Brand Rx - Necessary Losses, After Loss [e.g. Sonnenschein Layoffs]

In professional circles, it's fashionable to celebrate a kick in the butt, euphemistically called "adversity," as a great career enhancer. 

Thanks to that shock, setback, disappointment, total loss, we are supposed to gain unique access to insights that can catapult our career to a whole new level. Of course, warn gurus in the adversity industry like Jeffrey Sonnenfeld ["Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disaster"], this isn't a sure thing.  We may be standing under that dumptruck in the sky, get covered with whatever, and learn nothing. As the May 16th, 2005 FORTUNE cover story "50 and Fired" chronicled, there are more of those than us who are determined to transform this pain, humiliation and hit to confidence into something really big.

That said, what should the 124 employees laid off at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal be doing post-trauma to harness the power of adversity?  Or, much closer to home, how should I be processing the blow I received today?  Long story short: A lead-paint watcher had been in continual contact by email forever.  It was a mutually useful conversation.  I received tips on breaking news and insider information.  The watcher, I suspect, got to feel a part of a process few could understand or predict how it would end.  As we learn in sales, I mirrored the watcher's behavior.  Frequent emails were responded to.  Photos of the watcher's pets were admired.  Nothing wrong so far.

Then today it blew up.  Like those at Sonnenschein, the walking wounded cut loose from The Bear, and others thrown from their comfort zone, I have to deconstruct my part in this.  That's called Brand Rx.

Today the lead paint watcher informed me that the little presents I snail mailed his pets and the note congratulating a professional success he recently had were not perceived in a favorable light by his wife.  They're Gen Ys.  I'm an aging Baby Boomer.

Learning from trouble usually means what Judith Vorst called "necessary losses" in her book by that title. In this case I had to give up an illusion. That illusion is that gender is irrelevant.  It's 2008, I'm not spring chicken.  But to someone's wife I am a female and a threat.  Right away, you can anticipate how my branding has improved.  The Jane Genova Brand is going to be far more cautious with life situations embedded in gender.  Not that this loss can be accepted and I move. on.  Vorst also notes that loss is not vertical but circular.  We won't escape the loop - not for a while.  Pain is gain but still pain.

What might be the necessary losses of the former Sonnenschein and Wall Street crowd? My hunch is it's the sacrifice of ever trusting an institution - or ever getting comfortable in one.  Long ago management visionary Tom Peters told us that we were all on assignment.  There were no more jobs, no careers.  We had to see ourselves as players, figuring out our next move.  Not an easy reality to bite into, never mind digest.

The wonderful news: Once we exit that loop, we're usually fairly high functioning, actually at the top of our game, for a while.  After I happened to be standing under that dumptruck circa the turn of the century I gained a courage that few acquire post-50.  I made the transition, unusual for the Baby Boomer Gen, from print to digital, and from old-line corporate clients to startups.  I even could migrate from the conditioning to max income to being satisfied with enoughness.  It's been great.  And it will return to being great after I process another necessary loss.