We believe in the transformative power of technology to change the world at breakneck speed when we put our minds to it. Why is it when it comes to the very same humans who will make it happen, we set our bar so low? My daughter’s preschool demands more of four-year olds in their code of conduct than we’re asking from tech bros behaving badly.
We shouldn’t have to pledge to be decent to each other. If you can’t be decent, hand over your La Croix and get the fuck out.
Read MoreAt the NewCo Shift Forum earlier this year, Bill Kanarick, CMO, SapientRazorfish, hosted a conversation with Kara Goldin, Founder & CEO, hint, Inc., and Tina Sharkey Co-Founder & CEO, Brandless. Goldin and Sharkey had just delivered overviews of their companies, which you can find here (Hint) and here (Brandless). In the ensuing conversation, Kanarick focused his questioning on how best to be a startup in a massive category like beverages or consumer packaged goods. Their answer? Start with a clean slate. More in the video and transcript below.
Bill Kanarick: We just had a conversation about disruption and transformation. We at Sapient and Publicis deal an awful lot with both startups as well as incumbents. I’d be interested to get each of your perspectives on, as a startup, your advantages relative to the incumbents attacking the same space.
What are those advantages? What do you think really gives you an edge over those that might be trying to reinvent themselves, like, say, Proctor & Gamble, Tina, to use your example?
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A late afternoon of what now seems several lives ago, I found myself moderating a technical meeting with the team members I was supposed to be leading. I have been put in charge of the flagship project of the company I used to work for, at an age so early I didn’t know yet the world wasn’t flat. I was supposed to lead a discussion to select one of two development frameworks to use on the project, having no form of authority over a group of engineers that were more experienced, accomplished, and smarter than me. The memory is blurry now, but searching for the story brings back all the raw emotions. After the dust settled, and I’ve made the decision, I left the office upset, disappointed at myself, and with a deep feeling of inadequacy. What just happened?
First and foremost, I was still in that stage of your career where you think you are put in charge because you are better than those around you. How wrong we can be! Second, we had two very senior engineers behind each of the home-brew frameworks, and I didn’t have the skill nor the seniority to moderate a heated discussion that (now I know) had nothing to do with technology. Last, but not least, the topic at hand: for me, this was the chance to prove I was worthy of my role. It wasn’t pretty: every time I’d make a statement, I would simply not back out of it. I would crush anyone that would challenge me in the most dreadful way. I was loud and aggressive. What a sight! For the casual observer, I was dominant, assertive. What was going on inside me was completely different…
Technology and mobility have redefined a huge swath of our lives, but when it comes to the brands we use every day — from laundry detergent to toilet paper — not much has changed. Sure, you can order online, but consumer packaged goods, or CPG as the category is called, are still run on a business model of mass media advertising and mass market distribution. Long time entrepreneur Tina Sharkey is on a mission to change that, and rethink CPG from the ground up. Her company Brandless launches today, but we had Sharkey at the NewCo Shift Forum back in February, where she gave an overview of her new company’s purpose.
Tina Sharkey: I’m going to give you an overview of what we’re doing and hopefully you’ll understand that we think we’re starting a revolution. Steve Jobs said in ’84 — I know he set the bar really low — he said mainframes, PCs, it’s all going to change. It absolutely did change, and we never looked back from that moment.
I don’t think they thought at that moment that this would happen. They thought merging music player and a phone was a great idea, but I don’t think they thought that you were going to hail taxis. I certainly don’t think they thought they were building a remote control for your life.
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It’s no secret that the idea of employee loyalty with a company is being redefined in our world today. People are job hopping more than ever before in history. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has said that the average tenure for an American worker currently sits at 4.2 years. Probably better than you were thinking it might be. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. The real story is the breakdown by age groups.
There is a stark contrast between those beginning their career (Millennials) and those ending theirs (Baby Boomers). The 25–34 age range shows an average of 2.8 years in a job, while the 55–64 age range averages 10.1 year. Quite the difference, and has given the older generation something to frown upon when looking at the younger generation.
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by Rory Gerberg (lead author)
Y-Vonne Hutchinson (contributing author)
The first time I was sexually harassed was in the hallway in 8th grade. My classmate put his arm over my shoulder and extended it to grope my right breast. Terrified, I instinctively smacked him. The hall monitor asked if everything was okay. “Yup!” We laughed. His was playful. Mine was a nervous laugh of shock and confusion. Those interactions became less and less funny as I grew older. In an office, I couldn’t smack a colleague. I had to be careful not to offend.
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Are managers born or made?
The politically correct answer is made, but there are certain traits that can’t be taught.
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There’s a great story about a Zen master and a professor. When the professor visited the master to learn about the essence of Zen, the master served tea. He kept pouring after the professor’s cup was full, until the tea spilled onto the table. When the professor protested, the master put down the tea pot and said, “Just like your cup, you’re full of your own ideas. How can I show you Zen if you already think you know everything?”
When it comes to the transformation of our organizations in The Emergent Era, we’re all pretty much in the place of that professor. And in the place of the master, we’ve got the forces we’re all up against: acceleration, the rise of mobile and distributed systems, and the blending of the physical and digital worlds, to name a few.
We’re caught in between the structures of the future, which are still self-assembling, and the structures of the past, which are being disassembled. When it comes to getting things done, what we think we know about the how the world works is not always useful. To keep things moving, we have no choice but to unlearn.
This is a tough one for me.
I was one of those “little miss can’t-be-wrong” girls in school. Before the question was even out of the teacher’s mouth, my hand was up and my mind was straining with the desire to share what I knew. I loved the sense of control that came with being certain (as well as the gold star stickers that we got as rewards for having the right answer).
To move forward in my own career, and to help my organization move forward, I’ve had to change. I’ve had to make it a habit to clear my mind of what I know, including my unspoken assumptions, and approach things with a blank slate.
Here are three opportunities to unlearn that I try to spot and take advantage of:
Unlearning From the Customer. I have Eric Ries to thank for this one. If the essence of the work you’re doing is testing out a hypothesis, an assumption about the world, then the customer is where all your experimental feedback comes from. It’s the customer that tells you if your hypothesis is wrong or right. There is truly nothing that will clear out old assumptions faster than taking what you’re building and sharing it with somebody who might want to use it. If you’re willing to set your ego aside and really listen, the potential for productive unlearning here is vast. This is actually tougher than it sounds. As somebody who loves to share what I’ve learned and what I think is awesome about my projects, I’ve had to curtail that impulse to make this practice work.
Unlearning Through Curiosity. Sometimes, setting aside your emotions and direct impressions is a crucial skill. When we have a tight deadline, we can’t indulge every stray thought. But selectively listening to stray thoughts can be productive. If you find yourself dreading a project or consistently annoyed by it, it’s worth taking ten or fifteen minutes to think back to the moments when you felt that way and why. It might help you see the outlines of a problem that’s just below the surface. The same goes for sudden bursts of curiosity. At first blush, curiosity can actually look like distraction. But if something about your project is causing you and your team to ask a series of questions or go off on tangents, take a moment and ask yourselves why. Is there a potential opportunity lurking behind this curiosity, an assumption that could turn your work on its head? When curiosity crops up, don’t always ignore it. It might point out where your assumptions are holding you back.
Unlearning In Advance. Because of my vantage point at GE, by the time I see a project for the second or third time, a lot has happened. I’m often seeing work that a team has been digging into for weeks, even months, and I’m being asked to make an assessment. When I encounter works in progress in this way, I have to set a sharp limit for how much detail I’m going to allow myself to absorb. Too little, and I won’t be able to make an informed call. Too much, I’ll lose my outsider’s perspective, which is probably the most useful thing I can offer the team at that point. The ability to come in with a set of (carefully) uninformed questions can help people who’ve been close to something for too long see new ways forward. The catch is that I can’t allow my own curiosity to get the better of me — I have to consciously make myself stop taking in new information. As weird as it sounds, the less you know about a project, the more creative you can be.
How do you get rid of what you think you know? Do you know anybody who unlearns particularly well? What assumptions am I making here that I’m not even aware of? Let me know in the comments.
So Travis is gone. After persistent accusations of endemic sexism, a memo telling employees not to have sex ‘if you are in the same chain of command,’ and that time he berated a driver and the video went viral (obviously), the Uber CEO bowed to pressure from investors and stood aside this morning.
There’s a lot of talk right now on how this heralds a new era for the Valley. The beginning of the end for the aggressively non-corporate, roll with me, bro-CEO. And there’s probably some truth in that.
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The recent exits of chief executives at General Electric, Ford, and U.S. Steel are the latest indications that “the American era of the baronial chief executive” is over, writes Nelson Schwartz in The New York Times. That’s the result of massive changes in both the nature of the businesses these leaders run and the shape of the jobs that investors, employees, and the public expect them to tackle.
The landscape is full of new forces that make long-term, high-profile tenures like that of Jeffrey Immelt at GE less and less common. One of them is the rise of “activist investors,” who buy up chunks of stock and then make demands for higher profitability that often put a CEO’s strategy and job in jeopardy. Another is the speed of technological change, with advances in artificial intelligence, sensors, and processing beginning to collapse the boundaries between businesses.
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