TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

  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...