corporate culture
Auto Added by WPeMatico
To promote diversity, rewire your broken corporate culture
Travis Montaque is CEO of Holler and made Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2018 Most Daring Entrepreneur’s list for his work in branding consumer conversations. He was also named as one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 in 2016.
We have a problem. In tech, our companies are not diverse.
This is something we’ve known for a long time, but in an industry where we’ve innovated and solved some of the world’s most challenging problems, we have continued to fail here. I am one of few Black tech CEOs and I too have historically not done as much as I should have to harness the power of diversity in my business. I have been fast at work to change this, but I’ve learned that it requires rewriting the entire playbook.
To better approach the lack of diversity in tech, one-dimensional diversity agendas will not cut it. Company cultures across the board need to be rewired at their core. Change has to happen at every level, from leadership to individual employees — even how a corporation behaves as an entity.
Diversity is advantageous both for employees and the bottom line, but static, siloed diversity programs will not create systemic change. Shifting the company mindset around diversity means creating excitement around our differences, changing the idea that diversity is a zero-sum game and approaching diversity like every other challenge we face.
It can be tempting to introduce a diversity agenda and say you’ve solved the problem. A step beyond this involves diversity and inclusion initiatives that aim to get more people in the door and create support networks within the company walls. It’s not just about meeting D&I standards; the goal is to foster a sense of belonging for all employees.
Everyone should feel that their individuality, sexual orientation, gender and heritage are celebrated within the workplace, not just tolerated. Through diverse viewpoints, ideas can be challenged and made better. Without this level of acceptance and genuine excitement at every level of the organization, diversity initiatives will continue to fall flat.
When thinking about diversity, inclusion and belonging, leaders must consider ways to engage the full group instead of creating support groups for small portions of your staff. True diversity in the workplace requires a holistic approach where the entire team is participating and engaged.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that on the most basic level, people want to feel seen and appreciated. Personally, I’ve always leaned into diverse cultural experiences. I would go to my friend’s Passover even though I am not Jewish. My friends and other guests didn’t care that I didn’t know what was about to happen — they appreciated that I was there and willing to learn. I’m trying to take this same emotional interaction and apply it to Holler’s culture. We need to look for ways to acknowledge that we are here and ready to learn about experiences other than our own. And remember — we don’t have to have all the answers.
To address this, we’ve recently started to create holidays (or as we call them, Hollerdays) where we as a company will acknowledge and honor the holidays from various heritages, races and religions that our employees celebrate. This is not just a free day off. This is an opportunity for all of us to learn and celebrate cultures outside of our own.
Education is the key element in diversity-focused activities having real impact. We need to create normalcy around educational opportunities. Through education, opportunities to acknowledge and celebrate diverse life experiences begins to be baked into the company culture.
When introducing new educational opportunities, we must show that they are beneficial for everyone, not just catered to minority groups or hosted in order to meet a diversity standard. Corporate diversity can often feel like a box that can be checked by hiring more ethnically diverse candidates or implementing a program to help those individuals assimilate. What’s worse is that anything beyond these initiatives is perceived as special treatment or a chore to the full team. If an educational moment feels like a negative to employees, the outcome will be negative and mass adoption of equitable and inclusive company cultures will be slow.
To introduce new educational programs at Holler, we recently asked one of the BLM founders, Opal Tometi, to speak with our employees in a live Q&A. This was during work hours and highly encouraged, but not required. It was a communal activity where we were able to discuss different perspectives and continue thinking about how we can each do better on an individual level. We created excitement around it and reinforced that these types of discussions are a company priority.
The language we use around diversity also has a hand in creating real change. We need to focus on diversity as a way of lifting the entire ship and creating an equitable society. In tech specifically, team members who can think outside of their own lived experiences have a stronger sense of emotional intelligence. They can build algorithms or projects that address a larger collective — mitigating issues like biased machine learning solutions. They become more competitive as employees.
A community focused on diversity, inclusion, and belonging will have a competitive advantage. Frankly, it’s the morally right thing to do. Business leaders should monitor the execution of diversity and inclusion programs to ensure equity and belonging are a part of the conversation as well.
We as leaders in technology need to treat diversity and inclusion the same way we do any other tech challenge — with agility and openness to iteration. Many companies use agile methodology to yield the best results. To solve complex problems, agile practices encourage adaptability and promote continuous improvement, flexibility, collaboration and high quality. We must do the same for diversity.
With so much pressure to change and do better, it is tempting to implement new policies and say that you are automatically diversity focused. Immediately stating how your company will “fix the problem” is a band-aid approach that often misses the larger task at hand. It also does not involve enough follow through. Rewiring your company culture to be more inclusive and diverse requires continuous effort, a commitment to hearing feedback and evolving as you learn.
As a CEO, I’m trying to understand how each and every person within my company views diversity. Yes, this even includes white males. We need the perspectives of everyone in order to foster a sense of belonging and create company cultures that systematically embrace diverse backgrounds. We all need to be a part of the conversation and willing to grow.
I’m also continuing to speak and listen to other business leaders to hear how they are approaching change. Not a single one of us has the answer, but through sharing ideas and really listening to what is working (and what’s not), we can start to make sustainable change.
Think of diversity as an industry-wide open-source project. We cannot work in silos. Isolation will lead to furthering our fragmented industry and leave us without a standard for how all humans should be treated within the tech community.
Sharing ideas and progress can be intimidating, but it’s okay to fail. The agile methodology promotes the idea of failure as an outcome and empowers iteration. We need to allow companies to miss the mark sometimes, as long as they are trying and iterating. Businesses inevitably won’t get this right every time.
I’ve heard from white male executives that one of their biggest fears is rolling out well-intentioned initiatives and getting “canceled” when it doesn’t work out perfectly. If we do not allow today’s business leaders to make mistakes, we’ll suffocate progress. We need to focus on the good intent and keep moving forward.
We each have to take on the responsibility to make change happen — at a corporate and an individual level. Once we learn to celebrate everyone at our companies for who they truly are, shift the rhetoric away from who wins and who loses in the fight for equity, and evolve our approach to problem solving, we can begin to make systemic changes to our company cultures. The process is only beginning and it is going to take all of us doing our part to fundamentally alter how we approach corporate diversity conversations.
We must take our next steps together.
Powered by WPeMatico
How a martial arts gym trained me to build an inclusive culture
Ken is an engineering manager at Airbnb building products that enable entrepreneurs to provide hospitality on the platform. Outside of work he enjoys Muay Thai, Pekiti Tirsia Kali (Filipino sticks & knives fighting), cooking, and writing.
A wave of unease immediately swept through my body. Constant puffing and growling echoed around me as heavily-tattooed fighters threw forceful punches into the heavy bags. This was the scene I encountered when I stepped into Five Points Academy, a martial arts fighting gym in New York, for the first time a few years ago. Having grown up in a sheltered environment — the last time I had gotten into a fight was in kindergarten — I wasn’t sure I would fit in.
Emily, one of the instructors, immediately introduced herself and showed me some basic Muay Thai movements. The class focused on pad work, so students paired up and held Thai pads for each other to practice their moves. Emily rotated me through different partners during the class, offering me a taste of what it was like to hit pads, and I was hooked.
A year ago, my friend, Diane Wu, wrote a wonderful post arguing that “inclusion is the cause, and diversity is the effect. When an inclusive mindset is in place, diversity naturally follows.” My experience at Five Points reflects this sentiment. Despite being in a traditionally male-dominant field, roughly 40% of our instructors, half of our fighters, and half of our members are women. It’s not a coincidence that they are also widely regarded as one of the most inclusive and least “bro-y” fighting gyms in New York.
Tech has only been male-dominant in the last few decades — the first coders in the 1940s were women — while martial arts has been male-dominant for the last few millennia. If a martial arts gym can overcome systemic obstacles, we, in tech, can do better. After interviewing the owners, coaches, fighters, and members of the gym, here is what I learned about how they created an inclusive community.
Culture starts from the top
Studies have shown that culture stems from leadership, and this is demonstrated by the three owners of Five Points, Steve, Simon, and Kevin. Multiple members noted that Steve’s laid-back demeanor, Simon’s British humor, and Kevin’s always-friendly attitude were a big part of what made Five Points feel like family. As Steve explained, “People learn better if you’re encouraging as opposed to intimidating.” This welcoming culture from the top certainly encouraged a wider range of people to join and prosper, especially among more recreational fighters.
Companies are no different when it comes to establishing cultures from the top. If inclusivity is a priority, executives have to demonstrate that.
I’ve seen cases where the CEO created a committee to collaborate on establishing core values for the company, only to scrap that conversation and send out a survey asking employees to rate cultural values the CEO personally came up with. Over time, people with different viewpoints left the company, and the ones who stayed were predominantly from the same backgrounds in terms of work experience, gender, and ethnicity. Ultimately, building a culture of inclusion requires both executive buy-in and genuine follow-through actions, or else it will be hard to sustain.
“Inclusion” includes everyone
Five Points didn’t start out aiming to achieve gender parity or market to certain demographics. Instead, they focused on creating a community where everyone was welcomed. Simon summarized it well, “An inclusive culture includes everyone. By not having the right culture, you might turn away a person — not just women, but also other men — that can potentially help improve your gym directly.” He further elaborated, “We don’t want an asshole culture not just because women might be turned off—but men would, too.”
This is an important distinction. For example, it is tempting to generalize that a frat-house gym culture could keep women away. However, many men dislike such a culture as well. Instead of lumping people into groups, we can look at each individual and ask ourselves, “what environment would be welcoming for him or her?” For instance, Kevin always makes sure to take time to understand each prospective new member, give them a tour of the facilities, and discuss how the academy could cater to their needs.
We can extend this idea further: surface-level characteristics are often times just a proxy for deeper attributes, so why not go straight to the root? When I took Muay Thai classes at other gyms, the instructor would often remind everyone, “Guys, if you are paired with a girl, please go lighter.” This gender-based generalization is just a proxy for the root attribute: size. At Five Points, the instructor would instead say, “Guys (and gals), if you are paired with someone a lot smaller than you, please adjust your power to keep your partner safe.” Safety is a concern for anyone facing a bigger opponent, regardless of the gender they identify themselves with.
In tech, there has been a lot of discussion around creating a more inclusive environment for underrepresented demographics. I believe we can be more effective by augmenting this effort. In addition to asking “how can we make women feel comfortable contributing to meetings?”, we can also ask “how can we help all employees feel comfortable contributing to meetings?”[1] In addition to discussing “how can we provide support mechanisms for minorities?”, we can also discuss “how can we provide support mechanisms for employees who are not well-versed in mainstream corporate America culture?” I believe this hybrid approach can cover more ground and ensure that help is delivered to the people who need it most [2].
Treat everyone equally
A common theme among the female coaches and members I interviewed was that they felt that gender was something that did not cross their minds during class. Multiple members have commented that the instructors treated everyone equally. For example, if you were late, independent of what demographic or skill level you were, you had to do 30 pushups [3]. Giving everyone the same standards ensured that people couldn’t pick on others or make snide comments such as “Amy got off easier because she was a girl.”
One of the rules during Muay Thai drills class is to lower the power level and focus on technique. One time, Steve took Emily’s Muay Thai drills class and hit his partner a bit too hard. Emily immediately reminded Steve, “that was probably a bit too hard.” It didn’t matter that Steve was an owner and Emily was an employee — as the instructor of the class she made sure everyone followed the same rules.
Likewise, treating everyone equally starts from the beginning: the candidate experience. A common question I get is “how do we improve diversity without lowering the bar?” What I propose is to define a set of capabilities that all candidates need to demonstrate. For example, if a productive software engineer needs to be good at algorithms, system design, communication, teamwork, and breaking problems down, we should evaluate each of the five areas fairly during recruiting.
Unfortunately, many companies only look at the first two, which not only results in a non-diverse group of employees, but also those with skillsets that don’t fully map to their jobs. By communicating the standards transparently, we ensure that all employees understand that they belong, and are equally a part of the community.
Pay attention to details
Details often reflect the thoughtfulness put in to creating a culture. Ting, a Kali (a weapons-based martial art) instructor and former fighter, explained, “Many martial arts gym are dirty and smell like sweat. Five Points pays attention to details: there are hair ties and multiple hair dryers for women’s locker rooms. The mats are mopped every hour in between classes. This removes one extra stress for a lot of women who want to try out martial arts.”
Needless to say, the attention to detail applies to classes as well. A new member shared the following story with me: “Once I was getting ready to do a private session with Steve after Emily’s Muay Thai class. Emily went to Steve and said ‘she needs more work on her left roundhouse kick.’ Of course Steve then made me do left roundhouses for 30 minutes straight.”
While the member was cursing inside, she was also grateful for the attention Emily paid to her. Sonya, a long-time Kali student, also recalled that Simon would often notice when she’s flustered with a particular drill. With his classic British humor, he would remark “too much water in the bucket?” before proceeding to break down the drill further to ensure she could absorb the information.
There are many zero-cost things companies can do that could make the employees feel taken care of. For example, in the early days, Palantir, my former employer, would proactively offer employees the option to early-exercise their stock options. They also brought in tax accountants to explain how to handle the alternative minimum tax (AMT). However, I’ve also seen companies with 60+ employees where no one was given the option to early-exercise, even though it financially costs the company practically nothing.
Be adaptive to change and proactively improve
When Five Points first started, they followed the Western boxing mindset where members sparred hard. The mentality was to identify fighters who were tough and wanted it so bad they’d return after getting beaten up. Over time, as Steve and Simon traveled to Thailand, they witnessed a different style of sparring, where fighters sparred lightly and focused on technique and timing.
They revamped their sparring classes to “Thai Style Technical Sparring,” and had a few designated “hard sparring” classes. Although a few fighters were upset, Steve and Simon were convinced that this was the right approach. As Steve explained, “the old style can help you find tough people but not necessarily the best people.” Furthermore, the best fighter can come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and backgrounds, not necessarily the “tough person” who comes in day one wanting to fight.
This open mindset certainly uncovered many great fighters they wouldn’t have found otherwise, increasing the diversity of the community. One of their fighters, a former model and actress, came to Five Points never thinking she would fight. The welcoming environment and emphasis on technique during sparring made her feel safe as she leveled up her skills. Three years in, Steve asked her if she wanted to do a fight. She ended up getting hooked and went on to win multiple US Kickboxing Association International Championships.
This adaptive mindset is applicable to other areas as well. When I interviewed at Google, one of my interviewers told me that for a long time Google focused heavily on brain-teasers and algorithmic puzzles. As a result, during lunch with his team, the predominantly white and Asian male engineers with backgrounds in coding would discuss brain teasers and algorithmic puzzles.
Over time, Google’s leadership realized that brain teasers and algorithmic puzzles have little correlation with one’s performance. They then restructured their interview process, and the diversity of the team improved. Obviously there are still areas for improvement, but being able to recognize issues and adapt to new findings is critical to fostering an inclusive culture.
Enforce the rules fairly when needed
The journey to building a diverse and inclusive martial arts community is not without the occasional bumps. As a community grows bigger, there will inevitably be bad actors, and how a leader responds to them will set the tone for how the culture develops.
Emily has kicked students out of her class a few times when a bigger or more experienced fighter beat up on a smaller or less-experienced student. It did not matter if the bully was highly skilled or fought for the gym — she enforced the rules fairly with everyone. Similarly, after a 200+ lbs experienced man repeatedly beat up others during Muay Thai sparring and refused to let go on locks during Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes, Steve asked him to leave the gym.
On the contrary, in a work environment, I have witnessed situations where someone would repeatedly yell at colleagues in front of everyone — including executives — during meetings. It got so toxic that four people from various departments requested to switch projects because they did not want to work with the person anymore. However, because the employee was deemed important by executives, they continued to let him yell at others during meetings with no repercussions.
Culture is not just slogans hung on the walls of your conference rooms. UCSF Psychiatry professor Cameron Sepah says, “Your Company Culture is Who You Hire, Fire, and Promote.” One of the triggers for a recent employee walk-out at Google was because the company paid ex-executives tens of millions of dollars after discovering allegations of sexual misconduct. Ensuring improper behavior is dealt with immediately and fairly is vital to fostering an inclusive culture.
Success breeds success
When an initiative has early traction, it is much easier to continue the momentum. Culture is the same way. When Five Points first started in 2002, they already had three high-level female fighters—one of them, Emily, even went on to win the Muay Thai World Championships. Having diversity early on helped provide role models for members from underrepresented backgrounds who were interested in fighting.
Once an inclusive culture is established, the community members will continue to be inclusive and others will want to join. One of the coaches and fighters, Gianna, explained, “Nobody made me feel like sh*t when I was new, so I want to make sure other noobs don’t feel that way either.”
Another Kali student, Sonya, who describes herself as a “girly girl,” had to work extra hard honing her skills because she did not come from an athletic background like most of the other members. However, Simon was always patient with her, continually breaking down techniques until she grasped them. Looking back, she is extremely appreciative that Simon tried very hard to make her feel comfortable, and now she recommends all her female friends to try out Kali. Her motivation? “I want girly girls to know that they’re welcome here.”
The same applies to the tech industry. I have seen series A companies with 50 employees struggle to hire women due to their gender imbalance (15% female), only to see the ratio further decrease as the company grows (10%). On the other hand, Flatiron Health, also a former employer, focused on diversity & inclusion from the get-go, including hiring senior female leaders across all functions early on. When I was there, they had roughly 50% female employees and 50% female managers.
From inclusion to diversity
Five Points Academy never started with the intent of building a gym with 50% women and members from all different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Instead, the owners simply wanted to build a gym where anyone can belong, and anyone can enjoy being part of the community. By starting with inclusion, diversity followed.
I am not at all advocating for halting initiatives on diversity. It is important that we focus on diversity, and many companies are doing just that. However, just like Five Points Academy, we also need to invest in building an inclusive culture to help people thrive and grow at the company, which will further attract more diverse employees.
Footnotes
[1] Studies have shown that a man’s ideas are often taken more seriously than a woman’s. As a result, many women choose not to participate in meetings but ask a male colleague of theirs to present their ideas.
[2] For example, according to Ascend Research, Asians score the lowest in executive parity index, doing worse than Blacks and Hispanics. However, they are not considered an “underrepresented minority,” so relatively little has been done to mentor young Asian professionals on career progression.
[3] If you had physical limitations, you could substitute them with pushups on knees or another exercise.
Powered by WPeMatico
After 5 years, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has transformed more than the stock price
Five years ago today, Satya Nadella took over as CEO at Microsoft, and by most any measure has been wildly successful. It’s common to look at the stock price as the defining metric of Nadella’s tenure, but the stock price triumph has followed something more fundamental and harder to measure: how he changed the culture of the entire organization.
Nadella’s term at Microsoft has paralleled my own here at TechCrunch. I started in April of 2014, and in one of my first posts, I wrote about the difficulty of substantive change inside an organization the size of Microsoft. In those early moments of both our tenures, I recognized a subtle shift was taking place, one toward service, something Microsoft hadn’t been known for under his predecessors Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates.
Microsoft’s five-year stock price journey under Satya Nadella. Stock chart: Yahoo Finance
But Nadella’s inauguration came at a time when technology itself was shifting, moving from a monolithic model — where IT shopped mostly at one vendor, and they were a Microsoft shop or an Oracle shop or an IBM shop, buying a full stack of products — to one where they subscribe to cloud services and choose the best of breed.
This was also happening against the backdrop of the Consumerization of IT, where power was shifting from large administrative departments to users and teams. Nadella seemed to understand all of this.
The shift in strategy, as I wrote, probably began long before Nadella was handed the keys to the CEO office, but perhaps it took a different kind of leader, like Nadella, to turn the battleship that was Microsoft Corporation. Every company has its own politics and biases, and I’m sure Microsoft did as well, but Nadella seemed to manage those, reorganizing the company over time, and shifting priorities. It didn’t come without the pain of layoffs, including one in 2017 when thousands of people were let go. Long-time executives like COO Kevin Turner and head of Windows and devices, Terry Myerson, also left the company.
But Microsoft went from a company trying to compel customers to buy an all-Microsoft, all-the-time kind of approach to one that recognized it was important to work across platforms and to partner widely. To show how serious he was, a year after he started, Nadella set aside his differences with Marc Benioff and Salesforce, and appeared at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s massive customer conference. That was hugely symbolic, given the two companies had engaged in dueling lawsuits over the years, but this was a new day at Microsoft, and Nadella was out to prove it.
In a quote I’ve come back to a number of times over the years, Nadella laid out his new vision of cooperation. While he was going to compete fiercely, of course, he also was going to cooperate where it made sense, because customers demanded it — and under Nadella, it’s all about the customer.
“It is incumbent upon us, especially those of us who are platform vendors to partner broadly to solve real pain points our customers have,” Nadella said at the time. He wasn’t ceding markets, or failing to compete when it mattered, but he also recognized to make customers happy, he had to partner when it made sense.
Back in the days before Satya, partners and developers talked about a much more hostile environment, where it was difficult to get things done, to get the resources they needed, and the attitude was not one of cooperation, but almost hostility. That changed under Nadella, and he should get credit for that.
That all matters, of course, because in the age of the cloud, Nadella’s Dreamforce quote is spot on. Customers expect vendors to cooperate. They expect open APIs. They expect the platform to be friendly to developers — and under Nadella’s leadership, all of this has happened.
The company has also paid closer attention to issues like accessibility, with features such as real-time captions and the new Xbox adaptive controller. Microsoft has instituted programs under Nadella to use AI to improve accessibility, and he has also spoken frequently about responsible AI development.
Nadella has also led an aggressive acquisition strategy using his company’s cash to buy companies big and small. The splashiest acquisitions were LinkedIn for a whopping $26.2 billion in 2016 and GitHub for $7.5 billion last year, but there have been a host of much smaller purchases, most for much less than a billion dollars, that have filled in holes around security, developer productivity, gaming and a wide variety of cloud services.
It is exceedingly difficult to successfully navigate these kinds of broad cultural changes inside a large organization, and while it is probably still a work in progress, Nadella has been mostly effective to this point. The stock price has followed that broader change, but it is not the story here. The story is one of leadership and change management inside a large organization.
Powered by WPeMatico