Brian Elliott’s Post

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Much of the #DEI focus of organizations circa 2021 turned out to be what Stanford professor David Larcker calls “diversity washing”— firms that talked the talk, but didn’t walk the walk. Now with the backlash to DEI, some groups are reversing course — but it's not clear that they mean it this time either. They might just be responding to the way the wind is blowing. Recently, SHRM and Tractor Supply Company have gotten backlash for their response to the backlash -- more in the video. I’m proud to be associated with the folks at Charter. Since day one, Kevin Delaney, Erin Grau and team have had this at the top of their own charter: "A Charter organization is: 🔹 Fair and equitable—Ensuring equal access to opportunities, transparency around cause and effect, respect and compassion for all, and positive and open dialogue. 🔹 Diverse and inclusive—Recognizing that users and customers are diverse and global, and the team and the brand created should be too, bringing together people from different backgrounds to turn a shared vision into reality." They’ve also kept talking about it, even while other organizations have shied away, with articles in the last couple weeks alone on topics like the gender AI adoption gap and how non-Black leaders can be better managers for Black employees. The quote up top gets attributed to Alexander Hamilton and Malcolm X. Either way, they’re right. I don’t think organizations can or should take a stance on every issue; focus on what's tied to your purpose. You do have to listen to your own customer base, but you also needed to stay rooted in your values and be consistent in the face of challenges. It’s a good time to check out Charter if you haven’t already, 🔗 links in comments. #diversity #equity #inclusion #backlash

Is #GenAI taking away jobs? The vast majority of freelancers are actually ahead of the game, largely because they're 2X more like to already be using #GenAI. You wouldn't know that from the #WSJ headline, which grabs attention but does injustice to the contents and the broader data that exists out there: GenAI has been a net positive for most freelancers and the market at large. Data from Upwork shows the benefits of AI adoption, while also showing the risks. The 2nd image attached comes from work Kelly Monahan, Ph.D. and team have done and shows that in almost all cases, the result of GenAI adoption has been more, higher paying jobs. It's also in Christopher Mims coverage in the The Wall Street Journal, where he interviews a few freelancers on the lower end of the spectrum: copywriters. Even there, the stories of backlash -- GenAI pablum and errors -- come out pretty clearly: “The marketing people think it looks fine, but then you hand it to someone who actually knows something ... and they’re like, ‘This is word salad.’” As in the case of every past #technology evolution, GenAI helps reduce the rote, basic steps -- in this case, the first draft. What's left is more complex, creative and requires more interaction. It's unlikely that GenAI is going to take your job, but someone who has GenAI skills might -- or certainly might get promoted faster. Worried about #AI taking your job? Act like a freelancer! WDYT?

Feeling stuck? Moving sideways might be a good idea. Slower promotions and a weaker job market has led to a lot of folks feeling stuck in a rut. The solution might be moving around inside your own company -- which can help you grow, stay engaged, and increase cross-functional connection. Great examples in Chip Cutter's latest from Synchrony and Allstate: 🔸 At Synchrony, people can swap jobs for as little as 90 days or up to a year. "[People] want the ability to think about doing something net new and being empowered to do what’s best for them” says CHRO DJ Casto 🔸 Allstate increased internal hiring to 60% from 45% by focusing recruiters internally, starting with coffee chats. The starting point might be a bit rough. As Robert Toohey notes, “When you get a call from a recruiter internally, you start to go, ‘Am I losing my job?’” I've moved sideways at least three times in my career -- moves that accelerated learning and longer-term goals. Cribbing again from Bob, “I think we have to get away from just: ‘I move up.’ It’s ‘How do I progress?’” 🔗 Link to Chip Cutter's #WSJ coverage in comments, and thanks Bryan Berthold for the tip ... and putting me up to this! #career #turnover #layoffs #engagement

Apparently, return to office mandates still tick off employees -- and yet, a steady trickle of commands keep coming. My column about mandates for MIT Sloan Management Review was their 3rd most read story of 2024 (so far), which is a bit of a good news / bad news situation, tbh. The frequency of mandates has dropped; The Conference Board reports that #ReturnToOffice is way down the list of things to sweat this year for most executives. Those that remain tend to have two factors in common: executives under pressure for poor performance, and a desire to reduce staff. "Maybe people aren't working hard enough / taking this seriously enough" gets combined with "how do we know they're really working?" into "maybe we can avoid a layoff and severance." The challenge remains that the same command-and-control policy that might result in some "voluntary" turnover and remove people who really aren't working hard also tarnishes everyone -- including your highest performers. That's the doom loop. Flexibility also can't be a free-for-all. I've worked with enough teams grappling with coordination tax -- and people who want to come in, but not to sit alone on Zoom all day. Teams need to align on purpose for coming together, ensure they have regular in-sync hours, and agree on what tools they use (including the office) for which purpose. Leaders need to invest in getting themselves aligned on goals and priorities. What are the most important goals we've got for the back half of the year? Who's accountable at the exec level for getting us there? How does that roll out throughout the organization? What are we going to stop doing to do better on what matters most? Outcomes-driven leadership takes work, and hard decision making. It's harder than simply issuing a command. But it's the only way you're going to engage people on the goals of the business, instead of distracting the organization with the latest shift in policy. 🔗 Link in comments to the article! Huge thanks to the amazing researchers and experts that I tap for my work, including Mark Ma, Molly Sands, PhD, Annie Dean and team at Atlassian, Sharon Parker, Nick Bloom, Erin Grau at Charter, Caitlin Duffy, PhD at Gartner and several other amazing, incredible researchers whose work I love -- and thanks Leslie Brokaw, Abbie Lundberg and team at MIT Sloan Management Review! #RTO #leadership #futureofwork #remotework #remote #WFH #hybrid #hybridwork

🎶 The #RTO Tango... "Badge in from 8 to 6, to show us you exist. How can we manage people who we can't see? I know we're all adults, but some of us have faults and some of us are still kinda struggling with object permanence..." Way to go Forrest Brazeal!

Are you 👍 optimistic or 👎 pessimistic about the impact of #AI in the back half of 2024? "As we enter the second half of the year, I am filled with a sense of cautious optimism" That's Edith Cooper, who's seconded by Helen Lee Kupp: "I feel cautiously optimistic. Despite data showing that women are still lagging men in AI adoption, during a time when it’s estimated that women’s jobs are 9% more likely to be disrupted by AI, I have seen how powerful it has been to create accessible and easy ways for people to get hands on with AI quickly." Both of them point to the need to invest in learning at the individual level, as well as the team level, and to experiment and iterate together. I've seen a bifurcation in leaders: there's a set who are still largely just listening to the hype and thinking that efficiency and productivity will somehow magically show up. For those magical thinkers, the bloom will come off the rose. Then there's the realists, who get the J-curve... "Like every major technological shift before it, the impact of #genAI will be a J-curve: negative initial results with long-term impact created through experimentation, iteration and slow, steady progress." For more from all three of us, check out Charter's 2nd Half of 2024 Predictions, link in comments -- thanks Erin Grau! What's your take? #FutureOfWork #predictions #technology

#WFH went up last year, contrary to a lot of headlines about #RTO. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “~35% of all employed persons in the US spent the average working day doing at least some of their work from home.” That’s kudos reporting from Millie Giles and William Coulman at Sherwood News (who I found thanks to Rani Molla!) I would bet serious money Nick Bloom can digest the latest BLS survey twists and turns better than me, but it seems more like a point of stability. We know from Flex Index that fewer companies every quarter are full time office. We know from Kastle Systems that their occupancy measure hasn’t shifted on average. We also know most people don’t want fully #remote. But #hybrid is here to stay. If you haven’t made the modest investments needed to make it work, it’s time to get with the program. 🔗 Links to the Chartr reporting and to a great study from Naomi Titleman and team in comments. #FutureOfWork #remotework #hybridwork #workfromhome

Want to improve business results? Focus on creating high performance teams. "[M]ost leaders are not trained on how to manage and optimize team effectiveness and are much more comfortable providing individual feedback rather than focusing on understanding and improving team dynamics." That's from The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp)'s latest report, which posits 39% higher #productivity from improved team collaboration. The focus in a world of #hybrid and #remote on individual productivity doesn't work well in knowledge work. It's not a new topic, Peter Drucker in 1969 said "once we automate rote tasks, what’s left is creativity, decision-making, and complex problem-solving." High performance organizations only happen if you enable and support high performance teams. Katheryn Brekken, Ph.D., Rob Cross and team have found a few common problems, and solutions. 🔥 Priority overload is the most common dysfunction -- too many priorities, too few resources. 🔥 Misalignment is the most toxic dysfunction: differing incentives across a team and/or competition over collaboration build a lack of #trust. What do leaders in high performance teams do differently? ✳ 4X more likely to act to reduce burnout: prioritize the work, say "no" (or at least "not now"). ✳ 3X more likely to diffuse cliques, remove toxic people and reduce posturing and politics. ✳ 3X more likely to talk through goals across the group and build shared purpose up front. ✳ 2X more likely to streamline approvals, to escalate resource conflicts. They also point out common infrastructure at companies that are looking to foster high performance teams: 1️⃣ Best practices are gathered from internal high-performing teams and disseminated throughout the organization. 2️⃣ Support from coaches who help teams improve collaboration. 3️⃣ Training for leaders on how to focus on the needs of teams, not just individual performance. There's a lot more to it, worth taking the time to read and digest. Links to the report and a July 11th webinar in comments. FYI also folks like Sacha Connor, Samantha Gadd, Chrissie Arnold, Sophie Wade, Naomi Titleman and many others who are great at this type of work! #FutureOfWork #leadership #team #teams

How many tech companies have #hybrid work policies that require specific days of the week in office? How does that vary by size? Starting today, you can figure it out for yourself! Flex Index just launched FlexGPT, an #AI copilot that queries the Flex Index database of >8k companies' #flexible work policies, and gives back some lovely, interactive visuals like the one below. Getting past clickbait headlines and "everyone is doing X" requires real-life data. I've been a fan of the team since they started -- we need to root our conversations in real-world data. Now, instead of sending Rob Sadow, Kate Walsh and Michael Samuels my umpteenth "hey, what's the breakdown in Financial Services for firms over 10k employees?" I can do it myself. Plenty of folks out there who I hope will find this useful: I'd love to see more journalists and researchers using it, as well as #CRE brokers and consultants. But the biggest value ought to be for the #workplace and #people leaders who need insights into how their policies (or potential changes in policies) stack up against their peers. Together with Flex Index Office Benchmarks, they're building an indispensable set of tools! 🔗 Check it out, link to the new FlexGPT in comments! #remote #remotework #hybridwork #commercialrealestate #realestate