An Excerpt from When We're in Charge: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership
An excerpt from When We're in Charge by Amanda Litman, published by Crooked Media Reads and longlisted for the 2025 Porchlight Business Book Awards in the Leadership & Management category.
Most leadership books treat millennials and Gen Z like nuisances to manage around, focusing on how leaders from older generations can fit young people into their existing corporate cultures.
Not this one. When We’re In Charge is a no-bullshit guide for the next generation of leaders on how to show up differently, break the cycle of bad boomer leadership, and navigate the changing demands of those in power and the evolving expectations people have of their workplace.
Based on author Amanda Litman’s experience as a founder and executive (and mom of two who’s trying desperately to have a life outside of work), and informed by conversations with more than 100 next-gen leaders across politics, business, media, tech, education, and more—and including people like Versha Sharma, editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue; Maxwell Frost, first Gen Z member of Congress; and Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc—this book is a vital resource for new leaders trying to figure out how to get stuff done without making your team or yourself miserable.
When We’re in Charge offers solutions for sticky challenges:
- How to be yourself without giving your full self to your role
- How to think about social media when your team sees what you post
- How to set up guardrails for work-life balance
Litman also makes powerful arguments about the practices and shape of work:
- Why a four-day work week is the future
- Why transparency is a powerful tool that can do real damage if not wielded with intention
- Why it matters for you, the boss, to both provide and take family leave
A necessary read for all who occupy or aspire to leadership roles, When We’re in Charge is a vision for a future where leaders at work, in communities, and across the country are compassionate, genuine, and effective.
When We’re in Charge has been longlisted in the Leadership & Management category of Porchlight Book Company's 2025 Business Books Awards. The excerpt below is adapted from the book's Introduction.
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Back in 2017, when I started Run for Something—a political organization that recruits and supports millennials and Gen Zers running for local office—I kept noticing something unusual: At twenty-seven years old, I was regularly the youngest person (and for sure the youngest woman) in many of the rooms I was in.
My role as one of two cofounders was predominantly focused around fundraising and public events, so by necessity, I spent a lot of time with people decades older than me asking for money. I’d put on my “fancy lady” clothes (which, for me, involved a lot of animal print and bright-red lipstick) and try to make the case for investing in the kind of political work that wasn’t flashy or exciting but could make a meaningful difference if we did it right.
Meanwhile, my cofounder and I were slowly building a team of employees that were expected to work hard while they were on the job and rest hard when they were off of it. We were tired after years of sprinting from campaign to campaign and wanted our organization’s work culture to mirror our mission: long-term and sustainable.
When I first set out to start a company, I was operating without a how-to manual. No one in Democratic politics had successfully built a big organization doing what we were doing before, and in particular, no one had done it while also implementing policies that gave their employees space to be real people outside of work. Nearly every week brought new challenges I hadn’t expected.
But I believed (and still believe) in our mission, so I tried to carry myself with the confidence—real or pretend—necessary to get the work done and lead us forward.
Sometime around 2022, something changed. All of a sudden, there were other executives in these rooms who were in the same stage of life as me or even younger, and other organizations who were grappling with the challenges we’d worked through just a year or two before. Many of the leaders we’d helped elect across the country were making national headlines and showing the way millennial and Gen Z politicians could enter spaces not built for us and transform the energy, the focus, and the fire.
Political reporters noticed this trend, too, and a few reached out to ask: What’s the common thread among these younger leaders who kept making headlines?
The answer was obvious to me.
Our generations—millennials and Gen Z—lead differently. We have no patience for bullshit—we demand authenticity or, at least, perceived authenticity. We show emotion when it’s real, but we’re also vigilant about boundaries. We believe that our missions are urgent and important, but we understand that not every task in service of those missions shares that urgency. We’ve grown up online and understand intuitively how to use the internet strategically.
We believe in inclusivity as both a moral good and as a necessary tactic to achieve our goals. We love our work (sometimes), but few of us want it to be all of who we are. We’re collectively trying to break the cycle in nearly every aspect of our lives: to be better bosses, better parents, better leaders than those who came before us.
The more I thought and talked with others about it, the more I realized: This wasn’t just true in politics. My TikTok algorithm started showing me parodies about millennial and Gen Z bosses that deeply resonated—little clips that mocked generational divides, with millennial leaders telling their teams, “No, seriously, stop working,” with gentle but firm smiles and “Why do I care why you need the PTO? If you need the time, take it!”
There was something simmering under the radar that I could not stop obsessing over: The millennial and Gen Z style of leadership looks different, feels different, and leads to different team cultures. But it felt like no one had put pen to paper on what all of that added up to.
When I looked back at my experience, I realized part of the reason that starting and leading a company was so damn hard is because nearly every example of leadership I had to look to for advice didn’t quite fit the moment. The playbooks of the past were only barely useful in advising me on things like how to be myself without giving too much of myself away to my team, or how to post on Instagram if my employees follow me there, or even tactical things like how to actually take family leave as the boss.
If I wanted a new guide on how to lead now, I needed to write one myself.
That’s what this book is: the advice I wish I’d had over the last nearly ten years, navigating the choppy waters of changing leadership norms, new demands on those in power, and rapidly shifting expectations of what the workplace can and should provide, all in service of a new understanding of what it will look and feel like when we’re in charge.
Excerpted from When We're in Charge: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership by Amanda Litman, published by Crooked Media Reads. Copyright © 2025 by Amanda Litman. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Amanda Litman is the cofounder and president of Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, diverse leaders running for local office—since 2017, they’ve launched the careers of thousands of millennials and Gen Z candidates and in the process, changed what leadership looks like in America. She’s also the author of Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself (Atria), a how-to manual for people running for office.
Before launching Run for Something, Amanda worked on multiple presidential and statewide political campaigns. She graduated from Northwestern University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two daughters, and their sometimes rowdy dog.
