Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #147
Career Decisions or Life Decisions?
I’ve written before about how my career in the last 10-15 years has been less about a career ladder and more about finding the job that fit best with the life I wanted at the time.
Whether it was a desire to be in a specific region, a desire to travel less, a desire to work remotely, or a desire to change the work I was doing, I’ve given up on the idea of moving up and focused on the kind of work that fits with my idea of a happy life.
Welcome to this week’s collection of thought-provoking things. For each issue, I’ll share information about careers and workplace culture, mental health in the workplace, talent development, and important information about privacy, security, and legal tech.
You can find out all about me here - Mike McBride Online.
That’s why I bookmarked this article:
How To Adapt Your Career To Your Life's Journey
Our careers are only part of our lives. As I’ve gotten older, and experienced so many different things in the workplace, that’s the one reality I keep coming back to. I want to be good at my work, but it’s more important to be good at the rest of my life. The things that are most important to me aren’t in the office. Why should I endeavor to spend so much time there? Why should I sacrifice hours out of every week just to make a slightly higher salary that adds very little to my life?
When people ask me why I’ve changed jobs “x” number of times over the years, its mostly because what I wanted changed. That’s OK. It also stresses the importance of learning new skills and being willing to try new things. That flexibility gives you more options. You don’t have to stay where you are and wait to be promoted to whatever role someone else decides is a good fit for you and your overall lifestyle.
You can go make your own path.
How have you adapted your career to fit with your life as opposed to the opposite?
Speaking of learning, if you’re going to ILTACON in Nashville in just over a week, look me up. I’ll be speaking on Tuesday at 11 AM on a panel about Teams, and am always willing to say hello.
Careers and the Workplace
Speaking of the ILTA Conference, networking is a big part of it:
See also - Build Your Personal Brand at Conferences: How to Use Social Media
This is a good question. I'have no answer to the “where do you see yourself in five years?” question, why would we expect a business to?
At work, trust is also easily broken. - Trust is the foundation of any great relationship.
Artificial Intelligence
There are serious questions about whether AI will ever earn back the ridiculous amounts of money being invested - The End Of Investors’ GenAI Honeymoon.
What do you think, lawyers? - Pre-Trial AI Tools For Lawyers.
Also, is our eDiscovery knowledge key to unlocking AI use? - Same as It Ever Was: How Proven eDiscovery Approaches Help Leverage Generative AI.
This is an important first for the legal industry - First Ethics Guidance from ABA on Use of GenAI Tools.
Also, lawyers - Yes, AI is Here. No, You’re Not Gone.
Hint - you’re probably going to want one. - How to Build an (AI) Governance Program
Always happy to share good prompting resources - The Best AI Prompt Frameworks For Business (2024)
I think this is a legit concern, but I’m not an IT infrastruture expert - IT leaders worry the rush to adopt Gen AI may have tech infrastructure repercussions.
I think this is likely, but I also wonder how it compares to other technological projects - A third of AI projects will be abandoned by businesses by the end of next year.
Training and Development
This is the challenge facing trainers - Preparing Employees for Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet.
Change means needing to learn new skills and unlearn old habits - The important role of learning in change management.
I can get behind this idea - Let's stop using the word feedback for at least 20 years. We broke it!
Mental Health in the Workplace
I've mentioned before that in some of the worst of my mental health struggles, I had a manager who helped me manage the process and was incredibly supportive of me doing what I needed to do, and I later had a manager who made the entire thing awkward and unbearable for me. This was at the same company. Nothing about the rules or the program changed, but my manager did. That made all the difference between me staying and being productive and walking out the door.
Similarly - How can HR balance managers' and employees' mental health?
The folks who used the resources wound up being no better off than the employees who didn't. This is not good, and it's also not surprising. Mental health issues at work aren't a case of individual employees bringing their mental health struggles to work and needing some assistance. It's a workplace that is more likely to cause mental health issues that can't be fixed by individual employees.
We need more of this - How Companies Can Support The Mental Health Of Working Mothers.
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
Linked - Most people worry about deepfakes - and overestimate their ability to spot them.
Maybe those easy-to-spot ones are lulling us into a sense of overconfidence. What will we do when something is done with more effort and better quality? Heck, enough folks are being fooled by the poor ones because they display something they want to believe. None of us should assume we'd always know.
Google isn’t even capable of not being evil - Google Confirms Bad News For 3 Billion Chrome Users—You Will Still Be Tracked.
Some conversation about Teams.
That’s all, folks. If you found something interesting in this week’s newsletter, please share it with your friends. It’s the best way to help support the effort I put in each week to share this with you.