Over-50

Sitting in the Past, Only Then Moving on to Fully Embrace the Present

The memes all hammer escaping the past. Only then, goes the party line, will the aging be able to live fully in the present.

Those may be wrong, at least for some of us.

There is a wise adage: You have to sit in the past to be able to go on and live in the present.

Finally, I have a hunch that I have connected the dots on that. In 2014, in retrospect, I regretted reaching back to the past. Actually, the process generated a new kind of trauma in me. Here is that nightmare saga. In 2016, I relocated a 90-minute drive from where my emotional development probably became arrested. Here is that saga about the return of the native. 

However, now, those regrets are gone. For me, it was imperative to sit in my past. That might have been the only way I could get myself unstuck.

Of course, the journey backwards was full of shame. How could I have allowed those people to "get in?" Had I been more emotionally well put together I would have erected a moat filled with alligators and pulled down the drawbridge. No one deemed a bad fit for my needs would have dared even attempted to enter. 

Not that I am 100% in the present. Recently I had two setbacks. One was a car accident judged to be my fault. No one was hurt but my confidence in driving had been. The other was a repeat of the same old story. My gut told me not to accept a certain assignment. I did. The process took too much out of me.

The good news on those was that I bounced back faster than I had in the past which for too long had kept me 18 years old.  

Sitting in the past isn't for everyone. There are a growing number of other strategies for finding release. Here, for example, folks can download free of charge my book on navigating out of comfort zones. 

The tough part of being the pioneer generation in aging is that there are no absolute right answers. Only experiments to try out. But what I know now is that there is such an entity as a Late Bloomers.  I am among them.

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

 

Aging W/O Family, Like My Sister Anne Murga-Ring - Hey, That's Totally Doable, Frees Up Holidays for Travel

In November 2003, my younger sister Anne Murga-Ring and I became estranged. I was 58, at the time: young old. 

But even then I got it: I was w/o family, at least the nuclear kind. Parents and older sister had died. Relationships with cousins and their children, always frayed, had split their seams. I felt unhinged. After all, the ethnic ethos in America is All in the Family.

Now, experts on aging confirm that my distress was appropriate. They warn that navigating aging can be more difficult w/o family. Increasingly, more of us are winding up just that way: flying solo and often flying blind.

What's coming up is the 16th anniversary of that estrangement. In my thinking and in how I conduct my personal and professional affairs plenty has changed since then. 

Let's cut to the chase. What I have discovered is that a satisfying secure life can be put together while getting older w/o any family members. 

This is what I know:

• Actress Betty White, who has become advocate for older Americans, has hammered that aging isn't for sissies. This stage of a life represents as challenging a rite of passage as transitioning from formal education to the world of work. Therefore, I had to and continually still have t0 invest time and attention in figuring out what are the obstacles and opportunities in no longer being young. The number-one problem was denial. The major advantage was breaking open to forms of satisfaction beyond a career.
• Estate planning doesn't mean creating an inheritance for siblings. My beneficiary is an animal cause.
• Lawyers can be contracted to handle every detail. That ranges from whether to pull the plug to closing down all matters after I die. Sure, there's a fee. But there is also always a kind of fee in the complex maze of family relationships. 
• Holidays can represent startups. Mine has been to use them to see the USA in my Chevrolet. That need not be expensive. Discount Motel 6 takes dogs free. LOV, my four-legged son, enjoys the holidays as much as I do.
• Developing a small circle of trusted allies is mandatory. They provide early warning systems of what is going wrong. During the past two years that network has included a millennial. She flagged me that I had to end my preoccupation with money. I had "enough." And enough is enough. In the book "Making Toast," Roger Rosenblatt pointed out how little we really need later in life. 
• For those of us still determined to keep working, an executive coach is useful. From mine I "needed permission" to turn down assignments I didn't sense were a fit. Sure, I have down cold the Pareto Rule (80% of revenue comes for 20% of clients). But the residual insecure parts of me still required permission.

Not that getting older has been a wonderful "growth" experience. However, the process took on the quality of an adventure when I got the hang of transcending my own comfort zones. Here, free to download, is my book on all that. 

As my communications clients were observing how I was mastering aging, w/o family, they asked me to assist them. Where they especially found guidance useful was the professional identity piece. They wondered: How could they play better the cards they still held and how could they manage to get different ones? Yes, it's possible to be a Late Bloomer. Look at Betty White, Clint Eastwood, et al.

I have added over-50 coaching to the menu of services I offer.

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

 

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

 

Aging - Sensing You're No Longer Who You Used to Be Professionally

Professionals over-50 come to me for career coaching or ghostwriting a book for them primarily for this cluster of reasons.

They sense they're no longer at the top of their game.

They fear others also perceive them that way.

And they observe that their competitors are younger than they are and armed with tools, such as technical wizardry, they don't have.

After listening to them, I usually have to agree that their professional identity is in transition.

Probably everything has changed and continues to change. And they may never recapture the extreme mastery they had of their former game.

In addition, there is the reality, especially since The Great Recession, of cost-efficiency in organizations. They are at a high salary. The organization decision-makers could determine that is too high. Soon a much lower-paid millennial replaces them.

The irony is that once they embrace those developments, they find the insight and drive to play better the cards they hold and to figure out how to get some better cards.

One professional in a prestigious public relations firm, for example, knew she was losing ground. While her brand still had some clout, she conducted a stealth search for a leadership communications job in a nonprofit. That's where she is now.

A hair salon owner, whose customer base was shrinking, sold the shop when it was still marketable. He didn't get what he had hoped for but it was enough to fund an entrepreneurial effort in selling online specialty hair products. It looks like he could reach the breakeven point within another year.

A nonequity partner in a law firm saw the handwriting on the wall. He was no longer able to bring in enough new business. Unfortunately, he didn't put together a career transition before he was let go in a stealth layoff. But he has been receiving interviews for a variety of positions in which he can leverage his legal background.

Of course, there are the professionals whose careers aren't impacted by the combination of industry change and aging.

But if you're not among them, you can still enjoy a fulfilling professional life. Only it may be different from what you had mapped out in your mind. Here, free to download, is my book on finding your way out of your comfort zone. 

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

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

 

Post-Successful Career: Failing Retirement

The toughest rite of passage among successful professionals is moving on to retirement. 

In her book "Retirement reinvention," Robin Ryan discusses how many are failing at that. That is, they can't put together a meaningful lifestyle after their career ends. Signs of the failure range from boredom to a sense of being irrelevant. 

Given the combination of the need for extreme cost efficiency and age bias, what we traditionally classify as a "career," is ending sooner and often abruptly. Jobs are quitting the older professional versus the professional deciding to hang it up. In denial of that reality, many simply haven't prepared for the transition.

The rawness of being thrown up against The Next is nothing new. As Don Draper from "Mad Men" brought out in his iconic Kodak slide show, teenagers mourn the loss of the identity of being a child. Few ever emerge from the years of formal education and glide smoothly into the very different context of work. 

Yet, the expectation is that the passage into a post-career part of a life should be almost an instinctual process. 

Instead it is being put out there for what could be 30 or 40 years without any guidance from the past. Today's retirees are generational pioneers. 

Some, after suffering greatly, are finding a path toward meaning - as well as the added income to make ends meet. The Federal Reserve documents that one-third of those who rode into the sunset have headed back into the workplace. The amazing thing is that they can accept the lower compensation and status of those jobs. 

Another experiment is radical relocation. It's not simply the move from pricey Manhattan to less expensive North Carolina. It's the willingness to start over again in Mexico or Ecuador. They are fleeing the "Cheers" phenomenon of everyone knowing their name. 

A third is training for another line of work. That can range from becoming certified as a substance abuse counselor to long-distance truck driver. Unlike the academic degree route, this way is fast and relatively cheap. 

And, a fourth is wild experimentation. In total openness, former comfort zones are fled. The introvert does the online dating. The extrovert takes a seminar in listening. Everything becomes possible.

The major obstacle to mastering this rite of passage is usually the aging themselves. They tend to shoot themselves in the foot. Here, free to download, is my book on taming the dark forces which keep human beings over-50 from grabbing out for a new kind of satisfaction.

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.

 

 

Sure Baby Boomers Face Age Bias, But Millennials Are in Unique Financial Pickle

The next recession, warns Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic, could topple Millennials into the financial point of no return - that is, no real shot at building financial security. 

Sure, Baby Boomers encounter bias when they seek income from working. And, more of those who have retired find they need to return to the workforce to make ends meet. The Federal Reserve documents that one-third of those who rode into the sunset have been riding back into the harsh light of a labor market tilted against age. 

But Baby Boomers' peak years were during economic and stock market booms. Jobs paid well. College and even professional degrees had low cost tuition. That means big student loan debt wasn't standard. Renting and utilities were cheap. Employers had retirement plans. A fixer-upper house could be purchased for peanuts.

Millennials, in general, have only known struggle. 

As Lowrey documents, they entered the worst job market in 80 years. To get in and stay in they competed against seasoned older workers who pulled out all stops to continue being employed.

When working, Millennials earn 10% less than Baby Boomers. About 2/3rds have no real savings. Only 37% own stock currently. In addition, if Social Security is still around, their monthly check will not be high because their earnings aren't high. Also, there is the massive problem of student loan debt. Interest keeps growing on those loans from undergraduate, graduate, and professional school. Yes, there remains blind faith in higher education. 

Meanwhile, Baby Boomers are not really sitting pretty, of course.

Because of relatively high earnings, they are targets for layoffs. If their get the boot and lose their employer-funded medical insurance what they purchase will be high because of their age. Medicare doesn't kick in until age 65.

For work, their best bet is the gig economy or launching a business/purchasing a franchise. But to adjust to that new reality, they will have to take a leap out of the comfort zone. Here, free to download, is my book on that.

In addition, more and more Baby Boomers get it that they can no longer afford to live in the locations where they did their careers. Relocation is soul-wrenching, not an adventure. And, although media outlets position and package doing the golden years aboard, that represents a challenge many can't master. 

Baby Boomers unable to find work might shift their mindsets and strategies about earning a living. Here, also free to click open, is my guide to all that Download Outwitting ageism.

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

Remembering When There Were So Many of Us Good Catholic Girls

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has plenty of motivation to take on Donald Trump in the primary.

Former Tea Party congressperson Joe Walsh has tossed his hat in the ring. That opens the door for other conservatives to do likewise.

As books such as Michael Wolff's "Siege" disclosed, Christie was locked out of a leading role in the Trump White House. It was reported that when Steve Bannon delivered the bad news, Christie fought the decision. Many speculate that it was Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner who set that "no" in play. When a prosecutor, Christie had nailed Kushner's father, who then did time in prison. 

However, it is unlikely that Christie will run for U.S. president. That's because the ghost of Bridgegate has returned to haunt his legacy - and future career prospects. This is when there are signs of a comeback. For example, he is a presence on Sunday morning television.

Last June the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to review the convictions and sentences of Bridgegate defendants Bridget Kelly and Bill Baroni. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit had tossed two counts but upheld five. Kelly is out on bail pending this last appeal. If it doesn't pan out as she hopes, she will go to prison. Baroni is already serving his sentence. 

Bridgegate, as many know, involved causing a severe traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for not supporting Christie. Like hedge fund mastermind Steve Cohen, Christie escaped arrest. However, in both situations, their underlings suffered at the hands of law enforcement.

Law firm Jones Day will argue on behalf of Kelly. The case is "Kelly v. U.S." 

The odds are this SCOTUS review will receive considerable publicity. Media outfits will hammer details. That could finish off Christie politically. He may remain untouched legally.

Many who understand Kelly's background and how political offices operate have empathy for her.

She had been reared as what could be labeled The Good Catholic Girl. That entity is socialized to revere authority, obey, work very hard, and be loyal.

Those who have actually had jobs or had done volunteer assignments for politicos understand how co-dependent the roles can become. There can even be a loss of identity. In addition, isn't it naïve to assume that any strategic decision, such as blocking lanes on the GW Bridge, would be implemented without the approval of the man or woman who has been elected to office or is campaigning to be?

Meanwhile, Jones Day can throw off some of the shade recently thrown on its brand by two bias lawsuits. One is for alleged gender discrimination. The other for alleged illegally structured parental leave. Members of the legal media, including Law.com, have not been kind. 

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

 

Experience Caps Aren't Necessarily about Age Bias Per Se

In the age-discrimination lawsuit "Kleber v. Carefusion Corp" the plaintiff contended age bias in hiring came via an experience cap.

The Carefusion help-wanted was structured to require 3 to 7 years of work experience as a lawyer. No more than that.

Here is a copy of the complaint.

Dale Kleber, age 58 at the time, had plenty more experience than that. However, he still applied for the position. Eventually, Carefusion hired a 29 year old applicant.

The question arose: Was an experience cap leveraged as a stealth tool to discourage the aging from applying for certain jobs?

Well, Kleber's specific challenge didn't pan out.

As Bloomberg Law reports, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the plaintiff.

Here is a copy of that decision.

The Seventh Circuit, 8 to 4, stated that experience caps didn't constitute a type of disparate impact theory. That is, it wasn't a form of seemingly neutral policy that operated as a type of bias against a protected class.

However, some experts warned employers there could be more Kleber-like experience cap lawsuits. Likely, there will be.

Meanwhile, more and more help-wanted specify experience caps and those Google Forms applicants fill out as part of the job search process explicitly ask the number of years working in X or Y niche. That could be managing Price Per Click (PPC) advertising.

Pragmatism rules that applicants would size up what the "right" number of years is and then play in that very specific sandbox. Yes, redo the past to fit with the present.

Otherwise, there may be no access to the toys in that sandbox, ranging from a weekly pay check to benefits. 

But, the present is not so much about raw age bias, is it. 

Instead it's more about price point. Unless a business has a clear and powerful point of differentiation, it can be caught in competing via price. The best briefing on that is "Blue Ocean Strategy" by W. Chan Kim. Here it can be ordered from Amazon.

To keep the price-to-the-consumer/B-to-B market low, employers seek out workers with just enough experience to do the task well so that they can be paid as low compensation as possible.

The new college graduate who had an internship at a marketing firm specializing with PPC would look a lot more attractive to the budget of the employer than an applicant with 6 years experience. Sure, the newbie will probably fly the coop after 2 years but those 2 years could be very profitable for the business.

More and more help-wanted ads indicate that new college graduates are preferred. Since the 90-yar-old could just be graduating college, that phrasing gets employers off the hook on age bias.

In addition, there has emerged a new human resources model - Burn & Earn. It is described in "Disrupted" by Dan Lyons. Here that hilarious book can be ordered from Amazon. Essentially the game is about bringing in a bunch of enthusiastic newbies, training them to do A but not B, make a bundle, and expect them to keep exiting. Repeat. 

Interesting, though, there is a business, based in Manhattan and Chicago, which seems to champion deep expertise. That's the public affairs firm The Dilenschneider Group. On its website it has a section listing its major players and their years of experience. Here you can click it open.

Listed, for example, are:

•  Fred Bona - 40 years
•  Bob Dilenschneider - 30 years
•  Art Gormley - 30 years.

In the fast-moving world of communications, that's counter-trend.

After all, the sandbox, more and more in a digital universe, is custom-made for digital natives. Clients and prospects know the importance of everything from online influencers to local search engine optimization (SEO). So the new toys in the sandbox include everything from help paying off student loans to free food. 

The question is if businesses such as The Dilenschneider Group which position and package long years of experience as a plus have created the unique edge? Or, are they at a new kind of disadvantage? More importantly, does that give the business leverage with price point? 

As those issues are being duked out in the court of law, the hunt for work, and business branding, as early as the age 40 those needing income are finding doors slammed shut because of bias. Here is the article I published on that. If there is a severe economic downturn, that could worsen, of course. Because of their relatively high compensation, the aging usually have a target on their backs. 

Here is my book, free to click open, on how to navigate around all that Download Outwitting ageism. And here, also free, is one on being able to change. Addiction to any comfort zone can mean professional death. 

Full Disclosure: In my early 40s, Corporate America purged itself of middle-aged middle managers. I had to reimage myself as an entrepreneur. Having gotten the hang of how to change, I plan to stay working 60 hours a week until I am 80. Then, I will re-evaluate.

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

So Many of Us Did It All Wrong

From the get-go when we graduated college one reality was obvious: Those C students were getting those good jobs and moving up. Meanwhile the A students tended to struggle in the workforce. 

If we wanted to understand why, in 1995, psychologist Daniel Goleman explained all that in detail. He published the breakthrough book "Emotional Intelligence." That documented how social skills were more important to success at work and in personal life than raw intelligence. 

Here was the deal: In college the C students were enhancing their emotional IQ by running for and perhaps losing out in campaigns for class president. They organized dances. They went into town and answered phones for the woman chasing after a state senate seat. They figured out whom to network with and whom would never make enough deposits in The Favor Bank.

Meanwhile the A students were not only compulsively booking it. Their anxiety about achieving top grades often isolated them. Who wants to be around a nervous wrecks. Also they missed out on getting the hang of sizing up people and how to nicely shut out the takers from networks.

Unfortunately, though, high intelligence continues to be overrated in America.

And that is helping cause problems in all aspects of American life. David Robson addresses that in his bestselling book "The Intelligence Trap." It's at 401 on Amazon. Here it can be ordered. 

Who hasn't encountered the dumb situations Robson describes?

The brass parachutes into the happy corporate communications department the executive who earned top grades in a Master degree from an elite university. 

The genius is abrasive. Soon enough there is a flight of talent. The ball gets dropped on several important projects. As Robson notes, the smarty-pants usually is incapable of learning from his or her mistakes. The genius will continue to lose jobs. Businesses lose billions of dollars.

Some recall the high profile gender bias lawsuit "Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins." Pao contended discrimination was involved in her being fired.

The plaintiff lost so badly that there was the question why anyone would hire her to begin with. The answer might have been that on paper she seemed a genius. She had earned the MBA from Harvard Business School and the JD from Harvard Law School. 

In the doctoral program at the University of Michigan, a classmate asked a few of us females: Would you rather have great beauty or be more intelligent. Not one of us gave what was the right answer. Yes, we had been caught in the intelligence trap.

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

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. 

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

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.