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If The Shoe Fits: Emulating A Winner

Saturday, November 4th, 2017

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

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mWinning takes many forms, as Ryan pointed out yesterday.

Let’s face it, we are not all going to be the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.

But there seems to be plenty of room for us all to push a bit harder each day and surround ourselves with winners.

It is up to us to make that happen.

Not all winners desire to be founders anymore than all founders are winners.

I doubt anyone would/could/should minimize the abilities, skills, intelligence, and sheer grit that lands a person in a top senior role at a multibillion dollar tech company, such as Microsoft.

Achieving positions at that level are neither accidental nor serendipitous.

Now, imagine a future in which you are a winner of whatever kind and writing the summary paragraph of your LinkedIn profile.

What would you say when summing up what you did and how you accomplished it? What would you consider your major accomplishments?

Would it read anything like this? (Emphasis mine.)

“I am passionate about building technology that gets out of the way so you can focus on what matters most. My mantra ‘people first, technology second’ has been the driving force in my career. My focus has been leading teams and incubating new technologies and experiences to re-imagine the platform for intelligent work. In my career, I’ve helped build products, including Office, Windows, Internet Explorer, Xbox and Surface, that touch more than a billion people every day. As a leader, it’s important that my door always be open — to embrace everyone’s individual perspective, personality, style and abilities to makes my teams stronger — and creating a culture that the best ideas can come from anyone and anywhere.”

Is this someone worth emulating? Someone you’d want to hire?

Would your answer change when you learned this someone is a woman?

Because it is; she is Julie Larson-Green.

And it is the last 14 words of her summary that truly proclaim her a winner — by any standard.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Ryan’s Journal: #Metoo in the workplace

Friday, October 20th, 2017

violet

As many of you are aware the news this week has been dominated by the allegations against Harvey Weinstein and his sexual harassment and assaults on a variety of women.

As we learn more about what has occurred a new movement has started, #metoo. Women who have been harassed, assaulted, or worse are speaking up. Some for the first time.

As I have read through some of the posts of my personal friends and spoken to my wife, I am realizing this is much more rampant than I thought.

It has lead to some interesting discussions at work with my colleagues that I never imagined I would have. Most of the women I have spoken with have a story. Perhaps it was flirting that went beyond welcomed attention, an off-hand comment and in one case full-on assault.

It was heartbreaking to hear, as well as enlightening.

One thing I learned today, though, is the other ways women in the workplace have to cope.

In two separate conversations today I learned how my female colleagues have had to deal with aggressive men, misogamy or simple brush offs.

I am in the IT sector and the women in the technical roles have dealt with from not being taken seriously to not being trusted simply because of their gender.

I write all of this as a testament of how we as a society must do better.

I am still amazed that we can pick out the differences amongst each other, differences that we have zero control over, and tear one another down.

The fact that we allow gender to dictate how we should treat one another is shocking.

I am not naive enough to think that we can all just get along, however if we claim to be enlightened, then perhaps we should act like it.

Image credit: @UltraViolet

Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: Seeing Ourselves Clearly

Monday, October 2nd, 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.

It is said that hindsight is 20/20, because we can see the whole as opposed to the part in which we are involved. It’s mostly an accurate statement, but only if we can set aside our many biases. If not, we will see what we expect to see, whether it fits all the facts or not,

The problem is, of course, we are no better at seeing our own biases than we are at seeing all parts of a situation as it is happening, which makes 20/20 vision of ourselves elusive.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/anemoneprojectors/5620251974A few weeks ago Wharton professor Adam Grant wrote Dear Men: Wake Up and Smell the Inequality focusing on why men can’t seem to wrap their heads around gender inequality.

In corporate America, 88% of men think women have at least as many opportunities to advance as men.

This is the finding of a major new study—almost 30,000 employees across 118 companies—by LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company.

Just 12% of men felt that women had fewer opportunities to advance in their organizations.

Today, KG Charles-Harris sent a link to an article by Marshall Goldsmith about suck-ups, with an underlying focus on how easily we see traits in others, but not in ourselves. (I call it ‘but me’)

Almost all of the leaders I have met say that they would never encourage such a thing in their organizations. I have no doubt that they are sincere. Most of us are easily irritated–if not disgusted–by derriere kissers. Which raises a question: If leaders say they discourage sucking up, why does it happen so often? Here’s a straightforward answer: Without meaning to, we all tend to create an environment where people learn to reward others with accolades that aren’t really warranted. We can see this very clearly in other people. We just can’t see it in ourselves.

And that brings us to MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

MAP, in case you’ve forgotten, is what underlies and drives all our thoughts and actions.

While not seeing things in ourselves may be fundamental to our MAP, that doesn’t mean we can’t change it.

To do so is a choice, yours and no one else’s.

Choice is the most valuable thing that any of us have and it’s the most painful to lose.

Remember Dumbledore? He summed it up perfectly.

“It is our choices that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, p 333)

Image credit: Peter O’Connor

Change Requires Trust From All Parties

Wednesday, September 20th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/vexrobotics/17795865460/

Sometimes — more like most of the time or at least too often — we all say things without thinking through the full ramifications, especially those gleaned from experiences we’ve never had or opposed to what we think.

Yesterday I mentioned a startup CEO who said he was concerned about hiring more women, “It just seems like such a huge risk as CEO,” which brought the social media house down on him.

Although he apologized, etc., I noted that his words and actions probably didn’t do much to change his mind.

After reading the post a friend from back east wrote me his thoughts as a man-of-color/founder/CEO.

Sadly, everything he says is true and has been for decades — and I say that from first-hand other-side experience.

In the 80s and 90s I was three things that weren’t supposed to align: a successful tech (hdwr and sftwr) recruiter who was female.

Back then it was assumed that, as a woman, I acquired most of my clients in the same way Hollywood starlets got parts — on my back.

But, as I always said, if that were true I wouldn’t have had time to go to the office, let alone recruit anyone.

Here is the email; my only editorial change was to delete the name of the incubator.

Miki,

When I expressed skepticism regarding real change, you said that it’s better because now people are speaking about it. I replied that it will probably be worse for women in general, because now they will be seen as a risk factor. Unfortunately this is my own experience — I am afraid of mentoring women because they will often take it the wrong way, as several have interpreted my well-meaning advances as attempted pickup. It’s just not worth it.

Most recently, I saw a young black woman at an incubator I was visiting and decided to pay attention to her in a purely social way to make her feel welcomed. There were NO black people there, and since I am viewed as somewhat of a star and important, I believed it would be a boost for her. I never had a conversation with her, and the contact stayed on the level of smiles, fist bumps, etc.

While I was in SF, I received an invitation to a Y-Combinator invite-only event on women and leadership that I could not attend. I approached the woman and told her about the event and asked if she was interested in going. She said, “Absolutely!” and I said — “Send me your email and I’ll introduce you to the people who are leading this effort within YC.” She wrote her email address on a piece of paper and I made the introduction. 

Unfortunately her email bounced. I tried several different approaches. Then I went to her a few days after the event and said that I tried to make the introduction, and that her email had bounced. She looked at the piece of paper that she’d written her email on and confirmed it was incorrect without correcting it.

It then dawned upon me that she’d purposely provided me with the wrong email address, probably because she interpreted my friendliness as sexual advances. The sad thing is that I subsequently observed her whispering with other women and looking over at me, and that other women were avoiding contact with me. 

I then resolved that it’s just not worth it. I’m never going to make friendly advances to a woman in a work situation in the US again.

I do it all over the world, and have mentored men and women in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the US, but here is the only area where I’ve had negative experiences doing so with women (several). I’ve never had, or been interested in, a sexual relationship with any woman at work, in any country where I’ve worked or lived (except my partner who was my teenage girlfriend). 

The inflamed, sexualized nature of everything regarding female/male relationships in the US work environment does much to damage women’s advancement.

Which men will take the risk of staying late to mentor a woman after everyone has left the office — not me. Which men will take a woman out for drinks to have an informal chat about the politics at work — not me.

Which men will associate informally and socially outside of work with women they work with — not me. The reputational risk is simply too great. 

Who is the loser? Obviously both men and women, since there is greatness among them both.

Culturally it is more difficult to mentor women in the US than in Pakistan. Who would have thought…

The following came as a PS about an hour later.

Sexual advances are something most women, and some men, have to learn to deal with.

This has always been the case, and there have always been successful women. There are more successful women now than ever before.

The worst thing that can happen is to scare away the men that genuinely mean well.

Haven’t you ever asked yourself why women in more misogynistic societies are surpassing US women in societal and professional advancement to an increasing degree?

May it be because there is no cost to supporting women for those men who choose to do so? In fact, there is often great benefit, as they will have access to a more motivated and competent pool of people.

All that said, I am not recommending turning a blind or benign eye to the kind of behavior and toxic cultures that have been making headlines.

Image credit: VEX Robotics

Ducks in a Row: Change? Yeah, Right

Tuesday, September 19th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/timove/34352989113/

I read a post by Ellen Pao in Medium in which she asks if anything has really changed.

On its face, it all sounds like meaningful change, right? Or at least it sounds a lot better than the very recent public shaming of women who came forward and the sweeping of bad behavior under the rug. (…) Public apologies and one-off actions are superficial ways to react to criticism or put on a happy face, but they often cover up company culture failures that are hard to fix, especially if no one is seriously trying.

While there have been multiple resignations and apologies (complete with crocodile tears), do you really believe that any of these wealthy, well-known, white guys will land anywhere but on their feet? That their actions will have any permanent effect on their future?

If so, you’re living on a planet to which I’d love to emigrate.

Whereas the women who went public will pay a heavy toll.

I [Pao] have heard from several women who spoke up in this newspaper and elsewhere this year that they continue to face harassment. They have been told that discussing their experiences has limited their careers.

After virtual reality startup UploadVR was sued for sexual harassment in May, a male startup CEO publicly commented that lawsuits like this make him “VERY afraid to hire more [women]. It just seems like such a huge risk as CEO.” His comments went viral and he later retracted, apologized and deleted them.

Retracted, apologized, deleted, none of which is likely to have changed his attitude.

Speaking of UploadVR, which had, and probably still has, one of the worst, sex-drenched cultures in Silicon Valley.

The Valley will protect it, because it isn’t just a guy or a company, but a hub for the VR crowd and, collectively, they need it.

While current publicity is heavily focused on tech, the same actions are alive and well in many venues from the University of Rochester’s Department of Brain and Cognitive, one of the top graduate programs in the US, to women in sports broadcasting.

Are things getting better? Maybe.

But as long as there are no long-term ill effects for guys there is little reason for them to do the hard work of educating against bias, both inherent and societal, and changing culture.

Nothing is as simple as it seems. Be sure to read about an experience, shared by an East Coast founder (published September 20), that turns a spotlight on rarely mentioned fall-out from the harassment problem.

Image credit: TimOve

If The Shoe Fits: Guys’ Fault / Guys’ Responsibility

Friday, September 8th, 2017

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

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mIf you’re a guy and have a daughter/niece/sister/mom/female friend this post is for you.

If you’re a bro this post is especially for you.

You’ve all heard the stories of women who weren’t taken seriously as founders and couldn’t get funding.

You’ve heard it as anecdotal evidence, directly from women founders, and from those around them.

In fact, there’s finally enough data-driven proof that the fact can no longer be denied or blamed off on something else.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/19/in-2017-only-17-of-startups-have-a-female-founder/

It’s not just investors; but suppliers, partners, and vendors who ignore/condescend/etc., when the other party is female.

Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer experienced all these problems when they launched Witchsy last year.

So they took a time-honored approach.

Having noticed that the mostly male artists, developers, and designers they were working with took their sweet time to respond to requests and were often slightly rude and condescending in email— “They’d say things like ‘Listen, girls…,’” Dwyer tells Quartz—they decided to bring in a male co-founder named Keith Mann to make communication easier.

Pre-Keith, Dwyer explains, “it was very clear no one took us seriously and everybody thought we were just idiots.” When “Keith” contacted collaborators, Gazin says, “they’d be like ‘Okay, bro, yeah, let’s brainstorm!’”

Keith only lasted six months, but, by then, being Keith had taught them to stop being communicating “like a girl.”

Neither the approach nor the result is unique; women have been obscuring their sex to get ahead for centuries. But…

In era that touts gender equality, even school-age children are still absorbing warped messages about the sexes. A recent study published in the journal Science revealed that by the time most girls are six, they believe that only males can be geniuses.

That means by the time a female hits first grade she’s already convinced she’s second best.

And that’s on you.

Image credit: HikingArtist and TechCrunch

Ducks in a Row: Good Boss Culture

Tuesday, August 29th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewwippler/4556732144

There’s no question that tech, just like every other industry, is highly biased. It’s become a major issue not because it’s new, but because tech drives much of the economy, which puts it in the spotlight. Added to that, more women and people of color are and speaking out publically about what they have to deal with.

Tech’s main excuse for its lousy diversity numbers is a lack of talent, so they focus on kids to fill the pipeline — but all that really does is provide 5-20 years of avoidance in dealing with the real problem

Consider the hard data.

Among young computer science and engineering graduates with bachelor’s or advanced degrees, 57 percent are white, 26 percent are Asian, 8 percent are Hispanic and 6 percent are black (…)  technical workers at Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, according to the companies’ diversity reports, are on average 56 percent white, 37 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic and 1 percent black.

Those numbers certainly don’t add up.

The real problem is culture (duh!) — why spend eight-or-more (usually more) hours where you’re actively not wanted?

Yolanda Mangolini, Google’s director of global diversity, recognizes this problem.

“We know that it’s not just about recruiting a diverse workforce. It’s about creating an environment where they want to stay.”

True, but, in fact, the greatest company culture possible won’t cut it.

Even more important than company culture is the boss’ individual culture.

For hard proof there is Mekka Okereke, the black engineering manager who runs Google Play and seems to be missing (or controls) both conscious and unconscious bias.

That team is 10% black, 10% Latino, 25% women and 50% female managers, and has become a role model for other managers,

Obviously, Okereke doesn’t just hire strong talent; he provides an environment in which they can learn, grow and excel.

That’s what a good boss is supposed to do.

But it’s the great ones who actually do it.

Image credit: Andrew Wippler  

Ryan’s Journal: Culture Of Extremes

Thursday, August 17th, 2017

This past week has been unfortunate. There have been violent, racially charged protests, attacks and murder. All committed in the name of one cause or another. As an American I am ashamed. As a human I am saddened.

I never thought I would need to publicly state that I am against Nazi rhetoric or white supremacist views, but I am.

As a white male I find the fact that this thought still exists to be abhorrent and disgusting.

The thing that bothers me most about this is not that it exists; there will always be people that think a certain way. It’s the fact that the reaction of some leaders was to place blame on all, including the victims.

I never feel comfortable wading into race relations dialogue. I typically feel inadequate and too uniformed to truly understand the challenges that minorities feel. As a result I seek to learn and absorb.

However, in the case of Charlotte, Virginia the stance is clear. If you are an individual who claims that your so called purity as a white man/woman means you have more value than those of different colors, you’re absolutely wrong. Science does not support you, nor does history.

I failed to mention the train wreck that is Google right now.

One engineer writes a manifesto claiming women are emotion-driven and as a result are not as capable at STEM careers as men are. Google fires him, there is a major uproar and everyone now has an opinion.

One article I read showed how Google is acting as thought police preventing any idea that is not approved from being made public. Other articles I read show how, if we appease intolerant viewpoints, we risk allowing intolerance to abound and have extreme cases, such as Nazi Germany.

What does all of this say for society? I believe it shows that we are now on the margins of culture.

Only the extreme survive.

If you have an easy going and inclusive view on society then you are not to be trusted. However, if you take a hard stand on either the left or right, you are to be championed.

When did this culture of extremes become the norm?

Image credit: Steve Snodgrass

Ducks in a Row: Yonatan Zunger’s Response To Google Manifesto

Tuesday, August 8th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/yodelanecdotal/1449868160/in/photolist-3d7XhU-nD4FUb-nphNJ2-nTjSvi-bTwp2k-mXGMEk-pd9LmU-nBPnBS-boeAFR-7LJWi7-avRQjp-7LEZtK-7LJWjJ-ejatXA-21e3h-Li3kk-3fFvBG-bN4EGz-6i8NJe-8fwJhJ-eUAptg-9YDyyr-68eU85-cTB2rG-9B518N-rCyjHM-7fMvid-6pRHL-rp9wWp-CRih1o-A37C92-68aHjz-eKEMv4-A1ToUq-j29oe8-nVy9YM-dpQ5bL-dPoxSV-9PkXo-z8uXHK-6Qm34u-6QgWRc-zLFDXs-zKwsyt-eUMKcb-A3YDeV-DUDt1-A16hdb-7LEZrD-qMWFVH

I’m assuming you’ve read the anti-diversity manifesto, or articles about it, from the Google engineer decrying his company’s diversity efforts and harking back to the ancient reasoning that women are biologically incapable of being good coders, cops and firemen, among other incapables.

(It’s always sad to see this level of scientific ignorance in a technical person. Of course, it’s not easier in a (supposedly) educated politician.)

There are dozens of responses, but Yonatan Zunger’s is the best I’ve seen (hat tip to KG for sending it).

Zunger is a 14 year Google veteran, who left last week to join a startup. He not only refutes it, but analyzes why the damage goes well beyond the obvious. If you haven’t seen it, it is well worth the few minutes it will take to read.

Ayori Selassie’s is shorter and I’ve reproduced it in full below.

The penis doesn’t write code, the brain does.

Women also have a brain therefore they write code too.

There, I fixed your #GoogleManifesto.

The one thing in the manifesto I do agree with is that freedom of speech should mean that anyone can speak their mind without fear of shaming or harassment.

However, the tactics he describes that are commonly used in liberal bastions on those espousing right and alt-right attitudes are exactly the same tactics used on progressives and liberals in conservative strongholds.

It boils down to the age-old us / them attitude.

Join me tomorrow for a look at the skills that will power your career now and in the future — and have nothing to do with STEM.

Image credit: Yahoo

GoDaddy: How A Leopard Changed Its Spots

Wednesday, July 26th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/forthefunofit/4225932657/

I’ll bet you remember GoDaddy’s incredibly sexist commercials and bikinied conference models.

But did you notice that they totally stopped in 2013; they didn’t taper off, just stopped?

Obviously, something changed. It couldn’t have been public outrage; that had never bothered GoDaddy bosses before.

What happened was the installation of Blake Irving as CEO.

Irving not only stopped the ads, he set out to radically change a toxic culture that could easily have destroyed the company.

Culture starts at the top and its values and attitudes seep down throughout the organization.

That means change must also come from the top, but seepage won’t effect change.

Change requires structural and enforceable process change.

The answer is more complicated than just stamping out overt sexism. GoDaddy also focused on attacking the small, subtle biases that can influence everything from how executives evaluate employees to how they set salaries.

This was partly accomplished by changing the language, so that managers would evaluate impact as opposed to character.

You can’t change a place just by hiring more women,” said Ms. Weissman, the senior vice president, who oversees a technical staff. “You have to create a safe space to talk about the assumptions all of us have. You have to work against the biases.

Are the efforts paying off?

Today, almost a quarter of GoDaddy’s employees are women, including 21 percent of its technical staff. Half of new engineers hired last year were female, and women make up 26 percent of senior leadership. Female technologists, on average, earn slightly more than their male counterparts.

Who’d a’thunk it?

Go Daddy as one of the nation’s most inclusive tech companies and a top workplace for women and a lodestone of gender equity.

The company’s policies on equal pay, its methods for recruiting a diverse work force and its approach to promoting women and minorities had been lauded inside business schools and imitated at other firms.

Uber et al. take note.

With truly committed leadership a leopard can change its spots.

Image credit: jdog90

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