TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

  Blessed. Those of us born after WW II. That's how it was. The GI bill was the beginning of universal access to college. The post-war economic boom would be kicking off. Unlike our parents, many immigrants, we wouldn't have been broken in spirit by The Great Depression. Authority figures were socializing us in the graces of the middle class and above. Always use correct grammar. Make friends and influence people. Go to a WASPy church. Yesyesyes, we could become that era's analogue of a Larry Summers, Leon Black, Kathy Ruemmler and more.  Now, through the Epstein Files we have confirmed that maybe the values we were born into were the right way to live. Was all that scramble to become upper middle class so misguided? Actually, impossible? Now we also know what it's like. There is the highly educated leader who held big jobs. Larry Summers. He expected sexual favors in return for snippets of mentoring. He uses the crude expression of going "horizontal." So, tha...

  Once glam and dripping with creative cool, the advertising sector is crashing, documents The Wall Street Journal.  The 3,000 jobs lost last December had represented just the tip of the iceberg. Bigger signs of existential trouble are these: "The market capitalization of Ogilvy parent  WPP  ... has fallen from more than $30 billion in 2017 to less than $4 billion today ...  Publicis Groupe  saw its  shares fall sharply  in February after its outlook failed to dispel investor concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence on its business." Amidst this implosion one model is proving effective. Unlike the ethos of the old-line ad agencies it celebrates being midwestern and is based there for cost-efficiency, doesn't aim for rapid growth positioning that as stability, is low-tech and has a close interface with clients. That's the Bark Firm, housed in Casper, Wyoming. Operating in the brand space since 2009, it's thriving.  Could that...

 Some of us anticipated that, unless Congress intervened, our Social Security monthly payment would be cut. Now, we're finding out this : That could happen in six years and the percentage of reduction could be 20%. So, if you're receiving about $2,000 a month, that could be cut by about $400. Therefore, those of us blessed with investments in equities are downright obsessed with the stock market. That could provide one of the few options to make ends meet. It is getting more difficult for the aging to land work, any kind.  At 1:10 AM ET futures are down: Dow Futures 49,392.00 Fair Value 49,566.42 Change - 177.00 0.36%  Implied Open - 174.42 Another option to supplement Social Security is to become a solopreneur. I have been doing just that since 1987. Four years ago, I reset the business for another line of work. That edge the over-65 have in entrepreneurship is that we receive Medicare. In my coaching I'm hearing that younger generations c...

 If the university were a close friend, you would start ducking it. That's because it doesn't stop putting the muscle on everyone, not just alumni and the wealthy, for money. My mother, a cleaning lady residing in a bad part of pre-gentrified Jersey City, New Jersey, would receive pleas for donations. As an adult, I put my alma mater on the do not contact list. I warned about legal action if any communications got through. That chase after money, as The New York Times documents, has gotten higher education's leaders, at all levels from president to professors to administrators in a dental school, in trouble. Emails disclose they sucked up to Jeffrey Epstein. That gush might have been authentic, that is an assumption they were buddies, or what the job requires, that is gladhanding with deep pockets. The elephant in the room is this: Why can't higher education become cost-efficient like public companies. It's heavy with administrative manpower. Provides money-losing ...

  Capitalism is conducting what The Wall Street Journal calls A  Grand Experiment. The top leadership job - that is, the CEO position - is experiencing churn. One in nine CEOs in public companies has been replaced. And who's taking their place are younger and less experienced players. Driving this are: " ... the swift rise of artificial intelligence, the unraveling of long-established trade practices and an unsettled economy and geopolitical order." Why put value on experience when everything is changing? The deciders are giving a new generation a crack at achieving growth in unprecedented times.  Other institutions might also get the message.  The comments to this WSJ article hammer that so many of the aging in public office should also be replaced. The noise is full of mandates for term limits.  Higher education is in shambles, ranging from a declining pool of applicants to the scramble for funding to the Epstein Files. Apollo CEO Mark Rowan is in the front ...

The big guns in AI are giving it straight off the shoulder about the impact of that technology on knowledge work. The CEO of AI at Microsoft Mustafa Suleyman , for example, anticipates catastrophe and at an accelerated pace: "So white-collar work, where you're sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months." Iconic author of "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" and professor at UC Berkeley Stuart Russell is equally pessimistic about a broad range of white collar tasks. He puts that at 80% unemployment:  "He suggested that sectors once considered safe — from driving and logistics to accounting, software engineering, and even medicine — are likely to be swept up in the coming wave of automation." Russell also projects surgeons will be wiped out by robots. CEOs aren't safe either. A world with...