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The High Cost of Disrespect

Wednesday, May 9th, 2018

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrfb/8727714185/

 

The last few days we’ve been talking various aspects and effects of respect, but one of the most important to business is its effect on creativity and innovation (they’re not the same thing), although we touched on it when talking about the drawbacks of a “nice” culture.

The opposite of respect is disrespect and if it permeates a culture you can count on four things.

From this perspective, “misfits” are valuable to companies. They don’t quite fit into a specific team. They’re always challenging why the company does what it does. They’re rebellious. They’re independent. They can seem counterproductive to everything that a manager needs to achieve—to maintain order.

But those are the people that are going to change the game on how your company innovates.

As a boss, culture is your responsibility. You can’t afford to assume that your boss or their boss will make the right choices.

No matter the scope, within your organization it’s your choice.

Choose wisely.

Image credit: MiloszB

Golden Oldies: A World I Won’t Live In

Monday, November 13th, 2017

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Who’d a thunk it? A world I wrote about 5 years ago that I hoped I wouldn’t live to see has already happened and I’m still here. Bummer.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/igorschwarzmann/6243421484/Two stories today made me really happy.

Happy that I won’t be around to see the world that the Silicon Valley mentality is working frantically to make happen. (I say ‘mentality’ because startups are all over as is the mindset described.)

It’s a world of instant solutions, from quasi-immortality, postmortem tweets from soon-to-be-launched LivesOn, to futurist Ayesha Khanna’s idea for smart contact lenses that would make homeless people disappear from view—out of sight/out of mind.

Solutionists err by assuming, rather than investigating, the problems they set out to tackle. Given Silicon Valley’s digital hammers, all problems start looking like nails, and all solutions like apps.

And then there is Seesaw, which allows you to “crowdsource absolutely every decision in your life” and practically guarantees siloed, homogenized attitudes over the long-term.

The drive seems to be to avoid thinking in general, let alone any of the less comfortable deep thinking required to mature and develop anything vaguely resembling wisdom.

Leszek Kolakowski argued that, given that we are regularly confronted with equally valid choices where painful ethical reflection is in order, being inconsistent is the only way to avoid becoming a doctrinaire ideologue who sticks to an algorithm. For Kolakowski, absolute consistency is identical to fanaticism.

Or as Emerson said long before the rise of today’s technology, “A foolish Consistency is the hobgoblins of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers, and divines. With consistency, a great soul simply has nothing to do.”

The main problem with so many innovators is that they want to solve problems with an algorithm, which ignores the entire messy human equation; much like medicine desperately wants to believe that one-dose-fits-all.

Nor, in the rush to innovate, do they give much thought as to the longer-term effects of their miracles.

The interactive dialog provided by digital media was hailed as a way to draw millions more into the dialog, which sounds great until you look at the real effect of negative comments on stories.

Comments from some readers, our research shows, can significantly distort what other readers think was reported in the first place. (…) The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.

Turns out it’s not so much the comment, but the tone that has the greatest effect.

So. No discussion, no disagreement within your little world, no ethical dilemmas, no deep thinking, mental struggle, stretching or growing.

Maybe no innovation.

Is this the world in which you want to live?

Image credit: Igor Schwarzmann

Ducks in a Row: How Facebook Stepped in the Poo

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2016

https://www.flickr.com/photos/44412176@N05/4197328040/

Facebook really stuck its foot deep in the doo doo pile when it claimed its racial diversity numbers, which are even worse than its gender diversity stats, are the result of a lack of qualified candidates.

What is really going on is the very real human desire to hire “people like me,” but using “cultural fit” as an excuse for their bias.

In a post shared widely on social media, the computer science student and iOS developer took Facebook and its Silicon Valley peers to task for focusing on whether potential employees are a “culture fit” — an ambiguous gauge often used to defend discrimination.

But that, of course, depends on what is meant by culture.

Culture is a reflection of the founder’s/company’s actual values — values equaling stuff such as how customers are treated and whether politics will rule over merit.

Culture is not a function of perks — or it shouldn’t be.

“Most of tech recruiting is currently not built to look for great talent,” wrote Thomas in her post.

“I’m not interested in ping-pong, beer, or whatever other gimmick used to attract new grads. The fact that I don’t like those things shouldn’t mean I’m not a ‘culture fit’. I don’t want to work in tech to fool around, I want to create amazing things and learn from other smart people. That is the culture fit you should be looking for.”

You wouldn’t necessarily expect tech, with its penchant for data-based decisions, to cherry-pick the stats, but Facebook is an amalgamate of human beings and their biases, so it’s not that surprising.

Then, of course, there’s the data — which you’d think a company like Facebook, reliant as it is on algorithms, would’ve parsed before blaming education for its diversity ills. There simply isn’t a pipeline problem as long as there are twice as many black and Hispanic computer science graduates as there are actual hires from these minority groups.

So, once again, the old programming saying ‘garbage in/garbage out’ proves true.

A perfect summing up of Facebook’s, and tech-in-general’s, “no pipeline” excuse.

Flickr image credit: gorfor

If the Shoe Fits: Silicon Valley Groupthink, Should and You

Friday, January 8th, 2016

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mOn one of the last days of 2015 I read a great article about the groupthink that pervades Silicon Valley these days.

It reminded me of how teens of every generation display their rebellion against society through their choice of clothes, while simultaneously making sure they “fit in” with their peers.

This is most easily seen in a subgroup like the goths, whose black clothing and makeup sets them apart from other teens, but within which a rigid dress code prevails.

Unlike the Silicon Valley I knew in the 1980s and 90s, today’s Silicon Valley is far more homogenized and undiversified, with little perspective on the “real” world.

The result is that it’s far less creative and exciting than it once was.

Silicon Valley groupthink is also the force behind what Danielle Morrill, CEO & Cofounder of Mattermark, calls the “tyranny of should.”

But sometimes when I am able to quiet that story down, I catch myself listening because it is just so much easier to have someone else figure out what I should do.

In the first days of this new year I urge you to choose between taking the easy road of groupthink and should or following Sam Altman’s path of most resistance.

“You should ignore what your peers are doing or what your peers or parents think is cool. (…) And that’s the hardest part. We’re all so much more susceptible to that than we think.”

Yes, another ‘should’, but not all ‘shoulds’ are created equal.

As always, it’s your choice.

That’s both life’s greatest joy and its greatest fear.

Image credit: HikingArtist

If the Shoe Fits: the Worst Idea Ever

Friday, August 7th, 2015

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mI admit to a long-time and deep fascination with innovation, startups and the people who drive them

Although many of the new apps and services provide no value to me personally, in most case I can understand their allure to those of a different mindset.

But now and then I read/hear about an idea I consider the height of stupidity, but that doesn’t mean it won’t succeed.

Right now, co-living spaces are at the top of my stupid list.

Live-work spaces aren’t new.  HP started in a garage. Two decades ago they were a major force in the creation of what became SOMA in San Francisco. And home offices are everywhere.

But co-working spaces as envisioned by startups like WeWork are not only stupid, they are dangerous.

Crystal City WeLive location [Washington DC], the company will ultimately be renting out 360-square-foot “micro apartments,” which sit on top of WeWork’s co-working spaces. WeWork will offer more than 250 micro-apartments at that location, along with amenities like bike parking, an herb garden, and a library.

The idea is to eliminate the need to go outside your immediate environment.

It’s Silicon Valley efficiency taken to the extreme: you give up a normal work-life balance to eliminate your commute and live with all the amenities you need nearby. If you already hire people to take care of your other chores for you — you use Uber to drive you around and Wash.io to do your laundry — why not take it a step further and take care of your living arrangements through a startup too?

Residents not only give up any kind of work-life balance, they give up much of their connection to the real world and, more importantly, to their customers.
They will work/live/relax/socialize with people like themselves.

While losing contact with the extended world is bad, the potential for personal damage is catastrophic.

Shrinking the already tiny startup world will exacerbate the damage done by its ultra-competitiveness and worsen the rates of anxiety, depression and suicide already prevalent within it.

Image credit: HikingArtist

If the Shoe Fits: Is San Francisco/Bay Area Really the Promised Land?

Friday, October 24th, 2014

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mThe Bay Area is touted for being the best place in the world for startups; the place that all others try to copy.

But is it really the best place?

I live in Washington State, just across the river from Portland, Oregon, AKA, Silicon Forrest. Lots of startups including a few that have jumped ship from San Francisco.

Tilde joins startups like Simple, Panic, and Sprint.ly, which have already set up shop in the city. Big-name companies like Salesforce, eBay, and Airbnb have also opened outposts here in recent months.

New York State offers cushy lures and there’s a lot more to the state than just New York City.

START-UP NY, Governor Cuomo’s groundbreaking initiative, is transforming communities across the state into tax-free sites for new and expanding businesses. Now, businesses can operate 100% tax-free for 10 years. No income tax, business, corporate, state or local taxes, sales and property taxes, or franchise fees.

Detroit should be up for consideration, too, thanks to Dan Gilbert, Quicken Loan’s billionaire owner who bought 60 skyscrapers totaling nine million square feet.

He has brought 12,500 employees with him to downtown, and along with other private investors is funding the construction of a light-rail system that will connect the central business district with the neighboring Midtown district. Through his umbrella company, Rock Ventures, he formed a start-up incubator called Bizdom and a venture-capital firm, with some of the funded companies already expanding into other Gilbert-owned office space.

Or you might prefer the new Las Vegas being guided by Tony Hsieh, using $350 million of his own money, because he deeply believes that some of the best ideas come from the unplanned interactions of dissimilar people.

He has brought 12,500 employees with him to downtown, and along with other private investors is funding the construction of a light-rail system that will connect the central business district with the neighboring Midtown district. (…) Around the same time, the Las Vegas city government was also about to move, and Hsieh saw his opportunity. He leased the former City Hall — smack in the middle of downtown Vegas — for 15 years. Then he got to thinking: If he was going to move at least 1,200 employees, why not make it possible for them to live nearby? And if they could live nearby, why not create an urban community aligned with the culture of Zappos, which encourages the kind of “serendipitous interactions” that happen in offices without walls?

One thing all of these areas have in common is diversity; because living costs are lower their populations reflect real-world attitudes and concerns, as opposed to the more homogenized views of the wealthy, super-educated white males that dominate the Bay Area.

More on them next Tuesday.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Entrepreneurs: Does Investor Homogeny Reduce Success?

Thursday, July 3rd, 2014

https://www.flickr.com/photos/voght/2440993795

Spending time with entrepreneurs is always enlightening.

I was at lunch with a group of them when talk turned to the current “media bashing,” as one person called it, tech was getting over the lack of diversity.

“Jason” said focus was critical in a startup and it was achieved best when the founders hired their friends and friends of friends.

He went on to say that while he understood the importance of diversity in a large company, focus was rarely a byproduct of diversity.

I asked if he considered focus to be as important for investors.

He said of course and went on (and on) explaining why it was even more important with investors, since they usually comprise the startup’s board.

Most hung on his words, since Jason was the big name that day (personally, I found him arrogant and patronizing).

I asked Jason if he would be surprised that research showed the greater the similarities between investors the less likely the success of their portfolio companies—success being an IPO.

They found that the probability of success decreased by 17 percent if two co-investors had previously worked at the same company—even if they hadn’t worked there at the same time. In cases where investors had attended the same undergraduate school, the success rate dropped by 19 percent. And, overall, investors who were members of the same ethnic minority were 20 percent less successful than investors with different ethnic backgrounds.

Conversation more or less died after I shared the URL with them.

They were too busy reading and then we were out of time.

Flickr image credit: Steve Voght

Ducks in a Row: Bias—a Four Letter Word

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brighton/8201654745/I had a solid dose of déjà vue when I read yet another article about the cancellation of Yahoo’s work-from-home policy, but this one from a different angle.

What about all the single people? And all the people without kids? We need to stop acting like they’re not part of the work-life conversation.

Some things never change.

I never married and after five decades in and around the workplace I find it dispiriting that almost nothing has changed.

The original version (before my time) was “Jim won’t mind, because he’s single”; the great improvement is now it’s “Jim or Judy won’t mind, because s/he’s single.”

Back then companies/managers assumed that singles were easy to relocate, because they didn’t own homes and moving costs would be minimal, since singles don’t own furniture or much stuff.

There are plenty of managers who still think that way.

Males were given hiring preference, because “they had families to support,” and while it may be 2013, that attitude still exists, however deeply buried.

Bias.

Unconscious or not, it has the power to taint, damage and even destroy anything/everything.

Bias drives homophily, not just in people, but skills; is grounded in assumptions and negates the diversity that leads to success.

Bias can lay waste to your culture and, in doing so, destroy your company.

Bias is a four letter word.

Flickr image credit: Jim Linwood

A World I Won’t Live In

Monday, March 4th, 2013

http://www.flickr.com/photos/igorschwarzmann/6243421484/Two stories today made me really happy.

Happy that I won’t be around to see the world that the Silicon Valley mentality is working frantically to make happen. (I say ‘mentality’ because startups are all over as is the mindset described.)

It’s a world of instant solutions, from quasi-immortality, postmortem tweets from soon-to-be-launched LivesOn, to futurist Ayesha Khanna’s idea for smart contact lenses that would make homeless people disappear from view—out of sight/out of mind.

Solutionists err by assuming, rather than investigating, the problems they set out to tackle. Given Silicon Valley’s digital hammers, all problems start looking like nails, and all solutions like apps.

And then there is Seesaw, which allows you to “crowdsource absolutely every decision in your life” and practically guarantees siloed, homogenized attitudes over the long-term.

The drive seems to be to avoid thinking in general, let alone any of the less comfortable deep thinking required to mature and develop anything vaguely resembling wisdom.

Leszek Kolakowski argued that, given that we are regularly confronted with equally valid choices where painful ethical reflection is in order, being inconsistent is the only way to avoid becoming a doctrinaire ideologue who sticks to an algorithm. For Kolakowski, absolute consistency is identical to fanaticism.

Or as Emerson said long before the rise of today’s technology, “A foolish Consistency is the hobgoblins of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers, and divines. With consistency, a great soul simply has nothing to do.”

The main problem with so many innovators is that they want to solve problems with an algorithm, which ignores the entire messy human equation; much like medicine desperately wants to believe that one-dose-fits-all.

Nor, in the rush to innovate, do they give much thought as to the longer-term effects of their miracles.

The interactive dialog provided by digital media was hailed as a way to draw millions more into the dialog, which sounds great until you look at the real effect of negative comments on stories.

Comments from some readers, our research shows, can significantly distort what other readers think was reported in the first place. (…) The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.

Turns out it’s not so much the comment, but the tone that has the greatest effect.

So. No discussion, no disagreement within your little world, no ethical dilemmas, no deep thinking, mental struggle, stretching or growing.

Maybe no innovation.

Is this the world in which you want to live?

Flickr image credit: Igor Schwarzmann

If the Shoe Fits: the Value of Dissent

Friday, November 9th, 2012

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mLast Friday I cited research from Northwestern and advice from John O’Farrell of Andreessen Horowitz on the dangers of flattery and importance of not hiring ‘yes-people’.

I received a couple of emails arguing that it was important in a startup that everyone in a startup was on board with the founder’s vision. Boat-rockers were not welcome; 100% agreement was needed to support the level of commitment required to succeed and without it the company was likely to founder if not fail outright.

Perhaps these folks will listen to Steve Blank.

“Countries that stifle dissent while attempting to encourage entrepreneurship will end up at a competitive disadvantage. (…) Because without dissent there is no creativity.

Companies are small countries.

Whether it’s Google or the newest startup on the block, each has its own peculiar culture, mores and MAP.

Its own laws, spoken or not, and law enforcement; its own ways of keeping its citizens in line.

It’s your responsibility as founder to encourage dissent—especially when it’s dissenting from you.

Option Sanity™ celebrates creativity.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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