The hot book when I graduated from business school was Dress for Success, a compendium of the rules for proper appearance in the corporate world, by John T. Molloy. Millions of us devoured it. We were eager to gain every possible competitive advantage. To this day, I have never worn a brown suit in Boston.

But I fear that in the frenzy to get in the corporate game -- to win -- many never stopped to question whether the rules of this game were really ones that we wanted to live by.

I dont know anyone under 40 who has jumped into corporate life with that same sense of blind obedience to the rules as they are currently defined. As one of you commented in response to my post "Entrepreneurs in Our Midst: Corporate life needs a major makeover to become more attractive to both Xers and the generation below them. Current corporate life is still very much a product of mechanistic Taylorian thinking that dates back to the early 20th century and saw employees as automata. . . . [F]or people who want to retain their individuality, who want to bring their personality, their interests, their emotional needs into the workplace, the big corporation is not likely to be a particularly appealing place. . . . To appeal to the under 40s, the corporation has got to move on from Frederick Taylor and notions of control, and take a few lessons from [the] world of the social networks.

My favorite book today is The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life by Thomas W. Malone, an enormously insightful professor at MIT, who has long been a visionary voice on networks and collaborative technologies. Tom lays out an inspiring argument for rethinking how corporations get work done that parallels what I see when looking at the shifting values within todays workforce. He explains how we are reaching an inflection point, as instant, ubiquitous, and essentially free communication lets us conduct the most basic processes within our corporations in fundamentally different ways--market-based, even democratic.

Another compelling compass comes in Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy and Innovation--and Others Dont by my good friend Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School. Through stories and rich examples, Lynda illustrates the innovative benefits and enormous gratification that collaborative processes can provide.

There is a picture emerging of how corporations might be -- if those of you in your 20s and 30s keep reminding everyone of the need for new ways of working. Dont let up. Weve got a lot of work to do.

Maybe Ill start by buying a brown suit.

How will you start?

HARVARD BUSINESS ONLINE RECOMMENDS:
Making Flexible Schedules Work--for Everyone (HMU Article)
The Kids Are Alright: How the Gamer Generation Is Changing the Workplace (Paperback)
What It Means to Work Here (HBR Article)