This week I had a few conversations about Bozoma’s newest position at Uber -- which I am personally very excited about. To my surprise, not everyone felt this way. Some felt like many have tried and everyone walks away saying how challenging it is to work with Travis or that she would be working to line his pockets.
As I thought about this, I wasn’t so worried about Travis’ pockets being fat yet more intrigued at the accountability and responsibility he is having to step into along the journey of fattening his pockets.
In today’s CREATE Culture Report, I muse on the idea of getting to be different. Do leaders get to change? Is it possible to learn and grow? Or is it all just PR and strategic moves in the sake of world domination?
This is what seems to be opportune today, in the world of corporate greed, shady business practices, and oppressive work cultures -- the dark side of things -- there is an unprecedented ability and desire to hold leaders accountable.
One of the primary reasons I decided to go into management consulting out of engineering, was because before it seemed there was this culture of it being ok, to do people wrong, ignore the environment, and participate in straight shade, all in the name of getting ahead.
19 year old Tiffany wanted to be a part of changing this..I still do.
Slowly but surely, however we’re entering an age where as a people we’re more woke.
In one conversation I had this week an executive mentioned that transformation doesn’t happen overnight and that the needle is moving slowly and steadily.
While another executive I spoke to mentioned how before, specifically in the case of gender balance, the value of women being women in the workplace was completely ignored and we were expected to be better men. And now we’re in a place where we can acknowledge that there are differences and begin to talk about it.
I see both of these conversations -- moving the needle and the acknowledgement of the value in diversity and inclusion as galvanized energy for what Malcolm Gladwell spoke of us a Tipping Point.
Over the next 3-5 years we will experience what feels like mass transformation in corporate culture, structure, and strategic value chains. I don’t think this is completely altruistically driven, though there are a lot of change makers and catalysts on the front lines. I met some last Friday at a UC Berkeley sponsored Women in Tech Roundtable.
Moreso what we are experiencing are a number of factors -- technology, workforce demands, capability, and a shift in consciousness to name a few -- that are creating the conditions for this tipping point.
We’ve been moving towards this for some time and there seems to be the beginnings of a critical mass needed to make it more visible to the naked eye. I share this, just to say -- people may show up differently whether it be out of need or necessity. They also may not.
What is key, is that we give them the space to allow them to. If we hold someone to who they used to be, without the freedom to be different in our listening, they never get to show up differently. On the flip side, when we listen for someone’s highest good, we give them the freedom and space to show up in that way too.
In other words -- we, as the observer, influence the results. #observereffects #physics
I’m not saying it’s easy -- just that it’s possible.