TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

  I am honored that LinkedIn News is featuring my article on how Ford is managing "underperformers." Throughout business so many other organizations are also raising the bar on assessing performance. Here is my point of view . In transition in your career? Need more income? Healing from a professional setback? Intuitive career coaching. “On the menu” of services are Tarot readings, both spreads and one-card pulls. Complimentary consultation. Please contact  janegenova374@gmail.com  or text 203-468-8579. 

  Mom, along with the career departments in universities, meant well. They talked turkey with you and nudged you forcefully into  STEM  majors. Those are: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.  Now this. As  Axios  documents among the disciplines getting hit hardest with plummeting labor-market demand are: Software Development - Down 29% Mathematics - Down 26% Scientific Research - Down 20%. In those fields it is increasingly difficult to get a job, hold a job, and move on to better jobs. Professional anonymous network Reddit Jobs confirms the findings of Axios. Here in this  thread  are detailed the now-typical suffering that is standard in a job search in a STEM area.  What is happening in STEM, of course, is not a new pattern. Often we invest time, money, hope, and the opportunity cost in gaining training and hands-on experience in a niche that is marketable - at the time. As time passes, the labor-market changes.  That was the poignant undoing of the law graduat

  You are notified that you are laid off. You didn't receive the promotion you worked so hard for. After four interviews the company is ghosting you. Therefore, you are as the saying goes  Shocked into Silence.  That's the silver lining in a reversal of fortune, disappointment, and uncertainty. And the Tarot's High Priestess Card opens the portal to how you can begin listening to the messages of the universe. As Kim Huggens explains in the  Complete Guide the Tarot Illuminati : "Perhaps this takes the form of simply listening to another person, listening to one's inner voice, listening to one's intuition, or instinct, listening to silence ..." In that pause can come unique Ah-Ha moments or epiphanies. That kind of insight often isn't available in the noise of routine - and the usual noise in our heads (Buddhists call that "monkey mind").  It is interesting to note that in a seminal interview with  SuperLawyers , Brad Karp, chair

"'Underperforming' white-collar workers at Ford will be offered severance pay or asked to take part in a 'performance-enhancement plan ...'"  - LinkedIn , October 31, 2022 Employers, of course, establish the criteria as well as the methodology for measuring this thing called "performance." Way back in the 1980s, GE CEO Jack Welch introduced "Rank and Yank." Performance was assessed in a competitive manner among employees. Those in the bottom tier were terminated. Of course, fear was a dominant emotion at GE.  Ford is leveraging both the slowed-down economy and the need to retool skills for the technology of Electric Vehicles as the strategic justification for its version of rank and yank. In this situation employees have the option of PIP - that is, a proposal to improve performance.  Overall, the bar for even satisfactory performance - not just the kind that merits a promotion, raise, and/bonus - is being raised. On  Fishbowl Consulting  t

  When hatchet job on Wall Street and Big Law - "The Caesars Palace Coup" - came out in March 2021 it got a lot of attention. For a while. That had been sustainable for about 12 months. Since then, it's in Amazon rankings hell at 250,619.  More recent exposes probably won't even have that good a run. Already another hatchet job, this time focused narrowly on Goldman Sachs - "Bully Market" - is already down to 27,990. That was fast. It seems like just yesterday that its author Jamie Fiore Higgins was jaw-jawing on "Today."  And the slam on Big Law out about six weeks ago - "Servants of the Damned" - wobbled down to 12,894. Meanwhile, the how-to for entrepreneurs "Zero to One" by venture capitalist Peter Thiel is at 2,398. It had been originally published in 2014. Do the math. Obviously the market favors positivity. Thiel explains if you do this and don't do that you could have a shot at launching and growing a successful ente

 " When I brought this up [alleged age-biased/sexist remarks] with my manager he said 'CEO is a boomer, he says boomer things'. Is this type of sexism common? Any legalities with that?" -  Post on Fishbowl Startups and Entrepreneurship, October 2022. Here is the thread.   Surprisingly, only one response to the post, at least so far, noted how age-biased it is to put in writing the existence of that alleged conversation. Since it was supposed to have occurred in a phone exchange which hadn't been recorded, there is no evidence that it even had transpired.  In these language-sensitive times referring to public remarks about "boomer things" throws shade on a whole generation. The reality is that no leader or manager in any age category would remain in that position long if there was inappropriate public discourse.   Will Fishbowl delete the thread?  In transition in your career? Need more income? Healing from a professional setback? Intuitive career coachin

  When hatchet job on Wall Street and Big Law - "The Caesars Palace Coup" - came out in March 2021 it got a lot of attention. For a while. That had been sustainable for about 12 months. Since then, it's in Amazon rankings hell at 250,619.  More recent exposes probably won't even have that good a run. Already another hatchet job, this time focused narrowly on Goldman Sachs - "Bully Market" - is already down to 27,990. That was fast. It seems like just yesterday that its author Jamie Fiore Higgins was jaw-jawing on "Today."  And the slam on Big Law out about six weeks ago - "Servants of the Damned" - wobbled down to 12,894. Meanwhile, the how-to for entrepreneurs "Zero to One" by venture capitalist Peter Thiel is at 2,398. It had been originally published in 2014. Do the math. Obviously the market favors positivity. Thiel explains if you do this and don't do that you could have a shot at launching and growing a successful ente

"Musk's personal lawyer, Alex Spiro of Quin Emmanuel [sic], was on hand, effectively splitting the workload with Musk ... Spiro took on legal, compliance and content moderation work. While Spiro's role is not formal, one person close to the deal described him as the 'de facto' head of legal for Twitter right now.” - Insider , October 28, 2022 At Quinn Emanuel, where he is a partner,  Spiro  co-chairs Investigations and more. Focusing in on one major client - and even being physically embedded at their sites - is common among Big Law lawyers. And in that specialized role they can become stars in the legal sector firmament.  That's exactly how Jones Day's partner  Don McGahn  became famous. During the 2016 US Presidential election McGahn glued himself to serving Donald Trump's campaign. Later, as many know, he left Jones Day to head legal at the White House, then returned to Jones Day when that role was over. Paul Weiss associates manning the lucrative  A

  If Nancy Pelosi had been home, as was her husband Paul, she might have been  badly injured . Or worse.  In these crazed polarized times she and actually all public servants are vulnerable to physical attack. That's not even factoring in the vilification they endure from social media and on social networks. It seems like an overdue idea to pay all public servants temporary combat pay. That should be in-place until there is more political, social, and economic stability. And, come to think about it, what about practicing lawyers. After all, they are officers of the court. Legalities are littered with landmines. Some of us vividly recall how fictional lawyer  Will Gardner  from "The Good Wife" had been fatally gunned down in court by a deranged client. Lawyers handling controversial litigation are certainly magnets for whatever. For example, woman of color Loretta Lynch is the lead defense in the racial bias lawsuit "Brian Flores, et al. v NFL."  Here  is

 DOW JONES: 32,861.80 USD ▲  +828.52 (+2.59%) today October 28, 4:20 PM EDT  ·

  Let's cut to the chase. If a mentor or even a supervisor wants to provide well-intentioned recommendations on how you can improve your professional performance, they should be doing that in a private totally off-the-record informal conversation. Not via a formal totally on-the-record performance review.  The official performance review has always served as a kind of documentation for termination. In the GE empire that Jack Welch has created the system was known as rank-and-yank. If what was checked off on your performance review and the textual comments put you at the bottom of your group, you were out. The formal review process released the corporation from any legal liability in the firing. And since it was a firing it skipped that paying unemployment insurance cost. Currently, in this choppy economy in which cost-reduction can mean survival more and more businesses are using the performance review to quickly downsize the manpower expense. An added advantage of this kind of

"Help! My friend won’t stop complaining about work and I just can’t take any more"   -  CNBC , October 28, 2022. Obviously, this person's friend hasn't discovered all those professional anonymous networks such as Reddit, Fishbowl, and Blind. There are units and subunits for just about every line of work. In addition there are overarching ones like Reddit Career Questions.  Not only are those venues exactly right for ranting. Seasoned players with information and insight provide useful responses to whatever situations are being presented. Here, for example, is the Fishbowl Consulting thread about all the artificial urgency created in terms of deadlines.  Meanwhile, complaining about work has always branded the whiner as a loser. And downright dangerous to the business. After I started my enterprises in 2004, former colleagues wanted contract work with me. You bet, I didn't hire any of the complainers. Not only did I not want to put up with the negativity. I assume

 DOW JONES: 32,449.02 USD ▲  +415.74 (+1.30%) today October 28, 9:56 AM EDT  

   It had been way back more than a year ago that first-year associate at law firm Akin Gump Julia Ghahramani died from cocaine laced with fentanyl. Yet that story keeps resurfacing.  This week  RollonFriday  revisits it. And  Reddit Big Law  considers the issue if the energy from cocaine is what's making possible those 2,500 hours billed in law firms.  Is what's keeping this on the radar the hunch that use of the illegal substance cocaine is common among those practicing law? After all, in addition to being an energy-booster, it provides a nice reward for such hard-working lawyers. Also, they have the earnings to afford it. Most of the rest of gunners have to stick with boozing. So, why not?  The reality might be setting in that the death could simply have been an aberration. Think about it this way: Ghahramani had bad luck in her alleged choice of dealers. Others might be able to exert more scrutiny in overseeing the content of the illegal drugs they sold. The message c

"A lot of chairs feel that slower deal flow, softer economy and softer performance in many firms ... gives them cover to address areas of weakness in their firm that were harder culturally to address in a strong economy.  What I hear chairs and managing partners indicate is they’re thinking about cleaning up." - Law-firm consultant at Zeughauser Kent Zimmermann quoted by the  American Lawyer,  October 2022 Will there be a Stalin-like purge targeted at highly paid associates in law firms? That would make good business sense. Eliminate enough of those associate annual salaries, which start at 215k and quickly rise to nosebleed levels, and Profits Per Equity Partner can continue to grow. That would be despite the slowing global economy and falloff in demand in a variety of practices. Such a strategy would prevent: Throwing shade on the brand by a decline in PEP. Those statistics are made public.   The flight of star partners to firms which can cough up the

  It's so human to want to trust. And in these chaotic economic times that's what getting some employees blindsided. The company says X and then does Y. The Y results in layoffs. Many of the workers tell me in coaching:  I never saw it coming.  They should have.  However, workers should forgive themselves for not having researched and analyzed the conditions affecting their employers and the probability of a reduction-in-force - or of a quiet firing.  Even respected stock analyst Jim Cramer admitted today on CNBC - here is the  video  - that he really goofed in trusting Meta. He says he should have trusted his own gut. After all, he has been in the business of assessing stocks for 40 years. As everyone knows, Meta's stock price, which hadn't been doing well for a while, took a real tumble today. Right now (3:15 PM ET) it's at 97.94. That's down 31.88 points from yesterday or 24.56%. At this point it's a long way from the 52-week high of 353.83. The near futu

 "Elon Musk: Twitter acquistion is 'important to the future of civilization.'" Yahoo Finance,  October 27, 2022 Or, maybe in a grade school vocabulary class such an assessment would illustrate the state of "sucking up all the oxygen."  As simple buzz, it's an eye-roller. In transition in your career? Need more income? Healing from a professional setback? Intuitive career coaching. “On the menu” of services are Tarot readings, both spreads and one-card pulls. Complimentary consultation. Please contact  janegenova374@gmail.com  or text 203-468-8579. 

"More than half (56%) of people who started a new, better-paying role in the last year are worried about their job security, according to financial services company  Bankrate , which surveyed 2,458 U.S. adults in August."  - CNBC , October 27, 2022. This development should be no surprise.  In times when the focus is brutally on cost-reduction as is now high pay makes the employees a target for termination. That is exactly a driver in forcing out the over-50 in organizations. Their pay scale is too high and they can be replaced by those with just enough experience who would accept a third of their compensation. Employers are increasingly unwilling to pay for what they assess as "too much experience." All they want is for the specific job to get done. That is exactly why resumes and cover letters (if one is requested) should be configured to the specs for a particular job.  In addition, there is the Last In, First Out phenomenon.  There are myriad reasons why there i