 "Photo: Jacke Green")
In a generation that grew up learning family values with the Tanner Family, teenage pitfalls with "90210" and a twisted sense of what is real with reality TV, the organizational gap between younger generations and baby boomers seems to be spreading further apart in the business and corporate worlds.
Jake Greene, author of the career guide "Whoa, My Boss is Naked! A Career Book for People Who Would Never Be Caught Dead Reading a Career Book," provides a unique insider's look at the transition from college student "couch potato" to corporate business culture.
"I wanted to write sort of my answer to the 'corporate tools' for 'corporate tools,' " Greene says. "There are so many professionals today without any perspective and so much organizational 'Kool-aid' that they miss out on other opportunities. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of the company or traditional versus non-traditional."
Greene uses pop-culture references from the past 20 years to explain subjects like office politics, and how not to become a "corporate tool."
He says he has had a strong passion for pop culture and a love for television and movies for a long time. He says the guide is something different, contrasting from the standard 'twelve steps to success' type business book.
Greene says he thought a lot about his friends and their own experiences in college and starting out in the business world for his inspiration and structure.
"For me, when I was writing the book, I had a certain audience in mind and representative of friends from high school and college who didn't really pay so much attention to lectures when they were paying to be there," he says. "Why were they going to read a 200-page lecture? I wanted to have very short chapters centered around pop-culture examples that could be consumed in very short sittings."
In a generation often criticized for its lack of motivation, Greene says the book doesn't suggest people be lazy, but focuses more on a smooth transition from couch to office.
"I think there are a lot of general misconceptions that I think anyone who is in their 20s will face," Greene says. "There's entitlement, laziness and lacking focus, but it's not your responsibility to battle those but be aware that they're out there. But it's pretty easy to do away with those if you improve your communication skills and work effectively."
Greene says he continues to collaborate with close friends and networks to gain some of the references within the book as well as the corporate business world.
"You kind of have to have a 'Danny Ocean' type mentality," he says. "You practice a network of friends who do diverse things, who aren't the same age, who don't look like you and who you keep in touch with and build relationships with and talk about opportunities with each other."
Greene's recent YouTube video comically giving examples of "Interview No No's," picked up by Current.com, was done completely on a whim with friends he had networked from past business experiences.
"The guy who started the video actually did my own Web site," he says. "The three of us didn't just premeditate this funny career video. The opportunity presented itself and it just turned out that Mike the Web guy was really funny."
Greene graduated from Stanford University in 2002 with an undergraduate degree in interpersonal communications, and he interned at different organizations such as Disney Buena Vista and an advertising firm, he says. Since then, he has had numerous corporate experiences and returned to Stanford to receive a graduate degree in sociology.
Currently, he has a consulting practice working with small to medium-sized businesses with branding, marketing and gross strategy. Greene also speaks at various colleges and continues to write.
Greene says he hasn't received much criticism from the business world regarding his distinctive method of explaining corporate culture.
"Certainly there are people less comfortable with the references in the book," he says. "They are used to business personalities and multi-million dollar CEOs who run Fortune 500 companies. I've survived in most of those environments. Instead of a view from the clouds, this book is sort of an adult, 'Ferris Bueller'-type voice, or older sibling's advice."
Greene separates "twenty-somethings" into three categories - those who don't have a job yet, those who do and those who are moving up. Starting out is very important, he says, and could go completely wrong if not done the right way.
"I like to compare college graduates and people just starting out to the reason why most bands suck," Greene says. "We're a generation who grew up as multi-talent multi-taskers with different things to focus on and go after, after college. You should consider yourself to be a rock band just starting out. You need to commit to one sound. If you try to be everything to everyone right away, you won't get signed. Don't worry about shutting the door on all talents and interests - you can diversify later."
Greene says the connection between pop culture and careers is surprisingly all around us in the television we have seen in the '80s and '90s and have seen today.
Reality television can often serve as a "driver's ed" video for career development that can show you exactly what to do or exactly what not to do, he says.
"I'm 28, so there's only a certain time frame when pop-culture references are relevant," he says. "But I talk with my friends about things like 'Anchorman' quotes and things like that. We went through our 'Borat' phase and bad reality television. We're a generation who has grown up learning from pop-culture. I mean, my best geography teacher was Carmen Sandiego. The only reason why I know the capital of Iceland is because I chased some criminal there."
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