While our U.S. government is pouring billions into GM hoping to revive our economy here in the U.S. - if you look at where the money is going and who will be making these new cars, you begin to realize, it isn’t here. The new plants and jobs will be filled by autoworkers overseas, mainly in Mexico, China and South Korea, to be sold here in the US. This is the growing pains of a global economy as our own companies have to move out of the United States to become profitable, while selling our stuff back to us. On top of that, we will be paying tariffs on those same goods.

View original article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/07/AR2009050704336.html

Now I am all for globalization. I think we as a country have been isolated for far too long. Only 5% of American’s have passports. But we as a nation are just not encouraged to get out and see the world. And I can understand why…we have a hell of a lot to see here at home. My problem is the way globalization has been handled.

Here in the US we lost 13 million jobs over the past year in shrinking sectors like construction and finance. Yet we’ve had 3 million new jobs created in expanding sectors with no one to fill them – they are still open and available. Why? The skill sets from the shrinking sectors are NOT aligning with the skill sets of the expanding sectors. Healthcare is one of them. Imagine pouring concrete for 10 years and then learning how to be an X-Ray technician overnight. Skill sets need to align.

How? We need to retrain people in order to repurpose them.

And that’s my big gripe - Baby Boomers were never prepared for this shift to a global marketplace and the death of the Industrial Age. Since most of us are unsure of where we are going as a country, many hold on to the old ways of thinking and working. We were raised on a steady diet of John Wayne movies, “America is always the hero” history books, and a solipsistic approach to world politics, and what you get is an entire generation suffering from what Tim Davis calls Adult Resistance Learning. Our culture is physically trained to resist change.

We are waiting for the “jobs” to return. This is something we can no longer afford to do. First the idea of a job has changed. Companies understand it is better to have a freelance, seasonal workforce than to be paying so much in salaries, benefits and sick pay. Consultants pay their own healthcare, taxes and retirement. Responsibility is shifting to the individual.

Knowledge hording is something that allowed us Boomers to gain status and move into the corner office. Today knowledge hording is a detriment to ones career as keeping up with the amount of knowledge out there becomes impossible. It is doubling every 72 hours. Hording knowledge becomes a ball and chain especially when learning new software. So having a team of up-to-date knowledge seekers becomes paramount to your career.

As entire sectors shrink, and those “jobs” move overseas, many of us will have to change careers. Auto workers may lose their pensions and retirement benefits (just as former Enron employees did), despite all the bailouts. Case In Point: pension obligations are so huge at Ford, if they sold ALL their assets as well as all the inventory of cars, they would have only a small percentage of their pension obligations. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Retraining & repurposing people needs to happen now. As Alvin & Heidi Toffler pointed out almost 40 years ago in their book Future Shock…“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those that cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Just look into market sectors that are expanding and ask yourself “Do I need to get Trained for That Job?” If the answer is yes, then I suggest you get trained now.

Also start listening to Generation Y. They are also called Millennial’s and they’ve been trained in the global marketplace. With a completely different set of skills - they were raised to have higher self esteem, entrepreneurial skills and a voracious appetite for technology…while children! They are prepared for globalization…we Boomers sad to say, were not. But we can make up for lost time by letting go of opinions and start listening and get retrained. Unlearn and relearn all that you hold on to.

Look, it is going to get ugly as jobs leave the US by the millions - this recession is far from over despite Bernanke’s crystal ball. After all, if Bernanke was a sharp as every one thinks, he would have predicted this recession/depression before it happened. So I am not going to put any faith that our economy will recover in 2009. Instead I am a realist.

Corporations are looking for the cheapest way to get things done and use technology to automate as much as they possibly can. It is not a good or a bad thing. It is the bloody transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Horse & Buggy manufacturers didn’t completely disappear 100 years ago, their sector just shrank. So, keep in the back of your head the fact that someday the factory of the future will be completely automated. So do you want to continue working in a factory or do you want to get trained to repair all those robotic welders?

Dare I say the latter is a cooler job.

Thank you for reading,

Brad Szollose
Need Executive Coaching? How about an executive coach with executive experience?
Send an email to brad@bradszollose. We look forward to hearing from you.

May I suggest: Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. It will amaze you how much he and wife Heidi were able to predict about today’s world. http://www.amazon.com/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler/dp/0553277375/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242055676&sr=8-1

Many months ago, good friend, fellow entrepreneur and corporate coach Glenn Andrew lured me to the Marriott Marquis in Times Square for a casual meeting. After a few sodas Glenn popped a question: “Do you have any tips for my readers on forming a Master Mind Group?”

We chatted for a little on the subject and then I realized it required far more than light discussion, it needed a list of do’s and don’ts. I told Glenn I’d get back to him with my list.

A week later I emailed him my ideas and then forgot about it. So yesterday I get some correspondence from Glenn reminding me of what I had written down. Wow, someone actually listens to my ramblings…AND saves them! (Thank you Glenn) The results of that question are my 5 tips that have come from 30 years as an entrepreneur, business owner, board member, speaker and author.

Go to http://glennandrew.com/mastermind-groups/Thank you for reading, and let me know if these points work for you.

Brad Szollose 

PS: I cannot recommend anyone better than Glenn, so please add his RSS feed to your world. Great coach and business leader…AND he’s on Twitter, Facebook, and whatever social network will be available in the future;-) 

Brad is featured this month in the Details Magazine June/July 2008 issue with Christian Bale (a.k.a. Batman) on the cover.  The article Your Career May Already Have Peaked by Mac Motandon on page 113, speaks loud and clear to those Gen X and Gen Y entrepreneurs who cashed out during the first and second Dot Com Boom and now, whether broke or cash rich, don’t know what to do with themselves (I know, not too many people are going to feel sorry for them).

Being one of the fortunate ones, Brad puts his 2 cents in and comments on how to not choke when you become a first time CEO. (page 118)

Pick it up at new stands now! Enjoy!

Maybury’s Two Laws
“Do all you have agreed to do
Do not encroach on other persons or their property”

Many years ago after dabbling in the Stock Market, New York real estate, various mutual funds and such, I threw my hands up in disgust. I came to the same conclusion that Suze Orman made – brokers make you broke.

My wife pulled me aside and said to me, “Why don’t you read Richard Maybury’s newsletter?” I had no idea who he was except that several of my friends were [click here to continue…]

While Americans are starting to feel the effects of the mortgage meltdown, derivatives, inflation, credit problems and a war-based economy, Germany, as of this past year, stepped into the leadership position as the number one exporter of goods in the world, a.k.a. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Yes, little old Germany. [click here to continue…]

After turning a modest sum into a few million I realized that a close friend of mine had to have a system to explain her über success. When I pressed her to reveal the secret, she astounded me with something I always knew was there, but never awakened to. It was as if she bestowed wisdom on me with the touch of a magic wand.

“So, what’s your secret, Val?” [click here to continue…]

Mergers and acquisitions rarely work. Short term they look great, but long term always reveals that the purchaser paid way too much for a bloated carcass. Or worse yet, the two companies are incompatible. I wish that people who specialize in M&A’s would take some basic marketing classes. It would save them quite a bit of money and make them appear to be geniuses.

For seven years I was involved in a particular car company’s annual meetings. I had access to concept cars as well as the new lineups 8 months before [click here to continue…]

I realized I was getting older when I didn’t know half of the celebrities in the American Express ads. That’s right I said it, “I’m getting older.” Most of my life I tried to stay in touch with what the youth were up to, but getting up on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons, checking out Soul Train, Comedy Central and paying very close attention to who is advertising, can make a grown man tired.

Some of you were probably wondering who the hell that guy is with Jessica Alba in the movie Good Luck Chuck? That my friends is Dane Cook, a young up-and-coming comedian who seems to have arrived. His fans knew it was him, us old farts who are hip to what you youngsters are up to…well, some of us knew too.

How did he get so popular? [click here to continue…]

My mother had a tendency to be a hypochondriac. Every six months it was a new ailment that she would see on TV or read in the paper. We couldn’t keep up. So when she complained of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome we kind of laughed, after all, she never worked on a computer or used her wrists like that in any way. Unfortunately her warnings this time turned into something very real.

She went into Hershey Medical Center in May of this year to endure a biopsy. It turns out her mysterious wrist problem was caused by [click here to continue…]

Imagine if Amazon decided to build bookstores in all the malls across the country. How successful do you think they would be? Not very. The simple truth is an online brand doesn’t translate into the brick and mortar world very well and visa versa. Starbuck’s doesn’t work online but is a great place to buy a cup of coffee. (I use their website to get coupons for a mocha Frappuccino.) The site becomes a support channel for them.

But what about brands that are about to be extinct due to a change in business methodologies? Companies like Blockbuster are probably not going to be around [click here to continue…]