Poking through 12+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

While politically correct has made a lot of noise since its rise in the media, it hasn’t made any real difference. Join me tomorrow for a look at the problem with many progressives and why it will undermine many of the changes they champion.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I sent an article about the “frat house” (AKA, sexist) culture prevalent in ZocDoc’s sales department to “Kevin”, a good friend who works in sales.

While agreeing about problematic sales cultures, he had a different take on culture in general.

His viewpoint, from someone who has been there/done that, may not be socially acceptable and could probably get him in trouble if posted on social media, but I can share it here — anonymously

Whether you’re a nigger or a bitch, this is the shit you have to deal with. I prefer environments where it’s obvious what the culture is, like this, than politically correct cultures where bigotry is the norm, but you never know for sure why you didn’t get the bonus, promotion or accolade with superior performance. Screw political correctness!

I believe it’s important to know where you stand, because then you can make informed choices. Give me this culture anytime – when I enter, I will know what the rules are. If I stay, it’s to accomplish a particular personal goal. When I leave (if not immediately), I will know why I stayed, left, and what I gained. I’m richer, they are poorer.

There is no such thing as “politically correct”. The term itself is an oxymoron that implies consensus building, popular sentiment or sinister machinations. Politics is about popularity — we never let others know where we stand or what we stand for in order to win a popularity contest. It is giving in to the tyranny of the mob, not daring to have unpopular opinions or stances, because one will not be popular.

Being a black man, I prefer a racist that’s honest about who he is and what he is. I prefer working for such a person because I know what to expect. I presume it would be the same for you as a woman regarding sexists. These days no one is a racist, we just have “unconscious biases” that prevent us from taking unpopular positions and that ensure that the powerful can continue to exclude the less powerful.

Politically correct environments rob me of information, choice, and the ability to navigate astutely to attain my objectives.

I agree with Kevin, even in those instances where bias has its basis in neuroscience, it’s better to know.

Flickr image credit: Zaskoda:

One of the dumbest (stupidest?) actions during the original dot com boom was two-fold.

The first was title inflation, with larger companies taking a leaf from the financial services industry where customer-facing positions, such as brokers and non-teller positions, were often VPs.

Second, bigger titles were often handed out in lieu of promotions and raises, while in the startup community titles bore little-to-no relationship to the person’s skills or experience.

Both created major problems for candidates when interviewing at new companies, especially for those who bought into their titles. It came as shock that the skills required to be a VP in a “real” company are seriously different than those needed in a startup.

That was then, but what’s happening now?

I got the answer in a list from CB Insights of tech’s silliest job titles.

It’s gotten worse.

Aside from confusing their customers and vendors, the titles sound totally idiotic to all but a very small slice of the tech world.

However, the titles do do a great job of strengthening gender bias and turning off women.

What more could any bro want?

Image credit: JJ Merelo

Continuing from yesterday.

Two of the hardest things you need to do to start acquiring wisdom are

1. Investing the time, energy and discomfort in getting to actually know yourself — the real you that may only exist in private at 3 AM and that you rarely if ever talk about.
2. Choosing (yes, it’s your choice) to reduce your intake of social media or not, you do need to reduce your reliance on it. At the same time you want to strengthen your objectivity

The absolute requirement of the first is to get to know your opinions, biases, prejudices, etc., sans outside influences. You can’t be objective until you know your subjective viewpoint.

That said, today’s world of distractions, intentionally addictive social media, and extended working hours doesn’t lend itself to self-reflection. That means you need to consciously set aside the time to do it and then follow through — same as any get healthy program.

Developing your objectivity requires you to do some very uncomfortable things, such as reading/listening to material outside your worldview, belief system and comfort zone.

Then researching sources recognized as objective to determine the validity of the information.

You should know that the odds are against your accomplishing this.

Research has shown that no matter how much incontestable proof people rarely change their mind.

But perhaps you can be one of the exceptions.

Image credit: Katherine McGittigan

Have you ever wondered why bias is so deeply ingrained and prevalent?

The answer is simple.

The datasets are biased.

For humans

Psychologists from Northwestern University have found that children as young as four show signs of racial bias, suggesting they pick up on cues to act intolerant from the adults around them from a very early age.

For AI.

The digital world is an incredibly biased place. Geographically, linguistically, demographically, economically and culturally, the technological revolution has skewed heavily towards a small number of very economically privileged slices of society.

Knowing the datasets for both are biased for the same reason, it is the wise boss, from team leader to CEO, who takes time to learn their own biases and also understand the various biases of their team.

Only then can they develop approaches and work-arounds.

The bottom line in business is that you don’t have to change minds, you just have to create processes that neutralize the effects.

Image credit: Paul Downey

(click to enlarge)

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

Bias is in our heads. Bias is in our MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

Bias totally permeates us and the rest of society.

It’s embedded in our schools, our religions and all forms of AI.

Experts, educators, gurus, and pundits analyze it, write about it, consult about it, and coach on it.

And often contradict each other.

If bias is this pervasive, the experts so ineffectual and management so ambivalent, what can one person do on their own?

You can access your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) where bias lives.

No one else can, only you.

That means you can change your MAP.

No one else can, only you.

One bias at a time.

Image credit: School of Thought

Everybody is biased one way or another. Some biases are minor and have little impact, while some can overpower rational thought/action.

Before you can choose which you want to adjust/change/disable you need to know what the choices are.

So I found fairly comprehensive list for you to review.

I’ve also found there is one thing you can do that is very effective.

It’s one of those things that is simple to understand, but takes resolve and effort to put into practice.

I’ll explain more on Friday.

Image courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Last year I had an argument over lunch with a woman friend who insisted that women in tech, especially in Silicon Valley, don’t face the same kind of difficulties career-wise that other women do.

She based her argument on the successful technical careers of a number of women friends and she became increasingly an4gry when I kept disagreeing with her.

I didn’t realize until several days later that we were both right.

Her friends did indeed build successful tech careers during the 1970s and 80s — predating the dot com era.

I, however, was focused on post dot com attitudes in the wake of the rise of bro culture.

Anyone around tech these days either recognizes the bias against women or lives in deep denial.

The latter apparently includes the editors in charge of Wikipedia, who didn’t think much of Donna Strickland’s work.

Prior to winning the Nobel Prize, Strickland’s only previous mention on Wikipedia was in an article about Gérard Mourou, her male co-inventor. On May 23, a Wikipedia editor rejected a draft of an article about Strickland, claiming that it failed to “show significant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject.” The rejected draft noted that she was at that time the associate chair of the physics department at Waterloo, and a past president of the Optical Society.

Not surprising when you consider that 90% of Wikipedia editors are young, college-educated males. Not a group exactly known for their pro-diversity stance.

As for Waterloo, Strickland says she never applied for a full professorship, but one has to wonder why the school didn’t notice her work.

Of course, if one is going to choose who notices their work, most would prefer the Nobel Committee to the editors of Wikipedia.

After the Prize was announced, Wikipedia finally created an article about Strickland.

But in what seems like an effort to disparage her accomplishment those same editors added a “personal life” section to her page.

Strickland is married to Douglas Dykaar, also a physicist.^[7] They have two children.^[7]

Information that is conspicuously absent from her male co-winner’s page.

Finally, the video on Strickland’s page talks about a childhood trip to a science fair, while Mourou’s features his post award speech.

How’s that for bias?

Image credit: Susan Young

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

Founders are a breed apart, especially young founders, with little to no business experience, let alone leadership/managerial experience.

I got a call from one I work with occasionally. After getting the information he had called for he took me to task over Monday’s post.

In short, he said that founders don’t have much time to spend on culture, let alone do the people-managing stuff I’m always writing about.

He went on to say that’s why people in young companies tend to be so similar. It’s far easier, not to mention more comfortable, to get stuff done when everyone has a similar mindset.

My response was that his mindset would do much to limit his market, so he would do well to plan on being a nitch player.

It was not appreciated.

Curating a team creates the same problem that curating freshmen roommate assignments created.

There’s no question that curation reinforces opinions, while eliminating conflicting ones, narrows people beyond from where they started and acts like fertilizer to unconscious bias and outright bigotry.

Curation, whether of roommates of team, has no positive effect, which is why colleges are going back to random freshman matching and companies are striving for more diversity. Duke eliminated curated matching.

Freshman year of college, Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs at Duke explained, is about students “engaging with difference and opening their eyes to opportunities, and meeting entirely different people than the ones they grew up with or went to high school with.”

What this 26-year-old founder didn’t say (and may not even realize) is that some things, such as successful managing, are the result of hard-won experience, not “vision.”

There is a reason that more diverse companies have better results.

Just as there is a reason that managers who practice good customer service on their teams attract the best people, have lower turnover, and enjoy better personal career growth / stronger startup success (if founders).

Image credit: HikingArtist

Bias, implicit or not, intentional or not, is at the forefront of most companies and bosses’ minds. Companies spend thousands on various kinds of anti-bias training.

But based on decades of data, not much seems to change.

Perhaps that’s because bias isn’t “fixable” or, as Lily Zheng, a diversity and inclusion consultant, says, Bias isn’t like an upset stomach that an individual can take an antacid to fix.

Zheng offers a truly commonsense approach that is far more practical and achievable than trying to make people unbiased.

The outcome of any implicit bias training shouldn’t be to cure people’s bias or make them more objective—it should be to make people bias-aware. (…) When people are bias-aware, they are able to act with less bias without fixating on being unbiased.

It all boils down to knowing yourself, which can be a lost cause for some people.

More than a decade ago I started talking about MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)™ is the basis for everything you do—it is the why of life.

Everything you do and say is a mindset, grounded in your attitude towards others, which, in turn, is based on your personal philosophy.

Obviously, implicit bias is part of MAP.

Zheng provides a good roadmap for handling implicit bias, focusing on the need for self-honesty and a non-judgmental attitude, including that awareness doesn’t always mean change.

While the decision may not end up changing, the process of being honest and nonjudgmental about one’s own bias adds both accountability and intentionality.

I provided a simple step-by-step for changing your MAP if you so desire.

Both require honest self-awareness, but doing them is, as always, your choice.

Image credit: Ron Mader