Law And More

"The Hero's Farewell" - From Jack Welch to David Lat

Power is heady.

The misfit Puritans made business one of the most powerful institutions in the new land. Actually it became the nation's shadow religion.

The economy they put together from scratch become the world's top dog. 

So, from the get-go, the leaders in business - often called "chief executive officers" - found it difficult to let go of that power when the job ended.

They still do.

Aging media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and investment genius Warren Buffett are not putting out there any signs of leaving.

Also, former head of legal media site Abovethelaw - David Lat - still has at least one foot in that sandbox. Maybe more.

Lat is now an employee at legal executive search firm Lateral Link.  The title is "managing director" but that's not being the number-one any more. 

The transition from number-one to an employee, by its very nature, represents a tricky crossroads.  Here is my analysis of some of that. 

"The Hero's Farewell, by management expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, captures that struggle. If former leaders don't navigate the shift just right, the implications are grim.

Their overall career could blow up.

More to the point, the business could flounder.

One has to wonder if Jack Welch had inflicted that darkness on himself and GE. He seemed to be unable to let go. GE has been in severe distress. The legacy of both is in play.

Constituencies with interests invested in those businesses in which the number-one departs might create a five-year rule.

That is, even though the former leaders might own stock (and a lot of it) they are banned from all official input for 60 months.

That includes no seat on the board.

Speaking to the media about the company is forbidden.

And, no organizing a stockholder movement to regain power.

As the platitude screams: We live in interesting times. How former business leaders manage their farewell is at the top of the list of fascinations. 

Full Disclosure: Recently I had a negative experience with Lateral Link.

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

The Media Innovator's Dilemma - From Ted Turner to David Lat

They build something that disrupts the media industry. 

The innovation works.

The experience is totally heady, with great influence. After all, it's said that media - not government, business or even technology - is the most powerful force in civilization. 

Then they sell that media outlet or simply move on to try out another role. What could play out next could be labeled The Media Innovator's Dilemma. 

For creator of 24/7 cable television news - Ted Turner - there was no next after he sold CNN.  He became just another businessperson whose former outsized presence went poof. Publicly, he indicated he regretted the sale. From then on, Turner seemed in mourning. And for a while, CNN's ratings plummeted. 

In the niche - legal media - the innovator had been creator of Abovehthelaw (ATL) David Lat. That began in 2006.

Officially he has left that role and become what is really a salesperson's job at headhunting firm Lateral Link. Its playing field is the legal sector.

Of course, that also constitutes a shift from being the boss to being an employee.

So far, Lat seems not to be able to totally let go of the legacy. He posts on ATL. It's in connection with his current headhunting  role, leveraging the aura of the innovation in hopes of developing new business. But, still, a clean break might have signaled amazing confidence in what is next.

As an employee, Lat won't be in charge. Instead he had to get the hang of fitting in to someone else's organizational culture. That's challenging.

In more rigid times in business, corporate employers hesitated hiring former entrepreneurs. They were wary that the transition might be impossible. That was the time of the Organizational Man (and Woman).

Since then, of course, careers paths have become less linear. More founders are parachuting into organizational functions. 

At best Lat could become a thought leader in the world of career strategies in the legal industry.

That's different than being a presence in media.

In his current role, his success depends on body count: How many placements he can make. Yeah, it's business, not mission of changing how news and commentary are positioned and packaged. The organization measures success in terms of that business metric. Either you make the sale or you don't make the sale. The game is binary. 

Lat could succeed at being a headhunter. He could adjust to employee status. He could also make more money than he had in media. But gone with his choice to give up ATL is the unique influence he had.

Media is the loudest voice in just about every context. That "loudest voice" is how journalist Gabriel Sherman summed up Fox News founder Roger Ailes. Here that book can be ordered from Amazon. According to some reports, after being ousted from Fox, Ailes was conferring with deep pockets such as Peter Thiel, who funded "Hogan v. Gawker," to fund launching a competitor to Fox. No, Ailes didn't plan to get a job in someone else's media outlet. 

Also, there is the issue if ATL, like CNN, will shift into a downward trajectory after the founder leaves. Part of the innovator's genius is a good head for the business of media. Are those business smarts embedded in ATL? The ATL DNA was Lat's genetic engineering. 

My hunch is that Lat could have moderate success in the headhunting space. But it's the media innovator's dilemma not to be able to make peace with the decline in influence.

Meanwhile, it would be shrewd reputation management for Lat to let go of ATL, in rebranding himself as a leader in executive search. Turner seemed incapable of that kind of reimagining his professional identity.

As for ATL, the niche of legal media seems ripe for another innovation. It could or could not come from the folks at ATL. A severe downturn can create demand for a fresh kind of analysis and presentation of issues. 

Full Disclosure: Since the late 1980s, I have been an entrepreneur. There I found extreme success versus organizational life. Recently I had a negative experience with Lateral Link. 

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

 

Ian Samuel - Lost, Yes, But Time Will Tell If He Will Be "Found"

One of the most direct paths to becoming lost in life is to experience early success.

That might be how Ian Samuel wound up resigning from his associate professor position at Indiana Law School. That followed a Title IX misconduct investigation. Here are more details from Tony Mauro at Law.com.

Samuel, still now a young man, had been a clerk to the late U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

He was an associate at the elite law firm Jones Day.

He had lectured at Harvard Law School.

And he was part of the successful initiative to convince law firms not to impose mandatory arbitration agreements on summer associates.

That was then.

Following the Title IX investigation he decided not to push to hold on to his teaching job at Indiana Law School.

He made the public statement that he had engaged in antisocial conduct such as excessive drinking in public places and not treating people right. In fact, he sums up where he wound up as "an ugly man."

Critics of his mea culpa observe that the tone and content are narcissistic. There doesn't seem to be any emotional or spiritual connection to the possible harm done others. 

So, only time will tell if Samuel can evolve into "Found." 

There are many examples of former miscreants who were able to get right with their humanity.

Labeled the "Evil Genius" of the Richard Nixon White House, lawyer Chuck Colson had a jailhouse conversion. After his release he ministered to the spiritual needs of ex-cons. Obituaries in establishment media positioned and packaged him as a kind of saint. 

In the "New Testament," Saul used to persecute Christians. Then he had a psychic shift and became Paul, in the front lines of preaching the teachings of Jesus Christ. 

On the other hand, there are those who seem incapable and/or unwilling to explore a less toxic existence. There is no need to list names.

I had dedicated my 2009 dark comedy - the novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich" - to all those who wound up in Lost and Found.

It resonated.

For a while it was #60 on Amazon.

I let it go out of print when I no longer needed that mirror. In 2014, I took the I-95 ramp out of the careerist Gold Coast of Connecticut and went in search of a different path. The jury is still out if I have found it.

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

 

Rainmaking - Lateral Link's Cordell Parvin Presenting 12-Part Series

In all professional services, not only law, hyper competition is the norm. So is client churn. 

Continual new business development is a must-do, both for survival and for scaling. In addition, the lack of new business development or rainmaking can result in being "forced out."

At Lateral Link, senior director Cordell Parvin is presenting a 12-part series on rainmaking. Here is the first installment, free to click on.

Among the key takeaways are:

•  Develop and continually deepen expertise in a niche. Become known as the go-to expert in that field. The market is national and global, not simply local. And, size of the firm can be irrelevant if you do that right.
• You must be visible.
• Gaining exposure entails using both the old-line tools such as a monthly column in third-party media and social media/social networks.
• Exploit what is know as "weak ties." Those are contacts outside your usual networks who know of opportunities others don't and can put you in touch with the decision-makers. Often those in your networks are all chasing after the same pieces of business.
•  Have down cold your prospects' business. That means understanding the fundamentals, learning about developments, and being aware of vulnerabilities to competitive threats. 
•  Have a plan.

What I have discovered in rainmaking is that some tools generate amazing outcomes - for a time. Then, there could be gigantic shifts in the marketplace, including new forms of competition. Sustained success depends on picking up on those changes before they catapult your professional services firm into a downward trajectory.

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

 

Crime and Punishment - Let's Re-Think All That

From the get-go in America, early social systems leveraged the power of public shaming.

The Puritans put miscreants in stocks in the town square.

Those settling the west tarred and feathers con artists and horse thieves.

Today, the official vestige of that is pretty tame. It's the perp walk. The alleged Wall Street insider trader is marched out the office in cuffs, with the media notified ahead.

Yet today social behavior is beyond offensive. Crime, especially the violent kind, is escalating.

It could be time to return to official and unofficial forms of public shaming for restoring social control and deterring crime. 

The 14-year-old mouthing off in class is mandated to take the elective course in poop removal in public housing. The progress in that learning experience is streamed back to the classroom and athletic events. Others will earn class credits by simply watching that. 

And, the hell with "sentencing" to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings those pleading guilty to DUIs.

First of all, only about 5%  to 10% of those in AA get and stay sober.

Secondly, everyone understands the power of social pressure. Let law enforcement and the courts come up with a public means of punishment that is not cruel or unusual. Clever lawyers can put that together. 

Meanwhile, contemporary social systems such as neighborhoods in old urban areas have developed their own ways of public shaming. There is no ambiguity about the message.

The self-absorbed pulls into a cleared parking space post-blizzard.

Sweet.

That car owner returns to a smashed windshield.

Beyond the cost and inconvenience of replacing the windshield there is the horror that everyone has witnessed this play out of crime and punishment.

The fear inside the car owner is the possibility of being shunned.

Of course, never again will there be any gliding into a cleared parking slot. 

In a densely populated residential complex in New Haven, Connecticut, a woman spoke harshly to me in front of others.

Soon enough, in front of others, when I spotted her coming down the block, I stepped off the sidewalk until she has passed me. Then I stepped back on. As others observed the theatre the area became eerily quiet.

Quickly, the woman became more respectful in her speech.

An alterative, of course, would have been to follow standard procedure: Going to property management and reporting the harassment. Yeah, that would have branded me everything from a rat to a cry baby. No question, figuring out modes of public shaming is the most effective approach to righting perceived wrongs. Instead of taking on the label of "tattle-tale" we are anointed "community organizer."

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

Souring of #MeToo? - "Stephens v. Baker & McKenzie," "Andowah Newton v. LVMH"

Movements are fragile entities. Some speculate that the counterculture lost traction when a severe recession hit in the early 1970s. 

It's possible weak lawsuits contending sexual misconduct could derail the #MeToo initiative. 

Two recent ones in that category have been "Stephens v. Baker McKenzie" and "Andowah Newton v. LVMH." 

In "Stephens," reports BigLaw Business, paralegal at Baker McKenzie Elena Stephens contended she had been sexually harassed. She requested $200 million.

When the trial judge demanded documentation of her claims, she didn't comply. Later she withdrew her lawsuit. Now, the court rules she has to pony up $35,445 in attorney fees. 

The other lawsuit "Andowah Newton" has, like "Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins," seems to have major problems.

As I explain in this analysis, there had been an internal investigation which turned up nothing. Also, the corporation is French. There could have existed cultural misunderstanding of modes of interaction. For example, was simple flirting interpreted as sexual misconduct?

Before the actual trial of "Pao," there had been tremendous support of the plaintiff's claim that she had been fired because of gender reasons. In a sense she became a symbol of third-wave feminism. But what came out through testimony was that she was ill-equipped for the kinds of tasks required at a venture capital firm. The jury totally acquitted the defendant,

Litigation is a powerful force of reform in American society. Not only can it change law. It also sends a message about values.

Currently lawsuits that throw shade on the spirit of #MeToo. It can provide ammo to those who position and package the movement as a misperception of the treatment of women in the workplace.

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

 

Beyond Pittsburgh and Poway - Accidental Jewish (or anti-semitism lite)

The questions were not a good-natured. They were not sincerely seeking to learn more about another culture.

When I was asked about the family structure I was being, well, interrogated.

And those doing the investigation were letting me know, indirectly, that my very being didn't measure up to theirs.

But unlike the shooting victims in Pittsburgh and Poway, my ordeal didn't make the global media.

The suffering was that of anyone anywhere who is perceived as "different." Once I left the New York Metro area in 2014 to start a new (lower cost) life in the west, the identity of "different" was designated as Jewish. 

Call it "Accidental Jewish" or "Anti-Semitism Lite."

To the insiders I was and am an outsider.

To them I fit the specs for being Jewish.

After all, the maternal side of the family is Eastern European.

The body style is stocky, not chiseled-boned WASP.

The complexion is dark, not American porcelain.

The accent is New York-heavy.

Since I have been an entrepreneur since the end of the 1980s, the mindset is hustle.

However, bias per se was not new for me.

In the 1950s, in immigrant-dense Jersey City, New Jersey, the Irish had the power. That included the leadership in the Roman Catholic Church and the parish schools. Other ethnic groups were treated as less-than. The little Irish girls with their blond hair, high cheek bones, and light skin sat in the front rows and were selected to help the nuns with law and order. 

I assumed I had fled all that when I finally got into an out-of-state college on scholarship. The Promised Land, right. But the head of the English department, you got it, had been Irish. Here was my Pittsburgh/Potway moment.

Ironically, management consultants tell businesses: Differentiate yourself from the competition. 

But in social life the message is clearly: Blend in, perfectly.

There is a wonderful best-selling book "The Stranger in the Woods." By Michael Finkel it narrates the true story of Christopher Knight. From the get-go of early adulthood he got it that he couldn't fit in. Because of that he anticipated that he would be made to suffer.

So, for 27 years he lived isolated in a homemade refuge in the Maine woods. That suited him just fine. Here it can be ordered from Amazon.

Is the solution for being emotionally safe and protected in a biased world establishing The Social System of One off the grid? Telecommuting allows us to do that and still earn a living. 

It's catching on, at least in mindsets.

In this very traditional residential complex, a neighbor who is, yes, different pretends she is based in a remote cabin miles and miles from any road. That has given her a sense of being okay. 

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

 

Whistle-Blowers - Doing the Supposed Right Thing at Great Peril

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange might not be likable. 

Many are jittery enough about national security to be wary of the Edward Snowden types.

And lawsuits such as "Andowah Newton v. LVHM" may us wonder about the downside of movements such as #MeToo.

But, we know from history, such as WaterGate, that whistleblowers are necessary for democracy and the sustainability of the legal system. 

So, it's scary that Edward Wasserman is flagging us in The New York Times about the precarious situation whistleblowers faces. He is the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California. The title of his opinion-editorial is: "Julian Assange and the Woeful State of Whistle-Blowers." Here you can read it. 

Both New York Magazine and Vanity Fair document this: A large number of the women who sued for alleged sexual misconduct or have been on the front lines of the #MeToo movement have suffered retaliation. Here is my coverage of that development.

Sure, doing the supposed right thing can be noble.

It can also be a heady experience.

But it is a form of whistle-blowing. The power structure is bound to push back. Speaking up, standing up - all that is risky business, literally. Careers can be temporarily or permanently derailed.

Yes, in the U.S. there are rewards for whistle-blowers. Those include, as The Wall Street Journal notes,  a nice payout from the IRS for disclosing information about tax cheats. On "Good Girls," FBI Jim promises Ruby much if she goes the distance in blowing the whistle on crime head Beth. 

Yes, society is also supposed to out bullies. Glassdoor is a mechanism for that in the workplace. The employee evaluations are anonymous. Here is how the help at The Dilenschneider Group perceives management.

Also yes, I outed on my syndicated blogs what I perceived to be an excessive vetting process by Your Edge for Success (YES).

It was for a contract assignment that wasn't even guaranteed to be for 15 hours a week. And the compensation was a project rate of $55 for editing each set of resume/cover letter. Suppose that had been job materials for a federal employee. The $55 compensation might not turn out to be much. 

Here is my push-back on Medium. 

But, hell, I have a successful communications boutique that deals in diverse lines of business. The resume/cover letter part has been and will be, well, small potatoes.

The risk? Practically zero. And taking on  YES and its head Katherine Metres served me well in terms of mental health.

Otherwise, I am cautious about outing wrongs associated with how I make my living. I am a single head of household. (Members are four-leggers.)

As Wasserman hammers, whistle-blowing is in a "woeful state."

Actually, I didn't need much of reminder of that. I grew up in the notorious Frank Hague political machine in Jersey City, New Jersey.

That was pre-gentrification.

There was no way to bypass the power of that machine except to leave the area.

From the get-go that was my goal. The exit ramp was, I strategically planned, a scholarship to an out-of-state college. That would provide the platform for putting together a more free life. 

Okay, I did get out. However, the residue of fear of the power structure has a long half life. Anyone from the Hague days probably can't entirely escape that force field.

Meanwhile, before those who need to make a living and want to do the supposed right thing have to consider the real possibility of never working in their field again. What on a macro level might be assessed as "right," could on the level of the individual trigger careeer interrupted.  

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

 

Kleiner Perkins - Legal Mess with Ellen Pao/Departure of Mary Meeker Were Just Symptoms of Deeper Troubles

Kleiner Perkins has been the media recently most because of the high-profile lawsuit "Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins" and the departure of star Mary Meeker. 

But those negative developments were not what derailed the once iconic venture capital firm into irrelevance. In Fortune, Polina Marinova presents that case study. Here is the analysis. 

Founded in 1972, Kleiner Perkins was among the smarties which invested early in Google. That was 1999. John Doerr was in charge and he was steering the ship well.

That was then.

Essentially four factors undid him - and the firm.

One was his judgment of people.

Ellen Pao, a seeming disaster on just about every professional front, was his protégé. After she eventually was fired at Kleiner Perkins she was forced out of Reddit. Currently, she's an activist for inclusion. Her book "Reset" doesn't rank high on Amazon - 44,546. Vanity Fair did a job on her and her husband Buddy Fletcher.

And it was Pao who enmeshed the firm in the ridiculous gender discrimination lawsuit "Pao v. Kleiner Perkins." Third-wave feminists supported Pao. However those with legal expertise saw the lawsuit as weak. So did members of the jury who acquitted the defendant on everything. But, the trial was a distraction. Also it was not good that the world got to see the defendants sweat on the stand. 

Another people mistake Doerr made was going for Brandnames with no real understanding of investments. Those included Al Gore. Soon enough Doerr was heavily focused on clean energy. I veered away from assignments in that niche, recognizing that wouldn't be where the lucrative projects were. So many clean energy startups folded. Incidentally, Pao was a brandname in that she had an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a law degree from Harvard Law School. 

That clean energy focus was the second big mistake: It sucked off resources that should have been plowed into the technologies which were taking off. Over and over again Kleiner was missing out on where the action was in Silicon Valley. 

Ironically, Elizabeth Holmes followed that pattern of parachuting into her startup Theranos Brandnames who knew nothing about the technology of blood analysis. They included Henry Kissinger. That gave her a passive board of directors with big names. Until The Wall Street Journal unmasked Theranos' misleading statements about the technology, Holmes was attracting billions in investment funding.

The third mistake was inadequate succession planning. Doerr had not developed and tested out those who could take over most of the day to day decisions and operations.

That is not uncommon.

Leaders tend to be reluctant to begin the process which will result in their losing power and ongoing control. They don't even want to envision letting go.

In addition, there is another syndrome: passing on power to those destined to fail so that the previous leader looks good. This can happen at organizations with mandatory retirement. The leader is forced out at a certain age. He or she will make Machiavellian moves to saddle it with the wrong talent. 

The fourth mistake was the inability to manage the infighting. Conflict in itself is not bad. Management gurus know it can be harnessed to produce extraordinary results. In a sense that is the rationale behind up or out work cultures such as at law firms and Harvard. There is a rumor that Donald Trump gives the same exact assignment to several different people.

Those internal tensions contributed to Meeker's departure. She exited to launch her own firm Bond. But before she did she had jump-started the firm's profit machine again through investments in late-stage companies. They needed funding to scale. Losing Meeker was lousy for the Kleiner Perkins brand.

The question is: Can Kleiner Perkins have a comeback? And then can it sustain that and scale? 

To put that in motion it has to have a couple of big wins. Then it has to hire the right publicity team to promote that success. 

If any of the team at Kleiner Perkins wants to be interviewed by this blog about what is in the works that is not confidential, please contact janegenova374@gmail.mail. It can be via email, providing those interviewed full control. 

UPDATE:

Mary Meeker raises $1.25 billion for her growth fund Bond Capital. Here are details from TechCrunch.

"Medellin" Flop Raises Question for All Aging Professionals: When Is It Time to Leave?

" … [Madonna'] 'Medellin' failed to catch on. It rose to number 9 on iTunes briefly, and now sits at number 32 … Beyoncé's 'Homecoming' album, released the same day, has sold or streamed a total of 43,000 copies in 48 hours." - ShowBiz411, April 19, 2019. Here is the article. 

Here is the audio - chachacha - from "Medellin," which is the lead-in to Madonna's new album "Madame X." Out in mid June, "Madame X" is supposed to be the 60-year-old's comeback platform. 

Nothing about "Medellin" is fresh.

That's why Madonna is being positioned and packaged as "washed up."

It isn't her age per se.

Betty White, a relic from the Mary Tyler Moore era, is in her 90s. She did fresh. That was through creating the persona as the designated role model for aging. That process, she hammered in her book, wasn't for sissies. The world loved it. Still love it. She remains marketable.

The issue Madonna raises is the scary question for all aging who are still working: Is it time to leave?

But what they are leaving might well be a very narrow career path. No, it isn't necessary to hang it all up, disappear into a retirement community in Oro Valley, Arizona, and compulsively do yoga. 

ShowBiz411 points out that the last several albums Madonna has put out have been "flops." 

Instead of continuing to do what isn't panning out, she could be testing out other ways to distinguish herself through work.

Maybe she can launch a training institution for the performing arts in Lordstown, Ohio. GM recently shuttered the plant there, putting about 1,600 out of a good job and hope. She can open the door to the light for all the Youngstown, OH metro area. The region still is caught in the shadow of Steel Yesterday.

Shoot-'em-up actor Clint Eastwood transitioned to serious drama at age 62. That was his film "The Unforgiven." Most recently, near 90, he gave us the amazing complex character of Earl Stone in "The Mule." Here is a video clip.

In the legal sector, Chris Darden of O.J. Simpson criminal trial fame shifted from prosecutor to defense attorney. At age 63, he is representing Nipsey Hussle's alleged murderer Eric Holder. 

If Don McGahn of Trump Administration fame is to regain his power and influence, he has to figure out how to develop a new sphere of influence. At age 51, his long-term branding is being blown to bits. Here is just a peek into that mess.

And there is that much younger version of transition: Elie Mystal. The Harvard Law School trained lawyer has gone rogue as journalist activist. He set that in play during his "audition" for a reporting job on Abovethelaw.com.

How do the aging and those no longer perceived as "young" come up with the courage to change?

I don't know about others.

What I do know is that for me the pain of becoming invisible was greater than the anxiety involved in trying out new lines of work. That experimentation in my professional life began when I was 58. Then, that same courage took over the decisions I made in my personal life. Here is one of those stories of brutal moments of clarity and then transition.

A useful read for those caught between career paths is "Necessary Endings" by executive coach Henry Cloud. Here you can order it from Amazon.

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