An article caught my eye which led to the topic of this week’s blog. The article discusses the changing job description of CEOs. Those of you who are kind enough to read this blog regularly (and MANY THANKS!) know research plays a big role in most every article. Well, anyway, doing as little more digging, it is evident that everyone’s job description in the C-Suite and beyond is changing and will continue to change and most likely the change will continue at a rapid pace.

Furthermore, whole industries are changing. Two examples are banking. Banking is still struggling with transitioning from a service industry to a sales industry. Today a loan officer must morph into a sales person – no easy task! The field of medicine has its hands full as well. Not only with technology changes, but rapid changes in medicine, and how the doctor/patient relationship is changing. You can thank the Millennials and the information age for much of the change in the doctor/patient interaction. Trusting your doctor was once the norm. Now Millennials in particular, see the newest medications on media, and insist that a doctor prescribe it, regardless of he doctor’s recommendations.

Recently, I went into a bank to deposit money into some CDs. The woman who helped me was older and quite efficient. I just assumed she had been with the bank for many years. When I asked her how long she had been with the bank, she said, I’ve only been here about six months. She explained that she had been with a bigger bank that was purchased by an even bigger bank and management laid off all the women over 55 years of age. But wait, there’s more!

Ford is laying off 7000 workers. The media has lost 2,700 workers to layoffs. 

According to Ars Technica when AT&T purchased Time Warner, layoffs occurred in 11 states due to “geographic rationalization [whatever THAT is] and employee surplus”. An inside source at CNN shared with me that in Atlanta, most of the layoffs were people 55 and older. I guess there was a need for “age rationalization” as well.