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Postseason=The beginning of the Major League Baseball season for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I like baseball. I just don’t care about the MLB until post-season. The same is true for the NFL.  It wasn’t always this way.

I was raised in a small New England village with a great baseball field about 100 yards downhill from our back porch.  Between the ages of 5 and 13 , during the daylight hours when I wasn’t in school, doing homework or participating in organized sports at another venue, that’s where you’d probably find me with the other guys from our neighborhood playing baseball in Spring and Summer or touch football in the Fall.

Since I was a New Englander, I grew up a Red Sox fan. The Yankees represented the Evil Empire.  New England didn’t have an NFL team in those days and the Jets didn’t exist, so the New York Giants was my default team of choice.

In later years, I lived in Pittsburgh where I became a Pirates and Steelers fan.

But now I’ve lived more than half of my life as a resident of New York state and, although during some of those years I’ve been a half-hearted Yankees fan, I’m not emotionally committed to any of the New York teams. I may, at times, like certain MLB and NFL teams more than others but I’m not passionate about any of them.

I’m a fair weather fan.

Which is why baseball season starts for me this week. Now that “the wheat is separated from the chaff”, “the cream has risen to the top”, or whichever metaphor you choose to use to describe the process which has brought these contending teams to the playoffs, I’m about to get interested.

I was particularly looking forward to watching Terry Francona and his Indians battle the Red Sox. But, alas, it’s not to be.

Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to an October and early November of close games, late nights, emotional ups & downs, and watching some amazingly gifted athletes and managers perform under pressure.

I find watching them to be inspiring and educational….even if I’m just a lowly fair weather fan.  

                                                             Batter up !

Brown uses his latest novel not only to educate us about Dante’s classic “Inferno”, the art it inspired and the controversy surrounding it but also to encourage our consideration of human overpopulation and its impact as well as the theories Malthus, Ray Kurzweil and other transhumanists.

Although “The DaVinci Code” is Brown’s most popular effort, I consider this book to be more important in terms of the issues that it addresses and the questions it forces us to confront.     http://ow.ly/poRNd

OK, I admit it. I don’t get the Game Of Thrones phenomenon. Can someone please explain it to me?

Although the show has just completed its third season and achieved its highest ratings to date, I’ve never watched it. But I keep hearing references to it. Mostly, on TV. Although I did see a young guy reading a Game Of Thrones paperback the other day.

So, is it a demographic thing? Is the audience for Game Of Thrones essentially the under-30 crowd? I gather that the show contains a lot of sex and violence so is its appeal primarily to young males. Is it to males what the Twilight series is to females? Or is the series more mass appeal than that and the attraction is its study of impact of power, sex, and violence and human relationships?

What exactly am I missing?

Flattered to be acknowledged by Martha Quinn in the new book, “VJ:The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave (No)”

[Minor inconvenience: You have to click on the picture to actually read the story. (Insert sheepish smile)]

It’s not quite how I recall it. But, close enough.

Let’s be honest. Al Gore can come across as a pretentious, pedantic bore. His political enemies have done a great job of convincing most Americans that Gore takes personal credit for inventing the internet. (By the way, he doesn’t. During a 1999 CNN interview, he spoke about taking the initiative as vice-president to foster, economically and legislatively, the technology that we now know as the internet.) But Gore’s formality and stiffness in otherwise relaxed situations along with a tendency to sound self-righteous play right into the hands of those that perpetuate this notion.

That said, as the New York Times reviewer noted, Gore’s latest book, “The Future:Six Drivers of Global Change” is worth checking out for two ideas that it introduces. Reviewer Chrystia Freeland writes: “The first is the premise. Gore believes we are living in a ‘new period of hyperchange.’ The speed at which our world is changing…is unprecedented, and that transformation is the central reality of our lives. The technology revolution, Gore writes, ‘is now carrying us with it at a speed beyond our imagining toward ever newer technologically shaped realities that often appear, in the words of Arthur C. Clarke, ‘indistinguishable from magic.’’”

“Gore’s second big argument is based on this first one,” Freeland writes. Since we’re experiencing these major economic and sociological changes, we need to think about the local, regional, and geo-political implications. Gore seems to believe that the nation-state is fast becoming irrelevant and talks about how globalization has really transformed business into Earth, Inc. And, he believes that if America doesn’t lead the rest of the world in developing a viable international reaction to these rapid changes, that the world will stay stuck in the paradigm that we’ve inherited from previous, less complicated centuries.

Of course, Al Gore isn’t the only person who believes that the business world has some issues such as “quarterly democracy” which need to be addressed. There are some, and I include themselves among them, who believe that this period of Capitalism is reminiscent of the days of the robber barons from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a recent TIME essay, “The Curious Capitalist” Rana Forooha talks about the short-termism of our system of shareholder capitalism and about those “calling for not only corporate pay and tax reforms but also a more Germanic-style stakeholder capitalism that can spread the benefits of a company’s growth more evenly among labor, management and shareholders.”

For capitalism to remain viable, it’s important that the population be economically productive. However, new technologies are enabling companies to employ “robosourcing” which eliminates a high percentage of workers from the equation. If memory serves, Gore mentions software which can be used by legal firms to do the work of 10,000 legal interns. Not great news for law students who’ve invested all that time, money and effort in their educations.
With people living longer and healthier lives, society is going to need to figure out a way to keep the population productively employed so that they can participate not only as conscientious citizens but also as active consumers who stoke the engines of capitalism with their purchases and contribute to the government coffers via taxes.

Along with unemployment, the overall growth of the world population, the aging of populations in first world nations, “The Future” also addresses water quality and shortages, top soil depletion and, of course, the effects of global warming. I have to admit that the Malthusian in me started wondering about the impact these dilemmas would have on fear and the growth of intolerance which generates hate groups like neo-Nazis, radical Islamists, and the like.

In his New York Times review of “The Future”, Michiko Kakutani says Gore is most convincing “when he refrains from editorializing and sticks to analyzing how changes in technology, our political climate and the environment are going to affect the world, often creating domino and cascadelike effects.” For instance, how the growth of the Internet and proliferation of mobile phones in developing countries has helped closed the information gap and increased the opportunity for “robust democratic discourse” but also increases threats to privacy and cybersecurity. Or how 3-D printing raises questions about intellectual property as well as copyright and patent law and how advances in science technology might soon create ethical dilemmas when parents have the opportunity to create “designer babies” with the ability to choose not only hair and eye color but also height, strength, and intelligence characteristics.

“The Future” is an ambitious project. Probably,too much so. Gore tries to educate us with a comprehensive, holistic overview about how various factors (business, population, environment, technology, information) interrelate but the effect can be overwhelming. Add Al Gore’s wooden and ponderous communication style to the mix and you might find your mind wandering as you wade through it. Nevertheless, it’s worth the effort. As Gore observes: “We as human beings now face a choice: either to be swept along by the powerful currents of technological change and economic determinism into a future that may threaten our deepest values, or to build a capacity for collective decision making on a global scale.”

Something to think about.

Jessica Chastain won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the CIA operative whose obsession with al-Qaeda’s network of couriers led to the discovery of Osama bi Laden’s hideout in Pakistan.
However, it might surprise you to learn that the woman on whom Chastain’s character is based was denied a promotion which would have earned her an extra $16K per year.

Apparently, the real-life Maya (not her actual name) is, shall we say, “assertive” and as one of her colleagues explained to a reporter not Miss Congeniality. However, another colleague pointed out that jerks are not in short supply at the CIA so the woman’s abrasive personality shouldn’t be an impediment to promotion.

The CIA says that she received a financial bonus after bin Laden was found but the agency was reticent about discussing why the operative’s promotion from GS 13 to GS 14 was denied.

Here’s the Washington Post story: http://wapo.st/VNTlJH

You’ll notice that this story was published in early December and it did get some press coverage then. But, as Charles Peters observes in The Washington Monthly, it’s odd that this story hasn’t received much wider media attention. Especially, following Chastain’s Oscar win.

Paul Greenberg, author of the customer relationship management book, CRM At The Speed of Light, cites a recent blog post about an observation from the IBM Institute of Business Value’s 2012 CEO Study which states, “ The view that technology is a driver of efficiency is outdated; CEO’s now see technology as an enabler of collaboration and relationships-those essential connections that fuel innovation and creativity.” Greenberg notes, “This leads CEO’s to see that the three most important areas for creating sustained economic value are (in order) human capital, customer relationships and products/ services innovation. We are seeing the beginnings of more distributed organizations to handle these transformations.”

So, what does this mean for us Alpha Boomers? We keep hearing that the business community has been reconsidering its attitude towards that part of the work force which is seasoned in our favor although the evidence remains slim. We certainly bring a lot of expertise to the table when it comes to establishing and maintaining positive relationships with customers. And, although Alpha Boomers may not be in the top quintile of Early Adopters when it comes to technology, we are certainly more open to embracing innovative new technologies that have been previous generations.

But, as a story in the New York Times noted this past weekend, the latest economic recession hurt we Boomers more than it did Millennials or members of Gen Y. A woman quoted in the article observed that employers are afraid to hire Baby Boomers because they’re concerned that they might have a negative impact on the company’s health insurance premiums and that it might not be worth investing in training Boomers due to the possibility that they’d leave the company in five years. Personally, I find the concern about leaving the company to be a bit disingenuous since a three years is considered long-term commitment nowadays.

However, in a recent editorial, the journalist Thomas Friedman observed that “everyone who wants a job now must demonstrate how they can add value” better than the above-average software, automation, robotics, cheap labor and cheap genius that’s available to companies these days. It’s going to require individual initiative on each of our parts to develop 21st century skills which compliment new technology and, as Friedman notes, will require us to combine our PQ (passion quotient) and CQ (curiosity quotient) with our IQ (intelligence quotient) to find or invent jobs along with a commitment to consistent learning and re-learning.

So, it seems to me that a challenge to Alpha Boomers will be to make a psychological commitment to stay fit in body, mind and spirit and to do the math so that we’re able to create a cost/ benefit analysis for potential employers which honestly compares the cost of hiring us over a three year period to the cost of hiring a younger worker.

Your thoughts?

I’m curious to learn your insights about a question which concerns me and many of my fellow “Alpha Boomers” (those of us born between 1946-1956). Although society and government have yet to catch up, many of us would rather pay in to social security than to collect it and have no interest in retiring at age 65. In fact, a recent report on CBS Sunday Morning indicated that, while there are currently 75,000 people in the US aged 100 or older, in 40 years there will be more than 6 million. Those will be today’s Alpha Boomers and it means that those people aren’t “senior citizens” but are “middle-aged”.

My point is that many of us Alpha Boomers are able and willing to continue working in economically productive and financially rewarding careers. However, there is an obvious preference by organizations to choose young & inexperienced over older & experienced applicants. Automation and globalization are certainly factors in the downsizing and restructuring which has been prevalent during the past 20 years. It’s my understanding that HR departments have not escaped this trend. So fewer people are left to cope with more applications. That’s led to a mindset whereby it seems that the primary function of HR systems is not as much to find the right applicant than to find a reason to say NO.

It seems to me that the US needs to focus on a way to create opportunities so that Baby Boomers who are able,willing, and (for economic reasons) need to work can collaborate with GenY’ers who need work in order to build financial security and pursue productive careers. Youth benefits from the wisdom and experience of seasoned professionals, older workforce is inspired and revitalized by the ideas and perspective of youth and the result it the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Is anybody in the HR industry and business in general considering this perspective? Is my attitude totally Pollyanna and unrealistic?

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts

During the past few months, I’m having this experience more frequently. It’s been happening when I sign into my Linkedin account after being alerted that someone has endorsed me or when I check Facebook to learn which friends are celebrating birthdays.

I’m confronted with the profile of a dead friend.

Has this been happening a lot to you, too? If it has, what do you do about it?

The practical part of me wants to delete the person from my list of friends. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Deleting them from my Linkedin connections list or “unfriending” them on Facebook seems, somehow, disrespectful to their memory. I guess, in some weird way, the uncritical emotional part of my psyche believes, if I keep their profile active, that they somehow remain “alive”.

But, I’m being confronted with this issue more frequently this year. Today, at least three different deceased friends confronted me either on the endorsement pages of Linkedin or on my Facebook birthday list.

Has this been happening to you? If you were me, how would you handle it?

Evaluation is a process. 

Judging is a decision which implies approval or disapproval.

As an analytical personality type, it’s been my experience that I’m frequently thought to be “judging” when, in fact, I’m “evaluating”.

When I attempt to explain that I’m simply in the process of information gathering to personality types who are from more of a “shoot-from-the-hip” orientation, they often become dismissive and agitated. They seem convinced that I’m judging them or a decision they’ve made in a negative way.

It can be quite frustrating.

What’s been your experience?