Speaker 1: Enjoy this throwback episode of Black Tech, Green Moneyvie holiday season.
Speaker 1: I'm Will Lucas, Mrs Black Tech, Green Money. I'm going
Speaker 1: to introduce you to some of the biggest names, some
Speaker 1: of the brightest violence and brilliant ideas. Feel black in
Speaker 1: building for simply using Texas secure your back. This podcast
Speaker 1: is for you. Everett Heart per CEO and co founder
Speaker 1: of Trust, a human center and software development company. He's
Speaker 1: also author of the new leadership book Moved to the
Speaker 1: Edge the Player, a Center, which was published by Widey
Speaker 1: earlier this year. He was previously director of Customer Acquisition
Speaker 1: and Community at Linden Lab Make Your Second Life, a
Speaker 1: CEO and technologist who also hits many stages around the
Speaker 1: world to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. I asked
Speaker 1: Effort to speak on this. I get that as a
Speaker 1: more imperative diversity, but it is all so profitable to hire, fund,
Speaker 1: promote and support black people. Uh. The quick answer is
Speaker 1: yes and UH. There is a research um history, both
Speaker 1: in academia and in practice for the last decade. UH.
Speaker 1: Cathy Williams, for example, Late Great Kathy Williams Dr Cathy
Speaker 1: Williams UH documented how that makes UM words that have
Speaker 1: diverse boards have higher returns. Diverse ship teams returns the
Speaker 1: UM process of innovation. More diverse teams have better UH
Speaker 1: they essentially less blind spots when coming up with a solution.
Speaker 1: So there's any number at different levels for the business
Speaker 1: case for all those things. And that's before saying, oh,
Speaker 1: if my customers are diverse, I would need to have representations.
Speaker 1: So UM, there's a lot of history. At this point,
Speaker 1: the ship has already sailed. So when you think about innovation,
Speaker 1: I remember I don't remember which of the founders of
Speaker 1: Twitter who talked about this, but there was a founder
Speaker 1: of Twitter who talked about when you're trying to get people,
Speaker 1: when you're trying to find a success in a startup,
Speaker 1: the best thing you can do is not try to
Speaker 1: change what people already do, but make what they do
Speaker 1: more efficient, because when you try to get people to
Speaker 1: change habits, you have an uphill, you know, battle to climb.
Speaker 1: And so can you talk about there was an article
Speaker 1: I've read that you had um wrote this particular line.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read it back to you and you may
Speaker 1: remember writing it. It says, we have a culture of
Speaker 1: innovation quote unquote is a statement found on crumpled banners,
Speaker 1: rolled up posters, and trash prochures, failed startups and shuttered businesses.
Speaker 1: Companies and investors have tried to shift fund or shock
Speaker 1: their employees into being becoming more innovative. Um. And then
Speaker 1: you went on to say, an infrastructure for innovation beats
Speaker 1: a culture of innovation. So those two concepts, the one
Speaker 1: that I position and what you just wrote, how do
Speaker 1: we how should we think about innovation when we are
Speaker 1: black founders, when we have a unique perspective in the
Speaker 1: marketplace and trying to build something, hopefully that the world
Speaker 1: has never seen that will you know, provide us some
Speaker 1: capital that we can build, you know, generational wealth. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: good points. And I guess I was feeling spicy that day. Um,
Speaker 1: so I think, um, here's how we think about it now.
Speaker 1: Twitter's culture. I don't know enough in the detail of
Speaker 1: how they think about culture to be precise about what
Speaker 1: they did because it may include an infrastructure that I
Speaker 1: don't know. But I do know is when you talk
Speaker 1: to BlackBerry, and you talked to Deck, and you talk
Speaker 1: to folks at companies that Xerox Park that had the innovations. However,
Speaker 1: they weren't able to put it in a system that
Speaker 1: enabled those innovations to scale, or to be shared, or
Speaker 1: to be sustainable. And it's really the system part that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about to make innovations actually come to light.
Speaker 1: So a different way to think about it is that um,
Speaker 1: for example, when we with the with the pandemic and pele, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna grit our teeth through this, and um, we're
Speaker 1: gonna make it through by sheer will and hard work.
Speaker 1: Well after a couple of months that bill starts to drop.
Speaker 1: You can't sustain heroism like that. But if you build
Speaker 1: a system that enables more people to benefit from that
Speaker 1: system without the same amount of toil, then you're able
Speaker 1: to get the innovations or any kind of innovations out
Speaker 1: into the market where it can be tested in in
Speaker 1: in with the customers. So I'm of the mind that
Speaker 1: you don't have to look far for ideas for companies,
Speaker 1: but that there are problems that exist all around us.
Speaker 1: And can you talk a little bit about how, if
Speaker 1: how do you admonish would be entrepreneurs to maybe look
Speaker 1: more at their story in what is going on in
Speaker 1: their world to help them come up with concepts or
Speaker 1: ideas or projects that could ultimately become businesses to UM
Speaker 1: more authentically practice a new way of doing things that
Speaker 1: other people can employ. Also, Yeah, So what I tell
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs with regard to that question is, you know, you
Speaker 1: start with the problem that you know that your experience,
Speaker 1: but you're only one person. For the next thing to
Speaker 1: do immediately is to test it with other people around you.
Speaker 1: Is this compelling? Is it um memorable? Does it solve
Speaker 1: a problem? Doesn't accelerate your life? And be real honest
Speaker 1: about that. That's actually the thing I love to do
Speaker 1: most UM and UM. You'll get some people who will
Speaker 1: support you, that's still not good enough that takes you
Speaker 1: to the next level. Then it's people that you haven't
Speaker 1: met before. And that's where the iteration and you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's UM being start up principles or other iteration principles,
Speaker 1: where you get out and you see whether your idea
Speaker 1: takes hold, whether people grab it, whether people are doing
Speaker 1: things on where you develop a platform for it. So
Speaker 1: UM the ten with people that are around you is
Speaker 1: only the first step. It's validing that and then it's
Speaker 1: that might be a good idea, but is it a business?
Speaker 1: So you have to ask the other kind of tops
Speaker 1: of questions. Are people going to pay for it? Are
Speaker 1: they going to devote their time for it? Are they
Speaker 1: going to build on it? Those are the next level
Speaker 1: questions that frankly, I find more entrepreneurs step missed that
Speaker 1: boat than they do with ideas, because I think people
Speaker 1: are full of different ideas. UM. I'll say the second
Speaker 1: thing I tell people, everybody has the same tend people
Speaker 1: the same idea you do right now, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: six of those people and those people will just be
Speaker 1: talking about it, thinking about it, whatever, won't even write
Speaker 1: it down. Seven and eight person might have done a
Speaker 1: little testing, might have like you know, explored some avenues,
Speaker 1: but they got busy, got distracted. The ninth person actually
Speaker 1: is is UM doing something about it? Is actually testing it.
Speaker 1: Maybe there is a little bit of money. You want
Speaker 1: to be the tenth person who has done all of
Speaker 1: that and UM gone and put the diligence in the
Speaker 1: time into that thing. So the idea is not the
Speaker 1: original part. It's whether you're able to turn it into
Speaker 1: something that's a repeatable practice that people will buy. There's
Speaker 1: this concept of UM, and I think it's like people
Speaker 1: like Peter til who talk about this like you have
Speaker 1: to have a unique perspective on things like what is
Speaker 1: your unique value? Like why should you be doing this thing?
Speaker 1: If you're going to an investor and they're like, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: we understand there's an opportunity in the marketplace, but why
Speaker 1: are you the one to solve this thing? And when
Speaker 1: I talk to entrepreneurs, sometimes not not of you know,
Speaker 1: black descent or African American descent or African descent, I
Speaker 1: should say, um, I find entrepreneurs who maybe in wildly
Speaker 1: successful businesses, but they have no passion for the business
Speaker 1: that they're in. Maybe they do you know, street signs, right,
Speaker 1: whatever it is that they do. And I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could play the other side of that conversation, like
Speaker 1: when is it okay for us to just be opportunists
Speaker 1: and see an opportunity in the marketplace and go do
Speaker 1: something about it. There's no argument against that, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: I think it's funny when you talk about why are
Speaker 1: you the person? If you're not the person, but you
Speaker 1: have a hundred thousand people saying that you are the person.
Speaker 1: That's about it. Whether I think you're the person or
Speaker 1: where the investor things your person is a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people back there and they're buying my service who think
Speaker 1: I'm the person. They don't care about me, They care
Speaker 1: about the service. And so if you're trying to get
Speaker 1: funding and you have a whole bunch of traction, you
Speaker 1: have a whole bunch of crazy fans. Um that's volumes.
Speaker 1: Now they may be look other kinds of pattern matching, right,
Speaker 1: but results talk. So I think that that's the first
Speaker 1: thing I think about when you're when you're when you
Speaker 1: were saying um. And in terms of like taking opportunities, yeah,
Speaker 1: because sometimes you practice that this one fails, but you
Speaker 1: learn some things. You take another crack at it, a
Speaker 1: little bit longer, a little bit later, another and then
Speaker 1: it's the next idea that actually clicks. But waiting for
Speaker 1: that perfect opportunity probably aren't going to ever start. So
Speaker 1: if you see something before it tested out and then
Speaker 1: hit that wall and say, yep, this is not the
Speaker 1: business I want to be, that's much better than sort
Speaker 1: of waiting back and hoping for perfect situation, because that's
Speaker 1: not going to ever happen. Well, describe what that wall
Speaker 1: could look like. How do you know when it's time
Speaker 1: to hang it up. How do you know when it's
Speaker 1: time that yet, I've been doing this long enough, I've
Speaker 1: been I've spend too much money, or I'm not getting this.
Speaker 1: How do you know what is the thing that says, yeah,
Speaker 1: this hand, Yeah, that's a great quie sin because the
Speaker 1: entrepreneur wants to be persevering and wants to be diligent
Speaker 1: and like, don't take no for an answer. At least
Speaker 1: that's the ethos, right, that's the story. The reality is
Speaker 1: um my. From my experience and talking to other entrepreneurs, partially,
Speaker 1: there's like pragmatic things. You run out of money, right,
Speaker 1: that's it. And especially for our audience, we don't come
Speaker 1: with thats of like historical cash, right, So there's that.
Speaker 1: I think the more spiritual one. I think the heart
Speaker 1: of your question is when your kind of soul is
Speaker 1: no longer fed by this, you don't wake up energized
Speaker 1: to try and overcome the next obstacle, because there will
Speaker 1: be obstacles, um and the market is telling you, hey, na,
Speaker 1: I'm not buying this. I had a nice spike at
Speaker 1: the beginning and then it flattened out. You might try
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff and if it's not moving
Speaker 1: the needle, then stunne UM. I'll tell you a a quick store.
Speaker 1: When I was starting this company, UM, originally doing a
Speaker 1: product company it was it was called tether Pad. It
Speaker 1: was about doing smart calendars for executive assistance. Originally for travel,
Speaker 1: but you know, it turned into the business thing. And
Speaker 1: this is around two thousand eleven when smart calendars are
Speaker 1: starting to come out. And I had this prototype, and
Speaker 1: I was like, people complicated travel arrangements or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I went to I said, where where do I find
Speaker 1: travel people? Where people travel stories when they actually existed? UM?
Speaker 1: And I went there and I had my little prototype.
Speaker 1: I went to the travel section and I asked people, hey,
Speaker 1: excuse me, would you use something like this? They were
Speaker 1: like pleasant and nice and interested a little bit, but
Speaker 1: no one said, oh my god, I have to have that.
Speaker 1: That is the greatest thing in the in the world.
Speaker 1: I knew that was not going to be a successful
Speaker 1: UM product because if I can't sell them face to
Speaker 1: the base, how am I going to do that when
Speaker 1: I'm competing with millions of other stides to do travel.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the business case and the lack of response tells
Speaker 1: you everything you need to know that you need to
Speaker 1: go back to a drawwood, which is what I did.
Speaker 1: How do you how did you know that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just another feature that you needed because we can get
Speaker 1: feature hungary and have scope creep really really easily. Because okay,
Speaker 1: maybe my travel app doesn't you know while the people.
Speaker 1: But if I added just this one other thing and
Speaker 1: then you find us another thing I had to add
Speaker 1: at another thing, how do you know it's not just
Speaker 1: a feature? How do you know when is the feature
Speaker 1: is not going to do it? Because? Um, I was
Speaker 1: trying to ask the core value proposition, which was, do
Speaker 1: you have a problem traveling and arranging things for complex
Speaker 1: travel or your you know, for your family or whatever.
Speaker 1: The representation of that was my app, but really it
Speaker 1: was the question about what the core problem was. And
Speaker 1: what I got back was that it wasn't that import
Speaker 1: and a problem to them. So I could add all
Speaker 1: the features in the world, but if it's not important
Speaker 1: to the buyer, it doesn't matter. So what I did
Speaker 1: was actually say, huh, maybe this is the wrong the
Speaker 1: right product, but it's the wrong audience who actually cares
Speaker 1: about this and is willing to pay for it. I
Speaker 1: went to give assistance because they are paid to complex
Speaker 1: arrangements for their executives. When I presented the same prototype
Speaker 1: with a little bit of you know, be skinning, they
Speaker 1: were all over it because I nailed their problem. So
Speaker 1: that was the difference. I don't care about the features
Speaker 1: I'm adding until I understand the problem, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to solve for the audience in the audience's own, uh words,
Speaker 1: or their own context. I would consider you, I'm you
Speaker 1: are a d e I expert and if you would
Speaker 1: call yourself that, but you're somebody who speaks on d
Speaker 1: e I and you know are paid to speak on
Speaker 1: d e I. Uh. What is interesting about the current
Speaker 1: conversation about d EI we're having, particularly at the corporate level.
Speaker 1: Let's start there. Like some companies believe if they put
Speaker 1: some money into some inner city, you know, youth programs,
Speaker 1: then they're being diverse and you know they're they're doing
Speaker 1: their job. Other other companies believe if they hired black
Speaker 1: d e I officer, they're doing their job. Um, what
Speaker 1: is interesting about this conversation to you? And how do
Speaker 1: we know if we're doing it right as corporate executives? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say spicily, Um, most of the conversation interests
Speaker 1: may be because it's a lot of window addressing UM,
Speaker 1: which is not to say that investing in a playground
Speaker 1: in UM community is not a great thing. That's fantastic
Speaker 1: for the community, but that is not a sufficient d
Speaker 1: e I response for any corporation of any significant size.
Speaker 1: It's the initial drop in the bucket, for example. The
Speaker 1: reason I say that is the question I always ask people,
Speaker 1: and this is particularly after George Floyd and everybody's getting
Speaker 1: involved with you know, d I trying to figure out
Speaker 1: racial injustice and and and what supremacy, etcetera. The question
Speaker 1: I would ask when people would come to me and say, hey,
Speaker 1: what can you do? I love your health? I said, well,
Speaker 1: what are you trying to do it for? How does
Speaker 1: this connect with your business model? This is a question
Speaker 1: you started with and then there's like often a silence.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, you need to figure out whether how
Speaker 1: it's connected to your business model. So that's the first thing,
Speaker 1: is is it connecting your business model? And many people
Speaker 1: don't have that. Those that do start to start to
Speaker 1: make progress in ways that others do not. UM. I
Speaker 1: think the other thing that's interesting to me about the
Speaker 1: conversation at the moment is the impact of remote work
Speaker 1: and how the market changes if you are now not
Speaker 1: just located in particular place, but actually can remote and
Speaker 1: expansively across the country. We've been promote since the first
Speaker 1: since two thousand twelve. We wanted to have a diverse company.
Speaker 1: We're like, well, there isn't a full diversity here in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area, and those who are here are going
Speaker 1: to be heavily competed with um for town. And we
Speaker 1: have Oh, by the way, we have Google and Facebook
Speaker 1: who can PLoP a bonus um larger than someone's annual
Speaker 1: sale at our company. So we went to rest of
Speaker 1: the country and we have people in three states, and
Speaker 1: we have black folks all over, and Hispanic or Latina,
Speaker 1: latinos Um and Mina and and and but the located
Speaker 1: where they and so that gets much more sustainable from
Speaker 1: our perspective. Now we have to go to the next
Speaker 1: level because other people have discovered it as well, So
Speaker 1: we have to figure out the next thing. But we
Speaker 1: developed this networks of community. I think they're going to
Speaker 1: be sustainable in the long run. I wanted to go
Speaker 1: deeper on the remote work thing in a second, but
Speaker 1: I do want. I don't want to glance past something
Speaker 1: you just talked about, and that's that corporate commitment to
Speaker 1: being to actually making real lasting impact. How after you know,
Speaker 1: the sizzle is gone from that pen after the immediate
Speaker 1: George Floyd, you know impact or you know, police shootings
Speaker 1: or elections that have real consequence, after those initial triggers,
Speaker 1: how do we get corporate commitments to black people, to minorities,
Speaker 1: to diversity, equity and inclusion, um, how do we get
Speaker 1: them to last past that moment in time? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the way I think about the questions I would ask,
Speaker 1: and so it's the dialogue that actually kind of starts
Speaker 1: to spur action. One is is connected to your business model,
Speaker 1: to who's running it. If it is a initiative within
Speaker 1: a small marketing team organization, I don't take it seriously.
Speaker 1: Why don't I take it seriously? Because so it's a
Speaker 1: budget cut. As soon as there's a downturn, budgets are tight,
Speaker 1: that discretionary program goes away. It needs to be led
Speaker 1: by the executive and needs to be led by the
Speaker 1: C suite, and needs to be led by the CEO.
Speaker 1: That person needs to come in front and say I
Speaker 1: believe in this. It's part of our business, even if
Speaker 1: we don't know specifically what our googals are. I am
Speaker 1: personally committed to making this happen. And then I have
Speaker 1: people who are going to execute, so it's got to
Speaker 1: come from them, and it's got to be on repeat.
Speaker 1: So that's the question. I would then ask the CEO
Speaker 1: of Alved how long is their support for that? And
Speaker 1: then how are you gonna roll that out as a project.
Speaker 1: I think the other um thing in terms of in
Speaker 1: terms of asking is um. I'll quote my friend Damian
Speaker 1: Hooper Campbell, who I interviewed for the book. He said,
Speaker 1: diversity is measured in quarters and years. Making a dent
Speaker 1: in diversity and inclusion is measured in quarters and years,
Speaker 1: not days and weeks. And I absolutely completely agree with that.
Speaker 1: Even for the well intentioned companies. If it was easy
Speaker 1: to recruit a bunch of black folks, they would have
Speaker 1: done it already. But we're heavily competed for or the
Speaker 1: networks aren't there, or you're changing cultures internally. Anybody knows
Speaker 1: about culture change. No, that takes that text quarters and years,
Speaker 1: not days and being even if you're well intention So
Speaker 1: what's your plan executive for having a year's long strategy
Speaker 1: where you can actually move the needle. And that's where
Speaker 1: we get some agreement and some alignment of what's realistic.
Speaker 1: From my opinion, UM, you probably recognize that there is
Speaker 1: a quickly moving bt O resurgence. You're like, back to
Speaker 1: office companies are going back to office AP think Apple
Speaker 1: announced it yesterday or today, depending on when you're listening
Speaker 1: to this. Apple recently announced they wanted people back in
Speaker 1: the office. Um is that dangerous to this conversation of
Speaker 1: diversity in the in the workplace? I think it's really interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of different points to it. One, I
Speaker 1: think the cats out of the bag. Frankly, in terms
Speaker 1: of people saying, hunt, do I really have two hours
Speaker 1: of my day or three hours of my day to
Speaker 1: be commuting In an era where you have housing prices
Speaker 1: rising and folks can't afford to live near yor city center,
Speaker 1: that's even more of an issue. And it affects black
Speaker 1: books in particular. If I'm in Mississippi or if I'm
Speaker 1: in Georgia, if I'm in Atlanta, not only do I
Speaker 1: have amazing Atlanta based companies, but I'm attracting attention from
Speaker 1: all over the country. Why would I want to leave Atlanta? UM?
Speaker 1: If you enjoy that community. I think the other side
Speaker 1: of it gets interesting is UM. Oh yeah, And what
Speaker 1: I think the other side of it is UM. How
Speaker 1: do companies that used to be in office and who
Speaker 1: are going hybrid or fully remote, how are they managing
Speaker 1: the mentorship and sponsorship of new employees, particularly black and
Speaker 1: brown employees. Here's how it works. If it's always if
Speaker 1: it had been in an office and it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of dry by and so forth, meetings or lunches
Speaker 1: or whatever. Hey, I'd love to get like a coffee
Speaker 1: with you and you get some informal mentoring and so forth.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. If you move to hybrid, how does that happen?
Speaker 1: It doesn't just automatically. Has to have an intention, and
Speaker 1: so a company would have to say, we understand that,
Speaker 1: and we're committed to either having identifying our star folks
Speaker 1: or emerging talent and getting them back in that office
Speaker 1: for a week a quarter so that we can kind
Speaker 1: of get that that trust building that happens person to
Speaker 1: person or a place of place to face UM, or
Speaker 1: we do some other rotation system if as a remote
Speaker 1: person who isn't getting that kind of manatorship and the
Speaker 1: culture supports it face to face, they are at a deficit.
Speaker 1: So what I would have to be thoughtful about setting
Speaker 1: that up. So what do you say to employ you know,
Speaker 1: black and brown employees who want to work at the
Speaker 1: biggest companies in the world. Um, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: all to live in the Bay is not the chiepest
Speaker 1: place in the world live, you know, But I may
Speaker 1: be talented enough and the engineer. Um. And then now
Speaker 1: you know, six months ago I had this opportunity. What
Speaker 1: happens when I want to work in some of the
Speaker 1: biggest places to have some of the biggest impact on
Speaker 1: the world via the technology perspective, And now they want
Speaker 1: me to uproot my family and I got to bring
Speaker 1: all of us to the Bay or to New York
Speaker 1: or you know, think of a place. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what I would say is too broaden. Actually the landscape here.
Speaker 1: You said, we will don't work at the biggest companies.
Speaker 1: I say, why do you want to work at the
Speaker 1: biggest companies? There are lots of amazing companies with great
Speaker 1: brands that don't have to be the fan companies and
Speaker 1: in fact, I think there's probably many, many opportunities that
Speaker 1: go under the radar for making impact, for propelling your
Speaker 1: career to having a great sense of culture. So I
Speaker 1: would broaden the broadeness the scale to other sorts of companies.
Speaker 1: The second thing I'd say is negotiate um enable sorry
Speaker 1: first create optionality. Right, that one company wants you to move,
Speaker 1: that's a great time to look are other companies may
Speaker 1: be looking for me and allowing me to to to
Speaker 1: stay at home. I bet there are. Now you have
Speaker 1: some negotiating leverage, um. And I think the other thing
Speaker 1: is upgrading the family is a big deal, and that
Speaker 1: support from a family is a big deal to one's happiness. UM.
Speaker 1: That serious consideration. The last thing I did today is
Speaker 1: they are definitely conversations I've had with folks. And the
Speaker 1: market is now kind of a little soft, right, there's
Speaker 1: some some layoffs happening, slowing down hiring. I think it's
Speaker 1: an opportunity to sort of take stock and say, what
Speaker 1: is it that I'm trying to do with my career,
Speaker 1: and how can certain companies advance the ball in this situation?
Speaker 1: Because sometimes it might be great to take that one
Speaker 1: year think up your family for a year, get the brand,
Speaker 1: get the money, and then go to another company. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think broad in the opportunities is the is
Speaker 1: the message, and broaden your options so you're not just
Speaker 1: locked into one way of advancing your career. There are
Speaker 1: many ways to advance career. UM. A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: you guys embraced salary transparency and and one I want
Speaker 1: you to talk about why, why that's important or was
Speaker 1: important for you guys, and steps to doing that well,
Speaker 1: because I imagine there's um a large opportunity there to
Speaker 1: cause more ruckis in the beginning, you know, especially in
Speaker 1: the beginning. But what are the lasting implications of doing that,
Speaker 1: both on the positives high and negative side, and steps
Speaker 1: to doing it well? Yeah, So just for context, we
Speaker 1: did it in two thousand SEVENTEAM, so it's been in
Speaker 1: place since then. The reason we did it was for equity,
Speaker 1: for racial and gender equity. Lots of great companies, lots
Speaker 1: of bad companies. We're paying people different depending on their gender.
Speaker 1: Lots of well intentioned companies didn't want to do that,
Speaker 1: but they allowed for some negotiation. And so for example,
Speaker 1: of you are are if you negotiate a five percent
Speaker 1: higher salary than I do right for the same position,
Speaker 1: same work. Five years later, you've done fantastic work, You've
Speaker 1: both gotten promotions, and both got a twenty percent bump
Speaker 1: every single year. That difference than amplifies, right that the problem.
Speaker 1: And then five years later you have a company that
Speaker 1: says the employee says, wait a minute, I'm being paid
Speaker 1: how much less? Now the company has lost a valuable
Speaker 1: employee with all the institutional memory that problem. So we
Speaker 1: wanted to avoid that, and the quickest way we wanted
Speaker 1: to do it was say, let's make it transparent, let's
Speaker 1: make internally transparent, and then let's go through a process
Speaker 1: for engaging our employees to make that happen so that
Speaker 1: there isn't a ruckus. So what we did, basically, I
Speaker 1: just it's it's actually in the book fairly explicitly. There's
Speaker 1: a step by step process that we use that anybody
Speaker 1: can follow. But the first thing we did was really simple,
Speaker 1: are you going to leave if we make our salaries transparent?
Speaker 1: At nine down? People said no, we'll not and one person,
Speaker 1: I'm a little uncomfortable, but let's go for it, right,
Speaker 1: So that's the first thing. The second thing was we
Speaker 1: involved them in the solution, so was lots of research
Speaker 1: to do. Is this the right solving? Are there other alternatives?
Speaker 1: What other companies are doing this? But we had a
Speaker 1: committee based on leadership and employees that participated. Why does
Speaker 1: that matter because they're gonna bring different perspectives than I
Speaker 1: would and whatever solution we come up with they're going
Speaker 1: to participate in. That's going to enable people to feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I designed this. Finally, the big actually the big part
Speaker 1: of the work. We didn't have our leveling and we
Speaker 1: didn't have our rubrics very well laid out. That took
Speaker 1: of a seven month process. That took about four and
Speaker 1: a half months to do that. Right, any companies should
Speaker 1: have that anyway, regardless of whether good and salary transparent
Speaker 1: or not. By the time we announced it for seven months,
Speaker 1: the reaction was basically a whole hump because we brought
Speaker 1: everybody along for the ride. Um. We also did one
Speaker 1: other thing that is a fun piece. It's called the
Speaker 1: pre mortem. I talked about it in the book as well,
Speaker 1: and it's basically a technique to basically it's a technique
Speaker 1: to enable you to project into the future and try
Speaker 1: and avoid problems So the quick question you ask is
Speaker 1: we did this, okay, team, it's three months, three weeks
Speaker 1: before launch. I want you to project nine months down
Speaker 1: the road, the thing is launched, it reached all the people, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: In nine months, it is a complete disaster. Everything's gone wrong.
Speaker 1: Everybody hates us, We've lost customer. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: What went wrong? Yeah, And I usually start by saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was me. I wasn't paying attention, I didn't answer
Speaker 1: that phone call. Was slot respawn Right. It loosens people
Speaker 1: up a little bit because what you're trying to do
Speaker 1: is have people to be creative. Dan, it starts to
Speaker 1: come out, well, we didn't that stakeholder, we didn't talk
Speaker 1: to this person, we didn't talk to Oh, we forgot
Speaker 1: this step. Once you gather a bunch of those you
Speaker 1: work backwards. So how could we mitigate that possibility? It
Speaker 1: is an amazing how many things come up that you,
Speaker 1: even the most diligent person did not think of because
Speaker 1: they didn't imagine the failure case down the road. So
Speaker 1: that's what we did with the salary recordees. But I'm
Speaker 1: sorry pay transparency as well. Um So we tested this
Speaker 1: thing and we iterated it, and we continue to iterate
Speaker 1: to this day. UM. I liked what you just brought
Speaker 1: up the pre mortems because it blends very well into
Speaker 1: this next question. Is you know you guys were remote
Speaker 1: even before COVID you talked about twelve you guys were
Speaker 1: fully remote. Um, and there was obviously some forward thinking there,
Speaker 1: and so others can be forward thinking. What was the
Speaker 1: insight you had back then about being fully remote hiring
Speaker 1: people from all over the world so that other people
Speaker 1: can try to figure out ways they can be UM
Speaker 1: successful when they actually write that pre mortem. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. Um, we decided to go fully
Speaker 1: remote just solve a problem. Kind of going back to
Speaker 1: your entrepreneur opportunity question. My first co founder and I
Speaker 1: Mark invited our third co founder to be part of
Speaker 1: the team, to be official co founder. She gave us
Speaker 1: an answer that we didn't expect. I'd love to join,
Speaker 1: but my husband just got a fellowship to be in
Speaker 1: the Balkans and in Western Europe and in Scotland for
Speaker 1: the next eighteen months on a fellowship. Can we work
Speaker 1: that out? And I'm like, that is that what I expected?
Speaker 1: But Okay, let's start to figure it out. The solution
Speaker 1: we came up was really straightforward, um, show up on time,
Speaker 1: get get an Airbnb or a place you're renting that
Speaker 1: has great WiFi, and make our work transparent. Those are
Speaker 1: three things, and then we just said let's roll with
Speaker 1: it and see what happens from there. We started to develop, Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: here's better ways to display the work, and then we
Speaker 1: started to say, how can we involve other people in
Speaker 1: the solution. Well, all of those things are scalable. Show up,
Speaker 1: but show up on meetings on time. Okay, we're using Pivotal,
Speaker 1: track displayer work. Now there's mirror, and there's all this
Speaker 1: Asana and all these other places. Um, and get good WiFi.
Speaker 1: So it was sort of a problem solving exercise that
Speaker 1: we then could scale and that we could share and
Speaker 1: it's sustainable and that's really where it started from. And
Speaker 1: we've had to build things, of course in the meantime,
Speaker 1: but I think that's with the corporate So I think
Speaker 1: the message entrepreneurs is what are problems that you can
Speaker 1: solve simply and quickly and make them experiments And it
Speaker 1: could be anything from HR to remote to a product
Speaker 1: idea and then just try it out and then learn
Speaker 1: and trash it and do the next thing if if
Speaker 1: that doesn't work. Black Tech Green Money is a productive
Speaker 1: of Blaviti fro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network
Speaker 1: and I Heart Media. Is produced by Morgan Dubon and
Speaker 1: Me with Lucas, with additional productive supported by Love Beach
Speaker 1: and Rose mc lucas. Especially thank you to Michael Davis
Speaker 1: if that's Serrano. Learn more about my guests and other
Speaker 1: tech this focus and innovatives at afro tech dot com.
Speaker 1: Video version of this episode. We'll drop the Black Tech
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