Have you noticed that Uber-frenzy has eased off? It’s a nice change to see other lead stories taking its place.

The most valuable private company in the world is definitely at a crossroads.

There is one thing that’s definite and that is that without new leadership that can staunch the blizzard resignation at all levels, galvanize the troops, lead the change to a radically new culture, and keep all the wheels turning in sync Uber easily could fall from its vaunted position.

In short, the new CEO needs to be someone with a sterling reputation, a string of high profile successes, and a believable visionary who people will trust.

Is that how you would describe Marissa Mayer?

The last thing that Uber needs is someone who defends Kalanick and seems to excuse what happened.

“I count Travis as one of my friends. I think he’s a phenomenal leader — Uber is ridiculously interesting.”

Mayer, who may be campaigning for the Uber CEO role, added: “I just don’t think he knew. When your company scales that quickly, it’s hard.”

Mayer went on to say that Uber was going through the same kind of thing Google went through when Eric Schmidt was brought on as CEO to help founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

But Mayer is not Eric Schmidt; in fact, her two main qualifications seem to be being female and buddies with Arianna Huffington.

Of course, there’s a long way to go and a number of other names being bandied about.

If she is hired I’m sure the investors will be excited to watch Uber take the same path as Yahoo.

Image credit: Mike Mozart

I had an interesting conversation today with a Director of IT Security from a large healthcare provider in Delaware who is a customer of mine.

The conversation was mostly to do with what his daily responsibilities were, how he balanced competing priorities and to gain a better understanding of his particular challenges.

I went into this meeting with my only desire to better understand him as a person and see how I could be of better value to him as my customer.

I did not expect to come away from the conversation with real world cases of how culture within an organization can change over time, but I have found when you keep your ears open it is surprising what people will say.

Some of you may have experience with healthcare providers, either as a patient or perhaps in a business relationship. I am sure that one thing we can all agree upon is that as a rule they can be slow to adopt, adapt and mature.

This may be hardwired into the DNA of the organization. I know that when I break my leg a doctor will put a cast in it because that has been proven to work through millions of previous experiences.

This can be the desired outcome versus the doctor that decides to try a different remedy for every broken leg. 

As I was speaking with my customer he said one thing that struck me. He said, “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

He was saying this in reference to his desire to shape the culture to be more security conscience. However, he understood that if radical changes were made overnight he would lose the support of the organization. Instead he was implementing incremental changes over time to affect change.

Isn’t this the desired outcome?

As I think through this, there are times when radical change is needed, but typically it’s at the personal level that it is achieved.

Obvious examples being taking up exercise, limiting the amount of alcohol or taking up a new routine.

Try and push that on your friends or family overnight and good luck!

It takes time and buy-in from the group to effect lasting change.

That leaves us with a question that I do not yet have the answer to.

How do we achieve the change that is desired?

Image credit: becosky

Steve Blank wrote a great post about changing culture in larger organizations. It’s a must-read for anyone in business, government or non-profit who is looking to juice innovation in their organization.

Blank agrees that there are four components to culture.

Two McKinsey consultants, Terry Deal and Arthur Kennedy wrote a book called Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life.  In it they pointed that every company has a culture – and that culture was shorthand for “the way we do things at our company.” Company culture has four essential ingredients:

• Values/beliefs – set the philosophy for everything a company does, essentially what it stands for
• Stories/myths – stories are about how founders/employees get over obstacles, win new orders…
• Heroes – what gets rewarded and celebrated, how do you become a hero in the organization?
• Rituals – what and how does a company celebrate?

He goes on to explain what needs to be done for “innovation to happen by design not by exception.”

While I agree with everything he says, I believe he left out a most critical component.

In reality it should be a subset of values/beliefs, but it is rarely thought about by bosses — they either do it or do the opposite automatically.

It can be summed up in four words, don’t kill the messenger—Pete Carroll, coach of the Seattle Seahawks, is a master of this mindset.

To be truly innovative means trying new stuff and a part of trying new stuff is accepting that it won’t always work.

Corporate culture in general and many bosses individually can’t seem to wrap their minds around the idea that some things will fail — it’s the dark side of the ‘but me mindset’ at work.

What they, and anybody setting out to change culture and encourage innovation, need to understand is that it only takes killing the messenger, i.e., responding negatively to the person who brings bad news, once to negate whatever progress had been made and put the effort back to square one.

Flickr image credit: Eirik Newth

Different generations, but bosses are asking the same questions.

How do I implement cultural and other intangible changes and, more importantly, encourage (or, if necessary, coerce) their adoption?

I responded nine years ago and the answer hasn’t really changed.

The most successful method is as simple as one, two, three.

1. Carefully define, in a quantifiable manner, what you want done (not “increase retention,” but “reduce turnover by X%”).
2. Include these well quantified goals in the managers’ annual objectives.
3. Make it clear to your managers that they will be evaluated on these goals and that the evaluation will impact their annual reviews and compensation.

Vested self-interest will do the rest.

Flickr image credit: Martin Cooper

Dozens of ugly stories in 2014 threw a spotlight on the lack of gender and color diversity and the prevalence of bigoted and frat house/misogynistic cultures in tech.

Individuals and companies are speaking out vowing to change things — talking, talking, talking.

Intel, however, isn’t talking; it’s putting its money where its mouth is.

Intel said it has established a $300 million fund to be used in the next three years to improve the diversity of the company’s work force [goal of 14%], attract more women and minorities to the technology field and make the industry more hospitable to them once they get there.

The big difference between what Intel is doing and the rest of tech is not just focusing on STEM training and recruitment, but on changing the workplace so that those who join tech will stay in tech instead of being driven out by the current culture.

Changing culture is difficult within a company, let alone within an entire industry.

Google is already working on it, while most companies are suggesting/funding issues that are external, such as education.

Hopefully, the clout and funds that Intel is bringing to the table will makes a difference.

Image credit: Intel Free Press

After 40 years the architectural profession isn’t any more open to women than it was.

In 1974, Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic for The New York Times, wrote that it was “appalling” that the institute’s national membership consisted of 24,000 men and 300 women.

Although women now account for half of all graduates of American architecture schools, they represent only 20 percent of licensed practitioners and an even lower proportion of partners in firms…

It took pressure from Millennial men in search of better work-life balance to force some law firms to effect change, in spite of the fact that losing a second-year associate costs $200,000 – $500,000 and nearly 50% of women lawyers quit.

Paying for women to freeze their eggs is the latest perk being offered, including by Apple and Facebook.

Many in tech believe that organizations such as Girls that Code and mentoring groups like WEST will change the dismal gender diversity numbers.

Facebook, Box and Pinterest announced on Wednesday that they have gotten together to launch a new mentorship program called WEST (Women Entering and Staying in Tech). The idea is to get more women interested in computer science, and to help them be prepared for the tech jobs of the future.

Google is ahead of the pack by taking a different approach and addressing unconscious bias.

Will any of these initiatives work long-term?

Doubtful.

Because, other than Google, none address the need for cultural change.

Changing culture is hard and it needs to start from the top, which means that leadership must change its MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

But considering the example set by the architectural profession I’m not holding my breath.

Flickr image credit: Peter aka anemoneprojectors

Washing dishes for Jeff was grueling, greasy work. But then again, making a pizza, or driving a truck, or baking a cake, or any of countless other jobs are not always enjoyable in themselves, either. Out of all the lessons I learned from that guy in the Pizza Hut tie, maybe the biggest is that any job can be the best job if you have the right boss. — Danial Adkison

People work for people, not companies.

People quit people, not companies.

They accept positions because of the culture and leave when it changes.

Bosses interpret company culture; they improve or pervert it; they add/subtract/polish/tarnish it.

What bosses don’t do is pass it on intact and untouched.

Flickr image credit: Susanne Nilsson

Decades ago I asked a client who had a reputation for being a great boss what was the worst part of his job.

I’ve never forgotten his response.

“That’s easy. I don’t mind shoveling my own, but I hate having to shovel somebody else’s.”

Not only was he correct, but I’ve never met anyone, boss or not, who didn’t agree with the statement.

Shoveling someone else’s often happens when an iffy/bad boss/person leaves and the new boss/person finds their first X weeks spent cleaning up the mess.

It’s not unexpected.

When the culture is the mess there is not only more to shovel, but far more damage to correct—damaged morale, damaged group reputation and, worst of all, damaged people.

Damaged through no fault of their own.

So if you find yourself shoveling someone else’s be sure to look for the buried people as you do it.

They are often the true gems your predecessor was too blind to see.

Flickr image credit: Tambako The Jaguar

Tech currently has a high profile for arrogance, not to mention chauvinism and bigotry, with Google, Apple and Facebook are its most public whipping boys.

However, their comeuppance came with the intense media focus that will likely force them to at least put some effort into cleaning up their respective acts.

Not like their psychological brethren on Wall Street.

And while tech has a modicum of excuse that stems from age—its frat house culture has gotten worse as entrepreneurs have gotten younger—proven by the numbers, i.e., more women entered tech in the 1980s than do today—Wall Street has none.

The investment banking world has always been a bastion of white, male elitists; and hardcore harassment—an old boys group that didn’t give a damn what anybody thought.

Arrogance has been synonymous with investment bankers for decades, so seeing it kicked in the teeth by upstart tech arrogance was exhilarating.

Google’s Larry Page created his own acquisition yard stick,

The toothbrush test: Is it something you will use once or twice a day, and does it make your life better? …The esoteric criterion shuns traditional measures of valuing a company like earnings, discounted cash flow or even sales.

Page, for example, is looking for “usefulness above profitability, and long-term potential over near-term financial gain.”

Potential and usefulness are esoteric concepts to most bankers and “long-term” isn’t even in their vocabulary.

Bankers are fine with the hard stuff revolving around money, but are often useless on human side.

But often, when big tech companies are looking to grow through acquisitions, it is the culture and vision, not the earnings and revenue, that are of paramount importance.

Of course, investment banks need to lose a lot for it to really start mattering, but it looks like they are.

The acquiring company did not use an investment bank in 69 percent of American technology acquisitions worth more than $100 million this year, according to Dealogic.

All I can say is that it couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of guys—their comeuppance was a long time coming and it’s hitting the only place they might notice—their bank balance.

Flickr image credit: Chris Hartman

A few months ago I read the book, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barrat.  It was a tremendously interesting book and confirmed many of the concerns I’ve been having about my own industry for some time.  Subsequently there have been a slate of articles wondering about AI and how the industry is progressing.

One of the book’s premises was that we need to take a step back and think about the moral and ethical basis of what we’re doing and how and what we’re imparting to these machines. 

I believe that it will be difficult, or impossible, for the AI industry to change direction mid-streams and start being concerned about morality and ethics.  Most of the funding for AI comes from DARPA and other such institutions that are part of the military and affiliated organizations.  Finance is second largest funding source.

Most of the people who are concerned about AI (including James Barrat) worry about when machines gain human level intelligence.  I am much more concerned about what happens before that.  Today it is said that the most sophisticated AI has the intelligence of a cockroach.  This is no small feat, but it also brings with it some clear implications – cockroaches have important drives and instincts that guide their behavior.  Survival, resource acquisition, reproduction, etc. are all things that cockroaches do.  How far away are we from when our AI exhibit these characteristics?  What about when we get to rat-level intelligence?  

At that point machines will be very powerful and control many of the essential functions of society.  Imagine a frightened rat (or 6 month old toddler) with infinite power – what actions would they take to protect themselves or get what they perceive they want or need?  How would they react if we stood in their way?  How concerned would they be with the consequences of their actions?  Most adults don’t do this today.

Before we achieve human level intelligence in machines, we’ll have to deal with less intelligent and probably more dangerous and powerful entities.  More dangerous because they will not have the knowledge or processing power to think of consequences, and also because they will be controlling our cars, airplanes, electricity grids, public transportation and many other systems.  

Most AI optimists ignore the dangerous “lower mammal, toddler and childhood” stages of AI development and only see the potential benefits at the end.  But we need to think about the path there and what we can do to prepare as individuals and as a society.

Not to speak about the fact that once we reach human level intelligence in AI, we’ll be dealing with an intelligence that is so alien to anything we know (after all, we have lots of experience with cockroaches, rats and toddlers), and no way of knowing what its motives are.  But that will be left for another discussion.