TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

Wichita, Kansas is one of those cities in the midwest which is growing. That means it is offering humans a reason to be there.  That's what makes what's going on at the Walmart on Seneca so cringy.  In the early morning this Wednesday there is little sign of human labor.  A robo cleaner mops the floors. It whirls around so quickly I jumped.  The two check-outs which should have people ringing up your groceries and packing them are not open. You have to go to the automated check-out.  The one human I spot working is in the financial services center where you can get a money order and such. In the afternoon that human might run from the center to open a check-out for a bit and then back again to the financial center, operating both posts. I had remarked to her that seemed difficult to manage. No comment. Only a plastered smile. Overall, from what I pick up in conversations, there is no outcry about a "lack of service." No protest about the obvious threat to human ...

  There's a job drought. So, the buzz is about the best platforms on which to hunt and apply. LinkedIn ranks high, of course. Its signature is career everything.  But the brutal reality is that, as a poster on Blind points out, a single opening can attract 500 applications. Not 100. Back in boomer days - yes, we were the luckiest generation in America - the advertised job might bring in about 20 applications, with four actually being flown in for an interview. And the meetings could all take place that day, with no further interviews.  For the initial screening among the 500, you have to retrofit the resume and cover letter for AI and also cost-efficiency. That means everything from using the necessary keywords to documenting that you are an exact fit in experience for the very detailed job specifications. If you get to the interview phase the first one could be conducted remotely by AI. You have to research how to perform in that. I had assessed job candidates and on th...

Nimble Paul Weiss has an excellent track record for transformation. That kicked in when current chair Brad Karp become leader in 2008.  Disruption as Chairman's Signature Karp discerned that the firm couldn't remain a top New York player solely as a litigation player. He built transactional practices.  More recently he got it that global competition was intensifying in the legal sector. He expanded the firm's worldwide footprint. That included enhancing the star quality of the London office by multiple raids on rival Kirkland & Ellis. Currently London is a major profit center for Paul Weiss. Turning Supposed Lemons into Lemonade Now, there's the matter of the flight of nine litigation partners and six litigation associates to boutique Dunn Isaacson Rhee. The latest partners to join are Martha Goodman and Amy Mauser. Most of them specialize in tech matters. Their clients have ranged from Alphabet to Apple. Earlier litigation partner Damian Williams had gone to law fi...

  We were warned that the conflicts in the Middle East were pulling down Futures. Some of us expected another 700-point nosedive on the Dow. But the damage, at least so far, has been less than a 100 points. Boomer hearts rest easy. Dow Jones Industrial Average Index Index: DJI Compare 42,448.36 USD ▼  -66.73 (-0.16%) today June 17, 10:19 AM EDT  ·  Market Open Rattled by the uncertainty? Faith-based Career Coaching. Special expertise with transitions, reskilling and aging. Psychic/tarot readings, upon request. Complimentary consultation with Jane Genova (Text 203-468-8579, janegenova374@gmail.com ). Yes, test out the chemistry.

  "I have two Masters degrees." That's what a woman who wanted to unretire told me during the complimentary coaching consultation I offer. She then added: "I had done contract assignments around the world for multi-national corporations." Gently I informed her that the world of work she had known had changed. Among the disruptions were: Much of higher education is being treated as a liability since employers anticipate they're expected to pay premium wages. Unless the credentials are an exact fit to the very specialized job specifications previous experience doesn't count. Her age would be held against her. ProPublica research documented that harsh reality. In addition, she hadn't kept up with hands-on expertise in technology or had even developed a LinkedIn profile and following. But she is not atypical. And it isn't all about aging. The go-getters among Gen Zers had made all the right moves and now BusinessInsider reports this: "Based on...

Whether the law firms cut a deal with the Trump administration or successfully sued about the legality of the Executive Orders, they have been dramatically impacted.  As The New York Times documents, US President Donald Trump promised change and that's what he set in play in the legal sector. According to those in the loop, he's mildly surprised that he has triggered such an upheaval. Law firms will never be able to return to their pre-election branding and operations.  A leader with a deep understanding of media, Trump has kept this legal story alive way behind the usual expiration dates for such developments.  It was in late March of this year, for instance, that the chair of Paul Weiss Brad Karp made his controversial journey to the Oval Office to negotiate the firm's way out of an Executive Order. That saga, along with its fallouts, remains sticky. In the past few days influential Law.com featured Karp's meeting with litigation partners, reassuring them of the heal...

 It's becoming an evening ritual for boomers to check Dow futures on CNBC. Last night they were rising and we slept soundly. Predictably, the Dow opened this morning up more than 200 points. Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI: ^DJI 42,402.05 +204.26  (+0.48%) As of Mon. Jun 16, 2025 9:30 AM EDT · Free Realtime Quote (USD) · Market open For this we're grateful. Actually, we've settled into a mindset of "enoughness." As long as we seem to have enough for the next 10, 20 years or more we have found a new level of contentment.  In my intuitive coaching I am hearing less about boomers feeling like failures because their college or graduate/professional school classmates have made the big time in wealth, influence and power.  That comparison game has screeched to a halt. They just don't want to be homeless or forced into a kind of pathological frugality. There are already those who lament compulsively that tomatoes went from 82 cents a pound to 98 cents. They don'...

  Recently law firms Kirkland & Ellis added more than 300 lawyers and Paul Weiss lost nine litigation partners.  But those additions and reductions in headcount may become an irrelevant metric in sizing up where a business is at. Actually, a growing manpower number could become a downright liability. More on point will be revenue, profits, productivity, geographical footprint, ranking in innovation and, for public companies, the stock price. Without apology or sugarcoating Brit telecommunications player BT's CEO Allison Kirby  discussed massive cuts in headcount by 2030. What's driving that is not only generative AI itself. But also as Kirby puts it: what the company can be learning from AI during the rest of the decade. The Reductions in Force could exceed 40,000. Kirby adds that such an estimate "does not reflect the full potential of AI." Just look at how Big Law operates. The fewer the partners the higher the Profits Per Equity Partner, the greater the opport...

  Alex Soros is 39 years old. Huma Abedin 49.  Weddings are seminal rituals for launching/cementing power. That extends from royalty in medieval times in their marriages arranged across nations to this weekend's tying of the knot between what has been declared by The New York Times as the new "It Couple" in Democratic party positioning and packaging.   The torch may have now passed to a new generation. It was politically savvy Hillary Clinton who advised Soros and Abedin not to elope. Instead, they hosted one of the major wedding events of 2025. A sign of their influence, the front lines of progressive wealth and power attended from around the world. This emerging force field could be the most effective strategy to undermine the continuity of the Trump administration. Not the traditional approach of mass protests. Or maybe not lawsuits either. The determination of that administration to impose its ideologies was made brutally clear when it issued Executive Orders on...

  We journalists (that's how I started out my former 30-year career in communications) tend to bristle when editors tell us: Rewrite. Usually we argue why the article is strong, the way it is. After all, the writing is pulled from our inner being. Well, the two editors at Italian publication Il Foglio don't have to deal with that pushback when telling ChatGPT to redo an article. That, of course, makes "hiring" ChatGPT more attractive than having to deal with journalists with lots of ego.  Since March of this year at Il Foglio Claudio Cerasa has been piloting an AI experiment. That is a four-page insert with ChatGPT-created articles and headlines. Two hands-on editors oversee the style and content, including the inaccuracies AI is known to generate. And, yes, it will instruct ChatGPT to rewrite.  The world is watching. And that's not only those in the media loop.  Those in professional services, for example, produce plenty of high-stakes content. Be that a slide de...

Oh, we boomers were lucky.  Cherished after the carnage of World War II, industries and institutions were created to service us.  We were the first generation to attend college en masse. Back then it was downright cheap.  A sustained economic growth boom made it easy to get and change jobs. We joked: So, they fired us. We walk across the street and land another job paying $20k more, with tuition paid by the new employer for the MBA.  Some made it to the top and stayed. They include Disney's Bob Iger (74), Paul Weiss' Brad Karp (64) and JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon (69). Rebellion? There were no tradeoffs for speaking up. Because of our large numbers - 76 million - society was plum scared of us.   Sure, the Jack Welch-types of downsizings of corporations in the late 1980s were a setback. But by then we understood business and could set up our own boutiques. In our 70s many of us are still operating them or other enterprises we started.  Along the way we inve...

  It was clear: You had to be on Blue Sky. That was the platform for thought leadership which wasn't boxed in by biased conservative ideology.  There was a rush to follow and be followed. Now, what's in the ether is the perception that Blue Sky has hardened into an echo chamber of angry liberalism. Tech Crunch  sums up some of the beefs. When viewpoints become predictable what's the motivation to listen to those conversations or be part of them? That sad state of affairs was what helped kill off the influence of HuffPost. Before reading an article we knew exactly the tired liberal stance it would take and even the supposed evidence to support the rant.  As The Verge notes, though, the Blue Sky platform is more than just a social network. But the dings to its branding can reduce interest in those other aspects. To get, hold and accelerate attention an entity must be full of surprises. OpenAI continually comes out with eye-bugging text and image products. In addition, ...

The world looks at Vishwash Kumar Ramesh for insight about survival. He was the only one in the India Air jet who didn't perish.  Bloomberg might have nailed it with this headline: " ‘I Got Up and Ran’: How One Man Survived Plane Crash That Killed 241 " That could be the meme for this volatile era for how to make it through everything from earning a living to deciding about relationships. That is, learn to get up and run.  In my career coaching I am bearing witness to so much suffering by humans who remain in declining situations too long. On professional anonymous networks such as Reddit, Fishbowl, Blind and Glassdoor there are laments about how their sector is being downsized by cost-efficiency, Generative AI and more. They wonder what they should do. But usually they do nothing. Then comes the layoff, along with no way back in. Instead, like Ramesh, they should have got up and ran.  Of course, they should be running toward something. What is The Next has to be on ever...

WORLD ON EDGE.  That's the headline on Drudge Report. The reason is Israel's attack on Iran.  Globally, markets tumble. Here in the US Dow Futures plunged 600 points (at 3:00 AM New York Time). What we know about how the stock market operates during crisis is that there could be a decline well beyond that. So, here we boomers are: Again, the value of our investments is in play. For a while we felt safe, maybe even blessed.  Now?  The really scary part is that there is no longer a lot of gigs available to bring in extra income and that they're harder to get. In fact, I have discontinued coaching those who decide to unretire. They are too out of touch in everything from how AI has changed job search to how employers have the upper hand. UPDATE: Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI: ^DJI 42,338.88 -628.74  (-1.46%) As of Fri. Jun 13, 2025 9:59 AM EDT · Free Realtime Quote (USD) · Market open Rattled by the uncertainty? Faith-based Career Coaching. Special expertise w...

  The New York Times focused in an organized way what many are thinking: What if Harvard, as a result of the Trump administration's actions, is no longer Harvard? No longer being Harvard, the article points out, is possible. And it quotes Larry Summers, former president of Harvard (2001 to 2006), who puts it this way: “We would lose influence all over the world ... Instead of being the world’s pre-eminent university, after a few years, Harvard would be just another school.” That means the "value" of a degree - undergraduate and from graduate programs and professional schools - could decline globally. Actually, if the perception that the administration has of a Harvard education hardens into accepted reality those degrees could even become a liability. For instance, "Harvard trained" could be interpreted as "trained wrong."  Will medical doctors, lawyers and management consultants with professional degrees from Harvard miss out on being hired, promoted...

  Oh, there was that smug rant among creatives: Generative AI lacks the human touch so it wouldn't threaten their jobs.  Well, as we see at enterprise brand content creator Contently , Gen AI has come a long way with the stylistics and text that engage in a very human way. Ad empire WPP is racing to integrate that technology in a big way.  Trash talk like that is now making creatives seem stuck in pre-ChatGPT time. But they're still at it. The new wrinkle on that is this: Gen AI isn't proficient in storytelling. Well, when we prompt it to profile our career path it comes out as packaged as a narrative, not bullet points. Yes, it even connects the dots on how it all comes together.  Then there are the critics of Paul Weiss, which made a deal with the Trump administration instead of suing it for imposing an Executive Order. They got the attention. A seeming coup for putting the knock on this law firm is the recent departure of seven litigation partners to launch their ...

  The recent partner flight of litigators from Paul Weiss delighted critics of its dealmaking with the Trump administration. And, sure, it probably did a bit of damage to the brand.  But as for the business - and the deal was made to protect the business - it's likely still as strong as it can be in this era of intensified global competition and the threats coming from economic uncertainty.  What happens in the court of public relations can be separate from what's going on in revenues and profits. Whether it's a spill or fossil fuels, Big Oil can take it on the chin in public relations. But simultaneously it could be making record profits and having more folks apply for its credit cards.  Here's the reality for Paul Weiss. Roy Strom explains in  Bloomberg Law  that increasingly litigation is not  the  business of that law firm. Corporate transactions are. He notes that there has been:  " ... a long-term trend at Paul Weiss, with the firm...

  With the usual fanfare in AI, Anthropic rolled out AI blog Claude Explains. The focus was highly technical. But the model was supposed to showcase how humans and AI can work together effectively. Also the stylistics were to feature human-like writing. A knock put on AI content is that it's not engaging.  Early on, 21 websites linked to Claude Explains. That was impressive. Very soon after its introduction, though, Claude Explains has been eliminated from Anthropic's website and what had been posted also had been eliminated.  Tech Crunch reports that Anthropic has positioned its experience with Claude Explains as "pilot." But, for many of us that's now how we thought about the blog. We considered it as another sign that a common role in communications - blogging - was being taken over by AI.  Among the complaints about the blog was a lack of transparency. It couldn't be determined what was done by humans and what by AI.  Anthropic could have enhanced its bra...

  What Paul Weiss feared would happen if it didn't have the Trump administration Executive Order rescinded has happened - even though it was lifted through dealmaking, That's this: partner flight. The latest partner exit is Melissa Zappala . That's to join the newly formed boutique Dunn Isaacson Rhee. She had represented Meta and Qualcomm.  Already six other former Paul Weiss partners are part of that boutique.  Before that two other partners had also departed. They are Jeb Johnson and Damian Williams.  So far, a total of nine partners have left that elite law firm after Paul Weiss struck a deal with the administration in late March 2025.  The departures in themselves can ding the brand. In addition, they can make the law firm vulnerable to being raided of top talent.  These exits could have implications both in the court of law and in the business of the firm. Rattled by the uncertainty? Faith-based Career Coaching. Special expertise with transitions, resk...

As long as it isn't down ... Dow Jones Industrial Average Index Index: DJI Compare 42,779.02 USD ▲  +16.15 (+0.038%) today June 9, 9:30 AM EDT  ·  Market Open Day Week Month Year 5 Year Max 10:00 12:00 2:00 3:30 42,400 42,700 43,000 Vol  

Advertising becomes just another sector being crushed by intensified competition and AI. The "Mad Men" kind of glam is gone. As for creativity AI can now exude plenty of that in both stylistics and content. And quit that knock on it for lacking the human touch. By now it simulates the human quite well.  Evidence of the beating the ad business is taking is that Mark Read , who headed WPP since 2018, is exiting that role. WPP is the parent of, among others, Ogilvy and GroupM. It was Sir Martin Sorrell, whom Read had succeeded, who put together that giant entity through acquisitions. It's always about the share price. That has gone down by more than half since Read took over.  But, will new leadership restore WPP to its glory days? Like so many other industries, be they practicing law or management consulting, the ad business is being pulled into a whole new order of things. Sooner than later the model could be a small number of strategists and editors overseeing massive AI...