About Angela Wilson
Location: Midwest
Occupation: Web Producer/Freelance Writer
Bio: I love to read - and write - and surf. My FAV genres include mysteries, romantic suspense and thrillers. I'm finally working on my own thriller (under a pen name) and writing a book on marketing/PR for authors. I blog about writing at www.wickedwordsmith.com, and have accounts on various sites. You can find me on MySpace, Facebook and more by visiting www.angelawilson.net.
Posts: 282
More from this author
Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders
Books: 0 comments: 04/16/2008
Want to know why the latest generation is filled with me-focused 20-somethings who feel entitled to everything and need a coddling to get through life? Then this is the book for you.
I am fascinated by generational studies. It’s fun to read the general analyses of generations. It’s sort of like reading a horoscope: sometimes it can apply to anyone.
In Millennial Leaders, authors Authored by Bea Fields, Scott Wilder, Jim Bunch & Rob Newbold banned together to seriously study the generation through interviews and cultural studies that show how technology shaped this generation that expects to be CEO within a year of starting a job.
I know my cynicism is showing in this review. I’m an Xer, and I’ve had to bust my butt to get anywhere – and I’m certainly not where I want to be. Yet. I read some of the interviews with these kids and I just thought, “The world has yet to pound them into dust. Just give it time – unless they have helicopter parents.” If you don’t know this term, you should. Helicopter parents helped created this generation. They hover and indulge, attend job interviews with their spawn (true story) and call up bosses who write up their children or don’t encourage them as they should (also true).
Snarkiness aside, Millennial Leaders is, in fact, a great read. Each chapter offers up interesting interviews with generational leaders, then offers up a short section devoted to guiding Yers reading it on how they should use the information. It is not until the end that I really see real life – not Second Life – appear. It’s in an interview with the author of My Reality Check Bounced, Jason Dorsey, who talks openly about how parents have created this nightmare, er, social issue, and how society has to deal with it.
I particularly appreciated the emphasis of skilled labor over a traditional college education in an interview with a PhD. Seriously, there are more opportunities in these areas than white-collar jobs, and someone needs to start telling youth about them before those jobs, too, become contracted out to foreign countries. It was also interesting to see this change-the-world mindset embraced by Yers. Reminded me a bit of Boomers.
The book is also set up to be an informative tome for business leaders who have thrown up their hands in disgust or confusion at Yers who demand cells, laptops and company cars on top of a signing bonus just for stepping through their doors.
Millennial Leaders is fun and fast-paced, and will likely bring out the cynic in you when you read the youthful optimism, but will also open you up to a generation that isolates itself in online social networking and text messaging.
