TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

 Ranging from journalists to public officials there's a restriction on gifts. If they are allowed at all, the monetary amount has to be minimal. That's because, of course, implied in gift-giving is obligation. Early in romances we tend to discourage lavish gifts. It's obvious to us those probably don't come string-free. We're not ready to move the relationship to where the other party seems to want it. So, Leon Botstein, long-time president of Bard College, as well as other academic leaders, should have been aware that donations to the institutions by Jeffrey Epstein weren't without expectations. The New York Times documents: " ... previously unreported messages show how the college president gave the convicted felon access to Bard’s orbit, suggesting deeper ties than Dr. Botstein has so far acknowledged." That seems also the situation at universities such as Harvard which allowed Epstein in. Essentially he was not a passive donor. As for now-top lawy...

Maybe the solution to re-directing youth from college/advanced degrees is this: Stop praising them for stand-alone academic performance. Those who have gotten good at going to school could then get it that such a know-how is in less and less in demand.  Despite unemployment/underemployment rising among degree-holders and it's projected to get worse, higher education remains the path more traveled. An op-ed by Allysia Finley in The Wall Street Journal documents: "U.S. colleges awarded 2.2 million bachelor’s degrees last year, about twice as many as in 1990 … 860,000 Americans last year received a master’s degree, nearly triple the 1990 figure. Nearly 40% of Americans with a bachelor’s now have an advanced degree." Meanwhile, unemployment among college grads 22 to 27 is at 5.6%.  A headline on subreddit r/careeradvice reads: "41% of college grads are underemployed ..."  InsideHigherEducation puts that at 52% For those with advanced degrees the percentage? On p...

The tsk-tsking has started about the risk of having a leader being the brand - and a blockbuster one - for the business. Specifically Law.com runs an earnest article headlined: "Lessons from Paul Weiss: Can Law Firms Afford a Star Culture?"    And, sure, research such as by Jeffrey Lovelance in the Academy of Management documents that a celebrity leader can result in negative results for the organization. That is especially the situation when there are internal and/or external changes. Most who follow the history of business know that. When competition entered the auto market Henry Ford's rigidities almost collapsed the company. When returning to the CEO job at Disney celebrity player Bob Iger stuck to being an old-line media guy. The stock plummeted. The world had changed. In addition, the charm offensive was falling flat. Eventually Iger changed with the times. As AI becomes a crowded playing field Sam Altman's dominant presence at OpenAI could become a liability. S...

  Sure, the Dunkin commercial kept our attention. But otherwise, as Spun hammers, overall the commercials came across as a nuisance we had to put up with to take in Super Bowl 60. Some contend Anthropic's pitch about not carrying ads (as OpenAI is planning) was clever. But to me it seemed too clever by far. The formal term for that is "convoluted." So, what's the takeaway here? Is the disappointment with the pricey commercials partly a result of being embedded in a defensive game that wasn't exciting? Maybe. Also isn't what's palpable about the ads this: A lot of people were trying way too hard to make that investment in the commercials pan out.  Or, should we conclude that something bigger has gone on tonight? It could be yet another confirmation that advertising as a medium is dying. And only partly because of AI.  Advertising as we know it is less and less how we receive information, shift points of view or are nudged to part with our money. We go to s...

  Humans tend to be herd animals. Between 1997 and 2004 there had been a stampede to glorify creativity.  So celebrated was that capability that it didn't have to be bundled with accomplishment. It was enough just to be anointed "creative." Richard Florida systematized the concept in the seminal book "The Creative Class." Sectors known to require creativity such as advertising became glam. Otherwise the cable series "Mad Men" wouldn't have caught on. That was then. In The Wall Street Journal podcast about Super Bowl advertising reporter Suzanne Vranica is blunt: "The companies that own all these [advertising] agencies, they're contracting at a rapid clip. Creativity in terms of that part of the business had already been in a contracting stage … You're going to see lots of layoffs."  The same goes for creative sector public relations. O'Dwyer's newsletter documents that. And, hell, as I was told lots before I exited con...

Hiring is a high-risk decision.  Part of that is this:  Almost 50 percent will fail within 18 months in succeeding at what they were onboarded to accomplish.  But there are plenty of other risks, as former chair of Paul, Weiss Brad Karp found out this week. A "prize" hire back in 2016 - Scott Barshay - participated in the internal coup. Barshay now has Karp's job. The Wall Street Journal sizes up that hire a decade ago as among Karp's leadership milestone achievements: "Key to Karp’s success as a firm leader was bringing in Barshay. Karp had spent years publicly retelling the story of how he fought to poach Barshay in 2016 from rival firm Key Cravath to build Paul Weiss’s then-fledging mergers and acquisitions practice."  The WSJ adds that Barshay had told partners over and over again that he had no desire to be chair. Should that the "lady does protest too much, methinks" have been a red flag about ambition? Obviously leaders have to factor in th...