Over-50

Baby Boomers & Generational Conflict - "The Lawyer Bubble" by Steven J. Harper

In "Downton Abbey," the generations, both downstairs among the servants and upstairs representing the business interests, co-exist.  There is little of that cross-generational conflict we find in the current workplace. 

We Baby Boomers, who want or need to keep working, are perceived as blocking the gate for youth to have access to good jobs and move up in organizations.  Since this is a growing problem and it has regulatory implications, it's no surprise a thought leader with a legal background has looked into it.

Former partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis Steven J. Harper includes in his book "The Lawyer Bubble" recommendations for making the workplace more equitable and how Baby Boomers can keep reinventing themselves.

Essentially Harper advocates organizational policies which recognize the realities of aging.  Most of us Baby Booomers are not equipped to do this on an individual basis.  For instance, something I didn't want to admit was that, in my late 60s, I couldn't take on a client assignment which involved sustained long hours and national travel.  Harper notes:

"Until America's big-firm leaders become wiser about all of this, aging baby boomers will continue to face an unhappy dilemma: embrace marginalization or hog opportunities. How they resolve it has profound implications for attorneys of all ages and their firms."

For law firms, the solution could include mandatory retirement. That's just out there as an option.  A more attractive option would be creating exit ramps leading from daily responsibilities more suited to middle age and youth to engrossing work that carries prestige.  That is, a new kind of future is mapped out for us.

An example Harper provides is the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard. There "fellows" develop ideas and plans on how to implement them.  Movers and shakers who are aging likely would view that Next as a path which leads in a new direction.  On it they have opportunities to network with seminal thinkers and launch projects which could be game-changers.

In both developed economies such as that of the U.S. and Japan and emerging ones such as that of China and India, policies have to be instituted to help us Baby Boomers help ourselves.  If we do that, then Generations X and Y might be more willing to open doors for us.  As things stand, at least in my field of communications, Millennials in media tend to block us who have learned to navigate digital from getting in. We, in turn, are backing off from the usual task of mentoring newbies to the workplace.

 

Baby Boomer Lawyers: Navigating Tech To Boost Profits

Some day, some watchers of the legal sector predict, you lawyers will be delivering your services from sleek Apple-like retail sites, both brick and mortar and virtual.  That could be.  But right now, as there are signs of growth in demand for legal services, you Baby Boomer lawyers want to capture that.  The future is speculation and speculation doesn't attract new business.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Laws.com Boris Kreiman fingers marketing as the number-one blind spot for how most lawyers, of all generations, manage their practices.  And that's because you have been conditioned to lawyer, not invest time in the business of staying in business.  And within that blind spot, often the black hole is leveraging technology.

"What I refer to as 'technology' could be need to have a web presence with a high Google ranking," says Kreiman.  "To get results from, for example, an investment in search engine optimization (SEO) demands that lawyers take the time to learn about search engine technology so that they can ask the right questions, and then take more time to shop around interviewing vendors." 

 Other urgent issues related to technology might include how to mine the data you have about your practice to connect the dots on the most profitable segments.  You don't have to be an expert in predictive analystics to do that.  You just have to develop a curiosity about the variables which convert into the prospects taking action. Or you might be convinced that you need to piggyback on someone else's tech platform to connect with the right customers.  Laws.com has developed a proprietary algorithm which links consumers with lawyers by legal specializations and location.  Here you can find out more. 

Meanwhile the most useful guide on how to reconfigure your mindset for a marketplace which keeps changing is the new book "The Startup of You" by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.  Essentially the message is that how to pursue a career has been transformed from a linear path to a whole bunch of interrelated moving parts and personalities which you open yourself up to.  That's where opportunity emerges.  And that's where you have to identify it, pounce it, and exploit it for all it's worth.

 Full Disclosure: I assist Laws.com with communications.

RECOVERY! Be prepared for good things to happen fast

A new crisis is emerging for some of us Baby Boomers.  That's the shift in the economy from recessionary to growth.  The February Jobs Report chronicled that change.

For those of us which have already felt the impact of better times, the challenge is to reconfigure our mindset and behavior from hard times to ones filled with opportunity.

Last week I not only landed a job in lower Manhattan with an ecommerce company.  ABC News also interviewed me about that.  Here is the clip of that interview.  Colleagues I hadn't heard from since the days I had worked full time in the Fortune 500 contacted me. 

Yes, we have to absorb that things can move fast.

Baby Boomers & Working: Setting our minds to it

Sometimes age has nothing to do with it.  Sometimes what gets us that plum assignment or job is the mindset.  We are determined to speedread the situation on an interview and pull out the best and most compelling evidence that we are the perfect fit for what that organization needs.

Relentlessly I competed with professionals in their late 20s and early 30s for a full-time mostly telecommuting legal communications opportunity.  I got the job.  I am 67 years old.  On this platform I can build my new career path, which I have a hunch can be lucrative. 

There is a saying: Change or die (at least in the sense of being highly employable).  I changed.  There were times, though, that I thought that I was dying.

Leaving Our Comfort Zone: Is habit holding us Baby Boomers back professionally?

Impossible, I assumed.  How could I even get to an interview for contract work from New Haven, Connecticut to lower Manhattan, I thought to myself.  That would involve taking the bus from my apartment complex to downtown New Haven.  Then I would walk a way to the railroad station.  Then board the Metro North to Grand Central.  Next it's take the Number 4 subway to Fulton Street.  Then walk to the high rise office building.

Then I re-thought things.  I can try it, I said.  If assignments are offered and if those involve some or all onsite work, I can deal with that in due time.

I embarked on my journey yesterday.  There were a few glitches but eventually I did wind up on Fulton Street, early.  I used the time at McDonald's, where there is free WiFi, to catch up on what was going on in cyberspace.  I answered email.  I scanned headlines.

I received a tentative offer for an onsite opportunity.  If that comes through, I will manage the extreme commute one day at a time.  To continue to make a good living in this era of turbulence, we Baby Boomers might have to exit our usual routines, over and over again.

Jail: Now that's a way we Baby Boomers can finance our years of dependency

The current issue of  THE ECONOMIST  reports that the aging population in jails is increasing worldwide.  In response, because of both the courts of law and of public opinion, correctional institutions have been introducing special facilities and services to serve the aging.  Those range from units with hand rails to diagnosis for the diseases associated with old age.

Mmmmmm.  That gets some of us whose nest egg took a hit thinking about breaking the law bad enough to receive a sentence that will extend beyond our death.  We could spend the next 10, 20, or 30 years as guests of the state.

We all remember the media stories of the bum who throws a brick through a store window in winter in order to gain access to lodging and three squares available in institutions such as jail and mental hospitals.  The conventional were appalled.  The entrepreneurial among us saw the smarts in that.

Another possibility for being assured room, board, and medical care might be to become a monk or nun in the various schools of Buddhism which have sprung up in the United States.  At the Zen Center I attend in New Haven, Connecticut there is a live-in nun.  She seems to be a member of Generation X.  It would take my investigating this option to find out if Buddhist organization allow the aging to train to become monks and nuns and thus spend the rest of their lives as monastics happily housed in the organization's facilities.

Law School: The intellectuals among Baby Boomers went there, the money crowd went to B-school

We Baby Boomers, the first American generation to attend college, were in a higher education state of mind.

Those of us who determined that we had superior intellects frequently felt compelled to learn the law.  Some of us went full time, as I did when I left a good job to matriculate at Harvard Law School.  Others like my former colleague in communications at Chevron such as Victor Barkman went at night.  The majority of us abandoned that journey when we recognized how much work it entailed and returned to less cerebral career paths.  But we did feel a sense of closure that we had investigated law.

Those more focused on money marched off to B-School.  They were more apt to complete those academic programs than us fine intellectuals.  Then they took advantage of the economic boom in America as they took jobs in middle management at GM, P&G, and IBM.  Some made it to the top.

But everything changes.  The generation in high school now probably will never experience the pull force we did to attend law school.  For one thing, it's financially out of reach.  Current graduates could leave with $125,000 in student loans. For another, the profession has become a business and a downsizing one at that.  The way legal tasks are done and the way in which the service is delivered have been reshaped by technology as well as the new frugality.  THE NEW YORK TIMES reports that applications to law school are down 38% since 2010 and even professors are being laid off at law schools.  In the next decade, there is a number floating out there that 10 law schools could be shuttered.

The business degree is holding up.  After all, America is the center of global capitalism.  It is also a pragmatic degree which teaches immediately useful skills like accounting and is portable around the world. 

Another change is that we Baby Boomers who had put so much value on intellectual activity now recognize, as in Mao's purge of the so-called elite class in China, it's not going to get us much in our struggle to earn a living and remain professionally relevant.  Those doing the buying of skills demand evidence of outcomes, not theory. 

The pursuit of intellectual excellence was a wonderful life, when it lasted.

Activism: Baby Boomers have to re-think whistleblowing

Are whistleblowers boy scouts risking everything for the greater good or reckess self destructs who lose everything for no public service?

That's an issue we Baby Boomers who had been participants in the CounterCulture of the 1970s have to struggle with.  Everything has changed with the War on Terrorism, for example.  And among those who seemingly read that wrong was former CIA operative John Kiriakou.  His story has been front page news in brandname media such as THE NEW YORK TIMES because, in disclosing information about such activities like waterboarding, he leaked the name of a CIA covert agent.

As THE WASHINGON POST reports, Kiriakou has been sentenced to 30 months in prison.  Before this, he had lost his consulting positions.  When he is released from prison he will have a difficult time finding work that pays well.  Likely he will have to start over again in another field.

The reality in this economy of scarcity is that whistleblowing could knock someone out of their career path forever.  Transition is tough business, literally.

FinanceSherpas.com: Personal finance tips and advice

Why do some Baby Boomers have wealth and some primarily credit card debt?  

The answer to that isn't rocket science.  Those who have built wealth have developed the habit of becoming informed about personal finance, ranging from the best choice of debit card to strategies for early retirement. 

The good news is that more Baby Boomers, thanks to the two recessions in the 21st century, have made it their business to become financially literate.  One new tool for that is FinanceSherpas.com, a site dedicated to personal finance advice and tips.  

The advantage FinanceSherpas.com provides is that it simplifies even the most complex topics such as reverse mortgages.  As a result, no one becomes frustrated after the first paragraph on how reverse mortages differ from traditional one and gives up on learning about this option.  In addition, the tone is upbeat.  According to FinaceSherpas.com editor Nick Allen, it's never too late or too early to start on the journey to financial security and perhaps even becoming the unassuming billionaire next door, at age 85.

The success of FinanceSherpas.com is reflected in its brandname advertisers, ranging from LendingTree to Quicken. 

Full Disclosure: I contribute articles to FinanceSherpas.com. Recently I completed an eight-week tutorial on financial reporting funded by McGraw-Hill.  I was awarded a spot in the program because of my proposal to do an article on the financial issues of that invisible demographic: 66+.

Silent Generation, Baby Boomers: Forget retirement

On one issue, all the generations are united. That issue is that we want to keep working.  At least more and more of us, especially those of us who are members of the Silent and Baby Boomer generations.

Bloomberg reports that when the new president of the U.S. is sworn in next January, 4 of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court Justices will be over the age of 74.  We are seeing that trend in many other lines of work: The reluctance to retire.  Clint Eastwood, Jimmy Carter, and Jack Welch are no spring chickens.  Yet they are still out there hustling.

The reality is that we live in a capitalist system.  Our worth depends on our productivity in the economy.  If we aren't in some way attached to the work force, we tend to be perceived as less-than.