Category: Persons

Be human to human beings

Whether it’s Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, mass shootings, massive firings in some industries, the war in Ukraine, or the war in the Middle East… it is reasonable to expect that any, some, or all of these events -and others- have impacted and still impact the minds and hearts of the people in your charge at work.

I invite you (and keep in mind that I am not beyond imploring or begging) that you do not turn a blind eye to how your people are affected, and that how they are affected impacts their ability to perform. I’m inviting you to be human. Being human to another human being is not a sign of weakness nor does it entail a loss of power.

And why should you?

Well, because they are human. They’re not things.

Call me a master of the obvious and I will say that there is enough evidence to show that managers and business owners often override this with the doctrine of some dead economist to the effect that “everyone is looking for their self-interest” or “employees have contractual obligations”.

That, by the way, is eons away from the other discourse they hold for the gallery: “We’re a family”, “people are our most important asset”, and -wait for it- “We’re all in this together”.

Again, why should you?

Well, because you are human too. As managers and business owners, we work with people, not through people.

We work with what’s there – now. And that changes from day to day as people have successes, are tired, have children, are worried, navigate grief, move from one city to another, go back to school, etc. It also changes based on what is going on in their environments, close and remote.

Over the years I found that the best teachers and the best managers and business owners all work from the same premise: you teach/manage the people in front of you. Not the ones you wish you had, but the ones you have, the ones that are there.

And not only are they different from one another in abilities and readiness, but they are also different from one day to the next. That is who you work with. Every day.

People are struggling.

There is a lot going on and they carry quite a bit from the recent past.

On the odd chance that you feel this might be too touchy-feely for you, I will say this: Emotions exist. They affect what we think about and how we think. The reasonable thing to do is to acknowledge emotions and work with them. To dismiss them altogether is, well, irrational.

So the invitation is this: be human to your fellow human beings, in difficult times and always.

I know you can. I trust you will.

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I originally published this text in the October 2023 issue of my monthly newsletter.

Go HERE for more essays.

Suggestions for 2022

Take wrong turns.

Talk to strangers.

Open unmarked doors.

And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing.

Do things without always knowing how they’ll turn out.

You’re curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off.

There are so many adventures that you miss because you’re waiting to think of a plan.

To find them, look for tiny interesting choices.

And remember that you are always making up the future as you go.

— Randall Munroe

 

The job candidate selection process is a fail. Try this.

The job candidate selection process does not work. Even Google has taken back their famed clever interview questions. There is just no data to support that the job candidate selection process is effective at screening for success or at predicting that candidates will remain with the company.

A few years ago I worked with a large, successful engineering firm (it might have been the largest in the country at the time) that had a unique way of selecting and hiring candidates.

The owner of the company told me that their approach was based on two observations:

  1. There is no telling from a job interview, or a series of interviews, whether a candidate will be good at the job, be happy in the company, and will remain for longer than x years. And, if as a company these three criteria (or any other you identify) are important to you, then job interviews are useless and a random process is just as good.
  2. Nor can you tell whether we will want a a person to remain in the company once we get to know the person and the person gets to know us.

The process

So the process they established was as follows:

  1. Identify a series of criteria that any candidate should meet. Because no criterion has proven to be predictive then pick the ones you think/feel might work;
  2. Once you have received applications, pick out the ones that meet all criteria;
  3. From those who meet all criteria, pick one randomly.

The interview

Then the owner would invite the candidate for a chat in which he would explain to the candidate what type of work they do at the firm, how they work,  and what type of values they try and uphold. The owner would then ask the candidate if they can see themselves working in such an environment. If the answer is yes, the person was hired under the following terms: You are hired for six months with full benefits.

After six months

At the end of the six months you and I will meet again and you will tell us whether

  • What we told about the type of work they do at the firm, how they work,  and what type of values they try and uphold is true; and
  • You can see yourself working here permanently.

And we will tell you

  • How well you did during the six months: your work, how you work, and how you understood and embodied the values we try and uphold based on surveys and interviews with your manager, the co-workers on your team, the peers you interface with, and (when applicable) the customers you interface with;
  • Whether we want you to stay and, if yes,
    • We will be discussing the type of projects you would like to work on in the future; and
    • Offer you a permanent position.

The added benefit

Imperfect and incomplete as it is, based on its premise of nothing being predictive of anything in matters of hiring, it is as good as any other process I am familiar with.

And I just read in the FT that it also a great way to boost diversity.

See also: How IBM does it, Writing a good (emotionally-intelligent) job posting helps, and there’s always the Monthy Python way.

 

 

 

 

Nicholas Winton – the power of good

Sir Nicholas George Winton is a British humanitarian who organised the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War. Winton found homes for them and arranged for their safe passage to Britain.

Winton kept his humanitarian exploits under wraps for many years until his wife Grete found a detailed scrapbook in the attic in 1988. The scrapbook contained lists of the children, including their parents’ names, and the names and addresses of the families that took them in.

After sending letters to these addresses, 80 of “Winton’s children” were found in Britain. The world found out about Winton’s work in 1988 during an episode of the BBC television programme That’s Life! when Winton was invited to be an audience member.

You can read the whole story here.

 

 

The real future of work. It’s not what you think

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the job projected to have the largest percentage increase in employment from 2018 to 2028 is the home health aide followed by the personal care aide, a reflection of the growing older population in America.

Despite the increasing need for these workers, home health aides and personal care aides typically earn less than $12 per hour. And they are overwhelmingly women of color, and disproportionately black women: 87 percent of paid adult care workers are women, compared with 46 percent of nondomestic workers, and about 25 percent of home care aides are black, compared with 12 percent of nondomestic workers.

The workers we need the most aren’t wearing boots and hard hats; they are wearing sneakers or scrubs. (source)

The real future of work is the people who take care of us – a low-wage service work force that is disproportionately made up of black women and other women of color. A workforce that will grow in numbers as the population ages. And they are largely unprotected by our safety net.

This helps situate the relative importance of robots replacing humans and remote/distributed work.

Also, I can’t get over the numbers.

$12 an hour is $96 a day, $480 a week, $24,000 (for 50 weeks). Roughly $2,000 gross, $1,800 net.

Can one live on $1,800 net?

If you follow the 50-30-20 philosophy, you’d have $900 to cover your Needs (Housing, Groceries, Utilities, Transportation, Bills, Insurance, etc.), $540 on Wants (Shopping, Entertainment, Restaurants, Hobbies, Etc.), and $360 for Debt Payoff and Savings.

 

 

 

We witnessed the lynching of a black man

Note: For some reason (probably human error, that is, me) this entry did not post at the determined time, which was weeks ago now. I’m not saying anything new, but I am speaking my mind. I’m sure I will come back to this in later posts.

We witnessed the lynching of a black man. We all did.

And we were reminded of other similarly barbaric and despicable acts taking place in the recent past. Enough instances to lead one to conclude that this also is a pandemic.

I share Elie Wiesel‘s observation that

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Indeed, “we must take sides.” (Night).

Personally, taking sides consists not only in not being racist but, rather, in being anti-racist. Reading and reflecting on this hand-out from the Racial Healing Handbook: Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing by Anneliese A. Singh, PhD, LPC is a good place to start.

For corporations, statements are a modest start but clearly not enough.

 

Maintaining professionalism in the age of black death

Please be mindful of what our black colleagues are going through. Shenequa Golding’s Maintaining Professionalism In The Age of Black Death Is….A Lot is a good place to start to nurture your empathy.

Here are a few excerpts:

I don’t know who decided that being professional was loosely defined as being divorced of total humanity, but whoever did they’ve aided, unintentionally maybe, in a unique form of suffocation.

If I am to perform my duties for 40 hours a week, it’s asinine to assume that the life I live outside of those 40 hours won’t rear its head. Whether I’m a sleep deprived single mother of two or a struggling college student who really needs this internship to graduate, the belief that only the part of me that fattens your bottom line is allowed in the workplace, is stifling.

This is magnified for young black professionals who are recruited for their culture, but told, in so many words, that their blackness and the struggles that come with it are to be left at the door.

A black man went for a run only to be ambushed by two white men, shot and then killed. A black female essential worker was asleep inside her home when police serving a “no-knock” warrant shot her eight times. A white woman, enraged that a black man asked her to follow the park rules lied to cops about being threatened. And a black man died face down on the ground because a white cop suffocated him.

But yeah, I can totally have that presentation for you by end of day, Ted. No problem.

black lives matter

We’re biting our tongues, swallowing our rage and fighting back tears to remain professional because expressing that hurt caused by witnessing black death is considered more unprofessional, than black men and women actually being killed.

So if you can, please, be mindful. Your black employees are dealing with a lot.

[Photo by Sticker You]