Tag Diversity

The week@work – leadership lessons from Leicester City, #TonysSoDiverse, exit strategies & the April jobs report

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work we visit Leicester, England (think Wichita,KS) to uncover a story of unlikely success, celebrate the diversity of the Tony Award nominees, grasp the value of a positive employee exit process, and review the April jobs report.

At the beginning of the English Premier League season, Ladbrokes, the world leader in gaming and betting set 5000/1 odds that Leicester City would win the title. On Monday, the team beat the odds to hoist the trophy and celebrate their marvelous win.

569698369-125280-3103660_150x113.JPG

There were hundreds of news articles published over the past week, covering the story from every possible angle. Here are a few, examining the business applications and social impact.

‘What do the foxes say?’, The Economist’s take on the champions suggests a future in business school and corporate conference engagements for club manager, Claudio Ranieri.

“In footballing terms, Claudio Ranieri, an affable Italian, has found a way to turn water into wine. Mr Ranieri manages a club in England, Leicester City, which historically has not been very good. On May 2nd his team were crowned champions of the English Premier League, a competition more watched than any other on the planet, and reliably won—including in every one of the preceding 20 years—by one of four much bigger clubs.

…Leicester’s triumph will also spark inordinate interest in the world of business, which has long looked to sport for lessons on management and leadership.

The BBC’s Robert Plummer shared six of ‘Leicester City’s business secrets’. “You don’t need to throw money at the problem. Get the right people around you. Create the right culture. Do the maths. Create the right incentives. Don’t forget your mum’s birthday!”

For a literary, fan perspective, Booker winning author, Julian Barnes wrote ‘My Stupid Leicester City Love’.

“I haven’t always been a Leicester City supporter: there was a time before I could read, or knew how to tune the Bakelite wireless to the voice of Raymond Glendenning on Sports Report. But from the moment I became sportingly sentient – say, the age of five or six – I have been (as they didn’t much say then) a Fox. So, six and a half decades and counting.

To be a lifelong supporter of Leicester is to have spent decades poised between mild hopefulness and draining disappointment. You learn to cultivate a shrugging ruefulness, to become familiar with the patronising nods of London cabbies, and to cling to an assortment of memories, of pluses and minuses, some comic, some less so. Yes, we have won promotion to the top division every so often; but the fact of promotion logically implies an earlier relegation. Yes, we did win the League Cup; but what burns the soul are the four times we reached the FA Cup final and the four times we lost.”

images-1.jpeg

ESPN’s Wright Thompson introduced readers to the diverse “salad bowl” that is Leicester, England, in ‘We’ve come to win the league’.

“This is the first city in the United Kingdom with less than 50 percent of the population identifying as “white British,” which some people see as the inevitable destiny of an island nation that tried to conquer the world, while others see it as a sign of the apocalypse. People here of different faiths and races seem to get along; Narborough Road, one of the main avenues into the city, was named the most diverse street in Britain by researchers. Shopkeepers and small business owners from 23 nations work there.

John Williams lives on a park near the local university where he teaches…He studies the sociology of football and has written many books on the subject. Whenever someone wants to understand the subtext of life on the pitches and terraces of Leicester, he’s often the first call.

“It was a very white space,” Williams said. “It had a sense of foreboding and exclusion about it. The new stadium has none of those memories. Everyone starts with a clean state at the new stadium because you have to make the history. This is a new history being written.”

Janan Ganesh shared ‘Lessons for everyone from the rise of Leicester City’.  “There is more of the Enlightenment than of romance about this story.

Foreign owners, a foreign coach, a polyglot squad, a laboratory of a training ground: far from mounting a stand against the modern world, Leicester is the modern world. Do not hold out against change, this season teaches us, absorb and master it. The lesson is not just for other clubs but also for modest cities adapting to globalisation and for individuals navigating an insecure world.”

And while we are on the topic of diversity, the Tony Awards were announced last week, recognizing the best of the American theater over the past year. Katherine Brooks sent a message to the left coast, ‘Dear Hollywood, Let Broadway Show You What Diversity Looks Like’.

13131599_1373658495994357_4299389596848712065_o.jpg

“The nominations for “Hamilton,” along with other plays and musicals like “The Color Purple,” “Eclipsed,” “On Your Feet!,” and “Shuffle Along,” reveal a picture of Broadway far more diverse than seasons before it. These shows feature actors of color in lead roles, highlight the experiences of women and minorities in the U.S. and beyond, and empower writers and directors breaking barriers in their categories. They prove, along with a litany of shows that weren’t nominated, that this year was a different kind of year for the Great White Way.

…critics across the Internet are using a different kind of hashtag ahead of the theater world’s version of the Academy Awards: #TonysSoDiverse.”

images

Heather Huhman addressed the importance of ‘last impressions’ in an article for Entrepreneur. Building and maintaining a positive reputation is key to recruiting talent. How an employer treats people throughout their ‘on the job life cycle’ is often chronicled in social media. Thinking strategically about the exit process can reap long term benefits.

“…the process for offboarding employees should be just as important as the onboarding one, and that companies neglecting the former, integral process may experience negative impacts. Here are a few things to consider, to ensure your formal offboarding program is successful: make saying goodbye positive, go beyond the exit interview, turn exiting employees into brand ambassadors and use past employees in your referral program.

Go beyond the exit interview to establish and continually improve the offboarding process to include exit surveys, strong communication throughout an organization and a plan to stay connected to departing employees.”

united-states-unemployment-rate@2x.png

Eric Morath analyzed the recent jobs report for the Wall Street Journal.

“U.S. companies slowed the pace of hiring in April while paying workers only slightly more, signaling a softening of the labor market…

…an increase in wage growth and a pickup in the number of hours worked across the economy could signal solid underlying income growth for workers that would support stronger consumer spending in coming months.

…the easing of job gains could also suggest the economy reached a level where firms will provide workers better pay increases and more hours, rather than hiring new employees.”

Imagining the Monday morning conversation at PwC

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

I have two questions. What happened to the PricewaterhouseCoopers lead partner for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and his colleague, and Oscar balloting co-leader, Sunday night? How did they face their colleagues on Monday morning after the Oscar host turned their most visible annual ‘guest spot’ into the saddest stereotype ‘joke’?

Melena Ryzik described what happened at the point in the award ceremony when the team from the PwC was brought on stage.

“Introducing the accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which tabulates the vote results, Mr. Rock instead brought onstage two boys and a girl of Asian heritage, whom he named Ming Zu, Bao Ling and David Moskowitz. As they clutched briefcases, they visually illustrated the stereotype that Asians are diligent workers who excel at math.

“If anybody’s upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phone that was also made by these kids,” Mr. Rock added, a punch line interpreted as a reference to child labor in Asia.”

What happened to Matt Damon ‘look alike’ and managing partner for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Brian Cullinan and his colleague, Martha Ruiz ?

The conversation on social media since the Oscar broadcast has centered on the ‘joke’, and the fine line between satire and slur. But what happened as hundreds of PwC’s employees arrived at work on Monday morning? What was the conversation between corporate recruiters and expectant applicants on college campuses? How did the meeting start between engagement managers and clients? Why did a company that values diversity allow it’s moment in the spotlight to turn into an epic fail?

PwC’s corporate website and recruiting site advertise the diversity of the firm as a core value.

“Role models inspire others by bringing possibilities to life. And I believe we all have the power to shape the course of other people’s careers. Active sponsorship makes all the difference when it comes to advancing diverse professionals.”

Maria Castañón Moats
Chief Diversity Officer

“At PwC, we foster an inclusive culture by acknowledging the unique experiences and perspectives all of our people bring to work. Our goal is to be known as the place to build a career, regardless of one’s background, beliefs, gender or sexual orientation. Diversity, in all its dimensions, is a key element of our people and our client strategy, and we continue to invest in the area diversity and inclusion knowing we will ultimately be measured on the progress we make.”

Bob Moritz
US Chairman and Senior Partner

Who makes the decision to violate corporate values for a moment of ill timed humor? On Sunday, a company with a publicized core value of diversity allowed itself to be manipulated in the midst of a nationwide controversy about the lack of inclusion.

In February, journalist Iris Quo wrote an article for the Washington Post, posing the question,  ‘Why do my co-workers keep confusing me with other people? Because I’m Asian.’

“All my life I’ve been mistaken for other people of my race. It’s a degrading and thoughtless error that boils away my identity and simplifies me as one thing: “that Asian.” One reason is that our society has so few Asians and people of color in positions of prominence that some people have little exposure to them. Diversity is so lacking in film and television that a director thinks it’s okay to cast a white person as Chinese, as Cameron Crowe did with Emma Stone in “Aloha,” and the Hollywood Reporter mistakes “Master of None” actor Kelvin Yu for show co-creator Alan Yang, who tweeted in response, “Same race, different dude.”

On Sunday night, I was thinking about Iris Quo, ‘degrading and thoughtless errors’, PwC employees and all the college students who are considering offers from PwC. An aberration, or a catalyst to revise the resume?

 

 

 

The week@work – writer’s rooms and publishing lack diversity, alternatives to academia, what scares us most and the number one mistake job seekers make

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

As the world turned this week@work, journalists continued to highlight the lack of diversity in the workplace: in the writers rooms of TV, the publishing industry and tech. The National Endowment for the Humanities announced a grant initiative to align graduate education with employment prospects.  A survey from Chapman University identified our top fear as corruption of government officials (unemployment and public speaking being way down on the list). And a CEO offered advice on the one mistake job seekers make.

Things are not looking good on the diversity front. Aisha Harris reporting on Slate.com, investigated the lack of progress on diversity behind the camera, in the rooms where plot and dialogue are created for your favorite TV shows.

“A Writers’ Guild of America report released earlier this year noted that staff employment for people of color actually decreased between the 2011–12 season and 2013–14 season, from a peak of 15.6 percent to 13.7 percent. The number of executive producers of color also decreased in those seasons, from 7.8 percent to 5.5 percent. While the 2014–15 season may have seen those numbers increase thanks to the addition of a few shows with diverse casts, such sharp declines demonstrate how tenuous progress in Hollywood can be.

…the television industry, like most creative industries (including journalism), pays lip service to “diversity” while very little actually changes. Even as the hottest show on TV boasts a majority-nonwhite writing staff, the work of vigorously recruiting non-white writing talent is still confined to a narrow pipeline: Diversity departments and fellowships help to fill one or two designated diversity slots on each staff. And that’s just the start of the problem: As writer after writer revealed, even when writers of color make it into that pipeline, the industry hasn’t gotten much better at making them feel as though their voices matter.”

Jim Milliot, the editorial director for Publishers Weekly, reported on their annual publishing industry salary survey. While the results indicated younger employees may be replacing the old guard, the workforce is still predominantly white.

“If publishers are indeed recruiting a new generation of employees, they do not appear to be hiring minorities. The share of survey respondents who identified themselves as white/Caucasian was 89% in 2014, the same as in the previous year. Asians remained the second-largest ethnic group within publishing, accounting for 5% of respondents in 2014, up from 3% the previous year. With the survey finding no real change in the racial composition of the workforce, it is no surprise that only 21% of respondents felt that strides had been made in diversifying the industry’s workforce in 2014. A much higher percentage, however, said they believe the industry has made progress in publishing titles by nonwhite authors and titles aimed at more diverse readers.”

One other article of interest on the diversity topic was written by Vauhini Vara for Fast Company and details Pinterest’s efforts to “fix its diversity problem”. She chronicles the various efforts to identify recruitment channels over the past two years and the lack of progress in diversifying the workplace. “There is lots of hope but little certainty about what works.”

The common thread in all of these ‘lack of diversity’ conversations is the ‘wishful thinking’ for a quick fix. The majority of the careers covered in these articles are filled by ‘contract’ employees. The hiring is tied to a project. When the next project begins, folks hire their trusted colleagues from previous gigs and there are few openings for a newbie. Diversity requires a long term investment in education, internships and mentoring – creating a new career pipeline.

One solution I personally observed in my corporate life was when a senior exec tied business unit management compensation to diversity targets. If you are rewarded for diversity – hiring and retention – there is a better chance for success. It’s not brain surgery; it’s a matter of priorities.

Academia is another workplace that has continued to struggle with diversity issues, driven in part by an outdated tenure process and lack of career transition in senior faculty ranks. As students continue to enroll in PhD programs, their predecessors compete for the few faculty openings and get by cobbling together a mosaic of ‘contract’ adjunct positions. Until now, it was taboo for a grad student to speak out loud about pursuing a career outside the ivory tower.

Colleen Flaherty reports for Inside Higher Education on the National Endowment for the Humanities recognition of diminishing tenure-track options and a proposal to explore alternatives.

“Critics have long complained about doctoral education in the humanities, saying that it takes too long and no longer reflects the realities of graduates’ employment prospects. In other words, graduate humanities programs are still largely training students to become professors at major research universities, when the vast majority won’t, given the weak tenure-track job market.

“We know that the traditional career track in the humanities, in term of numbers of available positions, is diminished — that scenario has changed quite dramatically over time,” William D. Adams, NEH chairman, said in an interview. “So we’re reacting to that in trying to assist institutions in providing a wider aperture for their students to think about careers beyond [academe].”

Based on the workplace issues we experience and read about, it may come as a surprise that workplace concerns are not at the top of this year’s Chapman University survey ‘America’s Top Fears 2015’.

Cari Romm summarized the survey methodology and results in an article for The Atlantic.

“For the survey, a random sample of around 1,500 adults ranked their fears of 88 different items on a scale of one (not afraid) to four (very afraid). The fears were divided into 10 different categories: crime, personal anxieties (like clowns or public speaking), judgment of others, environment, daily life (like romantic rejection or talking to strangers), technology, natural disasters, personal future, man-made disasters, and government—and when the study authors averaged out the fear scores across all the different categories, technology came in second place, right behind natural disasters.

Top10Fears-740x572

In the last article of the week, Business Insider writer Jacquelyn Smith, interviewed Liz Wessel, CEO and Co-founder of WayUp and discovered the biggest mistake job seekers make.

“People are generally far too modest,” she says. “If there’s ever a time to brag, it’s during your job search and interviews. You need to state your accomplishments and show how your work led to awesome outcomes for your companies. Remember, you need to convince your interviewer that, out of all the applicants the company is considering, you’re their best bet.”

If you don’t take credit for your work and accomplishments, no one is going to give you the benefit of the doubt for being modest, Wessel adds. “And if you don’t show proof of your accomplishments, you won’t stand out.”

The reason this “mistake” is so common, she says, is that a lot of people are good at being “team players,” and therefore try to share the credit. “In a lot of cases, this is a great instinct, and while it’s obviously important to work well in a team setting, it’s also important to convince an employer to hire you, not your entire team.

The message in the week@work themes: those who are confident in their talent and able to articulate their value to an organization have the potential to contend for work in writing, publishing, tech and academia. But the playing field is not level and winning the coveted spots will ‘take a village’: committed employers, dedicated mentors, paid internships, educational outreach and community visibility.

The Saturday Read – Ta-Nehisi Coates ‘Between the World and Me’

Eileen Kohan 1 Comment

Early in his career, The Atlantic writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates was mentored by journalist, David Carr. In February he wrote ‘King David’, acknowledging his friend and brother. “David Carr convinced me that, through the constant and forceful application of principle, a young hopper, a fuck-up, a knucklehead, could bring the heavens, the vast heavens, to their knees.”

“I miss you terribly. I do not want to say goodbye. Tony says you were our champion. How can we go on, David? How can all of it just go on? Who will be our champion, now?”

In ‘Between the World and Me’ the author has brought ‘the vast heavens, to their knees’ and takes on the role of the champion he lost with the passing of Mr. Carr.

The ‘Saturday Read’ is not a ‘summer beach read’. It’s an important addition to the canon of the social sciences and business.

This book should be required reading for every member of the workforce, educators and in particular, those who pride themselves as leaders of diversity.

An excerpt of the book is available on The Atlantic website. Written as a letter to his son, the book needs to be read in its’ entirety.

“…Perhaps struggle is all we have. So you must wake up every morning knowing that no natural promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.

The birth of a better world is not ultimately up to you, though I know, each day, there are grown men and women who tell you otherwise. I am not a cynic. I love you, and I love the world, and I love it more with every new inch I discover. But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful—the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie. You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold.”

Among the positive reviews, Syreeta McFadden for The Guardian:

“I am in near-total agreement with Coates’s view of this world we share. Yet I did wonder where the stories of black women feature in all this death and plunder. Their names are not included in this work, and I am not the only one who has noticed it. Coates seems aware of the omission, but he still only manages to surface the experiences of black women through their (very real) pain at the death of black men. That lens isn’t Coates’s alone, but it’s one worth interrogating.

In fact, Between the World and Me doesn’t aspire to anything so large – or vague – as “overcoming” or “transcending” race to defeat racism. It is simply about surviving, and remembering. Coates’s preoccupation is not with saving the soul of America. It’s urging it, to borrow a phrase you see around a lot lately, to “stay woke”.

At the end of his tribute to David Carr, Mr. Coates reflects on Mr. Carr as a “tireless advocate of writers of color, of writers who were women, and of young writers of all tribes.”

“And I know that even I, who am no longer a young writer, do not always wear my best face for young writers. And among the many things I am taking from David’s death is to be better with young writers, and young people in general. Because every single time some editor shoved me down, David picked me back up.”

‘Between the World and Me’ is a gift to young writers. It’s a testament to the power of the written word amid the distractions of technology’s sound bites.

The week@work – Apple’s diversity problem, top cities for worker satisfaction, college is not a commodity and AstroSamantha returns to earth

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work we welcomed astronaut, Sam Cristoforetti, back to the home planet, and female senior executives at Apple to the Worldwide Developers Conference stage. A former Ivy League president reminded us that college is not a commodity and we learned where we should be living to have the best opportunity for job satisfaction.

Sam Cristoforetti, aka AstroSamantha, returned to earth and the steppes of Kazakhstan on Thursday. Her fan base grew to  558.1K followers on Twitter during her 199 days in space. Now that she has returned, we will miss her end of day wishes: “Buona notte dallo spazio.” Welcome home, Captain Cristoforetti.

The LA Times covered the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, taking note of the participation of senior, female executives:

“Apple Music, new operating systems and a smarter Siri were front and center at Apple Inc.’s Worldwide Developers Conference, but it wasn’t a new product that got people talking — it was women.

During Monday’s keynote presentation, Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Internet services, and Susan Prescott, vice president of product marketing, took the stage to announce new developments with Apple Pay and a news reading app. It was the first time that Apple has had female executives on stage at any of its major events since at least the launch of the first iPhone in 2007.”

In an interview with Mashable prior to the meeting, Apple CEO, Tim Cook shared responsibility for the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley:

“Cook doesn’t subscribe to the idea that women just don’t want to be involved in tech — calling that argument a “cop-out.”

“I think it’s our fault — ‘our’ meaning the whole tech community,” he says. “I think in general we haven’t done enough to reach out and show young women that it’s cool to do it and how much fun it can be.”

If you are interested in working for Apple, the good news is San Francisco is at the top of ‘Forbes Top Cities for Employee Satisfaction’.

“Topping the list is San Francisco, where a largely tech-focused workforce finds the deepest levels of satisfaction with their work. In fact, several California cities can claim deeply engaged workforces, as San Jose and San Diego round out the top three spots on this ranking.

Many smaller cities fare well for employee satisfaction as well. Salt Lake City, Austin, Raleigh-Durham, and Oklahoma City all make the cut. Major east coast mainstays Boston and Washington, D.C. have satisfied workforces as well, as does the Pacific Northwest’s tech flagship, Seattle.”

Hunter Rawlings, former president of Cornell University and current president of the Association of American Universities disputed the view that college is a commodity.

“A college education, then, if it is a commodity, is no car. The courses the student decides to take (and not take), the amount of work the student does, the intellectual curiosity the student exhibits, her participation in class, his focus and determination — all contribute far more to her educational “outcome” than the college’s overall curriculum, much less its amenities and social life. Yet most public discussion of higher ed today pretends that students simply receive their education from colleges the way a person walks out of Best Buy with a television.

Students need to apply themselves to the daunting task of using their minds, a much harder challenge than most people realize, until they actually try to do it. To write a thoughtful, persuasive argument requires hard thinking and clear, cogent rhetoric. To research any moderately complex topic requires formulating good questions, critically examining lots of evidence, analyzing one’s data, and presenting one’s findings in succinct prose or scientific formulas.”

The Atlantic’s Michael Levitin reflected on ‘The Triumph of Occupy Wall Street’.

“Nearly four years after the precipitous rise of Occupy Wall Street, the movement so many thought had disappeared has instead splintered and regrown into a variety of focused causes. Income inequality is the crisis du jour—a problem that all 2016 presidential candidates must grapple with because they can no longer afford not to. And, in fact, it’s just one of a long list of legislative and political successes for which the Occupy movement can take credit.”

And finally, for all you sports fans, the US Women’s National Team began their quest for soccer’s world cup with a win over Australia and a draw with Sweden.  Caitlyn Kelley, writing in The New Yorker, ‘The Hope Solo Fiasco’, asked the question on the minds of many loyal followers, “Am I going to have to root for Hope Solo if I want to root for Team U.S.A.?”

“This summer it will be sixteen years since the U.S. women last won the World Cup, which was hosted in the United States. The success of the tournament—not just the fact that the American women took home the trophy but that they did it in front of packed stadiums and record millions of television viewers—was an affirmation of the value of Title IX. Thanks to that piece of legislation, we want and expect women to have the same opportunities as men in sports. We should hold women athletes—and their organizations—equally accountable for mistakes, too.”