Whatever Next #8: Equality and diversity in the workplace
About diversity, leadership, mental models, agile projects, conspiracies, speeches, and more.
Hi @ll! I hope you’re all safe in these uncertain times. Welcome to my humble newsletter, where I will be sharing different topics that I found interesting.
Opinions and selection of topics are my own.
Before starting, this is the only newsletter for August (vacation newsletter). I hope you all could enjoy some summer holidays and had time to rest and recover in good company. Even if the situation is still not comfortable, this year's vacation was more needed than ever. Thanks for reading!
🛑 Equality and fairness at work: Diversity issues at Pinterest.
We could see on the news that former COO of Pinterest, Françoise Brougher, sued the company for gender discrimination. If you didn’t read anything about it, please do so. I recommend you read her experience from her medium post that you’ll find below.
As it happens with all disputes, we should listen to what have to say the other involved parties, like Ben Silbermann (CEO) or Todd Morgenfeld (CFO). In this case, I am giving credit to Françoise: eight years as VP at Google, four years as Global Business Lead at Square, and two as COO at Pinterest deserves it. I don't know her in person, but I am sure that she achieved this position on her own and that she is hardworking
Françoise received support from many former mates, from Pinterest and previous companies. People like Kim Scott, a former colleague at Google and author of Radical Candor, saying that “Françoise was one of the best bosses she ever had at Google” and sharing her experience on social media, or Susan Wojcicki, the YouTube CEO, also tweeting that “Francoise is one of the best execs I've worked with”.
There was also a virtual walkout to protest about “the gross racial and gender discrimination bravely brought to light by Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, and then again by Francoise Brougher” organized at Pinterest under the label #changeatpinterest.
Pinterest employees wrote at #changeatpinterest that “we believe that Ben Silbermann is a good person trying to do the right thing“. IMHO, Ben Silbermann demonstrated a complete lack of leadership. Ok, I don’t know him, and never had any working experience with him. But based on Françoise’s, and what answered to Kara Swisher’s interview for the NYT, you could build your own opinion: "I have talked about how deliberate you have to be to build products, but now I see how much more deliberate we have to be to build a culture. It does not just happen.” (after ten years) “My title may be CEO, but that does not mean I know everything”.
Diversity is a sensitive topic, as is equality or inclusion. Do you remember what I shared some time ago regarding psychological safety in diversity and inclusion? “Leaders who care about diversity must care about psychological safety, just as those who care about psychological safety must also care about diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Although diversity can be created through deliberate hiring practices, inclusion does not automatically follow”. When discussing diversity, the goal should be to “build an inclusive organization that realizes the benefits of diversity through greater inclusion and belonging”.
Every company is different. And in its way to provide the best workplace for its employees, it has to build its procedures to build and promote equality, trust, and candor. And we all have to put in place the practices to avoid biases and let people grow personally and professionally in an environment that embraces diversity and inclusion because we all have seen these wrong situations happen in time.
In my opinion, this Pinterest issue should serve all of us as a reminder. We have to care about this and learn from it, with the most profound humility. It could happen that the people around us or we are not entirely aware of what we/they are doing, and we all are responsible for helping in changing the situation.
By the way, as Françoise highlighted Amy Edmondson’s survey to measure psychological safety as one of the points to improve at Pinterest, I include this tool from Google Rework to measure and foster psychological safety on your teams. I hope it can be helpful.
🧠 Mental models by The Mack: Keith Rabois on Operational Excellence.
George Mack writes a newsletter about Mental Models that I consider gold. He doesn’t write often, but when he does, I find his stuff very interesting. I already shared his mental models about Tobi Lutke some numbers ago.
In his last newsletter, he breakdowns principles from a Keith Rabois lecture. Keith is a former Paypal, LinkedIn, Slide, Square, and is considered a member of the Paypal Mafia.
As he highly recommends, I also encourage you to check out the full lecture.
If you’re interested in receiving more mental models from George, consider signing up The Return of The Mack newsletter.
💰 Agile project estimation class by Allen Holub
The answer is that there are no projects, so there’s no need to estimate their cost. So against the cost of a project, you don’t budget them, you assign a team to work on products that will provide the highest value. You invest in products that will focus on returning the highest value (ROI). So in terms of costs, it is fixed based on the team’s cost.
🤯 Conspiracy theories from the “beings of light”
I am amazed and afraid at the same time about the capacity of people for, instead of thinking or improving critical thinking, developing conspiracy theories. Some people need to believe in whatever, to feel safe, rather than questioning their beliefs.
We could see it everywhere, increasingly in these uncertain times. From people ruling theories against the existence of COVID, the bad of vaccines, and 5G Bill Gates world domination, to Qanon in the US.
Regarding Qanon, they have appeared through media because of its relationship with the current POTUS, Donald Trump, who said that “these are people who love our country” and defends them while they are his supporters. If you don’t know about them, follow the link below. It’s scary.
📖 Book recommendation: Humanocracy
If Amy Edmondson recommends a management book, it is a book to keep in mind reading someday. This book is Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, written by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini.
Gary Hamel is a well-known business thinker, London Business School faculty, book and HBR author, speaker, and business consultant. As you could see on his website, Fortune magazine describes Hamel as “the world’s leading expert on business strategy,” and the Financial Times calls him a “management innovator without peer.”
The book seems to be pretty new, but I found the following interview and medium publishing by Jacob Morgan, “The Future of Work”, where you could find insights about the book, the leadership change, and the principles that he is promoting with the book. Also, both Jacob’s podcast and website worth spending your time. I will keep an eye on it.
🚧 Gasca’s personal homepage
“A collection of assorted musings” is what you’ll find on his new personal website. But who is Gasca? An “amateur twitter philosopher” is what his twitter profile says, but he is also known in his spare time as Director of Product Management at Google, former Twitter.
It seems that during WFH, he has started several initiatives, including website, newsletter, podcast, etc. On his website, you could find links to his twitter threads like the one that I included below about Product Management.
💬 Bezos great speeches
Love him, hate him, but Jeff Bezos's speeches seem to be a masterclass. Probably is, in a significant part, the ability of his team. But as I am a fanatic of great speeches (because I am terrible), I considered sharing this complete analysis. You could read the full transcript here. You could find, for instance, his humble origins, his obsession with customer experience, his investments through Amazon, and the jobs they have created.
This speech wasn’t by chance or just a lucky day; there’s also a known speech that Jeff Bezos delivered to Princeton’s class of 2010 (Baccalaureate speech). You could find the transcript of the speech at James Clear’s website as one of the great statements he is keeping. If you don’t know James, he is the author of the bestseller Atomic Habits: an Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones.
📜 The Excellence Twelve
This is the one-pager wrap up of the last 43 career years from Tom Peters, business author, and thinker.
⚙️ My last post about leadership styles
I recently published a post about leadership styles. It is a wrap up of different leadership styles, based on authority or emotional intelligence elements, and other evolutions and unique styles. My curiosity started learning from Lewin’s classic model having Autocratic, Democratic, and Laissez-faire styles. I saw it limited, and the post is the result of little research.
Returning to the first section of this newsletter, the Pinterest case, Ben Silbermann could be an example of a leader who didn’t evolve or adapted to the new needs. There are many significant issues with his commanding, and even if he is a good person, he has to promote the right culture leading with example.
At this point, he probably should step aside or at least delegate into somebody more experienced, based on what the company needs to achieve. As Kara Swisher also wrote in her NYT article: "Welcome to what happens when tech start-ups that are created by people who have no real management experience grow large". And this is true, Ben had no previous management experience.
🎁 Curiosities
Watching Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico, doing this is disturbing. But also funny. So check it out😃.
And… That’s it! If you arrived here, thanks for reading. I hope you like it!
Please, do not hesitate to add any comments. I am open to any suggestion so if you want to add a comment or contact me, I encourage you to do it.
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