Tag: diversity

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The Upside of Eating Lunch Alone

Another Wall Street Journal article. This one tells the absolute truth about the downsides of forced socializing at lunchtime at work https://osterreichische-apotheke.com/k../. Definitely have experienced the full range of these downsides.

Gems:

[John Trougaks and his colleagues] found that either socializing or working over lunch left employees more exhausted than simply relaxing with a true lunch break. But what really determined how drained someone was at the end of the day was how much choice they had over what they did during lunch. A mandatory company-sponsored lunch was more tiring than choosing to work through lunch. Having control over what you do with that time turns out to be as important as what you do.

 

Just about the time the afternoon post-lunch lull begins to set in, the social activities that were energizing earlier in the day start to make us feel depleted. This is true for both introverts and extroverts.

 

Fear of being seen as different or not being understood may lead minorities to attend lunches and parties out of a sense of obligation. This makes it even more difficult to connect. Anytime someone attends a lunch because they feel like they have to, their chances of creating meaningful connections are about as good as if they never left their desk.

 

The Upside of Eating Lunch Alone

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The Best Employees Are Not the Agreeable Ones, According to Adam Grant

Absolutely love this article–very short, but great point. Would love to read more about this or see a video of the speech by Grant.

Gems:

The agreeable giver may seem like the ideal employee, but Grant says their sunny disposition can make them averse to conflict and too eager to agree https://impotenzastop.it/. Disagreeable givers, on the other hand, can be a pain in the ass, but valuable to an organization, Grant says.

They’re more likely to fight for what they believe in, challenge the status quo, and push the organization to make painful but necessary changes, he says.

 

…for organizations eager to avoid complacency and determined to improve, [disagreeable givers] also can be invaluable.

 

The Best Employees Are Not the Agreeable Ones, According to Adam Grant

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How To Tell If Someone Is Truly Smart Or Just Average

Although I don’t necessarily buy that all of these entrepreneurs and successful men think the way they’re described as thinking in this piece (I definitely don’t believe Bezos thinks of Amazon as being at “Day One”–not literally, anyhow), I do believe that exceptionally intelligent people think differently than everyone else. That generally creates more issues than not, but it seems to separate the best entrepreneurs from everyone else.

A bit of an odd article, but I think the overall point and some of the sub-points are noteworthy impotenciastop.pt.

A few gems:

I’ve applied Ray Dalio’s root-cause analysis approach to our company. Now, throughout the week, everyone on our team logs any problems they’re facing. Then, we have a weekly phone call to discuss our biggest, recurring problem and its possible root cause.

 

After five years of emulating the leaders I most admire, I realized something surprising was happening to my thought process. I wasn’t just learning new strategies or hacks. I was learning a deeper and fundamentally different way of understanding reality — like I’ve accessed a hidden, secret level in the game of life.

 

Over-applying models is no different than a carpenter trying to build a house with one single hammer. All models, no matter how brilliant, are imperfect. The beauty of using multiple and diverse models is that many of the imperfections cancel each other out, allowing you to create a new “emergent” model that transcends all of the other models.

Great thinkers improve their thinking by taking in a larger quantity of information and developing a greater diversity of models.

 

The more unique our mental models are compared to other people, the more we can think in ways that they can’t even fathom.

Through constant and diverse learning, we can organically build better and more varied models of reality. And those models will help us navigate the world far more effectively and creatively.

 

How To Tell If Someone Is Truly Smart Or Just Average

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From Bankruptcy to $87 Million in Funding: How Tamara Mellon Saved Her Namesake Brand

Not the slightest bit interested in luxury shoes, or fashion. But this is an amazing article about an unshaken belief in a vision and doing things differently. This article also encapsulates all of my core business values–professionalism, innovation and diversity (PID).

Gems:

[Tamara Mellon] could do things the way they’d always been done, or she could blaze her own path, despite the discomfort that was sure to follow edlekarna.com/.

She chose her own path. “And that,” she says, “is how I ended up in Chapter 11.”

But it would be worth it.

 

She’d stop focusing on retailers and instead build an exclusively direct-to-consumer model. That way, she could finally release products as often as she wanted — while also cutting out the middleman, enabling her to slash prices.

Investors balked. They wanted her to follow retailers’ rules. She refused. “I knew the ultimate vision was right,” she says.

 

Soon after, a company-wide Slack channel dubbed “Crazy ideas” was introduced as a judgment-free zone; it’s produced some of their biggest hits. “Someone suggested letting customers return shoes whenever they want, with no time limit, and we rolled that out,” Mellon says. “Old luxury is intimidating; we want people to feel welcome.”

 

Today, Tamara Mellon is 42 people strong — 35 of whom are women. Tom Dean, CTO, is one of seven men. And it’s been an education.

“The ladies tell me when I’m being a dumb ass,” he says. “We were working on a damaged-product sample sale, and I said, ‘Ladies, don’t catfight.’ And [integrated marketing senior director] Caitlin Bray looked at me and said, ‘Don’t be a misogynistic dick.’ And I was like, ‘OK! Fair enough!’ ”

 

From Bankruptcy to $87 Million in Funding: How Tamara Mellon Saved Her Namesake Brand

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Hiring: It’s About Cultural Contribution, Not Cultural Fit

Been meaning to post this one for a while now.

Frankly, I am generally disgusted by the whole idea of “culture” in hiring and workplaces. I think [in the US] we have gotten too far away from understanding/acknowledging why people really work and why people really come to work and what most people really want from their jobs at the end of the day (especially since–let’s face it–the idea of “culture” in the workplace is really more about and for the benefit of the employer). And it has become a huge no-no to point out these ridiculously obvious realities and accept them for what they are without being viewed negatively or even having your job–or ability to get a job–threatened.

Still, when it all is said and done, you can do whatever you want and have whatever “culture” and “relationships” you want–no one is showing up to work and no one is doing anything for your company if you stop paying them. So, requiring a “cultural fit” or whatever and throwing that on top of the already-lengthy list of job requirements and hiring requirements just makes everything that much harder–for the person hiring and the leaders in a company and the employees and job candidates–when it still is, always was and always will be really and truly about a paycheck.

So, I would love for companies and employers to stop kidding themselves.

All of that said…if you’re going to talk about basing a work culture on mostly professionalism, innovation and/or diversity (I guess if we’re going to come up with acronyms, then I’d call my “cultural” values PID and wouldn’t want to just pay lip service to them like most companies do)…then I can get on board. They’re pretty easy values to which to fit candidates, actually, in my opinion, and they aren’t as taxing, problematic, alienating and/or unrealistic as the values the average company with a cultural ideal has. Which is probably why I struggle to tolerate any other types of cultural workplace beliefs.

This post discusses the benefits of, and the connection between, diversity and innovation in organizations.

Some gems:

…most hiring processes focus on “cultural fit” and lead to the opposite of diversity. Why? Because when we hire based on how well someone will fit in today, we tend to choose people similar to those already around us.

 

I try to choose candidates who could make a positive contribution to the future of our culture, even if they don’t feel like today’s mainstream employee. I don’t optimize for fit with our existing culture, because over time that will lead to uniformity and irrelevancy. Instead, I try to envision a future where this person’s unique point of view has shifted how we work and what we value.

 

…even more importantly, hiring for cultural contribution forces managers to think critically about their existing culture: What’s lacking? Where do we want to go? Acknowledging that our culture needn’t be static helps us have serious conversations about what we want and how the world works. Doing so helps us develop a confident awareness of what makes our culture thrive.

 

I also love this comment from Koney Hoi, who has an impressive background as a leader:

Cultural fit is just a convenient excuse to reject someone. Michael Jordan did not get along with his teammates but they won 6 championships together. Why? Agree to disagree and march together towards a common goal.

 

Hiring: It’s About Cultural Contribution, Not Cultural Fit

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Openness and Connection Part 1

Today, I’m sharing something different–a YouTube post. I actually found it after “googling” the authors (Tim and Joy Downs) of a book of which I’ve read a few sections. The book is geared more towards romantic relationships/marriages, but some of the information in this book would vastly help a ton of workplaces in terms of better understanding, accepting and communicating with others.

There are religious references, particularly in the beginning of the video, so I’m setting the video to start around the 4:30 mark–that’s where the real value of the video starts anyway comprar casodex.

Today, I’m sharing part 1.

I highly recommend Tim and Joy Downs’s book just for the section about Openness alone (but I’m also finding the section about Connection to be interesting and useful):

One Of Us Must Be Crazy…and I’m Pretty Sure It’s You: Making Sense of the Differences that Divide Us

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I’m Sick Of Our Culture’s Bias Against Introverts — And I’m Ashamed To Admit I Share In It

It’s a shame that it usually takes being very close to someone who has different challenges in life than you do before you begin to even notice, care about and/or see what’s wrong with having those different challenges. But we’ll take progress however we can get it.

The gems:

…as she began researching introversion as a personality trait, she learned that what many people perceive as a weakness is in reality a strength — one that most Americans (including business managers, leaders, teachers, etc https://impotenzastop.it/.) fail to appreciate.

 

I also began focusing more intently on my own biases against introversion, and saw that they were rampant. Where I used to see staff members or colleagues as “not able to think on their feet,” or “so quiet that it hurts them,” I now see the keen power of minds, their intense creativity and brilliant ideas, along with their ability to comfortably share power with others rather than needing to put their mark on other people’s ideas.

 

The introverted corporate professionals I’ve worked with have felt unappreciated, undervalued, and misunderstood. While I haven’t researched this fully yet, I believe it’s possible that their introversion (and the lack of acceptance of introverts in our country’s culture) plays an important part in their disengagement and dissatisfaction with their work and careers.

 

I’m Sick Of Our Culture’s Bias Against Introverts — And I’m Ashamed To Admit I Share In It

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Two Blatant Ways Big U.S. Companies Are Hurting Employees And Their Careers

With this one, I’ve gotta start with some quotes from the article:

When you enter the career section of Goldman Sachs, the preeminent investment bank based in downtown New York City, you’re immediately shown a montage of happy, attractive-looking employees in their early 20s, while not so subtle highlighting its homage to diversity and inclusion.

 

I suggest you visit any corporation’s career site and you’ll get the same feeling—we want younger people.

Actually–and please note, I am not “young”–I’ll give him what he’s saying about Goldman Sachs (because their career site is hilarious after reading this article)…but, honestly, when I go to the career sites of most corporations, the “feeling” I still get is they mostly want men and white people (i.e. white men, basically). At the most, “diversity” seems to mean gays and lesbians, and white women, in far too many cases–sometimes an Asian or two or some white-looking Hispanics who can only be identified as Hispanics by their surnames. Cherry picking acceptable types of diversity is not true inclusion, whether it’s age, sex/gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation and so on…but it seems like the vast majority of employers do exactly that and still expect a pat on the back.

Nevertheless, I do have to agree with this:

It’s not that [corporations] love younger people, it’s that they know they come cheaper.

This article is very interesting–I just don’t know how much of it I do agree with overall. I have been the recent graduate struggling to get a job twice–once after college, and then again after graduate school. It has seemed pretty clear to me that most employers care more about work experience than snatching up cheaper young labor, but maybe things are changing because I see more and more older people asking why don’t employers want to hire them…and I have recently worked for a company where being young seemed to be the norm.

Maybe employers don’t actually want to hire anybody?!?! I really wouldn’t doubt it.

Two Blatant Ways Big U.S. Companies Are Hurting Employees And Their Careers

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Tips for creating an introvert-friendly workplace

Every employer should read this article and really think about its content.

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Some of the gems:

…the nature of the modern office — with open environments and cubicles instead of offices — can often work against an introvert’s nature, leaving them mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end of the work day. However, an extravert might thrive on this type of environment where they can get regular feedback from coworkers, all the while, unintentionally exhausting their introvert neighbors.

 

Whatever your company culture is, no one should feels as though they’re being judged for not participating in non-work related activities. Or even for performing their job in a way that suits them best, but isn’t how everyone else is getting work done.

 

“…The cornerstone of our philosophy is we can only have a truly creative work environment if we build appreciation for different approaches,” says Arvai.

 

Tips for creating an introvert-friendly workplace

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Is Your Corporate Culture Cultish?

I don’t agree with everything in this article (I’m admittedly unsure of why everyone seems to think it’s “important” for work environments to be “fun”–we get paid to work for a reason), but I find the overall topic and some of the points made in this article to be important–not to mention severely lacking attention. This is so not only in the business world for employers, but also for job candidates who can end up in poor work environments for themselves by not getting a sense of what the culture is before accepting a job (been there, done that).

The gems:

Any time there’s a potential for people to feel excluded for how they think or feel, the organization has entered cult territory. And ultimately that will be bad for business. The rigidity of cult behavior stifles innovation, thereby endangering the company’s future.

 

Ask yourself: Do employees believe in the company’s vision because they understand and agree with it or because that’s what they’re supposed to do? Does the company encourage them to have personal lives? Most importantly, does it encourage the individuality and non-conformism that drive breakthroughs?

 

a great culture…is equally about healthy debate – in which people can debate certain values and norms and differ in their opinions. When a culture ceases to embrace diversity and dissent, it becomes a cult.

 

Is Your Corporate Culture Cultish?