Elon | Apathy | DEIB Approach | Overwork

OK, I'll start with Elon: The Information and Inc. Magazine report on a memo he sent to Tesla managers saying "all hires had to go through him."

This can be good in some ways -- famously, in the early years of 谷歌 , Larry Page approved almost every new hire to make sure the company was scaling properly. Elon may be doing this, but it seems more likely it's a tactic of micromanagement and cost containment because he hired a new CEO at Twitter and has more time to put back into Tesla. The benefit of the doubt, but executives should only be deeply involved in lower-tier #hiring if they have an actionable plan around aligning new hires to a broader purpose, not "culture fit," which is a broken way of describing sameness.

Apathy: I wrote this on Wednesday. I figured it would be popular, but its popularity surprised even me.

It's about this idea of "languishing" and how we're expected to care about so many things, but there's a finite amount of time for us to care about core, relevant things. Ultimately, organizations need to be better about priorities, and that starts with relevant alignment at the top of any project or change management initiative or anything else. That's how CULTURE PARTNERS begins all engagements, FYI.

New DEIB research: Pew Research Center released some new DEIB research on Wednesday morning:

There were some good new nuggets in there, including this one:

• Relatively small shares of workers place a lot of importance on diversity at their workplace.?About three in ten say it is extremely or very important to them to work somewhere with a mix of employees of different races and ethnicities (32%) or ages (28%). Roughly a quarter say the same about having a workplace with about an equal mix of men and women (26%) and 18% say this about a mix of employees of different sexual orientations.

One of our focuses in this space has been understanding and talking to leaders about interculturalism. It may seem semantic, but there is a difference between multiculturalism -- which underscores a lot of current approaches to DEIB -- and interculturalism.

Multiculturalism?emphasizes the coexistence of different cultures within society; you maintain your cultural differences and identity, and those differences are celebrated as you recognize and respect the cultural differences of employees.

Interculturalism?emphasizes the interaction and idea exchange between different groups; you are looking more for mutual understanding and respect, with the goal being a shared sense of belonging.

美国普林斯顿大学 political psychologist Karen Stenner has long argued that people with authoritarian personalities — those valuing strong and forceful control of situations and society, a trait more common in senior leaders — can ultimately become?more racist?when faced with the inclusion message, not less.

“Well-meaning programs celebrating multiculturalism…might aggravate more than educate, might intensify, rather than diminish, intolerance,” she has written.

For the DEI piece of culture to work properly, you need to focus on the experience level first -- and in an interculturalism model, the experience level is driven by consistent messaging (and action) on shared understanding and respect.?

You're trying to build belonging, much as any good manager would build around psychological safety, as opposed to showcasing differences more overtly.

Worth a watch:

This is an important cultural piece and discussion, especially since COVID. Most people I know want to work hard, and most leaders we work with deeply value hard work and want to see themselves, and their people, succeed. But you also have to respect and understand that work is not your entire life. If someone needs to leave at 3pm to make a soccer game, that's fine. If someone wants to work from Hawaii for a week and they can be productive and make all their meetings and deadlines, that's fine. Hard work and productivity matter. Presenteeism and "Green Light Syndrome" should not matter.

A happier workforce? This is from WorkLife :

Here's a good pull quote:

“Once compensation is competitive, it becomes the quality of leadership, the organizational culture, and work-life balance that really drive job satisfaction and retention,” Allan Schweyer , principal researcher for human capital at The Conference Board , said.

Indeed. Couldn't agree more.

More respect for mothers: As another Mother's Day has come and gone, I think we need to echo this one from the rooftops:

What is "The Action Trap?" The Action Trap occurs when leaders get caught in a continual cycle of implementing new processes and systems (taking new actions) to change results rather than addressing the underlying experiences leading to those results.

At Culture Partners, this is one of the biggest things we counsel against when we work with leaders. It's this idea that action and movement must inherently be good, so let's institute a new process, or a new initiative, or a new meeting, or a new call, or a new something just to be in perpetual motion. The Action Trap leads to burnout, leads to cultures without contemplation, leads to the best people leaving, and leads to a hedonistic treadmill of the next thing, or the next shiny object, or the next deadline. Work shouldn't be a guitar circle where we sing about feelings, no. But it also needs moments of pause, reflection, contemplation, and actual strategy about the next steps.

In the meantime, you can look at some of our spotlights for examples of cultures shifted and reborn with the right focus:

Phoenix: Some of our team was in Phoenix this week for HR.com #EmpowerTA and #EmpowerDEIB , and this tweet from Matt Charney summarized what a lot of people at the conference were discussing:

That's great to see.

What else do you want to cover next week?