A Year of Crisis–and Reinvention

BY Stephen Koepp | March 11, 2021

Do you remember what you were doing a year ago, when the world changed? I remember vividly. Our team at From Day One had just returned from our conference in Atlanta, where we hosted hundreds of business leaders at the Georgia Aquarium. Everyone was far more transfixed by a whale shark swimming lazily in its tank than the invisible threat circulating in the community. Back in our hometown of Brooklyn, we were planning to depart soon for our next destination, Chicago, when we heard disturbing news about a phenomenon we had never really considered: a super-spreader event, a conference in Boston eventually responsible for more than 100 new cases of the novel coronavirus. We didn’t want that happening to us and our From Day One community, so we scrubbed our live events. That was the responsible thing to do, but it raised a painful question: for a conference company with no conferences, does this mean we’re out of business?

I’ll tell you how our story turned out in a moment, but the theme here is reinvention amid the crisis. In a pandemic year of death, suffering and economic devastation, it was also a time of transformation in the way we work, raise our kids, and think about the roles of government and business. We had no way of seeing last March 11, when the global pandemic was officially upon us, how many old ideas would be turned upside down. But lots of thoughtful people are striving to help put the pandemic year into perspective, including how we frame its place in the trajectory of our lives.

In a sense, the past year was its own time, not like what went before, or what comes next. For a recent piece in the New York Times, writer Casey Schwartz was interviewing Sherry Turkle, the renowned thinker on human-technology interaction, about her new book when the topic turned to the meaning of the pandemic year, Schwartz wrote. “In many ways, Turkle believes that the pandemic is a ‘liminal’ time, in the phrasing of the writer and anthropologist Victor Turner, a time in which we are ‘betwixt and between,’ a catastrophe with a built-in opportunity to reinvent. ‘In these liminal periods are these possibilities for change,’ she said. ‘I think we are living through a time, both in our social lives but also in how we deal with our technology, where we are willing to think of very different ways of behaving.’”

While many of our transformations have been well-documented–we learned to work from home, we absorbed a better understanding of racial and social injustice, we gained a new appreciation for mental-health care, we adopted more pets, and we learned to bake bread–some of the transformations were more subtle or unheralded. To find out more about those, we asked some of the people who’ve spoken at our events to tell us about their own experiences in their businesses and life.

Striking Out on Her Own: Myla Skinner, who has moderated several of our events and has worked for organizations including the education-advocacy group OneGoal, decided to heed the advice of a mentor and friend who advised: “What you want to do doesn't exist, so build it yourself.” So that's what she did, launching her own consulting firm. “I wanted to do work that focuses on navigating complex and consequential change with care for people at its core. I wanted to do work that leveraged my experience to support businesses as they do really big things. And I wanted to do work that puts love at the center and foundation. So I built a business to do that. It's called Quarter Five (Q5), whose name represents an extra quarter in the year to focus on the things that most matter to your business related to change. The pandemic forced me to spend real time with myself examining how I wanted to both live and work. I had to sit in the still and silence that this awful virus created. I had to dig deep to find what would bring my life joy. I recognize my privilege in having the opportunity and I'm hopeful that this work will create opportunities for others to do their best work and be their whole selves.”

Saving Young People from a Missed Opportunity: For more than two decades, the EXP internship program in Southern California has been the on-the-ground partner to schools and industries, helping young people gain experience, unlock doors to opportunity, and build confidence. During the 2019-20 school year, the program served nearly 6,350 students at ten high schools. But at the onset of the pandemic, “when those classrooms and companies shut down, we were terrified,” says Amy Grat, EXP’s CEO. “We had lost both halves of the circle that we seek to complete–youth and volunteers.” Yet in a dramatic shift, EXP’s team let go of its previous assumptions of what an internship should look like, distilled it down to the essentials, and created a virtual experience. Earlier this month, more than 350 high-school girls from across Southern California, along with nearly 100 industry professionals, logged into a virtual conference space for EXP’s fifth-annual Women in STEM career day. The pandemic crisis, says Grat, turned out to be “a huge catalyst for growth and innovation,” especially in expanding EXP’s reach.

Discovering the True Nature of a Vacation: Deep Mahajan, senior director and head of people development at the tech firm Nutanix, said the year 2020 inspired her to reinvent what vacation means to her. “Earlier it meant finding and booking a fancy location, packing our suitcases, travelling by air or by road, clicking a ton of pictures, checking off all sight-seeing places–even if it meant cramming the schedule and heading back to wrestle with Monday blues and an inbox exploding with two weeks’ worth of emails,” Mahajan said. “Today it is different. Vacation to me today can be something as simple as taking a weekly hike with a loved one to a place that was always just a few miles away but was undiscovered till now. I consider taking a mindful walk after work in the evening too as my daily ‘vacation.’ It has helped me admire the change of seasons in the color scheme of my neighborhood. It amazes me how all those trees bursting with the season’s shade and the flower gardens in my neighborhood went unnoticed all these years. Perhaps because I drove past them thinking about a million other things. Walking has changed my understanding and awareness of where I live. You know the best part? After any of the above ‘vacations,’ I never have the dull feeling of ‘going back to work.’ I do not even have to take PTO for this!”

Taking a Meeting Outside: Lisa Nichols, an SVP in HR at Citigroup, is a firm believer in being productive without having to sit at a desk for hours on end. “I think one thing that has stayed with me is trying to care for yourself and building movement into your day. One way many of our managers have accomplished this is by doing walking, one-on-one phone meetings where we are simply providing updates or reviewing strategies,” Nichols said. “It has allowed us to get a little exercise while also completing a meeting that did not require that we needed to be in front or our computer or a Zoom meeting. This has been a good way to break up the day and get some movement to clear our minds.”

Building a Matchmaking System for Jobless Workers: “As we all were sent home a year ago, the enormity of the implications on jobs started to set in. If businesses are shut down, they can only carry their employees for so long,” said Kamal Ahluwalia, president of Eightfold.ai, which produces software for talent management and acquisition. “So we did what we usually do: organized a hackathon to repurpose our technology for the citizens.” The result was the Eightfold Talent Exchange, created in partnership with McKinsey & Company, which uses artificial intelligence to match unemployed workers to jobs. Ahluwalia shares the story of a Starbucks barista in Philadelphia named Joshua, whose hours were reduced because of the pandemic. As it happened, Starbucks was offering its workers some resources like the Talent Exchange, which Joshua used to land a manager position at a local Walgreens. “There are tons of stories like that, small but meaningful,” said Ahluwalia. “Makes me appreciate what we have a lot more, and try not to take things for granted.”

Learning to Let Some Problems Solve Themselves: Rob Smith, executive editor of Seattle and Seattle Business, embraced a new time-management technique. “I found it easier to obsess around perceived issues and problems because of the inability to communicate spontaneously with colleagues. So I started writing down things I wanted to tackle, and if they weren’t major, I stuck them in a drawer and revisited them later. I initially did this every day, but then started looking at them Friday afternoons. I was pleasantly surprised that most had either resolved themselves or I had misjudged how important they really were. I will continue this new tool post-pandemic.”

Getting to Know Each Other Better Remotely: Matt Orozco, organizational change consultant for the employee-engagement platform Peakon, said his company has committed to strengthening the ties among remote employees. As an example, “We improved the use of internal comms tools (in our case, Slack) by adding fields to ‘profiles’ so we can be more inclusive and share more about ourselves. Some fields we added were pronouns, name pronunciation (we operate in five countries worldwide), and a link to a  ‘ways of working’ doc so each employee can share how best to work with them.” He described it as kind of a user manual, but for human colleagues. On the personal side, he said that, “as a film student by education, I finally started to channel my passion for writing and film into a creative outlet by contributing to a film website,” as well as coming to grips with “the manufactured pressure to be more productive with respect to personal goals and side hustles during lockdowns.”

Keeping Employee Careers on Track: One of the biggest concerns among employees working remotely is that their career development suffers from being out-of-sight, out-of-mind at HQ. Larry McAlister, VP of global talent for the cloud-computing company NetApp, said the company launched a new, AI-enabled tool for setting goals and career paths. “We want everyone at NetApp to feel you can do the best work of your career from your kitchen table. We had a ‘career week’ a few months before launching the tool and we are now the vendor gold standard for adoption of the tool,” McAlister said, adding that the company keeps employee well-being in mind too: “We implemented Wellness Days, where the whole company has a day off each quarter. We have also implemented ‘No Zoom Fridays’ every month.”

(Photo by Tolgart/iStock by Getty Images)

Taking Control of the Calendar: Deep Mahajan, the executive who reinvented her idea of vacation, made changes in her schedule as well. “Unlike earlier, when all ‘house stuff’ used to happen strictly after and before office hours, today our schedules have become truly integrated. So you may be emptying the dishwasher between meetings and taking a meeting after office hours. It requires planning, without which it can be a mess. I re-invented the art of calendar-and-meeting management as I integrated my life into my work. Every Sunday I look at my calendar to mark the meetings that can be done walking, eliminate meetings which are redundant, add meetings for social interactions as needed, and eliminate those 30-minute ‘unproductive’ slots between meetings to be more efficient with my time. Family and house time has also come onto the calendar. Overall, I feel a better sense of control by organizing my time mindfully.”

Learning to Say No, When Possible: Erin Hicks, a senior director of HR at Applied Materials, realized that the lack of work boundaries at home was unsustainable. “For me, 12- to 14-hour days are just a norm I have learned to live with over the last four to five years,” she said, attributing the trend to “increased responsibilities, while there are still only 24 hours in a day, and something in my DNA that requires me to never let anyone down. This past year began with the same unhealthy pattern. That is, until I came to the personal realization that that kind of ‘work ethic’ was not only unhealthy, but it was depriving me of valuable time with my family that I could never get back. So I have worked hard to reinvent the way I work. I stop working when my teenager comes to check in with me on a school break, or when my husband comes in to do the same. The payoff is a lot more laughter during my day. I have reinvented my approach by modulating the work I agree to take on–and setting realistic expectations.”

Hicks added a broader observation on the issue: “From a work-culture perspective, I have really enjoyed seeing managers spending more time thinking about their employees’ physical and emotional well-being. The empathy factor has gone up exponentially. Teams have reinvented the way they interact, and not just from the use of new online collaboration tools. Leaders are finding myriad ways to bring their groups together on a human, social level that has been fun to watch. This forced reinvention of how teams interact as co-workers–and as people–in a virtual world will have a lasting positive impact, regardless of that the new normal or future of work looks like.”

Testing the Limits of Personal Handiwork: Like many remote workers, Mikeisha Anderson Jones, VP of global inclusion & diversity in the Colleague Experience Group at American Express, decided to do some redecorating. “In addition to adjusting to the new ways of working from home, I also fancied myself a weekend and late-night creative by endeavoring to wallpaper my office. Clearly, I’d spent insufficient hours watching the experts on Property Brothers and Love It or List It. When I started on my wallpapering journey, I hadn’t realized that I’d see my handiwork daily for the next 365+ days via videoconference. Thankfully, I love the print and despite my novice-level wallpapering skills, the result is quite lovely. I also learned something about myself: I will never, ever wallpaper another room by myself.”

While some of us may feel like this was a lost year, that might not be true in the long run. In a piece for Time, author and editor Joanne Lipman shared the wisdom of dozens of experts she has consulted for a book she’s writing on reinvention. “The types of transformations they study vary. Yet I’ve been struck by the one step that every type of reinvention has in common: it’s preceded by an in-between time, a seemingly fallow period much like the one we find ourselves in now,” Lipman writes. “The prolonged shutdown, by throwing us off-kilter, may help us reimagine our futures,” Lipman continues, citing the work of a psychologist who has studied survivors of trauma. After time, these survivors tend to “have a sense of fresh possibilities in life, an openness to following new pathways.”

In the midst of all this reinvention, one of our speakers offers a reality check. Daniel Roberts, who did some of his own reinvention recently–he left his job as editor-at-large at Yahoo Finance to become editor-in-chief of the crypto-news site Decrypt–predicts that some workplace transformations will revert to the old ways because they had obvious benefits. “We've all certainly adapted for a year and in many cases I think some workplaces have been shocked to learn how well WFH worked. The news media, I believe, rose to the occasion of covering every aspect of the pandemic–from home or in a mask–and has been extremely resilient,” he said. But don’t assume work-from-home will be for everyone, forever, he said. “I think there are a number of companies that see advantages to having their people in person, and are going to tell people when the coast is clear, OK, come back now. I fear some people will be in for a rude awakening when that happens.” As for journalism, he said, “I am a big believer in the power of the newsroom, and in being able to bat around ideas in person in a lively room with your colleagues.”

Finally, what about the From Day One team? On the personal front, two of our families reinvented themselves by having their first children. Babies can certainly be transformative. As for me, I took up yoga, faithfully attending my niece’s classes twice a week.

And as you might have been expecting by now, From Day One reinvented itself. Considering the alternatives, we were left with one possible way to survive: We would go all-virtual. Three weeks after making that decision in March, we produced our first webinar, titled “Smart Ways to Manage a Newly Remote Work Team.” Since then, we have hosted nearly 60 webinars and virtual conferences. Thanks to the intrepid spirit of our speakers, sponsors, audience members, and our extraordinary staff, we are still very much in business–just not the way we were before. The experience has broadened our reach and taught us how to think outside the conference room. But we look forward to seeing you again in person just as soon as we can.

Steve Koepp is a co-founder of From Day One. Previously, he was editorial director of Time Inc. Books, executive editor of Fortune and deputy managing editor of Time

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The Power Gap Among Labor Unions: Why Some Have New Strength–and Others Don’t

As the United Auto Workers set up picket lines last week outside of plants for General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge), there was a sense of familiarity, of economic history repeating itself. In times past, the UAW would roll up to a contract negotiation with all eight cylinders of its union engine roaring. There were work stoppages, but when the Big Three controlled 80% of the market, the car companies had a lot of sales to lose in enduring a long strike, so they had some willingness to compromise.Since the 1980s, though, the UAW–not to mention the United Steelworkers and other large industrial unions–have been squeezed by the global labor arbitrage that shifted work to Asia. They’ve become fewer in number, less powerful politically and forced into waves of givebacks to keep their jobs. Most galling, for the UAW, was the adoption of a two-tiered wage system—a lower rate for new hires, vs. legacy workers. The scoresheet has not been kind to labor; its share of national income has been in a long decline, one that has accelerated in this century.This year, the wealth and power pendulum has started moving the other way. The post-pandemic reordering of the global supply chain that enriched some U.S. industries–think greedflation–has given the UAW, and a few other unions the chance to muscle up again. They’re seizing the moment to demand a share of that new wealth. This is a workforce that has done everything asked of it during the pandemic to meet the needs of corporations and their customers.Which is making labor more militant, more willing to hit the bricks for better pay and benefits. We're going to see this soon in Las Vegas, where the Culinary Workers Union, 50,000 of them, may strike the major hotels and casinos if there’s no new contract. Las Vegas has been recording record month after record month of revenues since the end of the pandemic, and the unions quite reasonably expect to get a piece of those winnings. Some corporations have acknowledged as much, with the Teamsters winning a big contract with UPS. Likewise, American Airlines just settled with its pilots on a new contract in August, providing a 46% increase in compensation, as “revenge travel” hasn’t slowed. Why wouldn’t you settle with workers if your airline is filling every seat, and facing a pilot shortage over the next decade? Pilots are United and Delta have also settled. That’s the benefit of a healthy economy,  when labor and management each have more to gain than lose.The economy can’t solve every labor issue. In Hollywood, both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild have been on strike for months against the movie studios and the streaming companies. And in warehouses and coffeeshops nationwide, Amazon and Starbucks are fighting bitterly against determined unionization efforts.  Every labor negotiation rests on the extent of the common interests among the two parties. In the UPS negotiation, each side had too much to lose to take a strike. Shippers had already been moving their UPS business to other carriers as talks dragged on. And with drivers now earning more than $100,000 annually in some places, the urge to walk rather than deliver wasn’t strong. So UPS and the Teamsters settled and each can claim victory. This is the same Teamsters union that refused yet more givebacks with foundering Yellow Freight, and allowed the company to go under. Yellow had been in the red for years and the union could not see a way forward. With demand for truckers still high, and Yellow’s assets going on the block, there will still options for its drivers.For the auto companies, business is great but business is also changing rapidly–and that’s where the mutual interests are parting. Detroit has been able to sell every pickup truck it can build, for instance. These are the industry’s most profitable vehicles. How much of that business is worth risking? But the switch from internal combustion engines to EVs has introduced a host of new technologies that is reordering the workplace, and the unions are wary. Transmission plants get replaced by battery plants, for example, and the automakers are placing some of those plant in less union-friendly geographies in the South. The UAW has seen this movie before, when robotics came on the scene and eventually displaced a wide swath of jobs.Yet neither side is playing hardball, it seems. The unions are picketing at three selected plants–one from each automaker, a switch from the days when it would focus attention on one company.  That includes a Stellantis factory in Ohio, for instance, that makes the ever-popular Jeep. The union calls it a “standup strike.” The idea is to get the message across without crippling the entire industry. GM CEO Mary Barra, a lifelong GMer and the daughter of a GM engineer, has tried to keep the temperature low: “If you’re asking for more than the company made, I think that’s not a good position,” Barra said, but added, “I think we’re in a good position to get this done.” The gap remains wide, but that was also the case with UPS and the Teamsters.Technology is also a feature in the Hollywood strike by creatives against the studios and streamers. The actors and writers see AI technology being used to deprive them of earnings and intellectual property. Talks stalled, but there is still talk. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav tried to spread optimism, telling analysts: “We are just hopeful as a company, and I am very hopeful, that we can get that resolved. If we can get it resolved soon, then the long-term impact will be minimized.” But that optimism sounded a bit scripted, given that Warner has been willing to take a $500 million hit to earnings during the strike, and Zazlov’s lavish pay packet, $285 million over the last two years, has further impassioned workers over lavish media CEO pay.The dissonance could not be any greater in the case of Starbucks and Amazon, whose founders still exert a powerful influence on labor relations, leading to conflict. For Starbucks former CEO and chairman Howard Schultz, the battle with unions has been particularly difficult. Schultz, who grew up working class in Brooklyn, is a progressive. Starbucks pays well and has good benefits. He cares about the workforce, so he can’t understand why workers would want a union. He believes that he’s in the right position to know what they need, moreso than a union. But his view is from the top down. From that vantage point, understanding the workers’ point is view is difficult–very few business owners can do it. Henry Ford had the same stance–and his hired goons’ violent confrontation with union organizers was a turning point in UAW history.At Amazon, founder Jeff Bezos built a company by being a control freak over costs and operations and trained his senior managers that way. Unions represent a threat to that control mantra. And threatens to bring higher costs. Workers, for their part, see themselves as dehumanized labor inputs within Amazon’s system, not people. So the fight goes on, in both companies.The capital vs. labor issues this year are unique to their time–an economic situation unlike we’ve ever experienced and rapid technological developments that are rearranging traditional conflicts. The path to labor peace in the auto industry, then, may require these two old adversaries to bring more imagination and innovation to the negotiating table.  Bill Saporito is an editor at large at Inc. magazine. Previously, worked as an assistant managing editor at Time magazine and as a senior editor at Fortune.(Featured photo: United Auto Workers members walk the picket line at the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich., on Sept. 18, 2023. AP Photo/Paul Sancya) 

Bill Saporito | September 19, 2023

The Myth of the ‘Woke’ Corporation

“Whatever you do, lead with your values,” Apple CEO Tim Cook recently told the graduating class at Gallaudet University. Well, that leaves it wide open, doesn’t it? In Apple’s case, what values allow it to manufacture in China, a country that has crushed democracy in Hong Kong and violated the rights of millions of Uighurs on the mainland? Yet iPhones today are allowing citizens and soldiers of Ukraine to use technology to fend off the invading Russian hordes. Or consider McDonald’s, which closed some 850 stores in Russia, laying off 62,000 people. This is the same McDonald’s that is being accused by investor Carl Icahn of being complicit in ruthless treatment of pigs by vendors who supply meat for McRib sandwiches. Then there’s Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who claimed to eschew politics before tweeting, disingenuously, that he was becoming a Republican because the Democrats are the party of hate, notwithstanding the GOP affiliation with the clearly hateful and racist “replacement theory” that motivated an 18-year old domestic terrorist in Buffalo, NY, to murder 10 people. That’s not going to play well among California’s liberal Tesla owners—who now have many more EV models to choose from. And there’s no more emotional and potentially divisive topic than abortion rights. The issue is so fraught that the public relations firm Zeno advised its corporate clients to do zero–to run and hide. No, you don’t. Businesses that don’t confront such issues face the possibility that a relatively small group of white, male, you-don’t-even-have-to-say conservative legislators and regulators in states such as Texas and Oklahoma are going to dictate national policy. Which is why companies as diverse as Citigroup and Chobani quickly revised their benefits programs to include travel for out-of-state abortion services. If young people today want to work for a company that has a purpose, then defining that purpose in all its forms–political, social, environmental, racial and even local–has never been more complex for corporate America. Likewise for investors and investment companies. BlackRock has drawn fire from both conservatives for its stance on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, and from liberals for its investments in China. In Florida, the Walt Disney Co. first tried to escape the debate over that state’s so called “Don’t Say Gay” bill. But Mouse House employees, particularly its creatives, were having none of it. The company then broadcasted its dissent against the gay-bashing legislation. Disney’s support of its own LGBTQ community, in turn, made it a target for Florida’s reactionary governor Ron DeSantis, who orchestrated legislation that stripped Disney of its special tax and government status in the two Florida counties where Disney World operates. (Also potentially leaving the state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars of bond payments.) Then DeSantis vetoed funding for a training facility for the Tampa Bay Rays in part because the team spoke up against gun violence. Apparently, the governor favors it. But Disney’s customers voted Mickey over Ron—that is, they continue to flock to the Orlando resort and watch Disney movies. Those include the thousands of LGBTQ customers who show up, and are welcomed, for unofficial Gay Days at the resorts. A Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Michigan, one of more than 700 in the U.S. In 2018, the company halted sales of assault weapons in all of its stores (Photo by RiverNorthPhotography/iStock by Getty Images) The fact that a Republican governor would try to harm a Fortune 100 company that employs more than 70,000 Floridians underscores how divisive the politics have become. The fact that consumers have largely ignored DeSantis  shows that they respect thoughtful corporate decisionmaking about controversial issues. And well they should.  Yet another mass shooting event in Texas, in Uvalde, once again focused attention on assault rifles. But it was following a mass shooting at Parkland high school in Florida, in 2018, when Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Ed Stack pulled assault rifles from the company’s stores and halted gun sales to anyone under 21 years of age. That decision would cost the company some $250 million in sales initially. But Stack, a gun owner, had had enough. He told me: “After Parkland, I said, ‘We’re done. We’re not selling these guns, we’re not selling high-capacity magazines, we’re not going to sell any guns to anyone who’s under 21.’ That was it. We’re never going to change our mind on any of that.” Sales would eventually rebound because most Americans want to ban assault rifles, too. Walmart, no paragon of wokeness, made a similar call on behalf of its customers. This is a company that is now making a big investment in health care, because it can see the great need, and opportunity, among its customers and employees. To that end, Walmart recently banned cigarette sales in many of its stores even though the company, via a subsidiary, was once the largest tobacco wholesaler in the country. Selling death while at the same time trying to prevent death is a mixed marketing message at best, so Walmart made a choice: your health matters. We’ve already watched the Trump Administration play divide and conquer with corporate America in its defenestration of the Environmental Protection Agency and the trashing of pollution regulations. In clashing with the state of California over its stringent automobile standards—Trump demanded lower fuel efficiency—the administration forced automakers to choose sides. GM, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota, conservative by nature, backed into Trump’s garage. Honda, Volkswagen, BMW and Ford (with the support of executive chair Bill Ford), boldly backed California. These firms were already moving swiftly to expand their EV offerings; siding with California enhances their EV cred and offers a market advantage by doing so. Ford’s F-150 Lighting EV pickup, for instance, is already a breakout star. Corporations need to look a decade ahead to stay ahead. Any company that wants to be aligned with the future can’t avoid addressing human rights, animal rights, government actors, health care, sustainability and the environment. Not that the path is straightforward or even logical. Consider that Texas (once again) bars state retirement and pension funds from investing in companies that want to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Also consider that Texas is the nation’s leading producer of wind energy. If you build wind turbines, doesn’t that make you anti-fossil fuel by definition? Texas pols can deny climate change, but those denials will provide little protection when a monster hurricane–one of the consequences–wipes out Galveston. (Again. In 1900, more than 6,000 people died in such a storm.) And even if Galveston is spared, homeowners in coastal areas that haven’t prepared for extreme weather tied to a warming climate are already seeing sharp increases in flood insurance, if they can buy it at all. Which is to say that even if the free market doesn’t have a conscience, it tends to be rational. The defeat of two ExxonMobil board nominees last year by an activist hedge fund that criticized its strategy around climate change didn’t suddenly transform a hydrocarbon giant into an alternative-energy outfit. But that outcome did demonstrate that ExxonMobil wasn’t as focused on the future of clean energy as it might be—and that’s a market risk shareholders don’t care to face. ExxonMobil’s investors were indeed following their own values–while at the same time addressing shareholder value. That shouldn’t be such a rare event in corporate America. And if the graduates at Gallaudet follow the advice of Apple CEO Cook, it won’t be. Bill Saporito is an editor at large at Inc. magazine.

Bill Saporito | June 12, 2022

Don't Give up on Teaching About Unconscious Bias

Employee education about unconscious bias seems to have fallen out of fashion lately, with questions about its worth and impact. For many organizations over the last decade or so, anti-bias training had been a foundational pillar in addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). As a result of increasing critiques, however, some companies have now abandoned it, while others see continue to see value in it. The debate is covered well in this BBC story. Which way should employers go? There’s a wealth of research that unconscious bias exists, and that it can have significant detrimental impacts at work. So we shouldn’t just give up on the effort. I believe that adjusting the approach to the messaging and education in a few key areas can help keep unconscious bias education relevant and impactful. Having delivered varying approaches to unconscious bias through training and workshops across different industries and organizations, I’ve seen where it has made a positive impact and where it can fall short. From those experiences, I’ve identified some key challenges and the opportunities to improve. Avoiding the Backlash I have often wished for a replacement word for bias, because I see the resistance in people’s faces as soon as it is mentioned. For most of us, bias is a word with strongly negative connotations, so it takes more than just an assertion of “don’t worry, we’re all biased” for there to be a willingness to explore our individual propensity for it. Explaining that everyone has it–that it’s essential to how our brains operate efficiently–still doesn’t overcome our innate resistance to the word and its associations. Any successful learning and behavior change needs us to be open and committed, and anything that raises our resistance is immediately working against that goal. Telling people they’re biased creates a significant pushback, no matter how true it may be. Opportunity: Bias as a word and concept is already out there, and many people know something about it, so it’s not practical to avoid or replace it. However, in many scenarios, what bias creates is assumptions, and this concept is less threatening for people to wrestle with, because they can extrapolate from what they’ve likely learned previously–the importance of uncovering assumptions in decisions and strategy—to uncovering assumptions when it comes to people.  Why the Ask Is Paradoxical Our biases stem, in the simplest terms, from our brain being wired to process the masses of information we receive, by relying on broad assumptions. This is a survival mechanism because we don’t have the conscious-thought capacity to analyze every input and make a fully considered and calculated decision. But while on one hand we’re highlighting the limits of conscious-thought capacity, we’re also asking people to bring these assumptions out of their unconscious into that limited capacity. How do we do that? Can we expand conscious capacity? Do we displace existing conscious processes? Instead it’s implicitly positioned in the way many tasks are often assigned in the workplace: just add to an already-full plate and hope it works out. Opportunity: Acknowledge that our capacity is limited and ask participants to identify one situation where they recognize their own bias can have a negative impact for others, one where they are willing to put conscious effort into their own behavior change. To go the extra mile, they could also commit to providing feedback when they see others acting from the same bias.  Too Much Threat, Too Little Reward  There is plenty of research on what motivates adults to change behaviors, and it’s pretty clear that it’s not by being scolded or threatened. While examples of the negative impacts of bias can open our eyes to what can go wrong, and perhaps build perspective or empathy, those impacts are usually fleeting and don’t lead to behavior change. What’s so often missing is getting to the positive motivation that will fuel the effort that behavior change requires. Examples and exercises can show us how we might be biased, but unconscious-bias training rarely underscores the benefits of mitigating those biases—the benefits to others, and the benefits to ourselves. Jonathan Yeo, founder of The Potential Space (Photo courtesy of the author) Think about one of the most oft-cited examples of unconscious bias: identical resumes submitted, but with names of varying racial or ethnic associations. In one widely noted U.S.-focused research paper, the “white-sounding names” received 50% more callbacks than those with “African-American sounding names.” That finding is shared to show that bias exists, that it has negative consequences, and to hopefully prompt a reaction of “Wow, that’s bad!” It does indeed do that for many, but without any proposed mitigation it can leave people feeling shame, disappointment, disempowerment, cynicism, or despair. In other words, helpless rather than motivated. Opportunity: Contrast negative impacts of bias with their positive alternatives. In the resume example above, complete the emotional journey for participants by sharing examples of mitigating actions (for example, removing names from resumes) and their positive impacts (an increased qualified-candidate pool, more diverse teams). Don’t just leave the participants with what’s wrong–lead them to the benefits of getting things more right.  People Want Growth  For some reason, unconscious bias is often put in its own special place: a standalone training disconnected from everything else. That positioning, combined with some of the less effective approaches outlined above, can make it feel much more like compliance training than growth and development. At the least it should be part of broader learning on inclusion and inclusive behaviors. Better still, it should be embedded, recognized, or reinforced in programs on leadership, effective communication, career development, and growth mindset. Whatever you choose to call it, there’s still an important place for unconscious bias in organizations: integrated as a part of a development curriculum, embedded in programs to foster inclusion, and positioned as an opportunity for individual and organizational growth and success. It shouldn’t just sit out on its own. Jonathan Yeo is the founder of The Potential Space, a learning, development, and inclusion-focused consultancy. Previously, he worked at Apple for a decade in the fields of leadership development and inclusion and diversity. He will be speaking this Wed., Sept. 15, at From Day One's virtual conference on diversity recruiting. You can register here.

Jonathan Yeo | September 13, 2021