Gary Hamel, a professor at the London Business School, talks about a world without bosses for the new Phoenix Lecture Series. His words are jarring and at first, way out there because from my American worldview working a corporate job, the hierarchy is just how things are and there is no other way to go about it. The business hierarchy is what our economy is fundamentally built upon. You break into the workforce as a bottom feeder, and after years and years of sucking up and smiling, you slowly inch your way up the corporate ladder. Such a system perpetuates only because as you reach that next level, it’s only fair that the fresh-faced recent graduate that has just started at your company yesterday goes through the same b.s. process. Helps build character, right? It sort of reminds me of that Kayak.com commercial I saw on TV about the “morons at the top”.

But Prof. Gary Hamel suggests otherwise. What if there was no hierarchy? What if you only did what you wanted to do and you couldn’t be compelled otherwise? What if the future of the company wasn’t about where the big dogs wanted to take the company, but was a crowd-sourced decision that everyone would be happy with? What if everyone is on the same level and you wouldn’t waste away the prime of your life sorting mail and getting coffee because your voice is as essential as anyone elses? I can barely fathom it myself but if there are companies out there that are as progressive as this, sign me up. As a pragmatist, I don’t see it working. I hope companies out there prove me wrong.

Hey everybody.

This is Mike here. Sorry that we’ve gone off the grid for quite a while now. Life has officially waylaid our plans to get this blog booming but if you did want to stay connected with my personal projects, check out my new blog project.

The project is called Faith Palm and the url is http://www.faithpalm.com/. If I had to put what the project is about into a couple sentences, I’d say that it’s an honest look at the silliness of some acts of religion and zeal, a sifting of all of the mumbo jumbo out there, shaking the extra quirky stuff onto the pages of my blog by me.

Check it out, comment, subscribe. We have a Twitter feed, a Facebook group and all that jazz going. Look forward to hearing from everyone!

As I am taking up a blue-collar filler job over the next couple of days that leaves me too physically exhausted to think, let alone string together cohesive sentences, coupled with the fact that I am experiencing the tail end of some sort of sickness I caught over Thanksgiving break, I’ll just post a quick tip with an amusing video.

1. Don’t lie on your resume. Don’t stretch the truth beyond your capabilities. Your resume represents a snapshot of your career stats and if you get hired based on your illegitimate body of work, you’ll quickly be outed when you can’t perform the job up to par.

Don’t be like this guy. Certified fork lift license, my butt.

Once again, Peter the Postgrad fails at finding a job and has to resort to some desperate (and shameful) measures.

Check out Peter the Postgrad Part 1 here!

The Misadventures of Peter the Postgrad is a bi-weekly web series chronicling the unfortunate happenings surrounding a recent graduate’s journey toward ‘adulthood’.

Here at The Postgrad, we like to have fun.  As such, we started a “for fun” original series called The Misadventures of Peter the Postgrad that will feature Peter, who just recently graduated college, experiencing different types of misfortune in his journey toward adulthood.  We will produce a new video bi-weekly, so check back to see what kind of awkward/horrible/unfortunate situation that Peter finds himself in a couple weeks!

Warning!  This is not a “work environment” friendly video!