Over-50

In Workplace, Gender Bias Could Go Poof (but ageism remain)

In some circles, the law firm Sanford Heisler Sharp's signature is the class action gender lawsuit against BigLaw.

A recent high-profile one has been "Tolton, et al. v. Jones Day." Here is a copy of the complaint.

However, if the post-gender era does come, Sanford has nothing to fear. A group or individual with power likely will always be treating unfairly those with less or no power. Lawsuits are in the cards.

In addition, ageism isn't going away. It's one form of blatant prejudice that employers can still get away with. 

Signs of a world without gender classifications seem to be taking shape. That includes language.

Berkeley, California has passed an ordinance banning all gender terms from the city code. Those terms range from "policewoman" to "manhole."

The popular book "Gender Outlaw" by Kate Bornstein envisions social norms which don't differentiate human beings according to the sex organs they were born with. There will be no male. There will be no female.

Increasingly the conventional notion of gender as male or female has broadened into a continuum understanding. On that continuum some human beings are at the points of being more or less male or female in attitudes and behavior.

So, there is no longer such a set notion of what's "female" or "male." On the popular network television series "Good Girls," Beth thinks strategically about criminal activity, like a man is expected to do. However, her deep love of her children would be considered a female trait. 

Also, and most importantly, with fertility rates plunging in developed economies, the female's reproductive role becomes less central to how the world operates. In The Atlantic, Derek Thompson chronicles how the future of cities - the main engine of economic growth - is childless. It might be conjected that the need for offspring could have resulted in a conspiracy to temper female career ambition. 

The time when human beings don't sort out anything based on the perception of gender could arrive sooner than traditionalists anticipate.

An unexpected consequence could be fewer serial killers. Many of those have been locked into sexual-identity distress. With that distress not taking hold any more, there would be no compulsion to kill and keep killing. If "Law & Order SVU" keeps being renewed for another season, it might feature a post-gender plot line. 

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Labor Day 2019 - Will Bob Dilenschneider Post on Odwyerpr.com?

BigHolidays. 

LittleHolidays.

InBetweenHolidays.

On many of those, Manhattan public relations player Bob Dilenschneider frequently posts  commentaries on Odwyerpr.com.

The tone tends to be exuberant.

The content is often about what's very right about America.

And the takeaway usually is a message of what we should be grateful for.

So, this coming Labor Day, will there be a posting by Dilenschneider?

Since he's politically conservative and the nation is caught up in yet another presidential campaign, any commentary could praise The Great American Jobs Machine.

Sure, American voters are concerned about healthcare and the right to life, but, hey, you gotta have a job.

Many remember when they didn't have a job 11 years ago and beyond. So, there is good reason to be grateful to the current Administration, right? That could be the framework for the op-ed.

But how influential will Dilenschneider's messaging be in this era of social networks? Odwyerpr.com is a daily newsletter published by a business - J.R. O'Dwyer. It's not Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. And, on social networks it's a numbers game, that is, the number of followers, likes, shares, retweets, and comments. 

In the face of social networks, media, both established and upstart, is shrinking.  BusinessInsider reports that so far this year, 3,000 jobs have vanished from media. New York University professor and internet expert Scott Galloway hammers that globally media is a zero-growth business. Eventually, media, as we have known it, could cease to exist. I trust what influencer Michael Arrington observes about crypto on Twitter, not what MarketWatch reports.

Eventually, anyone who attempts to put messaging out there in old-line ways could wind up like Father McKenzie from the Beatles sons "Eleanor Rigby." He wrote sermons that no one would hear. 

Therefore, the takeaways on reach really are: First of all, on what platforms should Dilenschneider, et al. be posting? Next, the tone? And, what content will inspire us during this dark time in capitalism?

Not getting results from your marketing communications? Complimentary consultation – janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Preventing Dementia (even if we carry that awful gene) - The 5 Steps

Our mind is our number-one asset in figuring out how we will keep working, into our 70s, 80s, and beyond.

Therefore we should be plenty motivated to protect that asset from the onset of dementia. 

The way to do that could be to embrace a 5-step wellness program. And stick with it.

A study conducted at the University of Exeter found that a healthy lifestyle can reduce the risk of dementia 32%. That's even among those with a gene for it. Here is general coverage in MarketWatch. And, here is a detailed description of the research in ScienceDaily.

Co-lead author Dr. El?bieta Ku?ma found 5 healthy habits could bypass what might have been genetic destiny. They are:

•  Diet low in sugar and salt
•  Avoiding artificial sweetners
•  Regular exercise
•  No tobacco smoking
•  Moderation in alcohol consumption. 

Along with those 5 steps, you can read, free download here, my book on landing, holding, and moving on to better work, no matter what your age Download Outwitting ageism.

Staying in the workforce or continuing to operate our own businesses mandates fresh mindsets.

Not getting results from your marketing communications? Complimentary consultation – janegenova374@gmail.com.

Baby Boomers - Making That Gigantic Shift from Post-War Wild Optimism to 21st-Century Pessimism

" … pessimism has an image problem." - David Olusoga, The Guardian, July 14, 2019. Here is the thought piece.

The unique problem for us Baby Boomers in arranging some kind of financial security as we age is this: The post-war optimism we embraced.

The odds are that pessimism about what-if scenarios would yield the results we need to not become homeless by age 85. Pessimism tends to cover more bases. 

After the carnage of World War II, those in America in charge of memes made it their business to introduce a wildly positive mindset. On the plus side, that might have helped create the economic tide which lifted all boats. 

In our overcrowded classrooms, swim lesson at the Y, and Sunday School lessons, we were told all was possible. Just keep our nose clean, go to college, get married, and (for females) don't get pregnant before marriage. 

There was no undertow of the M. Scott Peck's notion that life is difficult. It took his publishing his book "The Road Less Traveled" to make that dark idea sticky. 

Life, of course, began to block the sunshine. Popular film "The Graduate" captured how hard it was to transition from what could be called The Program for Baby Boomers to making a place for ourselves after our formal education in an economic system that was sharp-elbowed - and unfair.

Relationships, it turned out, required lots of work. It wasn't what had been positioned and packaged on 1950s series "Father Knows Best."

Disappointment made us America's First Therapy Generation.

But, early conditioning doesn't erase easily. Inside there is still our inner optimist. Trust the system. And all will turn out well.

What we should trust is what we had learned in the required science course in college. That was to apply the scientific method to problem-solving. Approach whatever as an experiment to rule out some solutions and confirm others which were effective. 

That means not buying into supposed expert advice or following the example of celebrities and neighbors.

Many initiatives as we age will fail. But if we approach them as experiments we can navigate life as it is more smoothly and with less trauma.

For example, on expert advice I relocated from aged-biased expensive New York Metro area to southwestern Arizona. The latter had a higher median age and lower cost of living. Had I framed that as try-it-out, I wouldn't have struggled so hard to make it work. Only after 27 months I moved out of AZ and on to Plan B. 

My determination to operate my two boutique for at least six more years is yet another experiment. What I have as a kind of control group are those who have retired.

In itself, retirement is a try-it-out.

According to the Federal Reserve, that plan hasn't panned out for one-third of retirees. They have bounced back into the workforce.

It's not only a matter of money. Retirees found once their professional identity was over they became invisible. 

Obviously, those considering retiring should set that up as a experiment. Their control group are those of us who remain out here hustling. Here, free to click open, is my book on how to land, hold, and move on to better work, at any age Download Outwitting ageism.

Not getting results from your marketing communications? Complimentary consultation – janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

The Supposed New Aging - We're Making So Many of the Old Mistakes

Yesyesyes, those of us over-50 are The New Aging.

Our Generations - Baby Boomers and oldest of the Xers - are pioneers in how we can make our money, health, and social networks endure into our 80s, 90s, and beyond.

Whole new industries have popped up to ensure we do it right. Experts and hawkers of products/services pontificate that if we do ABC or buy DEF we will enjoy a long healthy, socially active life.

And, that's the rub. As in our youth and middle years, we are listening to all that. As a result we are making so many of the old

mistakes.

At the top of list is believing there is one right answer. It's easier to assume that. We're not overwhelmed with figuring things out. But the reality, we have found out usually through disaster, is very different. There are many answers, none of them the right one. Some, though, are a better fit for us than others. 

Here's an example. One school of personal finance says sell the family house. Another says hold onto it and age in-place. If we don't want to think stuff through or experiment, we embrace the sell or the not-sell.

Suppose we went with the sell, then recognized we couldn't live under landlords' rules, and couldn't buy back into the housing market. We could have avoided that by renting out our house for a year, trying out how it was for us to rent, and monitoring our finances, emotions, and social life.

Another familiar error is taking our planning too seriously. We joined the company with a plan to work for a promotion to middle management. We stick to that plan instead of accepting a more promising lateral position with another company. No, we never do get that promotion. And, at age 58, we get the boot.

A third kind of habitual mistake, at least for Baby Boomers, is to be too open. We were the first generation which let it all hang out. The mantra of the counterculture was to be open and honest. Our parent's generation played their cards close to their vest. 

When we first realized we were aging we blabbed about that. Therefore, others accepted that we were in a disadvantaged category. Age bias dominates America. When work opportunities came up, they didn't refer them to us or us to employers. We were seen as "old."

Instead we should have not introduced aging into the conversation. If it came up, we could have responded, "Aging? I never noticed. My business keeps me too busy."

The good news is that we can stop falling into these habitual traps. That's by asking ourselves: Does thinking, saying, or doing this worsen my financial situation, employment marketability, and social life or enhance it? We aging are often our own worst enemy. Here, free to download, is my book on how to stop being self-defeating. 

Not getting results from your marketing communications? Complimentary consultation – janegenova374@gmail.com.

Rethinking Not Retiring

Everything changes. And keeps changing. 

Personal finance experts can't be believed.

And an inner switch is poised to go "off duty," that is, leave that full-time career.

So, when and how do you make that decision to retire? It's become a terrifying rite of passage. Will you run out of money? Can your hobbies keep you stimulated? And can you navigate relocating from the coasts to where a lifestyle is more affordable?

Incidentally retiring no longer means no longer working for income. All it covers is taking the exit ramp from that big job or operating a business 80 hours a week. The new territory you enter, though, is filled with uncertainty. In itself, that creates monsters in the mind.

This morning many woke up the June jobs report. With 224,000 new jobs created, it beat estimates.

So, a recession may not be in the wings. That means there could be a return to a sellers' market for your too-big house in Connecticut.

The stock market may keep fattening a retirement portfolio.

Interest rates may not be cut and you can sock away funds safely in CDs. 

Meanwhile, probably not since the First Industrial Age that Charles Dickens depicted in his novels has the workplace demanded so much. That "so much" Stanford Graduate School of Business Jeffrey Pfeffer captures in his book "Dying for a Paycheck."

The reality is that with aging it can be increasingly difficult to keep up with the "so much." Maybe employers assume that to be the situation. What's palpable is how unwelcome the over-50 may have become in industries ranging from media to management consulting. In particular, employers are watching how quickly they are picking up new digital technologies. 

The good news is that there are ways to hustle for income after leaving the big job or selling a business.

The trick is to shake off the need for prestige and high wages. Here free to click open is my book on landing, holding, and moving on to better work, no matter what your age Download Outwitting ageism.

Coaching, lecturing, and writing/ghostwriting thought leadership content on ageism.

 

For individual coaching – sliding scale fees. Complimentary initial consultation. The displaced over-50 get back to work. Please contact Jane Genova janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Among the Good Catholic Girls from a Very Different Time - Bridget Kelly

Those of us who sensed Chris Christie aide Bridget Kelly got a raw deal in court regarding "Bridgegate" have our faith restored in the U.S. legal system.

As Marcia Coyle reports in Law.com, Kelly's conviction is one of the 13 petitions the U.S. Supreme Court has chosen to review for the 2019 - 2020 term. She is challenging both the conviction and the 13-month sentence.

The Kelly petition is "Kelly v. United States."

Here is a copy of the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari. 

Here is the history of that petition at SCOTUS.

Kelly is being represented by a Jones Day team including partner Yaakov Roth. The United Sates is being represented by deputy U.S. solicitor general Jeffrey Wall.

Jones Day is known to have a unique feel from what persuades The Nine. Annually they hire a large number of former SCOTUS clerks, paying them sign-up bonuses of up to $300,000. That insider perspective is, though, priceless.

As many recall, Kelly was among the seeming "fall guys" for the artificially created traffic jam on the Fort Lee ramp on the George Washington Bridge. The motivation was political retaliation.

Some contend that it was her boss Chris Christie who ordered it. After all, she at the time was an aide - with a big title. Those who understand how organizations, including political ones, operate wondered how any employee, even one with an impressive title, would take it upon herself to orchestrate such chaos without approval from the very top.

What the Jones Day team is asking, reports Law, is:

" ... whether a public official can 'defraud' the government of its property by advancing a 'public policy reason' for an official decision that is not her subjective 'real reason' for making the decision."

There was particular sympathy for Kelly from females who, like her, came of professional age as a seemingly "good Catholic girl." We were socialized to be other-directed, focused on making superiors and other forms of power look good. Those frequently included husbands. Also we worked unusually hard. In that selflessness we might have compulsively managed to cross the line from the ethical/legal to what the powers that be ordered or indirectly indicated would please them. 

The other dockets selected for review are:

"Department of Homeland Security v. Regents, University of California." (This represents a consolidation of three cases.)

"Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue."

"Opati v. Sudan." 

"Thole v. U.S. Bank N.A."

"GE Energy Power Conversion v. Oukokumpu Stainless." 

"Romag Fastners v. Fossil."

"Lucky Brand Dungarees v. Marcel Fashions."

"Rodgriguez v. FDIC."

Two associated with the original "Carpenter v. Murphy." 

The implications of SCOTUS' decisions for each review are huge.

However, the decision, the written majority opinion, and any written minority dissents in "Kelly v. U.S." could impact not only Kelly but also the future career of Christie.

In the book "Kushner Inc.," Vicky Ward reports that Christie eventually was shut out of a major high-profile role in the Trump Administration. That could have been retaliation from the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner for the prosecutorial role Christie had played in sending dad to prison. Here it can ordered from Amazon.

Currently, Christie doesn't seem to have a lot going for him. Likely as part of a comeback strategy, in January, he published "Let Me Finish." Here it can ordered from Amazon. It ranks okay on Amazon -  in the 9,000s. But folks may be paying attention to that book to get the supposed dirt on the Trump Administration players. So, overall, Christie's positioning and packaging does not appear to be solid. 

If the SCOTUS decision goes Kelly's way, her career path, in contrast, has no limits. She can be the new kind of female superhero of our times. Flawed and sinning, but determined and resilient. 

Exactly the right tone and content for all your communications. Complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail.com.

The New Aging - Sorry, High-SAT Scoring Baby Boomers, There Are No Right Answers (or wrong ones)

The first generation in America to attend college en masse, we Baby Boomers were socialized into believing our success depended on coughing up the one right answer.

We sized up our teachers so that we could figure out what was the right answer for them.

We prepared for the SAT to determine what the test-makers wanted as the right answer.

In most 20th century workplaces, you bet, there were the right answers. 

Then we aged. And we keep aging. Again, we are a first gen in something. That's in extreme longevity. For us the aging process could go until beyond age 100.

Only what's different, we are discovering, is that in this new context, there is no one right answer. Also, there are no wrong answers. 

We got that after we chased after the right answer. Should we retire/semi-retire? Should we relocate out of high-cost, high-tax state Connecticut for Arizona? Is it crazy to enter a degree program to prepare for another career?

We researched. We attended seminars. We talked with those who had already made some choices associated with The New Aging. Then, once we were certain we had the right answer, we did X or Y.

Smirk. Smirk. X or Y could have been a disaster. All the articles by experts indicated we were ready to retire. We did that. Then we were not only bored. Society treated us as invisible. Back to the drawing board, we searched for the next right answer. We did that over and over again until we recognized there are no right answers. Also there are very few totally wrong answers.

Instead, call it The Goldilocks Syndrome, we have to experiment. Without expectations. And without the need to be right.

To hold down the cost - financial, emotional, and social - of The Goldilocks Syndrome, we operate on a small scale. Instead of relocating to AZ or becoming expats in Ecuador we save our pennies or get a part-time job in Home Depot and add to our pennies. We go there for a few weeks. We take on the mindset of a researcher not someone doing magical thinking. We calculate the odds the situation would be for us. 

Sure, we might grouse daily about bunking in CT. But that might not be a wrong answer. Instead we can up the rightness in it by adjustments. Sure, the property tax in West Hartford is more than we can afford. But if we embrace "co-living" that is no longer the situation. No, we don't have to sell the house, as the supposed experts hammer. No, we don't have to relocate to South Carolina.

Trained in the absolute need to be right, it's jarring to navigate becoming older without any certainty. That's the ugly underside of reality.

But the good news is that once we experiment and hit upon solutions that are a better fit for us than others there is a profound feeling of satisfaction - and accomplishment. Yes, we can "grow" right up to the day we pass on to a dimension where the game could again change.

Exactly the right tone and content for all your communications. Complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

The Next Downturn - Of Course, Older Workers Will Be Hit Hardest

Professionally, financially, emotionally, and spirituality, many workers will never recover from The Great Recession. In a sense, they are as scarred as those who endured The Great Depression. 

Some of the survivors of the downturn of 2008 even put in play new movements.

One is minimalism or radical savings. They "needed" a gigantic financial reserve to be able to sleep at night. Their lifestyle shifted from conspicuous consumption to what's analogous to that of  a medieval monk.

Another movement has been FIRE (Financial Freedom, Retire Early). Yeah, they wanted to get the hell out of the system which betrayed them and do that as soon as possible. The reverence for work, that has dominated American culture since Puritan times, soured.

A third is the 21st century version of the counterculture - or dropping out. Christopher Knight has emerged as an anti-hero.

The book "A Stranger in the Woods" narrates the almost three decades he made it in a tarp in Maine. That was without human interaction or a job. Evidence that his saga resonated when published in 2017 is that it had almost 1,000 reader reviews. Here it can be ordered from Amazon.

But for too many lawyers the situation had been even worse. Time will tell how badly their inner life has been reconfigured.

One reason lawyers endured greater hardship than average is: That JD Lost Generation were and probably still are in a line of work in which having been laid off made them an "untouchable." When signs of recovery appeared employers were more apt to hire laterals, that is those who had held on, or new graduates. 

In addition, as MP McQueen chronicles in Law.com, there was also a desperate scramble for work, any kind of work, because of student loan debt. Between 2010 and 2017, 60% of JDs owed about $100,000 in debt.

On Abovethelaw, there had been a special column by Alex Rich about refugees from BigLaw who were doing mind-numbing document review contract jobs. Much of Rich's guidance focused on how to find the next assignment after that project dried up. 

As McQueen documented, some of the Lost JD Gen eventually landed on their feet. They were able to return to well-paying jobs practicing law. But that usually took longer than the average time for the displaced to find work. 

Meanwhile, those who have been burned and those who weren't but knew those who were wonder if the next economic downturn will change forever the legal profession.

If it is severe will it permanently downsize the number of those applying to law school? Finally, the message will be delivered and received: Don't invest in this career path.

And will those knocked out of the box not struggle to get back into the box but do a career change?

In itself that could leave The Professional Class with fresh insight about regrouping during adversity.

Currently, outplacement firms should be developing new models for earning a living post-catastrophe. That can be labeled "Playing in a New Sandbox - Rediscovering Joy in Work." That can apply to all work, both white collar and blue collar. 

One forecast is that 10,000 jobs in the legal sector could vanish in the coming recession. And, yes, it will come. It always does. And given the intersection of national economies, this one could be a whopper. 

Of course, in all careers, those hit the hardest will be the aging.

Age bias is what employers touting diversity are still getting away with.

It's not sexy.

It scares the jesus out of younger gens.

And the wheels of justice move at a snail's pace. By time a complaint is resolved the plaintiff could be too unhealthy to work or the skills have atrophied.

Here, free to click open, is my book on landing, holding, and moving on to better work, at any age Download Outwittingageism.

Exactly the right tone and content for all your communications. Complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail.com.

Keep Working, Hammers William Shatner, Age 88

Everyone is different. Everyone finds refuge from their unique demons in their own way.

For William Shatner, it has been work.

So, that's the wisdom he passes along in his new book "Live Long And What I Learned Along the Way." Here you can order it from Amazon.

Shatner is 88 years old. And he's still working. To him all work is the same in that it gives him the opportunity to be totally in the now. And not tortured by raw flashbacks to his painful childhood with his mother.

So, it doesn't matter to him if the assignment pays peanuts, is based a 10-hour drive away, and in the audience will only consist of a handful of people.

He recommends that others adopt the same attitude about staying working. 

His mantra is Yes, at least to much of the work that has been offered to him.

The flashback that's hardened into obsession for Shatner was the moment he asked his mother whom she loved more: her husband or Shatner. Without skipping a beat, she answered that it was her husband and it was because he gives her things.

Shatner is on his fourth marriage. His first three were failures. Obviously, he married his mother. 

Taking whatever work is offered at the time is excellent advice for the aging. That's because that old saying is true: Nothing gets you a job like a job.

Usually that next job is better than the earlier one. And, the lucky among the aging, continue to make progress in the kinds of work which come their way.

Here, free to click open, is my book on how to land, hold, and navigate to better work, at any age Download Outwitting ageism.

Career coaching for the over-50 available, on a sliding scale fee structure. Here is a backgrounder Download BACKGROUNDERJaneGenovaCoachingOver-50. Complimentary consultation available - janegenova374@gmail.com.