Warning: Fairly lengthy article, something of a rant, and I’m going to say “bullshit” quite a few times. Buckle up, buttercup…
In Guy Kawasaki’s book, Reality Check, he claims “Silicon Valley is a meritocracy like nowhere else.” Bullshit. Look at the lack of women, minorities, over-40. If it’s a meritocracy, then explain statistically impossible under-representation. Tech companies aren’t examples, they’re poster-children for how not to “do” diversity.
Diversity. Inclusion. As important as these words are, Tech just doesn’t get it. Even while company leaders tout the need to increase diversity for both business and social justice reasons and trip over each other trying to hire the biggest, baddest diversity guru, the better roles and big bucks are reserved for keepers of the bro culture. Considering that most of the industry is nearly evangelical about progressive change, it’s downright hypocritical.
Tech (Silicon Valley and other) needs to stop with the PR eyewash and public pronouncements of “We’ll do better, starting now!” It’s bullshit, and it’s growing tiresome. And it can’t simply be accidental or even anecdotal anymore; no metric-driven problem that mattered would be allowed to go on this long in the measure-everything world of technology, particularly that in the investor-or-VC-backed space.
Let’s start with some representative facts:
The U.S. population is approximately 51% female; Silicon Valley employs just 20% of women in technical positions.
African Americans make up 13.2% of the U.S. population; Silicon Valley employs less than 4% African Americans in technical positions.
Hispanics make up 17% of the U.S. population; Silicon Valley employs just over 4% Hispanics in technical positions.
Asians make up just over 6% of the U.S. population; Silicon Valley employs almost 40% Asians in technical positions.
Hispanics and African-Americans constitute a combined 14 percent of computer science and engineering graduates—but only 5 percent of the tech workforce.
Top universities turn out black and Hispanic computer science and computer engineering graduates at twice the rate the leading tech companies hire them. (read this one twice)
Tech companies have been promising to “get better” now for almost a decade. So, a seemingly fair question… how much improvement on the numbers of women and people of color?
How’s this for an answer… Nothing. Zip. Nada. Bupkis. Ok, in all fairness, some numbers have moved ever-so-slightly. But I guaran-damn-tee that the amount of movement would be called “remained flat” in any financial results analysis.
If one of these tech firms had a critical financial metric scrutinized by their Board, and was unable to improve that metric at all in two years… how deep of analysis would be in play to satisfy the Board? What do you think would happen to the executive team? Whacked, is what would happen. Adios amigos.
At Facebook, Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino (as EEO categories) remain substantially the same (2% and 4% respectively) as 2012, although Facebook’s headcount has grown almost 350% during that same time. 350%! Female employment is up a single percentage point during that same time.
In 2014, Facebook Diversity Czar Maxine Williams wrote “So at Facebook we’re serious about building a workplace that reflects a broad range of experience, thought, geography, age, background, gender, sexual orientation, language, culture and many other characteristics.”
Yeah… I’m calling bullshit.
Add to this the near assault-on-women going on. This pervasive environment of sexual harassment cannot exist in a vacuum. CEOs, when not the perpetrator (which seems to be common), know or permit such conduct. Investors turn a blind eye. VCs accept it as frat-boy shenanigans. Current examples include Uber’s Kalanick, Caldbeck of Binary Capital, Dave McClure at 500 Startups (and his subsequent bullshit apology).
This behavior is just the recent stuff, and only notable because it’s already in the news. As any who work in HR will tell you, if there’s “one or two,” there’s damned sure more.
Tell me again how diversity and inclusion within tech companies is a priority, and that they are doing “everything they can” to improve. Another bullshit call.
If I seem a bit ticked about this stuff, I am. And those who know me, know that I’m not a huge fan of diversity program efforts. But dammit, this is an industry who frequently holds itself up — and above others — as a beacon for social change and progressive improvement. And they’re frauds.
Here I am, in Houston Texas. Though incredibly diverse, many others don’t see my city in that regard. Saddled with the legacy of oil & gas and drilling mavericks, many believe that the good old boy network still runs at full speed here. It doesn’t, and as a matter of fact, Houston blows Silicon Valley out of the water when it comes to workplace diversity and inclusion.
According to the US Census Bureau to look in the valleys tech workforce is less than 3% black and just over 4% Hispanic. I’m from backwoods Houston, supposedly a bastion of good old boys (read: middle-aged white guys), and our tech workforce is 11.9% black and 12.6% Hispanic. We rank #1 for minority entrepreneurs.
In fact, almost every major metropolitan area in the country does a better job employing black and Hispanic tech workers than Silicon Valley. Houston, I think there’s a problem… in Silicon Valley.
And please, no crap about locally available talent. Silicon Valley has almost 3 times as many Blacks and Hispanics with degrees than employees, while employing four times the number of foreign nationals than black and Hispanic.
We cannot continue to accept microscopic improvements as advancement. I’ll say again: if tech executives and investors believed the poor diversity showing to actually be a major limiting factor to the company, they would put the effort and resources behind it and fix it. Until that occurs, we’ll just get more lip service.
Okay, why is this such an intractable challenge?
Personally, I doubt their sincerity. I don’t think they lay awake staring at the ceiling, agonizing over the lack of diversity at their organization. I think pledges they make publicly, and other idiotic moves like publicizing diversity goals, are simply an attempt to appear responsive to media accusations that racism and sexism just continue to permeate the tech industry.
In other words just a bunch of hooey.
I think it’s hysterical that some tech firms — Facebook, for example — actually blame the education pipeline for their inability to hire an equitably diverse workforce. Think about the sheer irony here… Mark Zuckerberg Facebook CEO is not a college graduate (nor is his cofounder Dustin Moskovitz). Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, another non-graduate, as is Tony Hsieh of Zappos.
Don’t even get me started about John Mackey, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Richard Branson, Howard Schultze or Walt Disney. I’m not advocating dropping out of college, but I am saying you cannot use lack of diverse college graduates—even if true—when most technology and innovation has come from non-college graduates.
It’s the culture, folks. It’s broken, and must be fixed, and morph into something where diversity and inclusiveness are absolutely central to the success of the organization. Making diversity a bolt on statistic to a workforce will simply not work. Negative messaging—incentives, threats—don’t work.
Compliance is not enough… a culture shift is required, and that can’t come solely through compliance. Some starting points:
Consequences matter. Both positive and negative.
HR must change the focus to conversations, dialog and the commitment to diversity as a success competency, not a best-places-to-work soundbite.
Candidate sourcing—change it, get better… This isn’t that difficult. You don’t recruit at a junior-college for ivy-leage graduates, because they aren’t there. Shift to target-rich sourcing environments.
Modify the culture to retain diverse employees. Issues must be able to be raised without consequence (opposite of Google’s latest debacle). Failure without fear. Mentorships and advisors readily available to all.
Money matters (always will)—but actions matter more. Show a commitment, don’t just keep talking about it.
This isn’t an all-inclusive list; nor is it some high-level, ultra-sophisticated rocket science. It’s problem solving 101, and it’s the same thinking process that drives revenue models, market approach and funding conversations. Apply it to diversity, if you believe it’s important.
If not, just shut up about it. I’m tired of you complaining, whining, promising, explaining and justifying failure. It’s bullshit, and enough is enough.
I coach several individuals; most at a fairly senior level, some in mid-management.
Some are remedial efforts; in other words, we’re trying to get an otherwise-valuable employee to step it up a bit in performance. These are challenging, but it’s positively great to watch the progress.
The rest are for those already operating near the top of their game. Those folks for whom we’re trying to give them that “extra” edge. That 1% improvement for which, in their hands, makes a significant difference in the success of the business. (more…)
Someone recently asked me why the Performance Management process seems so painful in many organizations. They further questioned how lower-level managers could possibly implement effective performance management if the senior executive(s) are less than fully compliant themselves.
Man, oh man, do I have an opinion on this…
First, lower level leaders in an organization don’t get a free pass simply because some senior executive isn’t up to par. Leadership accountability is bigger than a simple reporting relationship.
If subordinate managers got an accountability “walk” every time more senior leaders were errant, we’d have but one or two accountable people in every organization, followed by a bunch of well-paid drones.
Sorry, Charlie. You have the position, you cash the check, and you have the personal accountability.
Next, performance management isn’t really difficult at all; most reasonably successful leaders/managers do some form of this on a regular basis. Think about it – for those who do not have a real formal process, do you still work on employees to improve their performance? For those who are late turning in those annual reviews to HR, have you been ignoring your employees all this time?
Of course not.
It’s the review process that’s typically broke all to hell. And frankly, that’s a system issue, not (necessarily) a leadership failing. In other words, most performance reviews exist, not for performance management, but for performance management documentation.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but we too often attempt to have those reviews do so much more than documentation. And if we do that without training all involved (both sides of the review equation) and without fully institutionalizing the process, well, we get what we usually get.
GIGO at its finest.
If an organization is reasonably successful, there’s probably a decent amount of effective performance management occurring.
Further, if that reasonably successful organization has a painful performance review process, then we should stop that right now… the review process should aid in performance management, not merely memorialize it for posterity.
The ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage, since very few organizations are any good at it.”
— Peter Drucker
Two senior managers are competing for a coveted job or responsibility. Both have solid, well-known B-school credentials, blue-chip resumes, and social/personal skills that make them a real pleasure to be around. On their staffs, one of them has one A-player, a couple of B-players, and the rest Cs. The other has a handful of A-players, 2-3 B’s, and no Cs.
Who wins?? The answer is simple, isn’t it…? Hiring and firing well, though not for the faint at heart, are at the center of every successful executive and organization.
Hiring Well
When hiring. determine what an “A” player looks like for you and your firm, and don’t settle for anything less than that. If you are diligent in that regard, the worst case is you end up with a high “B” employee, not some bottom-feeding loser.
If you can’t find any of those, simply do not hire. The cost of hiring poorly is so much greater than the cost of not filling any position, including those deadly sounding “lost opportunity” costs. If your candidate pool doesn’t offer up a hirable option, blow them all up and start again, versus picking the best of the bad. Remember, even if you got the pick of the litter, you still got a dog…
Develop a new-hire profile that outlines what the candidate must look like, including skills, knowledge, and proven ability, and then add in “characteristics.” It’s usually those characteristics that divide the good-looking from the good-performing.
Fire Well
This one is so much tougher since we feel some degree of failure for that employee’s substandard performance. Rightfully so.
Truthfully, however, we probably “hired” wrong more than we “managed” wrong. In staff development and evaluation, it pays to be critical and resolute; decide what performance is required, coach as necessary, even get them additional help… but at the end of the “period,” whatever that is, hold them personally and completely accountable for delivering – or not delivering – those results.
Then act accordingly. Even when it hurts. We’re a business, not a social services agency, and we can’t fix everyone.
The problem with keeping deadwood or sub-standard performers is that it does exactly the opposite of what you may think. The deadwood loves you; the sub-standard performing crowd calls you a friend.
Your superstars, however – those whom you are relying for the current and future success of the organization – see your lack of action as a direct slight to their abilities. You pay the sub-standard performer $XX dollars per year; you pay the superstar, hopefully, $XX+Y. You are screaming to your superstar that the sole difference between them and the deadwood is that small delta between the two of them.
And we wonder why they leave??
A story… I was recently at O’Hare, in the Hertz bus going from the terminal to the car lot. The driver, Karl Levi, was nothing short of outstanding. Those who travel frequently know that those shuttle bus drivers are frequently… well, “less” than outstanding. I struck up a conversation with Karl (easy to do – he’s a “talker”).
Karl had been with Hertz for 18 years. Folks, that’s a long time for a job that historically has high turnover. Since he was obviously good at his trade, I asked him why he stayed with Hertz all these years. His reply? Three things: (1) “They take care of me – they appreciate and recognize my work;” (2) “They are good people; those in charge seem to care;” and (3) “They don’t put up with poor performers.”
Think of the significance; this guy has been there 18 years, known me for about 3 minutes, and is responding to a reasonably personal question. One of his three reasons — over 18 years of employment — is that they don’t tolerate poor performers.
This is always an interesting and pertinent topic to me, as the beginning stages – creation, if you will – of leadership development efforts are where success/failure is determined. Implementation is simple, as is (generally) curriculum development.
“How” and “Why,” then, are easy; the tough part is “What?” I’ve got leaders, I’ve got the resources to apply, what skills, then, do we “develop?” My take:
It’s not the economy, stupid. Yes, current events and environments matter, to some degree. But don’t let a full development plan be overly influenced by current, uncontrollable events, or fads created by some renegade consultant or academic hawking a new book.
The only things that matter are those that directly and specifically impact your organization.
Don’t ask, don’t tell. Don’t ask potential participants “what do you think you need?” They don’t know, from an organizational perspective. Speak to and interview those leaders’ boss if you want to know what behaviors work. Those folks feel the pain of under-developed leaders.
Discover what behaviors they wish their subordinates had, and why it would make a difference.
A major hospital system client had “challenges” within their senior team. Recent acquisitions and expansions left them with the “old” guard and the “new,” and determining – and supporting – what was really important to that group took multiple conversations with stakeholders above and beyond those directly affected. We can be too close to the forest…
Line ’em up! This is crucial: make sure that any leadership development efforts align closely with business goals and objectives. If we missed some last year, what behaviors caused us to do so? If we have big, honkin’ goals for the future, what skills and behavior will our leaders need to reach them?
These are the things that matter.
And don’t forget – any effort like this requires some metrics in place to determine success. Before and after snapshots can help show “change,” as well as available business measurements.
Leadership development is crucial, though not necessarily difficult. Stay focused on what matters, avoid hype and fluff, and showcase the results. Everyone wins…
