysia reminds us that with Sabah and Sarawak, our national soul is complete. From the longhouses of the Bornean interior to the high-rises of urban Kuala Lumpur, from fishing villages to bustling ports, each region contributes its own wisdom, resilience, and beauty to the national fabric.

As a multiracial and multireligious society, we carry within us a rare and powerful potential.

In a world often divided by difference, we have lived experience in embracing it. While homogenous societies may struggle to adapt to pluralism, we are born into it. We pray in different languages, eat at each other’s tables, and celebrate side by side.

This is not a weakness to be managed. It is a strength to be harnessed.

Across our diverse traditions, we find the same call to unity and shared strength.

Hinduism reminds us through the Bhagavad Gita that the same essence pervades the entire universe, binding all beings in one reality. Buddhism, in the Metta Sutta, calls on us to extend a mother’s boundless love to every living being, cultivating compassion as the root of harmony.

Taoism, in the wisdom of Zhuangzi, affirms that Heaven, Earth, and humanity form an inseparable whole, teaching us that we are never apart from the greater oneness of existence. Christianity, in the Psalms, proclaims the joy and beauty of people living together in unity. And Islam, in the Qur’an, reminds us that all humanity is but one community under God.

As the late Tan Sri P. Ramlee sang in Getaran Jiwa, “Andai dipisah lagu dan irama, lemah tiada berjiwa, hampa.” If melody and rhythm are separated, the soul is lost.

We too are like lagu and irama—distinct yet inseparable. Each culture, faith, and community adds its own rhythm to the Malaysian song, and only together do we become whole.

Peace,

anas zubedy

Penang