Tammy Erickson has been blogging about Gen Y and the workplace in advance of her forthcoming book, Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work.

I spoke to Tammy not along ago about some of the generational issues in the workplace. As the father of two teenagers, I like her approach in the new book, which speaks directly to young people, rather than exoticizing them for an older audience -- although managers seeking to understand the new workforce will want to read this book, too. (It's also a nice break from the cookie-cutter biz books that clutter my office.)

This passage caught my eye: "Your real gift is not so much that you know how to use the technology; it's that the way you use the technology causes you to think and act differently." Leveraging those differences will be a key to success for businesses in the years aghead. I'll pull a few hundred words from this section of the book for our book excerpt feature in next month's print edition.