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If Your Corporate Culture Isn’t Intentional, It Could Become an Accidental One

The importance of corporate culture in the workplace, particularly as millennials and younger generations take on increasingly influential roles, has never been more crucial than it is today. The polls show it. According to a recently released Glassdoor survey, which in June polled more than 5,000 workers from the U.S., U.K., France and Germany, 77% of respondents said they would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job. Another 89% of respondents told researchers for the Mission & Culture 2019 survey, conducted by the Harris Poll, that it was important for employers to have a clear mission and purpose. Sixty-five percent of American millennials in the Glassdoor survey responded that they were more likely to care about work culture than salary. The corresponding realities in the workplace have sparked changes and introspection among employers across the globe. A panel discussion at From Day One’s conference in Dallas, moderated by Brandon Call, managing editor of D CEO magazine, focused on the shifts in ideas about corporate culture and future trends–particularly about how to craft a corporate culture that truly means something. “The culture matters so much to so many people coming into the workplace,” said Ashley Oster, vice president of business development and marketing at E4E Relief. “It’s not really an option to be blasé.” She continued: “I think you have to connect it to what the work is that you do, why that matters and how you’re going to integrate that … it’s about space, it’s about attire, it’s about lingo. It’s much broader than people think. But I do think that it matters. It’s something you’re being thoughtful about, because the lack of intentionality is also a culture.” The absence of an “intentional” culture can easily lead to an “accidental” culture very different from what employers might prefer, said panelist Ollie Malone, Jr., vice president of human resources at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. He recalled when he worked with the Secret Service earlier in his career, lauding the organization for its utter commitment to “the mission.” Corporations should also be “mission-minded,” he said. “I think it’s a matter of finding common ground. Every organization has divisions that tend to take on a life of their own,” Malone said, later adding: “I think that’s what organizations need to find: the bedrock of the culture. What is our mission? What are we here to do?” He emphasized that the “fundamental piece has to be clear, and it has to be consistent.” E4E Relief’s Oster added: “The attunement of the leaders is really significant, whether you’re the leader of the whole organization or you are a manager of the whole particular group.” She recommended “being attuned to those who you can tell in your organization are influencers … seeing what ideas they have and noticing their influence and then drawing them in and taking in their ideas.” “We are all so much more interconnected than we used to be,” Oster said, adding: “You have your home life and you have your work life, and now everybody’s life is so much more interconnected. How do you honor a whole person coming into work?” The celebration of diversity and the simple of act of listening are two ways to embrace the “whole person” in a workplace. Catherine Olivieri, senior vice president of human resources at the Susan G. Komen organization, said she has been at the breast-cancer nonprofit for about four years and attitudes already were starting to change. “When I started, there were so many people that just looked up to leadership to say: What should I do? What do you want me to do?” she said, adding: “What we’re doing is really trying to shift that dynamic, because the reality is, the people who are doing the work–hands-on, kind of boots-on-the-ground–they know it better than we do. So how do we make sure we get that feedback?” Steps towards better feedback and communication include giving employees “the tools, the resources, the vernacular, to be able to use in a safe way, to give feedback, share feedback and make the organization stronger,” she said. Olivieri added: “Part of it is our engagement culture surveys we do [in order] to see: Are we moving the needle in the areas we want to move? Then to make sure we continue to get better.” But being honest, as always, plays a crucial part in creating and maintaining corporate culture, all panelists said. Malone pointed to the example of when Johnson & Johnson recalled Tylenol in 1982 after seven people died from ingesting poisoned products. (Today the company faces new challenges to its reputation.) A breakout session led by Bertina Ceccarelli of NPower, left, focused on reskilling and hiring military veterans as key players in a diverse and balanced technology team “The way they responded was very much in keeping with their culture. The question they were asking [was]: What does the credo suggest as our response?” said Malone, who was working with the company at the time. He added: “The usual tendency is: How do we protect our reputation? How do we forget that noise, and how do we focus on the thing that we say is most important to us?” Yvonne Freeman, vice president of global total rewards and HR operations at Sabre, the travel-tech giant, said: “Not everything goes according to plan and perfectly a lot of the time.” “I think how companies act when they misstep or they don’t get it right … to see how the company then acts or behaves after that, it’s really about the fix that really establishes trust.” She compared intentional corporate culture to “a compass and a true north in how you interact and the things you offer your team members.” That kind of culture helps ensure that, even when mistakes are made, employees can still be kept loyal and productive, and new hires will be attracted, because workers will feel included in the corporate effort to live up to the cultural aspirations. “It’s just easier to be honest about who you are,” Freeman said. “Just tell them about where you aspire to go–that’s why you should come here, so you can help us get there.” Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame

Sheila Flynn | November 25, 2019

How Movies With a Social Message Became Good Business

Hollywood has taken a lot of heat, lately from none other than Martin Scorsese, for its obsession with superheroes, sequels, and special effects. All this has raised a nagging question about the soul of the film industry: Does it care about real people and their struggles? Just in time for Oscar season comes an answer: Tinsel Town might have a conscience after all. Hollywood is producing a new wave of movies, many of them based on true stories, that tackle some of the most difficult and important issues of the day, from threats to the environment to racial justice. The best of them pose a triple threat: they’re artfully entertaining, they have a real impact on society, and they can make money. The latter, especially, is the kind of sustainability that Hollywood can celebrate. Dark Waters, which opens tomorrow, is emblematic of the trend. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway and Tim Robbins, the movie tells the chilling story of a lawyer who crosses over from representing corporations to challenging one of the biggest of them all on behalf of a community stricken by long-term chemical pollution. Its heroes have no capes or special powers. The movie has garnered strongly positive reviews, not just for its own entertainment value, but the kind of storytelling it represents. “Dark Waters, in its stunningly real and intricately crafted way, restores some of the original shock and awe to the journalistic genre of The Conspiracies Around Us That Are Truly Happening,” wrote Owen Gleiberman, Variety’s chief film critic.  “[Director] Todd Haynes has made the first corporate thriller that’s a call to action because you’ll emerge from it feeling anything but safe.” Dark Waters is the product of a relative newcomer to Hollywood’s elite, Participant Media, which was launched in 2004 by Silicon Valley tycoon Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay. Participant soon made waves with the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth and has steadily built itself into an Academy Award magnet, garnering 73 nominations and 18 Oscar statues. Among its recent films: Roma, Greenbook, and Spotlight. Propelled by their Best Picture awards, Greenbook and Spotlight respectively pulled in nearly $322 million and $100 million in box-office revenues. Contributing to the movement are indie studios like A24–which produced the human-size dramas Moonlight, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and The Farewell–as well as streaming powerhouses like Amazon Studios, which is distributing The Report, starring Adam Driver as the U.S. Senate staffer who wrote the 2014 report on the CIA’s interrogation methods after 9/11. Citing films like The Report, Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post wrote that they “might be called accountability filmmaking: fact-based movies that treat audiences not just as spectators but as citizens, hoping to engage them enough to take action or at least question the systems that condition their lives.” “Human stories, compellingly told, have an amazing value,” Participant Media’s Holly Gordon told an audience at The Atlantic’s Power of Purpose conference this week. “I think pop culture has a huge role in bringing social change.” Participant hired Gordon in 2017 as its first “chief impact officer,” which Gordon joked that her mother said “sounds dangerous,” but means that her mission is to leverage the story on the screen to bring social change in real life. “If the movie is the ‘What,’ the impact campaign is about the ‘Why,’” Gordon said. In the case of Roma, the story of a live-in housekeeper for a rich Mexico City family, Participant sought to bring a spotlight on the struggles of domestic workers. “We launched a campaign in the U.S. with Ai-jen Poo and the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and in Mexico with the Center for Support and Training of Household Employees and their leader Marcelina [Bautista] to advocate for workers’ rights for domestic workers,” Gordon told the Stanford Social Innovation Review. “This spring, a bill was passed by the Mexican legislature, [which] for the first time in Mexico’s history protects 2.5 million domestic workers across Mexico.” In the U.S., Participant worked with the NDWA to host screenings and panel discussions, as well as working with lawmakers in Washington to push for a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Participant will follow Dark Waters with the release on Christmas Day of Just Mercy, the fact-based drama of lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s fight against the racially-charged, wrongful Death row conviction of a rural Alabama man. The film, starring Michael B. Jordan, Brie Larson and Jamie Foxx, drew outpourings of emotion from the audience at a pre-release premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. “The crowd at the Elgin [Theatre] erupted in ecstatic ovations through large parts of the film’s closing moments, most of the credits and part of the question-and-answer session,” the Washington Post reported. Can the impact of such movies actually be quantifiable, like when citizens light a fire under elected officials? Quite possibly so, according a report issued today by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which projected the “risks from potential legislative action” in the wake of Dark Waters, as CNBC reported. The company targeted in the movie was DuPont, which in real life paid around $670 million to settle a class-action lawsuit based on about 3,550 personal-injury claims for dumping toxic chemicals known as PFAS compounds in landfills. (In the settlement, the company denied wrongdoing.) But the company singled out by Bank of America for a potential financial impact is 3M, because it too deals in PFAS compounds, which are known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t biodegrade–and thus find their way into humans. So far, dozens of legislative bills have been introduced to deal with PFAS, Bank of America said. (“… the materials used by 3M have been tested and assessed to assure their safety for intended uses,” the company says on its website.) Participant’s next giant-tamer is Slay the Dragon, to be released in March 2020, focusing on America’s confounding system of gerrymandering. Well-timed at the kickoff of an election year, Slay the Dragon will take on “a rigged system getting in the way of democracy,” said Gordon. Stephen Koepp, a co-founder of From Day One, was previously executive editor of Time and Fortune. Along the way, he and his brother David co-wrote the movie The Paper

Stephen Koepp | November 21, 2019

A Sense of Belonging and Growth: What Really Matters in Employee Satisfaction

It’s one thing to tell employees, particularly during the hiring process, that they’ll be valued. It’s another to actually deliver on that promise and ensure their continued satisfaction from the first day forward. Doing so, however, can lead to a win-win for all parties involved. Employee satisfaction increases engagement, motivation, loyalty, staff retention and, overall, productivity and the bottom line, according to panelists discussing the issue at the From Day One conference in Dallas. “If you think about engagement, there’s multiple different types of engagement,” said Suminder Sran, Boarding Pass venture lead at Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC). “There’s technical engagement and  people engagement. Specifically around people engagement, one of the biggest findings for us was the criticality [of the] relationship between hiring manger and new hire.” If a hiring manager “forgets to pick up a new hire” on the first day after making sweeping promises, Sran said, “engagement starts to fall off” and the new employee begins thinking: “Maybe I shouldn’t be here.” Ensuring satisfaction, then, begins even before onboarding, which should also be seamless and welcoming, and should remain an ongoing effort from there, said the speakers on the panel, moderated by Rob Schneider, managing editor–events for the Dallas Business Journal. Managers should be thinking at all times about individual employee growth, which is tied directly to the company’s evolution as well. “In today’s economy, upskilling and reskilling are very important,” said Curtis Brooks, vice president of employee performance management at U.S. Bank. While Brooks operates in the financial sector, he pointed out that such advancement should be applied across all industries. “Employees really want to be heard; they want to be developed,” said Ruth Tilley, vice president and HR business partner at McKesson. “They want to have career opportunities and progression.” At McKesson, she said, an employee survey is conducted every year to help gauge and increase employee satisfaction. “What I love about it is, this year we had 92% participation, which is not abnormal for McKesson,” she said. “The reason we have 92% participation is that they feel as if we’re listening–and we actively ask them questions. We take their feedback, and we turn it into action, year after year." Imagining an employee’s motivation, Tilley said: “It’s worth 30 minutes of my time to tell you what you’re good at and what you’re not so good at and what I want.” Smart hiring, surveys and fitting tasks to the right employees are also key, said Sharla Jones, vice president, learning & development manager at Hilltop Holdings. “How many of you get to do what you do best every day?” she asked conference attendees, providing the “unfortunate” answer that only about 21%  of people respond affirmatively to that question. Yet this is easily fixable, she said, and beneficial to employee and employer. Said Brooks: “In today’s economy, upskilling and reskilling are very important” “When employees are focused on their strengths, they look forward to going to work. They have more positive interactions with people,” Jones said. “They’re able to be more creative and innovative. They tell people they work for a great company. They even have the ability to produce, get results.” “Engagement, I think, is a choice,” Jones said. “We work because we have to; we engage because we choose to. There is an influence that managers have on that engagement, when people can focus on their strengths. That doesn’t happen overnight. It takes understanding, it takes ownership–and the ability to spend some time on that.” Building on the strengths employees already have can undeniably fuel a company’s success, panelists said, but linking the company’s mission or products to the lives of staff can also forge a bond and increase satisfaction. As an example, Nolan Godfrey, executive consultant and coach at Stewart Leadership, cited an automotive corporation that lets “their employees drive their automobiles. They give them a very generous program where they can do that,” he said. “Aligning some of the perks with the culture and with the company, that helps them feel appreciated and connected to the things they’re trying to sell or manufacture,” Godfrey said. “Being industry specific,” that’s one angle that can be really helpful, he said. It all comes down to involvement, communication, evolution and a shared mission, panelists said. “People want to be developed,” said Brooks. “Thinking about the employee and their whole selves–if companies will do that and do it well, everyone would want to work for a company that thinks about that whole person,” Tilley said. Godfrey reiterated that satisfaction would obviously have “ebbs and flows,” but “when you have a focus on an employee’s entire experience … you can really have a lot of leverage around satisfaction.” Sran added: “At the end of the day, when staff is coming to work for your companies, they want to feel like they’ll belong … They’ll want to feel like they made the right decision.” Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame

Sheila Flynn | November 18, 2019

When Business Supports the Arts, the Dividend Is Inspiration

Artwork combined with aviation. Drawings dotted through department stores. Dry cleaners volunteering to help with theater costumes. These were just a few examples of how businesses can support the arts mentioned at From Day One’s conference in Dallas. Responding to the question, “Why should business support the arts?”, a panel of experts explored not only how companies can help artistic endeavors but also how creativity can enrich corporate culture and communication, enhance the experience of clients and customers, and give back to communities. “I think that the business support for the arts, in general, is strong, and the reason that we think it’s strong is because every five years, we do a study with Americans for the Arts, our national arts advocacy organization,” said Katherine Wagner, CEO of Business Council for the Arts in Dallas. She continued: “The most recent study showed that the economic impact of nonprofit arts and culture organizations had grown three-fold since 2010–so that’s $1.5 billion of economic impact a year. That would not happen without business support for the arts. Business is, really, our major patron. It’s not the Renaissance; we don’t have kings that are big patrons.” The value, panelists said, is undeniably multi-fold. “It allows folks from across work groups that wouldn’t necessarily get a chance to even meet each other, let alone work together, to come together for a common goal, a common program,” said Sean Gaven, senior vice president of lending, analytics, payments and digital strategy at American Airlines Federal Credit Union, whose parent company has made a strong commitment to the arts, notably on display in the company’s new headquarters in Fort Worth. He and other panelists discussed the benefits to employee morale of everything from sculptures and artwork in work spaces to employee art contests. When art is incorporated in some way at American–in a plane, an airport, a break room or a maintenance facility–it “has allowed our team members to be much more engaged in what they do. It elevates kind of the mind and body and spirit,” he said. “You can step away from your desk and go someplace, either outside or within the building, and relax in a very friendly, warm location to either focus on work or take a quite break from work,” Gaven said during the panel discussion, which was moderated by Philip Silvestri, president and publisher of Local Profile. Gaven added: “You walk into these areas, and immediately you’re drawn to look at the ceiling. You’re drawn to look at this amazing artwork, be it in an Admirals Club or in one of our workplace facilities. It makes employees happy; it makes a lot of our customers happy to see that type of art infused …  into everything we do.” The arts panel: from left, Sean Gaven of American Airlines Credit Union, Katherine Wagner of the Business Council for the Arts, Mimi Crume Sterling of Neiman Marcus Group, and moderator Philip Silvestri of Local Profile (Photo by Steve Bither) That sentiment about customer appreciation was echoed by Mimi Crume Sterling, vice president of corporate culture and philanthropy for the Neiman Marcus Group. She explained that incorporation of art “stems from the DNA at Neiman Marcus, having been focused on fashion and art since Day One.” The department store, she said, has “a very robust art collection which has over 2,500 pieces of art spread across our offices and stores.” Sterling added: “The idea that [founder] Stanley Marcus had was that you need things to look at when you’re shopping. You can’t just shop, shop, shop … The art is a place for your eye to rest–so similar to restaurants in our stores, where you can rest and recuperate and re-energize yourself … If you have beautiful art to look at, that enhances the shopping experience.” But when it comes to collaborations between arts organizations and business, explained Wagner, sometimes both sides need to think smaller to have broader local impact. Huge corporations like American Airlines and Neiman Marcus have deep pockets and name recognition, but nonprofits can still seek out meaningful partnerships on a more local scale. “Nonprofit arts organizations, a lot of times what they look for, when they’re wanting funding … they think Toyota, they think big companies,” Wagner said. “They don’t think about mid [-size] and small businesses. But they are a really good place to get support and volunteers and services. Usually the owner is on premises, not in the headquarters in another city. Small and medium businesses tend to give what they have, what their actual industry is.” She cited Avon Dry Cleaners in Dallas, which she described as a “small mom-and-pop” operation which “loves” Dallas Children’s Theater and came up with a great way to help. “Dallas Children’s Theater, if you’re familiar with it, they make all of their own costumes,” she said. “And to have another stream of revenue, they wanted to lease out all their costumes–but you can’t lease out costumes without having them dry cleaned. “So Avon Cleaners stepped up and said: ‘We will take that on for you in perpetuity. We’ll make sure that those costumes you create are dry cleaned so that you can lease them out to other theater groups and ensure ongoing revenue.’” “So that’s a great example of what small businesses can do–or just donating services, donating knowledge,” said Wagner. Quoting a friend, she added: “There’s nothing that a business has that a non-profit arts organization can’t use.” Wagner added a pitch for even more business support for the arts: “I think it’s strong, but it could be so much stronger … What we found is that, a lot of times, there could be a lot of people in a company that engage in the arts, that love the arts, that want to support more as a company. But if the business leader doesn’t see the value in it, it’s really hard to make that happen.” Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame

Sheila Flynn | November 14, 2019

Why the Road to Gender Equality Has So Many Steps

In the long struggle for gender equality in the workplace, it’s important to remember that many small things add up. For example, when you compliment a woman on the job, what words do you use? Cynthia Carpenter, vice president of human resources and employee experience at Charter Communications, asks us to think about the implications of the accolades we give to women in a corporate setting. “A male leader will be praising women,” said Carpenter, speaking about a typical boardroom meeting. “He’ll say ‘That woman over there, she has a positive attitude. She’s a ray of sunshine!’ But to men, he says: ‘That man drives results!’” As an alternative, Stefanie Johnson, associate professor of management at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, suggested how men could pivot to more equitable thinking in such situations: “Yes, we know she’s a ray of sunshine, but let’s focus on her skills.” Perceived gender roles have implications for advancement, Carpenter added: “How do you promote? Not for smiles!” At a recent From Day One conference in Denver, a panel of five female leaders discussed real-world ways that everyone in business can help achieve gender equality in the workplace, moderated by Natasha Gardner, articles editor of Denver’s 5280 magazine. The focus was not so much on women getting jobs, and the infamous pay gap, but on the types of jobs women get and how they can advance within their workplace. Among the things holding companies back from promoting women are unconscious bias and lack of mentorship. Men need to be allies, to speak up when given the opportunity, and to actively invite women to take on special projects, panelists said. A leader should make a list of who they normally go to for such tasks and then make an effort to rotate those opportunities fairly to women who deserve them–even if they haven’t been agitating for the assignments. What is that? Women are socialized to speak up less. Yet studies show that we perceive women as speaking far more than they actually do during normal conversations. Likewise, when asked how many opportunities a woman is getting within an organization, men often overestimate the numbers. This is why the panel agreed it’s important to have accurate statistics about who is advancing in your company–and when, and why. Pattie Money, chief people officer for SendGrid, said that her company has set a goal to have 50/50 gender parity by 2030. Said Johnson: “Yes, we know she’s a ray of sunshine, but let’s focus on her skills” “Men are fearful and it is preventing opportunities for women,” said Kristen Blessman, CEO of the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce, recalling the time her male boss critiqued her attire, saying she “looked like a prostitute.” Blessman decided to deal with the issue herself. “Instead of going to HR, I told him directly.”  When men and women can have a rapport and a connection based on respect instead of fear, she said, conflict resolution becomes a lot easier. Aggravating the problem, however, is a backlash in the wake of the #MeToo movement, in which men perceive an adversarial environment. Many feel threatened by the perception that a woman is watching and waiting for them to screw up, cataloguing their every move. The solution may lie in education. Specifically, cultural-competence education, and not just for men. Women need to work towards healthy dialogue, too. Most importantly, women need to stop shaming people for their opinions, which cuts off the opportunity for any conversation, said Blessman. “We are never going to change bias if we keep shaming people.” By being honest and aware of the fact that some men feel pitted against women, companies can address the root causes of bias and work to change them. In an organizational structure, does change come from the top or the bottom? Yolanda Chase, director of Workplace Forward diversity and inclusion at Arrow Electronics, said she believes that change should start at the top. She advocates educating male executives on cultural competence with a “bias-busting toolkit,” which keeps the shaming to a minimum. Looking to the future, the millennial generation is being heralded as the bringers of cultural change. Some companies have tried to leverage their influence by promoting reverse mentoring, in which the young help guide their elders. Another way to change the conversation, panelists said, is to turn it from an “or” to an “and.” It's not women instead of men, it's women alongside men. Companies should also be transparent about their diversity data, which stops speculation and gossip. Women need to be fearless in their approach to the issue, willing to have the conversation that is uncomfortable, the speakers said. They can cultivate a relationship with male colleagues that allows for an open and non-judgmental exchange of ideas. Most importantly, instead of seeking out employees who "fit in," company leaders should encourage diversity of thought and healthy dialogue as a way to expand their company’s horizons–and increase the bottom line. "If you have a job posting that contains the words ‘cultural fit,’ take that out," said Carpenter. "It’s one small thing at a time." Kyria Abrahams is the author of I'm Perfect, You're Doomed (Simon & Schuster 2008). She is a writer and photojournalist whose work has been published in Narratively, among other publications. She lives in Denver with her husband and three cats 

Kyria Abrahams | November 12, 2019

How Do You Craft a Corporate Culture That Has Meaning?

When it comes to stating their mission and purpose, companies can put those intentions in writing for all to see. But corporate culture is something different, harder to quantify, intangible. Yet the culture of an organization is a critical factor in attracting and keeping employees, especially in the tight labor market of today, according to the speakers on a panel at From Day One’s conference in Denver. What should be the key qualities of that culture, from an employee’s point of view? “I would ask, ‘Do you feel valued as an employee and are you contributing?’ because that is so important,” said Karen Niparko, the chief human-resources officer for the City and County of Denver. “We want our employees to feel that they are highly valued, respected and appreciated. But they also have to feel that they’re contributing, that they’re making a difference, that they’re able to fulfill that purpose that we have for the City of Denver.” In assessing its culture, a company should look first at the most basic, unchangeable aspect of its reason for being. “First you have to look at ‘What is your cornerstone?’,” said Mark Bishop, senior vice president of associate and organizational effectiveness for Terumo BCT, which develops technologies for blood-cell therapy. “Things that are tried and true, they’re going to be there every day. That’s our passion, that’s our mission, that’s what we do,” he said. “Our baseline has always been, ‘I understand how the work that I do impacts the life of a patient.’” At GeoStabilization International, an engineering company that deals with landslides and other hazards, the culture is distinctly gung-ho, partly because the impact of the work is so tangible. “One of the things is, we look at ourselves as first responders,” said John Hollander, the company’s chief people officer. “So, when a rock lands on I-70, we’re there at 4:30 in the morning. When the phone rings at four in the morning, we answer it. We go. We’re there. Because we have a thousand truckers waiting in line to bring goods and services to your favorite Amazon warehouse that’s sitting on the Western Slope and they’re going to be late and you’re not going to be happy.” Even with a strong corporate culture, however, companies should question the status quo, since the culture outside the company could be changing expectations among both customers and employees. “It’s those things that you create as the norm in your organization that you need to stop and look at and say, ‘Do we want that to continue?’,” Hollander said. To keep a culture growing in a healthy way, company leaders need to listen closely to their workers, which not only sparks innovation, but sends a message to employees that they matter, said panelist Wendy Barnett, a business partner with Lingo Live, a firm that provides coaching to help emerging leaders communicate better. “When you look at the folks you have coming in–and everyone has valuable ideas, right?–how do you evolve where that organization is welcoming of challenges to ideas and is receptive to hearing that?” Barnett asked. She stressed that HR professionals must be willing to consider whether their policies are simply photocopies of the past, or are they welcoming of diverse points of view? To tap into those views, a company should set up structures for open dialogue with employees, said Judith Almendra, vice president of talent management and employee engagement for TTEC, which provides customer-experience technology. To make sure lines of communication are kept open, Almendra said TTEC created a company intranet where employees could share ideas and input across the board, even anonymously if they felt uncomfortable sharing negative feedback. Letting employees know their feedback is being used to implement changes has been a valuable tool in how TTEC "stays in tune with what’s happening with our business,” she said. “It lets people know we’re not just a bunch of programs. We use it, for example, when we’re going to do a sales pitch … there’s a lot of value in that collective knowledge.” The full panel, from left: moderator Daliah Singer, Mark Bishop of Terumo BCT, Wendy Barnett of Lingo Live, Judith Almendra of TTEC, Karen Niparko of the City and County of Denver, and John Hollander of GeoStabilization International Barnett said that’s why her company, and others, should be willing to place a high value on communication. “It’s so crucial to innovation, culture, evolution, everything,” Barnett said. “That’s what we realize passion is, it’s empowering people to share that voice.” “How do you build an EVP (Employee Value Proposition) and leverage that with culture?” one attendee asked the panel, which was moderated by Denver journalist Daliah Singer. Turns out, the two don’t exist on their own but are instead intrinsically linked. That’s where many organizations have realized it’s all about building a brand for employees, not just consumers. “When we built ours, we didn’t distinctly separate that from culture; we married it to the culture,” Hollander said. “So our culture existed first, we built the EVP, we did some market analysis … and we really took a marketing view of our EVP. We started thinking about ‘What’s our demographic?’ and then we built our EVP to reflect our culture. We used that to go to market. We actually hired a marketing firm to help us think about potential constituents or employees as customers, if you will. Our EVP statements are very reflective and heavily embedded in our culture.” Niparko added that the City and County of Denver also realized that in order to build that value proposition, it needed to develop a brand attractive to the workers it’s seeking. “Why would you look at a city? What are the opportunities in that city? We really needed to create awareness about what opportunities potential employees could have and promote that city,” she said. To that end, the city hired a marketing firm, which ran focus groups and engagement surveys with employees, candidates, and the public: “What is your view of the City of Denver and would you want to work there?” “From that, we developed a brand: Be a part of the city you love,” she said. “You’ll see it on buses, at the airport, on billboards; we feature our employees as brand ambassadors, and that’s part of our culture that is about our employees. Then we created, ‘What is our differentiator for Denver?’ One is obviously our strong purpose in serving the public, and from that we built out our value proposition. Now we promote that through all of our marketing materials, social media, etc. We’re out there now in many different ways than we were six or seven years ago.” Barnett has done research on the separation of personal and professional life and how that contributes to a viable workforce in today’s economy. “If we think about our values, they really come from a personal place,” she said. “We spend eight hours to 14 to 16 hours a day working, so integration of those values of personal and professional life is really critical. We, as humans, are attracted to organizations that reflect our personal way that we wish to live our lives.” Another attendee asked the panel that for those measuring employee, what would be the one question you should ask? “If you would recommend us as an employer,” Almendra said, “we know we’re doing something good. Jessica Machetta is a Denver-based journalist who has covered business, economic development, politics, crime and courts in several states and at least three other countries. She has worked for CBS, ABC, the Miami Herald, Bloomberg, the BBC and others

Jessica Machetta | November 06, 2019

How Behavioral Science and ‘Nudge Theory’ Can Make a Difference in Gender Equality

Since humans are creatures of habit and tradition, they’ll tend to keep doing what they’re doing until something motivates them to change. Individuals may change their behavior for reasons particular to them, but what if leaders in business or government want to solve problems by encouraging change across a whole group of people? The thriving field of behavioral science has produced a wealth of insights in how to “nudge” people with gentle pushes that can add up to a big impact. Behavioral-science firm the BVA Nudge Unit is a global consultancy that helps clients ranging from Air France to the World Wildlife Fund to create sustainable change, both inside and outside their organizations. In an interview with From Day One, we asked Jenic Mantashian, Executive Vice President of the BVA Nudge Unit USA, about her company’s work in the field. Excerpts: From Day One: Your organization recently helped the U.N. to engage 1 billion men in the cause of gender equality using behavioral science. That's a lot of people to sway. To start with, can you tell us about behavioral science as a field and give us some examples of its insights and tools? Mantashian: Behavioral science is a field of study that brings together several disciplines, among them cognitive science, social psychology and behavioral economics.  In very simple terms, behavioral science seeks to understand the true drivers of human behavior. As a consulting practice it’s a relatively new field, but has really taken off.  There have been several Nobel Prizes awarded to people for their work in behavioral science, as more and more people see its value for solving problems. Specifically, as a practice, it uncovers the cognitive biases, emotional and social influences, and the impact of context on our behavior. With those insights, we can pursue informed strategies to resolve what are otherwise intractable problems. Some of the most well-known areas where applied behavioral science has emerged as a practice was in consumer finance and global health. Specifically, through the application of nudges, individuals were successfully encouraged to save more money for retirement and to vaccinate their children, respectively. How do you define "nudge," as you deploy it among a particular group? I should mention that the term “nudge” was coined by two leaders in this field, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.   In fact, they wrote the book on it–Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. The way I explain a nudge to people is that it is a small discrete intervention that is inspired by insights uncovered through our understanding of human behavior. It guides beneficial behaviors in such a way whereby choice is not limited, so people don’t feel forced.  Nudges can be carried out through changes to a physical space, by communicating in an intentional way, or simply by including behavioral strategies within any interaction with a group or individual.  For example, you can nudge employee behaviors in a meeting simply by being very deliberate about the name of the meeting room or the title of your meeting–in effect, priming the participants. Jenic Mantashian is Executive Vice President of the BVA Nudge Unit USA What is HeForShe, the movement you supported for the U.S., and what are some of the behaviors it seeks to address? HeForShe is a solidarity campaign initiated by the U.N. for the global advancement of gender equality.  The movement invites men specifically, and people of all gender identifications, to stand in solidarity with women to create a brave, visible, and united force for gender equality. From a behavioral perspective, as a first step, HeForShe “pre-engages” with men by gaining their commitment. They’re persuaded to sign up to be part of the movement on HeForShe.org. As a second step, HeForShe encourages those registered to take action in favor of gender equality within their own communities. Naturally the specific behaviors are quite broad and varied, since each country and context is so different. The subjects of the nudges could range from heads of state, who have the ability to change laws related to pay equality, all the way to university students, who have the ability to foster a campus environment where women are safe from sexual assault. Why is there a need to deploy behavioral science to influence these ingrained behaviors, rather than more traditional methods like public-service advertising? I would start off by saying that giving people information is essential. Information helps establish an intent. Without an intent to act a certain way, it’s hard to make it happen. With that said, time and again we have seen that information is simply not enough to change behavior. For example, we know that eating sugar and processed foods on a regular basis can lead to diabetes. We know that smoking cigarettes can lead to cancer.  We know that driving and texting can lead to fatal accidents. There is so much information out there on these topics, but millions of people still engage in these deadly behaviors. What behavioral science and nudges allow us to do is complement the information we receive, so we can take a more comprehensive approach. For example, next time I have a craving for sweets, if I made changes to my kitchen environment that nudged me away from the cookies and nudged me towards the fruit, it will support me better with my intent to eat healthier. Can you explain the use of commitment as a step toward change, and why it proves effective?’ We know from many experiments in our field that when someone commits to a future behavior, they are more likely to do it. For example, in one experiment, hotel guests were asked for a pre-commitment to reuse towels to support eco-friendly behavior at the hotel, and by simply having people check a box, there was a 25% average increase in the reuse of towels. It is believed by some that engaging in the commitment dissolves any cognitive dissonance that results from not following through on the committed action. And since humans look for ways to avoid discomfort, we are more likely to follow through with the action to avoid the guilt or conflict that can arise. In a recent article, you identified many "drivers of influence." Could you offer a couple of prime examples? Sure. At the BVA Nudge Unit, we created a tool that we coined the 21 Drivers of Influence.  The tool isolates 21 of the most powerful heuristic-based levers, from more than 200 that have been identified in the field, that can be used to amplify the effectiveness of specific activations. In other words, they serve as behavioral science-based inspirations that drive our ideation process when we design strategies and nudges to change behavior. Commitment is one of those drivers. Another popular one is “Social Norms,” where we exploit the insight that people want to feel a sense of belonging and thus will be more likely to act in a way that’s like the rest of the group. If you look at Amazon, they use this driver very well, by showing you the popularity of a product, along with its ratings and endorsements by others. Another one is “Easiness,” which is the understanding that we are more likely to do something if it’s undemanding. That’s what Amazon was thinking in designing their “one click” check-out option. You also talk about "stairs of change." Could you describe the process? At the BVA Nudge Unit we have a proprietary behavioral framework that’s a step-wise process that inspires the development of behavioral science strategies and nudges. The best way to think about our Stairs of Change is to imagine you are climbing up four stories of a building, where each of the four stories represents an important stage. As you ascend to the top, you get closer to achieving your end goal.  However, if any of the steps are skipped haphazardly, you risk the collapse of your effort. In other words, we break down the steps to the behavior into four areas and work on each of them. At the step “Preparing the Field,” we think about how to awaken the attention of our target, such as finding the right time, place and messenger. We take this through to “Reinforce the Behavior,” where we think about things like providing reassurance through feedback, recognizing the behavior through rewards, and activating social diffusion. What kinds of results are you seeing from such programs, for example your work with the HeForShe movement? The results have been very positive. Our primary focus with the U.N. was to nudge the commitment process, getting men to commit to the movement. Shortly after our interventions were launched, using analytics from HeForShe.org, it was determined that commitments jumped from 2% to 25% conversions among website visitors. We’re also now working with HeForShe Champion corporations on the application of nudge within their organizations. Among other steps, they’re optimizing recruitment and hiring practices through the use of our frameworks in order to ensure gender-balanced workforces in specific sectors, along with achieving a more diverse workforce overall. We are in the testing phase and hope to share the good results soon. What are some other examples from behavioral science in fostering diversity and gender equality, particularly in the corporate sector? There are a lot of published examples out there and a good resource to access many of them can be found in our book called Nudge Management. Nudges can be put in place to encourage D&I at all stages of the employee experience. Let me give you some examples: When hiring: In advertisements, only list requirements that are key to the position. Research has shown that there are trends in the way specific groups respond to job advertisements. For instance, women tend to apply only when they feel they meet 100% of the required capabilities on a job advertisement, while men are likely to apply when they meet only 60%of those qualifications. To debias annual reviews: At a mid-size U.S. tech company, the annual-review process involved managers discussing staff performance. Comments were largely about employees’ personalities rather than their actual work, and included various stereotypes. A study showed that 14% women were criticized for being too aggressive, 8% of men were criticized for being “too soft.”  The company initiated an employee scorecard which focused on the work output and its impact on the business and not the individual. The result? A year after rolling out new scorecard, none of the women were criticized for being too aggressive, and less than 1% of men were criticized for being “too soft.” To increase diversity in global job assignments: An international assignment is often seen as a crucial step in a successful career in large organizations. But not many women declare themselves open to international mobility. In a global company, simply rephrasing the question on an employee-development questionnaire–from “are you internationally mobile?” to “would you consider an international assignment sometime in the future?”—led to a 25% increase the number of women declaring they were mobile, and thus candidates for further management development. That said, it’s important to note that these methods don’t necessarily work in every situation. Contexts change how people behave. That’s why ad-hoc solutions are generally recommended. Looking ahead, what other problems are you aiming to address by wielding behavioral science? Basically, any problems that exist where there are humans involved, we want to be there to support positive change. On the Nudge Management side, when nudging within organizations, this can range from encouraging entrepreneurial behavior among sales reps and the adoption of new sales automation platforms, to promoting compliance with safety rules and regulations, to adopting behavior that supports communication or innovation.    More broadly, we also are working on using behavioral science to improve customer experience, to adopt sustainable behavior, and promote the quality of life and standard of living in cities. Editor’s Note: BVA Nudge Unit USA is a sponsor of From Day One. The author of this article can be reached at jenic.mantashian@bvanudgeunit.com  

Jenic Mantashian | November 05, 2019

Discrimination on the Job? Young People See More of It Than Older People Do

Which age group sees the most discrimination, including ageism, on the job? Not the older employees or even the middle groups, but the young. In a new poll, American workers under the age of 35 were the ones most likely to see and feel bias on the job. Rather than suggesting that the young are more often the targets, experts said the results indicated “how different generations can view the same behavior,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Three out of every five workers have witnessed discrimination at work based on age, race, sexual orientation or gender, according to a survey from Glassdoor and the Harris Poll of 1,100 employees. “But people between the ages of 18 and 34 were far more likely than other age cohorts to report having witnessed or being subject to each type of discrimination,” said the Journal. The results may be reflective of a generation that is coming of age at a time of heightened awareness of bias, including sexual harassment revealed by the #MeToo movement. Younger people are more likely to see it for what it is and call it out, compared with older people who may be either less clued-in or more resigned to the status quo, according to Carina Cortez, Glassdoor’s chief people officer. Remarkably, young people tended to report more ageism than their elders. Fifty-two percent of younger workers said they saw or felt age-related discrimination, vs. 39% of workers over 55. Why’s that? The perception could be caused the tendency in both the media and the workplace to lump generations together and assign stereotypical traits to them, notably the cohort so often  referred to as “those millennials,” Cortez told the Journal.  

fromdayone | November 05, 2019

What Is It About Wegmans That Makes People Feel All Warm and Fuzzy?

In any town big or small, the opening of a new supermarket is typically a welcome event. But nothing was quite like the emotional outpouring that accompanied the debut of a new Wegmans supermarket last week in Brooklyn, NY. The media swarmed. Customers swooned. What is it about Wegmans? The family-owned company, one of the largest privately held corporations in the U.S. (2018 sales: $9.2 billion), has built a reputation on vast product selection, low prices, and excellent customer service at its 100 locations from New York to North Carolina. Yet there’s something more to the story that could be instructive to other companies. Reported the Wall Street Journal in the days leading up to the Brooklyn opening: “More than anything, Wegmaniacs say, the grocery store makes them feel good. ‘There’s an association that becomes ingrained in you as a kid that gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling,’ said Megan Clegg, a product designer who grew up near Syracuse and lives three blocks [from the Brooklyn location]. Ms. Clegg, 31, said she likes how the store forgoes fluorescent bulbs in favor of warmer lighting and uses store signage to celebrate employees’ work anniversaries or college acceptances.” For its coverage, the New York Times tapped a staffer named Jesse Wegman (no relation, but an affinity for the store chain nonetheless), who reported from the scene of the opening: “I had heard about the emotional connection people have to Wegmans, but I had never seen it up close. I can report that it is a real thing,” he wrote. He continued: “So what explains this level of passion for a grocery store? Some of it is the natural loyalty that attaches to a family-owned business, which Wegmans has been for more than a century. Some of it is the fact that Wegmans predated the current trend of massive, well-stocked, high-quality supermarkets. But what struck me most in the end was not the range or quality of the food options …. It was the sense of community, of shopping for food as reaffirmation of a shared civic life in which everyone looks out for one another. This sense seems to exist between the owners and the staff (Wegmans consistently ranks as one of the best workplaces in the country), and between the staff and customers.” Times urban columnist Ginia Bellafante, a Brooklyn resident, weighed in as well on the sources of Wegmania. “Wegmans counters some of our disaffection with retail capitalism,” she wrote. “The business is family run, still after several generations. There is no Jeff Bezos figure at the top holding on to his money as if it were a handgrip that would kill him if he let go.” As a civic matter, Wegmans was welcome in Brooklyn in part because of the location of its new store in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is now a thriving tech hub but is adjacent to a neighborhood that includes many low-income residents who need jobs. The company hired about 200 of its 500 new workers from outreach events at nearby housing-authority buildings. “That is why, nearly a decade ago, when supermarket chains submitted proposals to the city for the chance to open in an area serving both gentrifiers and thousands of public housing residents, Wegmans won,” she wrote. As it turned out, the new Wegmans was delayed years in arriving, but the outpouring of affection indicates that the wait was worth it.

fromdayone | November 04, 2019

By Ousting the CEO, McDonald’s Sends a Strong Signal on Workplace Conduct

The sudden dismissal of the CEO of McDonald’s over the weekend showed in dramatic fashion that the codes of conduct for top management in Corporate American have risen sharply. The fast-food chain announced on Sunday that its board of directors had fired CEO Steve Easterbrook after he engaged in a consensual relationship with an employee, violating company policy. Other CEOs have been fired for sexual misconduct in recent times, but in the case of CBS CEO Les Moonves, the accusations included harassment and retaliation, and in the case of Mirage Resorts CEO Steve Wynn, charges involved multiple cases of sexual assault. At McDonald’s, company policy forbids managers from having romantic relationships with direct or indirect subordinates. “Other companies don’t always act on that kind of information or fire their CEO for that, and so it seems like they are trying to enforce a pretty strict policy in this situation,” University of Richmond Law Professor Carl Tobias told Fortune. In the case of a CEO, everyone on the payroll is effectively a subordinate. Easterbrook, who is 52 and divorced with three daughters, acknowledged in an email to employees that “this was a mistake. Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on,” he wrote. He will be replaced by Chris Kempczinski, most recently the president of McDonald’s USA. The ousted CEO had generally been credited for launching a turnaround at McDonald’s, which had been under competitive pressure from fast-casual restaurants and food-delivery apps. “There’s no question he’s been a very good CEO during his time there,” Jonathan Maze, editor of the trade publication Restaurant Business, told the New York Times. “He really made that organization a lot leaner, they make decisions a lot more quickly,” he said. “They have gone from a company that was well behind on technology to one that is arguably at the forefront of things like artificial intelligence and delivery.” Even so, McDonald’s has faced criticism for low wages for its front-line workers and a failure to address sexual harassment. As the Times reported, “Tanya Harrell, a McDonald’s worker in New Orleans who has helped lead the campaign for a $15 minimum wage, said workers had filed dozens of complaints with McDonald’s demanding that the company take action to address sexual harassment. McDonald’s has ignored the demands, Ms. Harrell said, including requests to sit down with workers to discuss the issue.” The company has lately been offering training programs to U.S. employees in an effort to prevent sexual misconduct, but the extraordinary case of firing the CEO may send a strong signal in its own right. In an email to employees, the new CEO Kempczinski wrote, “Yes, we serve delicious food and offer great experiences, but our brand means so much more. We stand for opportunity and empowerment for everyone.”

fromdayone | November 04, 2019

The Company in the Community: You Get What You Put into It

Corporations don’t exist separate from the communities where they do business—and the value runs both ways. When business creates partnerships with non-profit organizations and government agencies, the combined leverage pays dividends in multiple ways, from the tangible (developing skilled labor) to the intangible (boosting employee morale). Yes, the return on investment (ROI) may be difficult to calculate. But building purposeful relationships in the community is essential at a time when customers and employees demand more from brands than just a product or a paycheck. “Believe it or not, [community involvement] might be the one thing we don't measure ROI on,” said Ellen Valde, managing partner of Workforce of the Future at PwC’s (Pricewaterhouse Coopers) Denver office. “It is the one thing that we don't know⁠—what's our return on investment with this involvement? Because it's so important that the employees and the team members feel like they're giving, to feel like they have that purpose ... that's enough ROI for us as an organization.” Meaningful community involvement is an integral part of the employee experience. But how should a company decide where to put its efforts? Focusing on causes and organizations that align well with business goals is key, according to the speakers in a panel discussion From Day One’s conference in Denver, moderated by Tamara Chuang of the Colorado Sun. Shannon Armbrecht leads the people-development strategy team at Western Union, which has its world headquarters in Denver, where it has become increasingly active in the community, particularly in supporting education. But the 168-year-old company operates in more than 200 countries, with employees around the globe, so it focuses on communities globally as well. “What we do for a living is ‘move money for better.’ So we move money to help individuals and families and communities and education and NGOs.” With that in mind, Western Union has created its own foundation, WU Gives, to focus on causes important to its employees⁠, who take an interest in the customers they serve. “With our employees, what we find is really important to them with moving money across the globe is supporting migrant workers, supporting refugee work and supporting education—specifically education for women, youth, and children,” she said. Helping companies identify value-aligned causes is mission-critical for nonprofits. Scott Dishong, CEO of Make-A-Wish Colorado, believes this strongly. “It's my job to make sure that we're a good partner to our corporate partners. And you, as business leaders and as company leaders, need to build that type of relationship where you can tell your nonprofits what's important to you. When I hear [Shannon] say you move money⁠—we move people. We've got a kid, a refugee from Somalia, who was just diagnosed with cancer and he wants to go to Mecca to pray. So that's a perfect opportunity for Make-A-Wish and Western Union to come together. But it's on us as nonprofits to know what you’re looking for in a partnership so that we can bring those opportunities.” As managing director of the Colorado Workforce Development Council, Lee Wheeler-Berliner sees the community/corporate relationship through the lens of government involvement, which for a long time was government-initiated and driven. “We flip that script in the state of Colorado, to say that government is here to support you,” he said. “One of the primary vehicles we utilize to do that is a concept called sector partnerships, where industry is coming together. Business leaders are at the center table, setting the agenda. Then government can listen and talk about opportunities.” An example of this is Subaru’s partnership with the Cherry Creek Innovation Campus, a new technical high school in South Denver. There are a lot of Subarus on the road in Colorado, and servicing requires skilled technicians. The company donated two new vehicles to use for training⁠—and now Toyota is planning donations, too, said Wheeler-Berliner. PwC, which directs much of its community involvement towards financial literacy, sees myriad returns on its investment. Teaching kids about bank accounts and even coding is a kind of “upskilling” that engages current employees while also nurturing a talent pipeline for the future. In a tight labor market, “it’s a war for talent out there,” says Valde. “So that's important.” Cynthia Barnes has written about everything from art to zebras from more than 30 countries. She currently calls Denver home

Cynthia Barnes | November 01, 2019

Lasting Secrets of Success, From the Guru of Great Companies

“You just get up and you start marching,” says author, teacher and consultant Jim Collins. “You always have a friend right when you wake up in the morning and there's this monster project that is going to take you years to do.” For Collins, his “monster project” has been research into long-term corporate success (and failure), research that has led to authoring and co-authoring six bestselling books, including Good to Great and Built To Last. Speaking at October’s From Day One conference in Denver, Collins shared his business insights and told the audience about his research over the past 30 years, his plans for his next project, and the spreadsheet organization he uses to get it all done. “The rule is very simple: I have to hit above 1,000 creative hours every 365-day cycle. That's how you get these big projects done. You just do that,” he said, echoing one of the enduring concepts he distilled in his research. There are other advantages that accrue from such sustained focus. “It gives you a chance to really go deep,” Collins told From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp during the one-on-one conversation. “I also find the insights deepen over time. If you stay in the work⁠—stay deep in the actual work⁠—then over time, you will have something that might be worthy to share.” What Collins has discovered in his research has proven worthy of teaching to corporations like Amazon, MBA students at Stanford, and cadets at West Point. In addition to compiling 6,000 years of combined corporate history, he’s also done immersive studies in health care, government and education. “⁠I've been really lucky,” said Collins. “I think luck’s important in life. But what really is the most critical kind of luck is ‘who’ luck—people who touch your life.” It’s ultimately all about people. “Great vision without great people is irrelevant,” Collins insisted. “If you always start with the idea that you begin first and foremost, everything, with building around people and getting the right people for what you're trying to do in the kind of company are trying to build, then ‘who’ comes before ‘why.’ That makes a great life.” Another key to enduring success is understanding the concept of momentum, in which brilliant ideas and magic moments are less important than plain old persistence. In his new publication Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great, Collins uses the flywheel as a metaphor for the constant, incremental efforts that businesses⁠—and people⁠—must make to succeed. “If you really study how something great gets built, it never happens as sort of one idea or one breakthrough moment or one ‘Aha!’ or one technology or one instantaneous thing,” Collins said. “It's a cumulative effect over the course of 60 or 70 years. If you look at the way our companies got built at their best, it's like pushing a giant heavy flywheel. You start pushing in an intelligently consistent direction. At some point the flywheel’s got all this momentum behind it and you keep pushing.” Values like humility and service are hallmarks of great business executives, who Collins categorizes as “Level 5 leaders.” By way of illustration, he quoted a line from a long-ago meeting with one of the founders of Hewlett-Packard. “He had one of those wonderful sentences that will forever stick with me. Sometimes a mentor will give you a line you can flip through forever: ‘Never stifle a generous impulse.’ Isn’t that just a wonderful thing? Like [if] you're ever wondering ‘Should I tip more?’ Never stifle a generous impulse. It's just a great guiding thing.” A stint as Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point taught Collins about creating a culture of service. He observed that the heavily challenged cadets seemed much happier than the MBA candidates he had taught at Stanford. “You learn something there that's instilled, which is success is communal,” he said. “The only way you get through this place is by taking care of each other. So if I struggle with a math test I'm going to get help from somebody who's good at that. And if I’m really good at something, I’ll help someone else. And you create a culture where the way we're going to do things is, we’re going to take care of each other.” Caring about each other is the first of three fundamental principles Collins closed with. “People are first. The people in your life, the people you work with, and doing meaningful work with people you love doing it with. No. 2 would be really to figure out your ‘hedgehog,’ what you’re passionate about, what you can be best about, and stick with it. And then the third is this fundamental dynamic of preserving your core, while always stimulating progress. I think that what one of the things that people struggle with is, they either give up their core and they water it down and then they don't stand for anything. Or they get so wedded to a particular version of the core and they don't change and they become irrelevant. The great genius at the end is to do both all the time.” The project Collins is now working on has fascinated him since early in his career, based on social scientist John W. Gardner’s 1964 book Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society. "He believed that one of the greatest costs of society is a failure of individuals and institutions to self-renew." With his research on companies wrapping up, Collins "woke up in my late 50s and started a research project which is incredibly exciting and asks a very simple question: Why do some people self-renew better than others?" We look forward to his answers. Cynthia Barnes has written about everything from art to zebras from more than 30 countries. She currently calls Denver home

Cynthia Barnes | October 29, 2019

What It Means to Provide Health Care That’s Focused on the Patient

When you ask the universe to challenge you, says Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis, you’d better be ready for what you get. A former practicing OB/GYN physician, the now-president and CEO of Denver’s Craig Hospital calls herself “a warrior for the vulnerable.” Over the years, she’s moved from delivering four babies on a single Friday at Kaiser Permanente to leading a world-renowned spinal cord and traumatic brain injury (TBI) rehabilitation center. At the From Day One conference in Denver last week, she spoke with reporter Jensen Werley of the Denver Business Journal about what it means to provide care that’s focused on the patient and the family, the unique challenges of a specialized hospital, and her own journey from bedside to boardroom. She opened the conversation with a bit of a koan, relating her career change to that of a leaf in a stream. “It isn’t passive,” she explains, “It takes intention to stay still. And one day, you end up as the CEO!” There is no presumed self-importance when Dr. Allen-Davis speaks. The importance, rather, is focused on the human lives she is charged with protecting. The culture she fosters at Craig is open and accessible. The employees are “family,” and past patients are “grads.” She talks about accountability, gratitude, and transparency. Dr. Allen-Davis is careful not to marginalize Craig’s patients, but to empathize with their difficult transition. “These are people who woke up with one reality and went to bed with a very different one,” she said, typically the result of accidents. She notes that 60% to 70% per cent of people living with disabilities are unemployed. Craig is one of only two hospitals in the U.S. to specialize in TBI and spinal injuries, but Allen-Davis was mostly unfamiliar with the hospital about two years ago when she got an unsolicited call from a recruiter asking her to apply for the CEO position. She was hesitant at first, but warmed to the culture at the hospital. “Not just the mission and the focus on patients, as as [the recruiter] talked about the openness, the accessibility and the warmth. They call themselves a family,” Dr. Allen-Davis told Werley. The CEO acknowledged that Craig needs to tell its remarkable story more widely, but needs to be sensitive about how it does that. “If you’re not careful,” she says, “You look like a ghoul.” Her working motto for Craig is, “This should never happen to you. But if it does, you should come here!” As an African-American woman, Dr. Allen-Davis has risen to her position past all the obstacles presented by a largely white, male profession. She’d like to see more diversity at Craig Hospital too, where “there’s a smattering in the middle of people of color, with a lot in food services and environmental sciences,” she said. And then there’s her—seated at the top, but spending a lot of time walking around the hospital, asking you in all sincerity how your day is going. Having worked in healthcare since 1984, she is painfully aware that her way of thinking may have more in common with the old establishment than it does with women of color. “I am like an old white man,” she said. Because of this, she actively promotes diversity of thought in her hiring practices. “We are wired to hire people who think like us,” she cautions, joking, “I want you to call me the B-word if I deserve it.” Perhaps it is this type of irreverence that allows a woman of color to take a seat formerly occupied solely by white men. The need to push STEM education and opportunities for women and minorities in otherwise neglected communities is imperative if we are to have the diversity of thought that Dr. Allen-Davis champions as the future of health care, she said. “It actually starts with a pipeline at kindergarten,” she said. “This is a grade school to grad school problem … We’ve got to open more doors and got to push STEM education a lot more than we do.” Calling out her own peers, she explains that—for all the talk about putting the patient first—the health-care field is still set up to benefit physicians. From office hours to appointment lengths, the structure is there to benefit the existing system, she said. To counter this, her leadership policy is open-door. “I’m not buttoned up,” she says, stressing that real and honest feedback is something she yearned for during her days at health-care giant Kaiser Permanente, where her roles included VP of government, external relations and research. Brittany Hill, co-founder and CEO of Accelerist, conducted a workshop But what Dr. Allen-Davis really wants to do as a leader, she says, is “bring back spontaneous joy.” She speaks with pride about writing her monthly “CEO Reflections,” and how much she welcomes opening an email dialogue with the replies from hospital employees—each of which she answers personally. Alongside more serious and immediate concerns, such as diversifying the hospital’s board of directors, Dr. Allen-Davis has chartered “Project Rubber Ducky,” a community-building effort that involves mentoring and sharing moments of gratitude. In fact, Craig Hospital has a “gratitude bowl” in which employees can deposit thank-you notes to other employees. “If I had my way, there would be gratitude bowls everywhere,” she said. In an earlier breakout session, Abby Cheesman, founder of Skill Scout, talked about easy ways to use video in recruiting, and Brittany Hill, co-founder and CEO of Accelerist, spoke about how “the next generation is the bridge you need to integrate your team and your company’s purpose.” Kyria Abrahams is a Denver-based freelance journalist

Kyria Abrahams | October 25, 2019

How to Create Healthy Teams–and Why It Matters

The key to fostering a healthy team is creating a sense of “psychological safety,” said Bhavna Chhabra, engineering director and site lead for Google’s Boulder campus. “A psychologically safe team is a team where the people … feel like they can admit mistakes and be able to admit when they don’t know something. [It’s] being able to ask for help,” she said. “If you don’t have an environment where failure is OK, then people won’t take risks.” At a place like Google, promoting innovative thinking and risk-taking is crucial, but Chhabra’s framework for a healthy team applies beyond tech companies. “It’s also about being a dependable team that delivers on time,” she said. “[And] a team that allows for a diversity of viewpoints and is inclusive of people who are different from them.” Chhabra, a University of Colorado Boulder grad, took charge in Boulder last month, but she’s been with Google since 2016. She now oversees a 1,300-person team and her role has shifted to nurturing an engaging office environment. She spoke about fostering collaborative environments and healthy teams with the Denver Business Journal’s Jensen Werley during a fireside chat last week at From Day One’s Denver conference. Chhabra was interviewed at the Denver Opera House by reporter Jensen Werley of the Denver Business Journal (Photo by Tom Sandner) “I try my best, no matter how busy I am, I take the time to meet with anyone, get to know them, show I care about them,” Chhabra said. Keeping employees happy and developing a creative, inclusive environment starts with leadership, she added. Every six months, employees evaluate managers in performance reviews. (There’s also an in-depth annual survey.) The results—and what Google finds from crunching data—are folded into the manager training program. This is important, Chhabra said, because in order to scale these sorts of systems, leaders need to make sure “managers embody those attributes” that have been deemed critical to maintaining “optimal team structure.” She also keeps an eye out for team members who personify the company’s values and would thus make good leaders themselves. “We can’t try to solve everything,” she said. “We distill it [the surveys] down to the most important [issues] based on data we received and try to do something about it.” Recently, Google leadership heard from its employees that managers weren’t valuing citizenship enough—how individuals were lending a hand both on campus and within the broader community. Now, “we reward people that are doing extra work to help their teammates,” Chhabra said. Google offers several other morale-building programs: classes around values that are fundamental to the company; an online forum where employees can post questions anonymously; and a focus on results-based performance. “We don’t care when you’re coming into work and leaving. What we care about is that you’re getting your work done,” she said. “We’re respectful of work-life balance.” (A related note: Google’s research found that “healthy teams are not impacted negatively by co-location,” Chhabra said, meaning that everyone doesn’t need to be working out of the same space to effectively collaborate.) That’s not to say Google has it all figured out. Chhabra underscored concerns about developing a more diverse workforce within the company. Google publishes an annual diversity report; last year, 92% of new hires were Asian or White and only 33% were women. Releasing this information is “the ultimate in vulnerability,” Chhabra said. All of this work toward keeping employees happy isn’t just corporate altruism, however. Healthy teams are also smart for business. “A healthy team retains employees,” Chhabra said, emphasizing the high costs of training and turnover. “Healthy teams deliver on time. Healthy teams innovate. Healthy teams have fun.” Santiago Jaramillo, CEO and co-founder of Emplify, spoke in a breakout session at From Day One (Photo by Tom Sandner) Fostering this sort of workplace invites more engaged employees, which then allows for teams who are better equipped to collaborate, innovate, and produce. “We’ve created an environment where people feel OK with being themselves. They’re coming across as not just employees but human beings,” Chhabra said. “It comes from this atmosphere of encouragement … of psychological safety.” Read more of Google’s research on work and innovation at rework.withgoogle.com. In breakout sessions that followed, Santiago Jaramillo, CEO and co-founder of Emplify, spoke about how to build a winning employee-engagement strategy. And Mike Bailen, vice president of people at Lever, talked about achieving a transformative hiring strategy and what new research reveals about key metrics to focus on. Daliah Singer is an award-winning, Denver-based freelance journalist. She has written for NBCNews.com, The Guardian, BBC.com, Outside, Travel & Leisure, and others. Follower her on Twitter at @daliahsinger

Daliah Singer | October 24, 2019

What It Takes to Enhance the Whole Employee Experience

With today’s unemployment rates at record lows, many companies are competing strenuously to attract new workers—and retain the ones they have. What are their best lures? Turns out that the intangibles matter. “Large salaries and monetary perks help, but cannot offset the need for purpose and meaning,” said Naina Dhingra, a partner at McKinsey & Co., the consulting firm.  “Employees want to have a clear sense of the company’s mission, how the employee can contribute to this mission, and how they can work with their co-workers to achieve the mission.” In fact, most Americans say they would take a sizeable pay cut in order to take a job more meaningful to them, noted Albert Siu, corporate vice president for learning and development at Parexel, a biopharmaceutical company. Yet there is no one-size-fits-all approach to keeping employees satisfied and engaged, so companies are increasingly looking at the whole employee experience. Among the elements: the right benefits to fit employees at different life stages, work schedules that offer flexibility in multiple ways, community-building efforts, and a physically healthy work environment, according to the speakers on a panel on employee experience at last month’s From Day One conference in Boston, moderated by Doug Banks, executive editor of Boston Business Journal. Employers in recent years have been focused on one generation in particular, millennials, who now constitute the largest segment of the workforce. And they’re restless. Nearly half of them plan to leave their current jobs in two years, according to a Deloitte survey. This rate of turnover costs businesses billions of dollars. Part of the cause is that, compared to earlier generations, millennials tend to be disengaged employees, indifferent to their work and wondering if they can find a stronger sense of purpose somewhere else. McKinsey’s Dhingra described how her firm’s new office design in New York City features ample amounts of natural light, plus an outdoor terrace As a result, employers have a strong interest in showing workers how their efforts have an impact on the world. In the case of government workers, who may not have the same financial incentives as private-sector workers, leaders emphasize the importance of their service. “Fortunately, the majority of people who apply to work for the government choose that option because they already have a desire to serve the public,” said Dana Yonchak, senior director for talent and culture for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Yonchak’s challenge is to share all of the positive things that government is doing and create a brand proposition that’s encouraging to prospective hires, especially young people who’ll make up the state’s future work force. “My team and I are working to publicize the fact that in addition to the social workers and court clerks, the doctor who is investigating the outbreak of EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitis) is a state employee. Marine scientists who study climate change’s effect on fish and their habitats work for the state, and so on.” In the health-care field, a sense of helping people is something workers feel directly. “They want to make a difference in our clients’ lives,” said Anastasia Bergmann, vice president of talent management, diversity, equity and Inclusion for Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. But after caring for patients, the workers need to take care of themselves, so Harvard Pilgrim takes a holistic approach to the benefits it offers employees, said Bergmann, in part by helping with the obligations in their personal lives. One is the burden of student loans; many medical professionals join the company with debts topping six figures. For call-center employees, Harvard Pilgrim added flextime and work-from-home options, which dramatically reduced rates of lateness and absenteeism. Harvard Pilgrim also offers three volunteer days which an employee can use to visit their child’s classroom during National Poetry Month, for example, or march in support of climate change. “Our goal is to be more intentional, more strategic, with benefit packages and a-la-carte options,” Bergmann said. The speakers reflected on the importance of healthy office environments as well. But there’s no clear consensus on what that looks like, since management thinking about office design has gone back and forth over the years. Earlier in his career, Siu worked at Hewlett-Packard, where the engineering floor was an open space because it facilitated information sharing and general communication. Then came the era of the cubicle, which put an emphasis on personal space and privacy. Now, following the example of Google and other tech firms, the open-plan office has returned, but this time around has produced a strong backlash among workers. “If you look at startups now, a lot of people wear headphones to block out noise, minimize distractions, and create a personal bubble,” said Siu. Jane Steinmetz, Ernst & Young’s Boston managing principal and New England markets leader, spoke at the conference about ways to promote the advancement of women into leadership positions McKinsey has recently redesigned its flagship offices in New York City and London in an effort to produce a healthy combination of those design ideas, based on the firm’s observations of employee workflow and activity, Dhingra said. In New York, the space is a combination of conference rooms, cubicles, and lounge spaces–all with lots of windows supplying natural light–and an outdoor terrace. But some organizational guidelines had to be adjusted because of how employees responded to the new design. “Team” conference rooms can be booked for a maximum of three hours, she said, because managers had noticed that teams would spend the entire day and well into the night in those rooms. Perhaps not a sustainable work pattern. In closing, moderator Banks pointed out that “over the nearly two decades since the Journal started publishing the Best Places to Work list for Boston firms, one thing is clear. Businesses that are ranked high offer their employees more than good salaries. It’s not all about money.” Angie Chatman is a freelance writer who covers business, technology, education and social justice. She earned her MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Find her on Twitter @angiecwriter

Angie Chatman | October 17, 2019

How Employers Can Provide Better Health Care

Aiming to improve healthcare for its 1.5 million U.S. workers, Walmart is planning to test a variety of new programs next year, including health-care “concierges.” Starbucks, for its part, aims to expand its workers’ access to mental-health care. In a tight labor market, both companies are seeking to provide more attractive benefits, even as the cost of workplace health-care coverage at big companies is expected to rise another 5% next year. What are the keys to addressing these competing challenges? Cost, quality and compassion. That trio of factors, combined with strong communication strategies, should form the foundation for what employers consider while implementing effective health-care plans in a rapidly changing, diversifying workforce, according to a panel of experts in a panel discussion at From Day One’s conference last month in Boston. Moderated by Vikas Saini, M.D., president of the Lown Institute, the panel explored how the complex worlds of health-care plans and providers must be accessible to populations diverse not only in age, gender, race and orientation but also geographic location, socioeconomic status and stage in life–such as early parenthood. Melissa Frieswick, chief revenue officer of Maven, which provides maternity and family benefits, pointed out that many companies are dealing with different cultures and societies within an international workforce; what might work for one person in India might not for an employee in the U.S., for example. On top of that, specialist care may be unavailable in their different locations, making it important to utilize telemedicine or otherwise put workers into touch with the right providers. Frieswick summed up: “Start with your own data, understand where your plans are, understand the cultural differences … that’s what I would start with: the culture and the data.” Said Krieger: “There’s a big gap in employee understanding what’s available” The calculation needs to be made with a combination of analysis and compassion. “What is the actual dollar cost to providing support, keeping the same level of quality outcomes, and having a positive experience for the patient, on the other side of it?” asked Natasha Prasad, vice president of customer relations at Cleo, a family-support system for working parents, highlighting the major factors her company considers. Many companies have started to look more closely at supporting the transitional periods in the lives of employees. “No one has nailed … the transition into parenthood that is just not supported well from the health perspective, from an overall mental-health and wellness perspective, and from the medicinal perspective,” said Prasad. “Most of us will be, or most people want to be, parents at some point–and when that transition happens, most people will be employed by someone,” she said. “The employer’s in a really strong position to be able to deliver on that health, wellness, emotional and logistical support.”  Generational differences present unique challenges. Wendy Hultmark, human-resources director at Elsevier, whose company began as a traditional publisher, pointed out that her company, “more and more, we are moving towards data and analytics as to services that we’re providing.” “From the employee standpoint, we have a large population who have been with the company for a very long time and may have more maybe traditional expectations around health care and benefits and yet … we have to look at the workforce of the future,” she said. Elsevier is making “a lot of acquisitions of small technology firms who have their own approach to health care and benefits, so that’s been a real challenge for us, the way we are dealing with that. So we’ve taken on board a lot of employee feedback. I think a few years ago, we really aggressively went after the cost of health care; we really moved to pretty much all high-deductible plans, really got away from … internal service provided by the company for health care. And we’re scaling that back a little. The feedback I’m getting from people is, it’s a bit too aggressive.” Elsevier, she said, is simplifying its portfolio of offered health coverage and complementing it more with enticements such as paid leave. Feedback and communication are essential to company success, agreed all panelists. David Krieger of Gallagher Communication pointed out that the way a plan is presented and explained to employees can make a key difference; he cited research by UnitedHealthcare, which found that only 7% of consumers can define terminology such as “premiums,” while more than 50% aren’t sure what they pay in health-care costs and another 55% estimate they waste $750 per year on medical expenses. Said Hultmark: “We have to look at the workforce of the future” “There’s a big gap in employee understanding what’s available, and that creates all kind of issues,” he said. He emphasized the need for employer-employee communication and education, but he also noted that, as companies strive to do the best for their employees against the backdrop of a rapidly changing professional landscape, there is only so much they can do–or have to do–as employers. “Benefits, first of all, they’re money,” he said “It’s money; it’s just money, and call it life insurance or health insurance … [it’s] a bucket of money. And the question you have to ask yourself is … motivation. What are my benefits, plans, objectives, and how are they aligned with my HR and business strategies?” He added: “What are your expectations, and [how], actually, are you trying to get your employees to behave, and how can you support that behavior?” “The decisions become a little bit more simple when you start with the objectives for the business and your people and that broad amount of money that you put in,” Hultmark said. Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame

Sheila Flynn | October 09, 2019

The Real Victims of WeWork Are Its Employees. Is Capitalism Broken?

The catastrophic collapse of WeWork’s initial public offering (IPO) has been in the news a lot lately. Most of the coverage has focused on venture capitalists, valuations and juicy details about self-dealing that were revealed in the company’s SEC filing. But as I read articles about the company I started wondering about something else: Can you imagine how awful it must be to work there? WeWork, which recently renamed itself The We Co., presents itself not just as a company that rents out office space but also (and more important) as a visionary thought leader with lots of innovative ideas about the nature of work and how to run companies in the digital age. The We Co. holds itself up as a model that others can imitate and learn from. That’s odd, because We sounds like a special ring of hell, a place run by posers who have no idea what they’re doing, with loads of inspirational rubbish and rules about not eating meat. I’m a survivor of startup life and wrote about my own nightmare experience in a memoir, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble. The place where I worked had a kooky, peppy, cult-like atmosphere, coupled with stress, mind games, and heartlessness that I’d never experienced in any workplace. The We Co. seems a hundred times worse than my former employer. But there are lots of similarities, most notably the weird mix of silliness and cruelty. As bosses, co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann and his wife Rebekah were touchy-feely hippie types who talked about wellness, spirituality, and ending world hunger. But at the same time they were heartless, ruthless people. Adam told his managers to fire 20% of the staff every year, to get rid of “B” players, and Rebekah, the company’s “chief brand and impact officer,” sometimes fired people after meeting them for just a few minutes, deciding she didn’t like their energy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Neumanns have been booted, but their wacko dysfunctional culture won’t be easily erased. High turnover is one of the biggest hallmarks of the new economy, and probably the most toxic. These companies, the disruptor class, don’t see high turnover as something to be embarrassed about. Quite the opposite–they’re proud of it. They believe high turnover signals that they’ve created a “high-performance” culture where only the best of the best can survive. This lunacy began at Netflix which in 2009 published a “culture deck” that included this slogan: “We’re a team, not a family.” The HR gurus behind this mantra say Netflix is like a pro sports team, where players get cut all the time. At Netflix you should expect to be fired, and probably sooner rather than later. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman echoes this sentiment, telling people to think of a new job as a short-term “tour of duty.” Columnist Dan Lyons In my own 20-month tour of duty at a fast-growing software startup, I saw more firings than in all of my previous jobs combined. People got fired all the time, often with no warning and sometimes for no real reason. They walked out crying–or stunned. The company tried to put a happy face on these firings, describing them as “graduations,” which of course only made it worse–and super weird. Living with constant fear of losing your job makes you nuts. And that’s just one form of the crazy-making management practices endemic to new economy workplaces. Noisy, open offices and constant change initiatives cause you to have higher levels of epinephrine, a stress hormone. Elevated epinephrine is linked to psychological problems and even physical ailments like heart disease. Worse is that if or when you start feeling miserable in one of these places, it doesn’t square with the shiny, happy image that the company projects to the outside world. You start to believe that there must be something wrong with you. If you’re really unlucky, you get a boss like mine, who got off on gaslighting me and telling me that nobody at the company liked me. I knew it was all some kind of weird psychological game for him. Nevertheless, I slid into depression, and left with my self-esteem in tatters. The damage lasted a long time. After I published Disrupted I heard from countless other people who had endured similar experiences and had felt messed up for months or even years afterward. We’re constantly hearing stories about nightmare work environments at new economy companies. Zenefits, Zillow, Uber–the list goes on. Why are so many new companies such uniquely awful employers? A lot of it has to do with the business model they use. I call it “Grow fast, lose money, go public, and cash out.” The We Co. has been doubling in size from year to year, but last year lost $1.6 billion and in the first half of 2019 lost another $700 million. Venture capitalists pumped huge amounts of money into the company–We has raised nearly $12 billion­­–and then pressed management to deliver astronomical growth. For workers, life becomes a constant sprint. You never slow down. The company has no incentive to care about worker health and happiness or work-life balance. Workers get abused, overworked, shortchanged, and treated like disposable widgets. The company burns them out and churns them out. In fact, that’s exactly what’s going to happen at the We Co. The company’s new leaders, slamming the brakes on its growth strategy, are planning to lay off 10% to 25% of its staff, or 1,000 to 3,000 people. Gig-economy companies like Uber and Lyft adopt an even more exploitative model and treat workers as contractors instead of actual employees, to avoid providing benefits. Most drivers last less than a year. Who cares? You just find more to take their place. The collapse of the We Co.’s IPO should be a wake-up call, a signal that this model isn’t working. We’re not producing any great companies this way, and worse, in our mad rush to generate money for VCs we’re making hundreds of thousands of people sick and miserable. How can we fix it? Capitalism itself needs a reboot. We need to dump toxic “shareholder capitalism” with its notion of running companies solely to benefit of investors and replace it with a healthier version of capitalism in which companies put employees ahead of investors. Focus on making workers happy, and let workers focus on making customers happy. For now I’m worried about what will happen to the 12,500 employees at We. It’s not just that many have been compensated with stock options that now are worthless. The bigger problem is that We might go bankrupt, putting thousands of people out of work–all because of a reckless, incompetent, self-dealing CEO and a board of directors who were willing to look the other way. The two co-CEOs who replaced Neumann have already announced plans to sell off several companies that Neumann acquired, which means at least a few thousand employees definitely will have their lives tipped upside down. Those workers will spend the next few months living with even more stress and uncertainty. Most have not even finished recovering from the disruption of being merged into We and then going for the crazy roller-coaster ride of the past two months. This crazy, high-turnover approach to work is not sustainable. Human beings simply cannot endure the kind of workplace that the new economy has created. Entrepreneurs and investors need to rethink the way they build and operate companies. One model might be a company that competes with We, called International Workplace Group, which the New York Times just wrote about. UK-based IWG is 30 years old and generates roughly as much revenue as We does–but instead of losing billions of dollars, IWG actually turns a profit. I suppose to the brilliant, forward-looking VCs in Silicon Valley that sounds kind of old-fashioned. Insisting that companies turn a profit won’t cure every problem. But it would at least make it possible for companies to treat employees better. That would be a good start. Dan Lyons is an author, screenwriter, and journalist. He is the author of two books about workplace culture in the digital age. His most recent book is Lab Rats: Tech Gurus, Junk Science and Management Fads—My Quest to Make Work Less Miserable. His previous book was Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble, which became a New York Times bestseller. Dan was also a writer on HBO’s hit comedy series Silicon Valley

danlyons | October 04, 2019

Why Genuine Diversity Includes People With Disabilities

“My phone doesn’t stop ringing with customers because they want to know what we’re doing,” said Jim Sinocchi, a top executive at JPMorgan Chase. However, unlike most callers who ring up the largest U.S. bank, their curiosity had nothing to do with money. It had to do with people—people with disabilities. Sinocchi, who leads Chase’s global Office of Disability Inclusion, has been part of a concerted effort by the bank to expand its diversity hiring to include more people with disabilities, an aspect of recruiting that has tended to lag behind progress on gender, color and sexual orientation. Sinocchi, speaking at the From Day One conference in Boston last month, told the audience about his personal journey with a disability, his three-decade crusade to broaden rights for the disabled in the workforce, and the breakthroughs he has helped achieve at the bank. Sinocchi, 63, has been a quadriplegic since a body-surfing accident in Puerto Rico when he was 25. He returned to his job at IBM after 17 months of rehabilitation and rose to executive positions in marketing and communications roles. Several years go, the married father of two retired from IBM, but before long, another Fortune 500 company, Chase, recruited him to be the leader of its new global campaign of inclusion. Since Sinocchi took on the groundbreaking role, JPMorgan Chase has hired thousands of disabled workers, identified new opportunities for the developmentally disabled, and increased the conversation around disability to the point that the percentage of workers who feel comfortable identifying as disabled has doubled, to 3.2%. “It’s a small change, but it’s a change,” Sinocchi told Carina Livoti, From Day One’s director of content, during a one-on-one conversation. “And that means, to me, that the culture is changing.” Said Sinocchi: “I think there’s no excuse not to hire people” with disabilities who can do the job, he said. “This is a great work force” Changing that culture meant educating managers and recruiters about understanding disabled people, looking for opportunities to match jobs to people, and encouraging and helping disabled workers to seek leadership opportunities. “People are afraid to touch disabled people,” Sinocchi said, explaining that training and education can help normalize interactions between the disabled and able-bodied, who often wonder what to say to disabled people when a simple ‘Hello’ or ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ would do just fine. “I’d like to try to demystify this for folks,” Sinocchi said. “It starts to catch on [when we] realize we have more in common, as disabled people, with able-bodied people than we thought.” He added: “That’s what I ask our managers to think about, and what I ask people that engage with us to think about … all of a sudden, it dissipates.” He said: “I have an 80/20 rule. [It] goes like this: If you’re a manager, you usually get resumes and bios to hire people. Why is it that, when a person with a disability walks into the job–after you call them in after reading their bio–why are you skittish? Sinocchi continued: “Every manager brings in a person after reading a bio because they have 80% of what they need to do the job. What us managers have to do is teach that person the 20%. That’s no different, whether you’re disabled or not, because you already accepted the bio from the person that was blind or deaf or sitting in a wheelchair. You just have to teach that person 20%.” While changing attitudes and culture has been key to JPMorgan Chase’s success, Sinocchi said, strategic financial decisions have also been instrumental. Budgets for buying or providing accommodation–such as automatic doors, Sinocchi said–were “held at the top of the business” so the manager would not have to worry about moving around money. Company-wide accommodations were also implemented, he said. And describing what he called the “beauty of the firm,” Sinocchi further lauded JPMorgan Chase’s top-down commitment, adding that CEO Jamie Dimon “had his hands all over this deal to make it work. “And if it works from the top, it’s going to work throughout the corporation,” Sinocchi said. But, he admitted, there was still some need for employees to speak up and tell managers about other accommodations that could make everyone’s lives easier. And disabled workers must be supported and encouraged to pursue their ambitions to take on bigger responsibilities, Sinocchi said. “I tell them, disabled employees, you have to own your disability,” Sinocchi said during the chat. “People with disabilities have this aura … where you feel less-than, you’re not going to be accepted. So if I can get my talented people with disabilities to come out and step out,” they will be available to an opportunity that might pass them by, he said. “No one’s going to call you out and say, ‘Hey, Mary, do you want to be a vice president today?’” “That never happens unless you go hard or you’re brilliant … The idea is, how do you position yourself for success unless you step up and convince your manager that you can be a leader? What I think about is not only hiring people, but how you get people into a leadership position.” Sinocchi emphasized that advances in technology and medicine have helped level the playing field somewhat for the disabled, but he pointed to the need for continued education, communication and innovation. “I think there’s no excuse not to hire people” with disabilities who can do the job, he said. “This is a great work force. Our attendance is high; we don’t have the medical issues we used to have, with the better care. People with disabilities are loyal; they want to work–and it’s a great area to look at.” Strives are also being made in identifying niches within the workforce where people with certain disabilities may excel, Sinocchi said. “In the last year, we’ve looked for work that can be better served by the developmentally disabled population,” he said. “For the first two years, we didn’t bring in anybody with developmental disabilities because I didn’t know what we had … but what we found out is, there were certain jobs that able-bodied people do poorly.” Willie Jackson of ReadySet leading a workshop on difference and equality He pointed to roles such as testing mortgage applications or other tasks that require a kind of hyper-focus and tenacity, which tend to be well-suited for people on the autism spectrum, he said. Chase’s innovation and research looked at “matching work to people,” said Sinocchi, admitting that “it’s a slow process.” He said: “I don’t think we can take everybody with a disability, but we can take people who are qualified for certain jobs and give them the accommodations they need to do it.” Disability inclusion can benefit all of a company’s stakeholders, he said, including employees and customers. “It brings people to us,” Sinocchi said, “and it makes our teams try to figure out how much more we can move the bar with the right technology to get these people to work.” In a workshop earlier in the day, Willie Jackson, a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant at ReadySet, focused on ally skills, which can position people of color and their colleagues to successfully undertake allyship at work and beyond. Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame

Sheila Flynn | October 03, 2019

Inclusive Leadership: What Gives Employees a Feeling of Belonging?

While corporate culture can set a tone for a workplace, research has found that the experience of individual workers is more influenced by their team leaders. So what makes an inclusive leader, the kind of manager who can give diverse workers a feeling of belonging?    “Authenticity,” said Dionne Wright Poulton, head of diversity at Riverside Community Care. “Authenticity is a precursor to congruity—to make sure your words and deeds are in alignment. If you find you’re making many gaffes [regarding diversity and inclusion], you want to do a self-examination and find out why.” Poulton was among the speakers on a panel on inclusive leadership at the From Day One conference on Sept. 18 in Boston, where the panelists agreed that one of the most important traits for a leader is humility and being able to say, “I don’t have all the answers.”  Tip-toeing around the issues doesn’t help, asserted KeyAnna Schmiedl, global head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Wayfair, the online home-furnishings retailer. Managers need to move away from strictly being “careful” to really engaging and digging into messy conversations. “I want to sit down and have people engage,” she said. Shirley Leung, at left, a business columnist for the Boston Globe, moderated the panel conversation Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung, who moderated the panel, asked the speakers to name the No. 1 diversity issue. Tom Bourdon, head of inclusion and diversity at Staples, said “the challenge is to give the adequate time and resources needed to move the needle.” He said that at most companies, “the commitment is there in theory,” but the resources are not necessarily allocated or even available.  Poulton said one of her biggest challenges is, “How to balance the notion that the customer is always right—with protecting the staff?”  This has been increasingly important as Riverside employees find themselves on the receiving end of a growing number of racial slurs and derogatory comments, she said.   “When we realized it was happening across the organization, not a one-off, we wanted to make sure people were being treated fairly,” she said. She credited her organization’s CEO for his willingness to respond quickly to the problem. Leaders especially need to be open and inclusive when their company is going through change. Tyler Muse, founder and CEO at Lingo Live, found being “radically transparent with people” has helped him best address these issues in his own company, which provides communications coaching. After the company went through a round of layoffs, he said, “the biggest concern for people is psychological safety.”  Lingo Live started as a company teaching language lessons online, but then pivoted more to coaching. As the company made the transition, Muse set up one-on-one meetings with staffers, in which he realized that the employees needed him to fully acknowledge that it was a time of transition for them and the company.   Leung asked the panel what advice they would give to people who have bosses who “don’t get it.” “If you have someone who isn’t being inclusive, it’s hard to give them the benefit of the doubt—and assume they are clueless—but you really have to,” said Muse. He suggested to try talking to a friend first, if you don’t know how to bring up the topic with your boss.   “If it’s your direct manager, people want to suss out if it’s happening with anyone else,” said Wayfair’s Schmiedl. “Finding out ‘it’s not just me’—is helpful.” Also helpful, she said, was building in inclusive language when describing a company’s core competencies. “We baked them in—so we are telling you how we expect you to act.”  For example, Schmiedl said instead of requiring employees to be “vocal contributors” at meetings—which could create bias against women and minorities who statistically tend to speak up less—Wayfair changed the term to “proactive contributor” which allowed employees who might be more introverted to contribute via email or other means, not just in the meeting itself.  The panelists agreed that younger workers are more outspoken on social media about their opinions, and more comfortable voicing them at work. As a result, companies need to have a different type of managed conversation about inclusive political and cultural discussions in the workplace.  “I think we millennials crave authenticity more than anything,” said Muse. “Bringing up politics or deeply personal beliefs tells who you are as a leader. There is a risk of doing that, but also of not doing it. I think most people want to know what you stand for—as long as you can explain your personal views are separate from what the organization stands for.”  Schmiedl said millennials, as well as Generation Z, are a group of people who have been shaped by the events they grew up with, like 9/11, so it makes sense they would want to talk about the influence of current events on their lives, but that can bring up divisive topics. The question for businesses is how to create inclusive workplaces that meet their needs, while also addressing the needs of older employees too.  “We can’t be expected to check who we are at the door,” said Poulton. “Organizations should provide a safe space where people can engage in constructive dialogue and are able to talk in a way where, if they disagree, they are not made to feel less than.” Brittany Hill, CEO of Accelerist, led a workshop on becoming a purpose-driven brand Bourdon agreed that often more harm is done when we don’t say what we think.   Finally, in one of the takeaways from the panel, he suggested, “I think we could move mountains if leaders said three things: ‘How are you doing?,’ ‘How can I support you?,’ and ‘Thank you.’” In an earlier workshop at the conference, Brittany Hill, CEO of Accelerist, a social-impact partnership technology, led a workshop on “becoming a purpose-driven brand in a sea of purpose-built companies.” She was joined by Gary Lavante, SVP of corporate responsibility at Berkshire Bank. Jennifer Mattson is a journalist and writer. She is a former producer for CNN and National Public Radio. You can find her work online at The Atlantic, Salon, Psychology Today and USA Today

jennifermattson | September 27, 2019

How Gender Equality Can Be Built Into Your Business

What does the glass ceiling look like in 2019? “We see more women at the entry level, but not as much diversity at the top,” said Iris Bohnet, behavioral economist and academic dean of the Harvard Kennedy School. “There is still unconscious bias.” Bohnet spoke on gender equality with Nancy Gibbs, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, at the From Day One conference on Sept. 18 in Boston. By unconscious bias, Bohnet described those social stereotypes we’re not even aware of, in which we associate certain groups with certain positions. It’s an insidious factor in holding women back from achieving full gender equality in businesses and other organizations. “Seeing is believing,” Bohnet said, meaning that to overcome unconscious bias, humans need to see stereotype-breaking examples modeled in the world. For example, if we don’t see male nurses, we might assume nursing is a solely female profession. “The bad news is that we are biased,” Bohnet said. The good news is that in addressing bias, and making smart changes, we can have a major impact on gender equality and inclusion, said Bohnet, author of What Works: Gender Equality by Design. Said Bohnet: “I would get rid of the unstructured interview, it is the worst tool to predict future success,” she said However, she said, diversity training is not the answer. "I have not found one single study suggesting that diversity training works," Bohnet told Gibbs. Why not? “Think about healthy-eating awareness. It doesn’t mean you won’t eat ice cream,” Bonhet explained. “Good intentions don’t always mean people follow through. For some people, when they go through diversity training, people feel they checked the box, and there is some evidence that people are more sexist afterward.” “We recognize that we all have these biases,” said Gibbs, the bestselling author of The Presidents Club. “And the good news is that research shows some things work fantastically well. What are they?” In answering that question, Bohnet said her biggest message is: Don’t try to “debias mindsets, debias systems.” For example, in the 1970s, the Boston Symphony Orchestra started auditioning people behind a curtain so the judges would be unable to determine if the musician was male or female. “Debiasing systems means doing the morally right thing—leveling the playing ground—but this is also the economically smart thing to do,” she said. Why? Because you get the best talent. She said blind evaluations work particularly well when an organization is looking for new talent. “Are there problems blind evaluations don’t solve?” asked Gibbs. Yes. Bohnet said they don’t address the problems of promotion, even those that factor in high performance. “A year and a half ago, when I was in Stockholm, 97% of Nobel prizes went to men,” said Bohnet. “Every year I get asked to fill out the Nobel form [and suggest a recipient]. Sometimes, solving the problem means remaking a form, sometimes it requires a curtain.” And so, she suggested remaking the Nobel form as a way to “debias the system.” Instead of asking for one nominee, Bohnet suggested that the Nobel Committee ask for three. If you ask for only one, everyone might suggest their favorite. But if you ask for three, the answer will allow people to think more about variety and diversity. Bohnet said unstructured interviews, the standard sit-downs in which prospective employees chat with a potential employer, are not useful despite their long tradition in the working world. “I would get rid of the unstructured interview, it is the worst tool to predict future success,” she said. The interviewer might ask you to talk about things that have nothing to do with how well you can do the job. “There is a lot of noise [in an unstructured interview] and a prospective employee might talk about what we are interested in,” she said. The conference drew business leaders to the Artists for Human EpiCenter in Boston For Bohnet, that is Switzerland and hiking. If both interviewer and interviewee have similar interests and hobbies, they may have a lot to talk about during the interview. This may animate the conversation, but have little to do with evaluating job aptitude. As an alternative, Bohnet suggests moving to a structured interview, one that asks the same exact questions of all interviewees for a particular job. What’s the best way to run a structured interview? Bohnet suggested that an interviewer prepare by thinking through the job’s requirements in terms of skills. Then build a list of questions from there. She offered one final takeaway from the conversation: “People believe that just because we are women, the idea is that we might be less biased.” Not necessarily so, she said. Jennifer Mattson is a journalist and writer. She is a former producer for CNN and National Public Radio. You can find her work online at The Atlantic, Salon, Psychology Today and USA Today  

jennifermattson | September 25, 2019