Culturati: in Conversation

Trending topics for fall 2022 have centered around quiet quitting and return to office, as well as economic concerns, ongoing mental health challenges, and the broader?Resign, Resigned, Re-sign?not far behind. Additional questions remain in queue on?ESG, the?future of work, and?DEI efficacy.

Search “return to office” online and every major publication has put in their two cents. We have RTO insights and opinions from?The New York Times,?Fortune,?CNN,?Bloomberg, even?Vanity Fair.*

*I say “even” as if their ‘less serious’ coverage of conditioners and dildos to die for somehow degrades the work. It doesn’t, and I shouldn’t. This acerbic piece by Delia Cai is nothing short of brilliant.

More CEOs are pushing to get employees back in the office and more employees are pulling away (i.e.?quiet quitting). Forbes reports that in their?latest quarterly survey?of more than 10,000 knowledge workers, only one in three globally work in the office full-time — with only one in five actually wanting to. According to?Kastle’s “back to work barometer”?— the U.S. national occupancy average is 43.8% (led, interestingly, by Austinites). The key seems to be flexibility. (Read more at?McKinsey & Company.)

The term “quiet quitting” may be a new name, but we all know it’s an old game. When considering this in relation to evergreen issues such as productivity, performance, and attrition,?Harvard Business Review?suggests looking first at middle-management. In research gathered since 2020 on 2,801 managers rated by 13,048 direct reports, the lowest rated managers* had only 20% of their employees willing to go the extra mile while 14% were quietly quitting. This compares to managers with the highest ratings who saw 62% of their direct reports willing to give more and only 3% performing the bare minimum of their job description.

Culturati in conversation…

Over the past few months I’ve touched base with some of our Culturati Scholars to discuss what they’re hearing, what they’ve been working on, and what they predict for the future. On the phone with? Steven Tomlinson (Seminary of the Southwest), we talked about potential rules of engagement for civil discourse.

Forming good habits on how we talk, listen, and make room to understand pre-judgment is critical not just in navigating our polarized world and work environments, but in breaking down barriers to build truly inclusive communities. (Read more from Steven Tomlinson in Harvard Business Review.) He also highlighted how the issue of working from home vs. returning to the office affects people differently in material ways, as well as the importance of examining whose power is being amplified and whose is reduced in either case.

Live from San Francisco (via Zoom), I had my “face-to-face” fangirl moment with? Rajkumari Neogy . Culturati Scholar, speaker, author, and executive coach focusing on epigenetics and neurobiology, Rajkumari is crazy smart and gets straight to the point. She’ll be helping us define what inclusion means and determine how we can better embody the values we espouse. At the forefront of her work these days are issues of gaslighting, psychological safety, divergent diversity, racism’s effect on both sides of the brain, and the science of hope. I've been enjoying her?Biology of Belonging bootcamp?which started in September.

At the University of Texas at Austin campus (hook ‘em!), I met with? Ethan Burris , Senior Associate Dean, McCombs School of Business & Professor of Management. We chatted about everything from trending topics (quiet quitting) to evergreen (backfill) to cyclical (new spins on employee engagement and satisfaction). Currently, the latter we’re all calling “thriving.” Microsoft even provided us a handy definition via?HBR?which is “to be energized and empowered to do meaningful work.” With each iteration of this construct (every five or six years) comes a new set of techniques and strategies… The best of which you can find here and in our?On Culture?newsletter. As Ethan describes our Culturati community, we are “leaders who are interested in culture and developing a business model where you don’t treat people like shit to make a buck.”

On the west side of campus at the IC2 Institute, I sat down with? S. Craig Watkins ?who is the University of Texas at Austin’s Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor, founding director of the Institute for Media Innovation, Director of the?Good Systems?Racial Justice Research Focus Area, and the MLK Visiting Professor at MIT. Craig spoke at our 2022 Culturati Summit on?Ethics & AI, and we explored this in greater detail at our recent meeting. We thought more deeply and intentionally about wellbeing in the workplace, how we can create space to build workplace cultures and environments that are future-oriented, how corporations and organizations evaluate their impact, and how designing more inclusive economies will lead to healthier communities.

His work on AI with researchers from MIT helps organizations think about and identify blind spots in predicated, biased data which may have equity implications when building or acquiring AI-based technology. The fear is scaling historical discrimination. The goal is to define a pathway to solve for this. We want to help develop a framework and vocabulary for organizational application. We’re also interested in commissioning research to standardize a toolkit to screen for and identify fault lines, particularly for verticals such as health and finance.

As I engage more deeply with the context of Culturati, I find it fascinating how the main challenges of our time care naught for org size. We have a really small (but mighty) team, and though I’ve only ever worked remotely with them (which my dog and tbh, I, vastly prefer?most?of the time) we’re still figuring out how to optimize culture in shifting settings. Mondays we have our L10 on Zoom which we start by sharing a personal and professional highlight from the week before... Yes, please tell me about what your dog did. (Oh wait, that’s me.) The rest of the time we chat on Slack (though Eugene will text or call). We also stay organized via Monday.com, and I have to say…big fan. Something about changing the color codes to “in progress” or “complete” is ridiculously satisfying, and it’s an easy way for the team to flag my attention as needed.

And not to jump on the bandwagon, but what we’re trying to incorporate more of now is in-person time. Though studies show, and?we know, that teams can absolutely still be connected, productive, and organizations can have great cultures being totally remote there’s just?something?about the energy exchange that only happens when you’re together IRL.

Don’t miss…

In the September edition of Culturati: Magazine,?Eugene checks-in from the CODE conference in Los Angeles. Co-founder,?Josh Jones-Dilworth, issues an “order of magnitude” challenge. Staff writer,?Annie Parmelly, explores the challenges of RTO edicts. Speaker, author, and Fortune 500 consultant,?Anne Grady shares her incredible story?and how it shaped her specialization in resilience training. And member company,?Cushman & Wakefield, provides ‘return to office’ reports.

We're excited to share…

Culturati: On Demand?is officially live and ready for your perusal. Search by keyword, topic, speaker, or any one of our advanced filters. And, congratulations to 2022 Culturati: Summit Chair, ALBERT SWATSON , on a hugely successful Big Brothers, Big Sisters Ice Ball which he and his wife, Sarah, presided over as Co-Chairs. (I’ve applied!) I spoke recently at the Junior League of Austin on DEIB. We’re adding more neuroscience to our thought leadership & programming. And, we're wrapping up surveys on next year’s pillars and through lines. Your insight is welcome.