Celebrating diversity in the organization

A few years ago a local (Rochester, NY area), wine shop decided to create a holiday season TV advertisement that featured many (possibly all) of the store's employees instead of actors or models or the owner of the store.

Cool idea, right? Nothing like a local business sharing some holiday season greetings and good vibes with the added bonus of making their own employees happy and excited as well. I mean, how often has an accounting clerk or a cashier or a maintenance person get the chance to be on TV, and in local cable regular rotation no less?

The ad, as many locally produced cable TV ads are, was pretty basic, and didn't really have much in the way of production values. It was essentially, a rapid fire series of close-ups of the individual members of the staff who each wished the viewers a 'Happy Holidays' or a 'Merry Christmas' or some such. 

Employee after employee each getting about two seconds of screen time and sending out their best wishes.

Pretty neat, right?

Except the only reason I remember this entirely unremarkable local ad is that every single person, every staff member featured in the ad was a white male or a white female. About 20-odd faces flashed across the screen, each one looking more or less the same as the last. And seeing that many faces, in such a short time, and in the context of a local business wishing a 'Happy Holidays from us to you' kind of way left me thinking only one thing. Or perhaps asking one thing.

Is the wine store for only white people?

It was so obvious and clear from watching the ad, that I remember not believing that anyone who had looked at it prior to approving it for TV would have green lighted it to run. It was such a weird and awkward and almost off putting spot. I can't believe I still remember it, but I do. 

What made me think about that weird, 'White people wine store' ad was this short piece I caught on the PSFK site, about cosmetics retailer Sephora's use of some of its own, real, employees in an upcoming ad campaign.

Over 1,000 Sephora employees submitted video applications to be included in the new campaign called 'Reach Out and Gift', and from that group, 10 Sephora employees were selected. Have the mental image of the parade of 20-something white faces from the wine shop TV ad I described above when you take a look at this pic of the Sephora employees who were selected for the campaign:

A pretty diverse, interesting, and for Sephora, representative collection of their team, and a reflection of the customers they serve. This image makes you think that everyone is accepted at Sephora, no one is excluded, and more importantly, that everyone is accepted for who they are. It is amazingly cool.

You can read more about the Sephora employees that are participating in the campaign here.

For organizations talking about diversity is certainly important. Creating a culture that values diversity is necessary.

But truly celebrating diversity like the folks at Sephora are? That has to be to goal that the rest of us should shoot for.

If I had a need to buy some makeup, I know where I'd be shopping.

Happy Thursday.

What do you think you know about job hopping?

Probably my favorite movie of the last few years is The Big Short, the adaptation of the Michael Lewis book detailing the run-up to the financial crisis/meltdown in 2007 - 2008.

If you have not seen it, take some time this weekend and do so, you will be glad you did.

But why I bring it up is that the movie opens with an on screen quotation, which is attributed to Mark Twain and that reads as follows:

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

If you know the story of The Big Short you'll know why the Twain aphorism resonates. Again, take some time this weekend and catch the film if you haven't.

But back to the point, or, rather, here's the point I want to make and why I thought of that quote this week.

What do you think you know about job hopping? Meaning, do you think, as I suspect most of us do, that younger generations of workers, (younger Gen X, Millennials, etc.), are more likely to 'job hop', i.e., have shorter average tenures in their jobs than prior generations?

I mean, that seems to be the convential wisdom, that the Millennials in particular have shorter job tenures, are much more likely than us older types were to leave a job that either is not working out for them, or for what they perceive is a better opportunity, and overall are less attached to workplaces and employers than we were in the past.

Do you think that is more or less true?

I admit, I did, (without ever looking it up), until I caught this piece in the Economist recently, Workers are not switching jobs more often. Here is a quick chart and excerpt from the piece:

EVERYBODY knows—or at least thinks he knows—that a millennial with one job must be after a new one. Today’s youngsters are thought to have little loyalty towards their employers and to be prone to “job-hop”. Millennials (ie, those born after about 1982) are indeed more likely to switch jobs than their older colleagues. But that is more a result of how old they are than of the era they were born in. In America at least, average job tenures have barely changed in recent decades.

Data from America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics show workers aged 25 and over now spend a median of 5.1 years with their employers, slightly more than in 1983 (see chart). Job tenure has declined for the lower end of that age group, but only slightly. Men between the ages of 25 and 34 now spend a median of 2.9 years with each employer, down from 3.2 years in 1983.

And here is a quick chart showing tenure not really moving, at least at younger cohorts, over time.

So yes, Milennials switch jobs more frequently than older workers. Younger workers have always switched jobs more frequently than older workers. The data shows that the phenomenon hasn't really changed much over the last 30 years.

What's really striking from the chart is not just that the 25 - 34 age cohorts is basically exhibiting the same characteristics with respect to changing jobs than they did 20 or 30 years ago, but that the largest and steepest declines in job tenures are seen in the Men aged 45 - 54 group. That group's average job tenure has declined from 12.8 years in 1983 to 8.4 years by 2016.

There are tons of possibly reasons for this, primarily how the events so well portrayed in The Big Short put so many of this group into unforeseen unemployment, as well as how technology, automation, and outsourcing have seem to affected this group more significantly than other labor cohorts.

But that is a post for another day.

The main reason this one stood out for me is that the data shows pretty clearly that what we think we know for sure, that Milennials are job hopping, low attention span miscreants, probably really isn't true.

What else about work, and careers, and employees do we know for sure that might be, in the words of Twain, 'Just not so?'

Have a great weekend!

Everyone wants a piece of Amazon HQ2. Except in these places.

Amazon's call for proposals from states/cities to be the location of their planned second headquarters location, (HQ2), closed a few days ago.

As has been widely reported, Amazon claims that the location that is eventually selected, (sometime next year), to be the new site for HQ2 will benefit from something like $5B in investments and as many as 50,000 well-paying jobs (again, eventually). As you have read, and should have expected, the competition has been pretty fierce, with many cities staging pretty elaborate stunts to get Amazon's (and other companies, surely), attention, and even some pretty embarrassing gimmicks as well. Mayor of Kansas City, who personally left 1,000 product reviews on Amazon.com extolling the virtues of his city, I am looking at you.

After the close of the submission process, Amazon announced it had received a total of 238 submissions from 54 states and regions across North America who want to be the home of HQ2. Below is a map that shows from which states and regions Amazon received proposals, (aggregated, sadly, it would have been more interesting if they broke out all 238 proposals).

What's interesting about the map of locations that submitted at least one proposal to be the home of HQ2 is not so much just how many of the states and regions wanted to have their hats in the ring, I mean, what city or state wouldn't want the influx of investment, jobs, and attention that the selection and eventual construction of HQ2 will bring? If you are the Mayor of the city that lands this deal, chances are, you'll never have a re-election worry and never have to buy your own beer in town again.

No, there are actually two interesting things in the chart to me. One, that lots of cities and locations that truly have no realistic chance, considering Amazon's own list of requirements for the HQ2 location, submitted proposals anyway. While these proposals are on paper for consideration for HQ2, they are really public statements of interest, cooperation, and positive attitude towards the hundreds or even thousands of smaller business location (or re-location) decisions that are made every year in North American. Making a claim to be ready to be the location of HQ2 is a public statement that your location is ready to be the home of any business really. That of course is likely not true, but I think it is better to compete above your weight class and get on the radar of the folks who advise companies on these decisions.

And the second thing that I thought was interesting on the map above are the locations that did not have a submission for HQ2. In the US, the only states not submitting a proposal are Hawaii, Vermont, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. These are all relatively small states, lacking the people, infrastructure, and other resources Amazon is seeking, and thus were never going to land HQ2 anyway,

Wait, there was one more state that did not formally submit a bid for Amazon's HQ2 - Arkansas.

Hmm, that one is more curious. While not the largest state, and having only one big 'city', Little Rock, still it does seem curious that they didn't even submit a token bid alongside just about every other location in the US.

Wonder why that didn't happen.

I will have to ask someone from Arkansas. I only know a couple of people there. They both work for Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Oh, I get it now.

Have a great day!

Protests, free speech, and how the 'Work/life blend' people got it wrong

Your right to free speech in the workplace has largely been a settled matter, at least here in the US. 

Essentially, you don't have any such right in the workplace. Or said differently, if you attempt in going too far in exercising what you think should be your right to free speech in the workplace, the company that employs you can and possibly will relieve you from your position without much deliberation and without recourse.

And most employees, I think, more or less get that. They understand the tradeoff, they know that the company does not exist to create a forum for employees to exercise their rights to free speech as and when they like. 'On the clock' time belongs to the company. Computers, phones, and other company owned devices shouldn't be used for activities that are not a part of your 'official' role.

Like I said, most of us get that. Back when email was first introduced into organizations as a work tool, we (tried) not to use it to email all of our non-work friends. We (tried) not to make a bunch of personal calls from the office phone. And (if we were smart), saved any break room or water cooler talk to last night's game or episode of The Sopranos. 

The time and place for provocative, controversial, or potentially divisive speech or conversations was pretty much understood to be when you were not at work, and not in the workplace. And that worked (reasonably) well for most folks for a quite some time. 

Even as technology modernized, and tools like PCs, home broadband connections, and later smart phones and social networks became more ubiquitous, there still was a decent understanding that work time was work time, and non-work time, (and freedom of speech time), was non-work time.  But just like water finds its way to fill up all available space, work too, tries to find its way into more and more of our personal space.

Over time, it made sense for many companies and for their employees to think a little more fluidly and creatively about 'work' and 'non-work'. The above mentioned technologies, along with more employee's desire to be more present and fulfilled in their personal and family life, and in the last seven or eight years and increasingly tight labor market have all combined to drive many workplaces and roles to be designed much, much more flexibly than in the past. 

Lots of folks no longer think about work as a place they go and a set of tasks they perform at specific, defined times each day. Usually Monday to Friday by the way. But the tech and the demands of work and employee desires have made it so that 'work' is not so much a place or a time but rather just a thing(s) someone does.

Who cares if you take the conference call from your kitchen table or if you work on the presentation at 9PM on a Saturday or that you skip some boring all hands meeting to catch Jr's soccer game? When work isn't a time or a place and it just is something you do, then when and where you are at any given time is irrelevant. You do what you need to do (at an acceptable quality level or not).

But what happened next is that more and more organizations and people too came to find that all this flexibility and fluidity came with an unexpected cost. 

Work, like water, never stopped flowing. Even when we were almost certain we were not working. Like when we were at that soccer game. Or on vacation. Or at 9AM on Sunday morning. Work became a constant companion, in a way that non-work, despite skipping out from the office to catch a 3rd grade recital never did.

As the balance between work and not work shifted more and more towards work, then we were suddenly informed by small but loud subset of 'experts' that we needed to stop talking about work/life balance, (which we were told we could no longer achieve), and focus on something called 'work/life blend'. 

The 'blend' agenda, was/is more or less an admission no longer can work be safely and easily partitioned off from non-work. Sure, you might be able to get away with taking an hour away from your email when you are at the recital but you better check in when you get home or at halftime of the soccer game. Weirdly, being available, accessible, and responsive all the time has become a badge of honor and value for lots of folks. And more and more an expectation of their employers.

Once you buy into the 'blend' argument, then work is never really something you can completely place aside. Not for long anyway.

And that might be perfectly fine most of the time for most people. Being able to not be tied to a specific workplace location for specific times has been an incredible benefit for lots and lots of people, (and has increased attendance at elementary school plays immeasurably).

But recent events in the news help remind us that this 'blend' also comes with a cost beyond just 'My Saturday night might be interupted by an email I have to answer'. The 'blend' also comes with a potential loss of one of the freedoms that most of us take for granted. 

When you buy in to the idea that 'balance' and by implication 'separation' between work and non-work is no longer possible, then you have tacitly bought into ceding more of your rights and protections than you probably think.

We've heard and read a lot of talk about how no one's freedom of speech fully extends to the workplace.

What happens when the workplace extends out to us, to everywhere we go, to everything we do?

Enjoy that blend.

How important is knowing the product for a new hire?

I riffed yesterday about how JetBlue is leaning into a pretty serious shortage of pilot candidates by expanding the talent pools and significantly increasing their investment in training and development in order to essentially 'build' the candidates they are having trouble finding otherwise. And while 'airline pilot' seems like one of the last kinds of job ads you'd see with a 'no experience required' listed in the job req, JetBlue is trying to make it work in order to meet their recruiting goals.

I thought about that case study/experiment again this morning when I saw the announcement of the newest appointee to the Twitter Board of Directors, (not quite having the responsibility of an airline pilot, but hang in their with me for a minute). Turns out the newest member of Twitter's board is not really a user of Twitter.

From a piece in Business Insider titled Ex-Google CFO Patrick Pichette is joining Twitter's board, and he just tweeted for the first time:

Twitter's board is swapping Pepsi CFO Hugh Johnston for ex-Google CFO Patrick Pichette.

Johnston is leaving Twitter to join Microsoft's board, he said in a series of tweets Tuesday. Pichette is joining Twitter's board after retiring as Google's CFO in 2015 and completing a two-year sabbatical.

Interestingly, Pichette doesn't seem to be much of a Twitter user. His account says he joined the service in February 2017 and his first tweet was published Tuesday announcing his appointment to the board

Ok, so the dude was a successful C-suite exec, had a high-profile gig at one of the world's most admired companies, and then cashed out to take two years having fun and whatever it is people with lots of cash and time on their hands like to do. He didn't have time to Tweet at all, but then again, being CFO of Google probably consumes a ton of time and energy and those two-year sabbaticals can be exhausting. I mean, just think about how you feel after your two-day sabbatical at the end of every week. Then multiply that feeling by 350 or so.

But I digress.

The point is the newest member of the Board of Directors for Twitter, a company that has been around for a decade, and for better or worse, has been a pretty significant influence on news, politics, social causes, and more for most of that time, has never really used Twitter.

I would imagine in the last ten years there must have been a time or two where Mr. Pichette at least considered setting up a Twitter account and testing out the product/service and each time decided, 'That's not really for me.'

Which is certainly his prerogative. I imagine there are lots of successful, accomplished, smart types who have decided not to engage on or otherwise use Twitter. But usually those kinds of people don't get appointed to executive or board-level roles on Twitter. And this isn't a knock on Mr. Pichette and his ability to do a great job on Twitter's board. His CFO experience might be just what Twitter needs right now.

But just like the JetBlue story, the appointment of Pichette, seemingly a person who does not know all that much about the product of Twitter to the Board speaks to the increasing importance in tightening labor markets of taking a more expansive view of the addressable talent pools.

Train someone to be a commercial airline pilot who has never flown a plane of any kind? 

Sure.

Put someone on the Board of Directors of a company who has never used or experienced the product?

Ok.

Hire someone for your next Marketing Manager role who doesn't actually have 'Seven years of progressive experience doing exactly the job we want you to do here in the same industry that we are in?'

Why not?

Have a great day!