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Can’t Ban Political Talk at Work

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When politics and social issues are increasingly divisive, workplaces find it challenging to forbid political conversation entirely from the workplace. In April, project management software company Basecamp faced uproar when trying to ban politics at work. Co-founder Jason Fried announced that Basecamp would no longer tolerate discussions around political or social issues “where the work happens,”

Today’s social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn’t have to wonder if staying out of it means you’re complicit, or wading into it means you’re a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It’s become too much. It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy and redirects our dialog towards dark places.

Basecamp’s ban was meant to prevent distraction and souring of work relationships, but the mandate swiftly backfired. Twenty out of some 60 employees threatened to quit.

Banning Political Discussions Isn’t That Simple

I think banning political talk is a lazy way for leadership to not deal with issues like racism, misogyny, stereotyping, and contempt that may be festering among employees.

Often, when people say they want more political discussion in the workplace, they actually mean that they want more political discussion about viewpoints they want others to conform to. Workplaces with lots of political discussions are ones where most of the staff has identical socio-political leanings. Employees with divergent political leanings tend to be reticent and stay out of such talks.

It’s neither productive nor possible to not talk about politics and society at work. Companies can’t tell employees to not bring their real selves to work. People are opinionated about politics, and everyone has views and tries to defend them. Besides, politics isn’t a neatly self-contained issue that doesn’t overlap with anything else. When an employee’s attitudes aren’t in line with the company’s—or even the majority’s—attitudes, “put up or shut up” policies end up more damaging than the bickering or backlash they are intended to avoid.

Group settings are better when divergent opinions are known. An inclusive workforce must be able to embrace a diverse range of views. Conversations will come up anyway, and instead of banning these conversations and encouraging employees to take them outside of work, employers must institute protocols for airing and understanding opposing opinions and dealing with offensive behavior.

Idea for Impact: Canceling conversations about the significant issues of the day simply silences those with unpopular attitudes instead of encouraging a culture of growth.

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Consensus is Dangerous

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Management books tout the importance of harmony, cohesion, and alignment with company values and practices. Comforting though they are, such goals often carry with them the assumption that unanimity is always helpful.

Indeed, like-mindedness has its benefits, viz. high morale, a sense of identity, and a vision’s execution. But an unchallenged majority can “bend reality.” Toeing the line can delude everyone into having faith in opinions that’re not true or beneficial.

I’ve talked previously about how humans have a tendency to create, maintain, and guard cliques. Life-minded groups recruit, socialize, and reward consensus while reproving dissent (consider Scientology.) People are recruited to fit with the organization, and they become even more socialized into the culture.

Influence-by-majority belief narrows the cognitive map

For the sake of consensus, people can overlook the confutation from their own senses and blindly follow the majority, whether right or wrong. In the bestselling Outliers: The Story of Success (2008,) pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell calls attention to the cultural predisposition to maintain silence and not rock the boat:

Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. When we think of airline crashes, we think, Oh, they must have had old planes. They must have had badly trained pilots. No. What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S.

Uniformity of thought and esprit de corps can act together to make people amenable and taciturn when they see a problem or a better option.

Idea for Impact: Making sure everyone’s on the same page can produce harmony—of the cult-like variety. Encourage dissent and counterevidence in decision-making.

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Silence is Consent

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Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit. (He who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree.)
—Latin Proverb

If you don’t speak up at a meeting or ask for a deferral of a decision, you can’t come back later and declare, “I really hated that decision. I don’t want it to happen.”

Make sure to speak your mind when you disagree with something because, for many people, silence indicates consent.

Go to the meeting. Challenge the proposal. Stand up and be counted. Let your feelings be heard. Chip in on the debate. Commit to how the decision will be made.

Idea for Impact: Silence, especially when a new, perhaps contentious proposal, is being discussed, indicates a lack of engagement within the team. People who care speak out in a healthy team environment.

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How to Start a Hybrid-Remote Work Model

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As the pandemic subsides (at least for now,) many companies are summoning employees back to the office. Some companies are giving workers a combination of remote and co-located work.

To initiate a hybrid-remote model for your workplace, first reconstruct how your team gets its job done. Ask, “What activities can be remote?” instead of “what roles can be remote?”

Not every activity can be equally performed in a remote setting. Take into account the level of human and physical interaction needed for every task.

Consider breaking down business activities that were formerly bundled into a single job. Mix and match responsibilities and tasks in keeping with employee competencies and individual needs.

Every employee responds to work circumstances differently. Some employees are eager to return to work—especially if they’ve struggled with blurring home and office during the pandemic, or if they fear disadvantages such as a lack of visibility for promotions.

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Never Hire a Warm Body

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If you have a position open and you’re having a hard time filling it, don’t compromise and hire a warm body. Certainly not to fill an open spot within a specific time frame so as to not risk losing your team’s headcount.

Alas, many warm-body hires do not last very long. So, until you have a candidate who fully meets the job’s requirements, don’t fill the position.

Rather than jumping at every job seeker to cross your path, be methodical and follow a clear and consistent approach.

Take your time during the hiring process. Needing to fill the position yesterday is not an excuse for shortchanging the process.

Idea for Impact: Don’t hire quickly and, thus, poorly because you need a warm body. You and your team are better off working overtime than cleaning up the messes generated by someone who didn’t meet your requirements fully.

Hire wisely; nothing is more important.

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Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission

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A long time ago, I heard the managerial maxim, “you will move as fast as you can make decisions.” Amen to that.

That complements the mantra “’tis better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission”—that’s the oft-repeated rallying cry of entrepreneurial thinking.

You need to know when you shouldn’t—and can’t—wait for someone else’s approval to do the things you need to do to succeed. Every time you ask for buy-in, approval, or agreement, you’ll slow yourself down.

Depending on what’s at stake, you’ve got to know when moving forward does need consent. As with everything, you want to know your manager, team, partner, or spouse, how they operate, and their expectations for the group effort. If something’s an important-enough decision with high stakes, they’ll want to be in the loop.

Idea for Impact: Live speed. Where possible, don’t let dilly-dallying for permission endanger your decision-making success. It’s not about taking advantage of situations but about knowing when to push the boundaries. Where possible, aggressively move forward on your own and “get it done.”

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Creativity—It Takes a Village: A Case Study of the 3M Post-it Note

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Creativity isn’t always about sudden insights that work perfectly. No matter how good an idea is, it’ll probably need some work before it can mature into a helpful innovation.

The invention of 3M Post-it (or the sticky note) is a particularly illuminating case in point that innovation requires actionable and differentiated insight. Cross-functional collaboration can help ensure creative involvement throughout the development process.

A Glue That Doesn’t Stick: A Solution Without a Problem

In the winter of 1974, a 3M adhesives engineer named Spencer Silver gave an internal presentation about a pressure-sensitive adhesive compound he had invented in 1968. The glue was weak, and Silver and his colleagues could not imagine a good use for it. The glue could barely hold two pieces of paper together. Silver could stick the glue and reapply it to surfaces without leaving behind any residue.

In Silver’s audience was Arthur Fry, an engineer at 3M’s paper products division. Months later, on a frigid Sunday morning, Fry called to mind Silver’s glue in an unlikely context.

Fry sang in his church’s choir and used to put little paper pieces in his hymnal to bookmark the songs he was supposed to sing. The little paper pieces of bookmark would often fall out, forcing Fry to thumb frantically through the book looking for the correct page. (This is one of those common hassles that we often assume we’re forced to live with.)

In a flash of lightning, Fry recalled the weak glue he’d heard at Silver’s presentation. Fry realized that the glue could be applied to paper to create a reusable bookmark. The adhesive bond was strong enough to stick to the page but weak enough to peel off without leaving a trace.

The sticky note was thus born as a bookmark called Press’n Peel. Initially, It was sold in stores in four cities in 1977 and did poorly. When 3M offered free samples to office workers in Boise, Idaho, some customers started using them as self-attaching notes. It was only then that Post-it notes started to become popular. They were first introduced across America in 1980 and Canada and Europe in 1981.

Ideas Intermingle and Evolve: Creativity Needs Collaboration

In all, it took twelve years after the initial discovery of the “glue that doesn’t stick” before 3M made Post-it available commercially. The Post-it continues to be one of the most widely used office products in the world.

This case study of the Post-it is a persuasive reminder that there’s a divergence between an idea and its tangible application that the creator cannot bridge by himself. The creator will have to expose the concept to diverse people who can evaluate, use, and trial the product.

In other words, the creative process does not end with an idea or a prototype. A happy accident often undergoes multiple iterations and reinterpretations that can throw light on the concept’s new applications. In the above example, Art Fry was able to see Spencer Silver’s invention from a different perspective and conceive of a novel use that its creator, Silver, could not. And all this happened in 3M’s fertile atmosphere that many companies aspire to create to help ideas intermingle and creativity flourish.

Idea for Impact: Creativity Is About Generating New Possibilities

Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas and concepts—and new associations that connect the ideas with existing problems.

Excellent new ideas don’t emerge from within a single person or function but at the intersection of processes or people that may have never met before.

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Living with Rules You Don’t Like

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As a manager, sometimes you have to enforce rules that you don’t agree with.

Try your best to empathize with the rules, and if you can’t, you have no choice to accept the rules and implement them.

No manager wants to be the bearer of bad news, particularly when it’s about something the manager disagrees with. To avoid conflict with your employees, be concise, straightforward, and empathetic. Pass on the underlying principle communicated down to you. Then assert, “I’m afraid we have to live with this rule.”

Allow for venting, but discourage debate.

To maintain respect for those who have made the decisions, you may add, “Our executives have considered other options. They’ve made the choices based on what’s best for the organization. Decisions made at the top are often the final word on a subject. Rules are the rules. It’s okay to question them and not like them, but they still need to be followed.”

Emphasize that some disputes and disagreements are worth fighting, and others just aren’t. “I certainly don’t like it any more than you do. This isn’t the choice I would have made. But, let’s live with this rule, implement the change to the best of our abilities, and focus on our work and our team.”

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Pulling Off the Impossible Under Immense Pressure: Leadership Lessons from Captain Sully

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I recently watched Sully (2016,) the overrated Clint Eastwood-directed drama about the US Airways Flight 1549 incident, aka the “Miracle on the Hudson.”

Sully Movie (2016) with Tom Hanks, Clint Eastwood In summary, on 15-Jan-2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (played by Tom Hanks) heroically dead-sticked his Airbus A320 aircraft in New York City’s Hudson River after both the aircraft’s engines failed from a bird strike. He then helped get passengers and crew off uninjured.

Sully centers on Sullenberger’s post-decision dissonance. To spin the real-life six-minute flight and the 24-minute swift rescue into a 96-minute Holyrood extravaganza, the filmmakers devised an antagonist in the form of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators who try hard to blame Sullenberger for the mishap.

Overdramatized Portrayal of the NTSB Investigators

On the screen, the smirking NTSB investigators use flight simulators and computer analysis to second-guess Sullenberger’s lightning-quick decisions. They would have rather he made it to an airport nearby—a possibility that he had instantly judged was not viable given his 40 years of flying experience.

Contrary to Sully‘s portrayal, the NTSB was unequivocal that landing the aircraft on the Hudson was the right call. In his memoir, Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters (2009,) Sullenberger mentions that he was “buoyed by the fact that investigators determined that [first officer] Jeff and I made appropriate choices at every step.”

In the course of the real-life 18-month investigation of Flight 1549, the NTSB did investigate the odds of landing the aircraft in a nearby airport. Exploring all possible flaws that contribute to a crash is part of the NTSB’s charter. The NTSB, like other accident-investigation agencies, concerns itself principally with preventing future accidents. It rarely seeks to assign blame, nor does it make the pilots justify their actions.

The Complex Leadership Requirements of Flying

Apart from the sensationalized portrayal of the NTSB investigators, Sully misses the opportunity to call attention to the complex leadership requirements of aviation. Flying a civil aircraft is characterized by a high level of standardization and automation, while still placing a strong emphasis on formal qualification and experience.

Today, highly trained pilots have to work with ever more complicated and autonomous technology. The routinization must be weighed up against deliberate action. On Flight 1549, the A320’s much-studied fly-by-wire system allowed the pilots to concentrate on trying to resurrect the engines, starting the auxiliary power unit (APU,) and deciding the flight path in the direction of the Hudson. Airbus’s legendary computer controls will not allow the pilots to override the computer-imposed limits even in an urgent situation. Sullenberger and others have commented that lesser human-machine interaction may perhaps have allowed him a more favorable landing flare and helped him temper the aircraft’s impact with the water.

Aircrews now consist of ad hoc teams working together typically only for a few flights. They build their team quickly and rely on the crew’s collective knowledge and experience to round out the high levels of standardization.

Due to the complex demands for leadership in aircrews, specialized training programs such as Crew Resource Management (CRM) are in place to improve crew communication, situational awareness, and impromptu decision-making. These systems were established to help crews when technical failures and unexpected events disrupt highly procedualized normal operations.

Furthermore, individual and organizational learning from accidents was institutionalized through mandatory reporting of incidents—not only within the airline involved but also across the aviation community.

Leadership Lessons on Acting Under Immense Pressure: The Context of Success

Owing to intuition, experience, and quick coordination, Sullenberger was able to “land” the aircraft on the Hudson within four minutes following the bird strike and have his passengers and crew quickly evacuated onto the aircraft’s wings and onto rafts.

The rapid and highly complex coordination required for this extraordinary achievement was only achievable because of exceptional leadership, exemplary decision-making under stress, and the technical skills of both the cockpit- and cabin-crew.

The pilots were highly experienced—Sullenberger even had experience as a glider pilot. Further contextual factors—the calm weather on that afternoon and the proximity of NY Waterway ferries—helped bring this accident to a good end. All this facilitated the almost immediate rescue of passengers and crew from the rapidly sinking aircraft and the frigid water.

'Highest Duty What Really Matters' by Chesley Sullenberger (ISBN 0061924695) On Another Note, Sullenberger’s memoir, Highest Duty (2009,) is passable. The most interesting part of the book is the last fourth, where he discusses Flight 1549 and what went through his mind. Interestingly, Sullenberger writes that even after he realized that the plane was in one piece after hitting the water, he worried about the difficulties that still lay ahead. The aircraft was sinking: everyone had to be evacuated quickly. The passengers could survive only for a few minutes in the frigid waters of the Hudson.

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Better Than Brainstorming

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Most brainstorming sessions suck. Facilitators aren’t often skilled enough to direct the creative process and overcome interpersonal and intrapersonal barriers to idea-generation. Participants are not as organized as they need to be. One or two “meeting-hogs,” who lack self-awareness and self-control, dominate the conversations with their pet ideas and shut everyone else down. And then there’s groupthink and self-censorship based on responses to earlier suggestions by others. Consequently, bold ideas seldom survive a group discussion.

If you want to buck the odds, try “brainwriting” instead of brainstorming.

In its simplest form, brainwriting has the participants quietly reflect upon an open-ended prompt of appropriate scope, for example, “how could we improve our design process,” and write down their ideas. A group leader can organize the responses by combining identical ideas, grouping thematically-related ideas, and posting them on a wall for the group to appraise them further. Then, the participants vote on their favorites, and the top ‘n’ number of ideas or priorities are identified for future discussion and exploration.

Idea for Impact: Teams Don’t Think—Individuals Do

In essence, brainwriting isolates idea generation from the instantaneous discussion and evaluation that can hamper the creative process.

Brainwriting, when followed by discussion, combines the benefits of both individual and group creativity. Studies have repeatedly shown that people think of more new—and practical—ideas on their own than they do in a group.

In my experience, this creative thinking process is inclusionary, engaging, time-effective, non-judgmental, and mostly free from pressures to conform to others’ ideas. Brainwriting is particularly useful with a group of people who are reserved and would be unlikely to offer many ideas in an open group session.

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