…knew to negotiate like an Indian — meaning he recognized that he has more control in his relationships with companies.

On first glance, the phrase “<action> like an <ethnic background>” seems offensive.  Try it yourself, plug a few in there, negative or positive.  In general it ends up sounding ignorant, maybe even hateful.  The fact that the author is Indian leads me to believe this wasn’t his intent, of course, and when you read a follow-up comment on the blog you get a clearer picture of what is going on here:

Spent some time backpacking in India … I realized I was very undergunned when it came to negotiating with the auto-rickshaw drivers. After six months, I could hold my own.

So one possible meaning here is that there are opportunities for confrontational negotiation in the Indian culture that are not in the US culture.  I asked the author of the post for clarification but he didn’t respond, so I can only guess.  But for someone in a global corporation, interacting with people from different cultures (even in different cultures) every day, this isn’t just an academic question.

I took the opportunity to discuss this with a few co-workers at EMC.  It’s easy to compare this to, say, a class offered internally which helps managers understand the cultural norms and how they differ in some of the countries in which we operate.  You might hear a story about how employees in the US and employees in India tend to react differently to authority figures, for example.  In fact, if you extrapolate out a bit, you can think of similar examples around personality types — creative people do this, while analytic people do that — or gender, or religion, or … you get the point.

So how do you accumulate knowledge about cultural (or other) differences without resorting to stereotyping?  Here’s one metric:

• If you’re increasing your toolset and adding new things to think about in your interactions, you’re being inclusive of differences.
• If you’re creating mental shortcuts to limit what you think about in an interaction, you’re picking up a stereotype.

For example:

Joe manages a multinational team and holds regular staff meetings.  At the close of each he invites discussion and sometimes the debates get heated.  He expects his team members to question his decisions in these meetings to help make sure the best decision is being made.

Joe does some reading and learns that culturally, it is not common to publicly express disapproval with authority figures in China.  Up until now, he had assumed everyone was comfortable with his style.  What does he do with this information?

• Does he use this as a mental shortcut and assume his Chinese staff members are incompatible with his style, and change nothing except how he interacts with those staff members?
• Or does he add the fact that some people aren’t comfortable with this type of debate to his leadership toolbox, and try to be inclusive of other types of group decision-making, not just for those individuals (who may or may not even have a problem with it) but for everyone on the team?

Our first instinct is to stereotype.  Don’t be ashamed of that.  It got us to where we are today — apes who can’t learn not to eat poison berries won’t survive long enough to reproduce.  But we’re not apes any more, and while generalizing is an effective risk avoidance technique it carries a high opportunity cost.  Apes who assume all berries are poisonous just because one made them sick are really missing out on some delicious and nutritious foods.

Evolve a bit.  When you learn about a new behavior, a new cultural norm, a motivating factor … put it in your toolbox.  Use it as a reason to make your style more inclusive of everyone.  Don’t take the easy way out and start putting all your co-workers in buckets.

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Stereotyping in the age of inclusion

I was unexpectedly moved by a few of the comments and questions from the audience.  Both came from women who were not (yet) parents.  One asked about how working mothers manage to balance the conflicting demands of parenting, working, and still finding time to maintain a relationship with their partners.  Another talked about never feeling like she was fully present anywhere, since the conflicting demands of 21st-century life were forcing her to constantly multitask.  I realized that while we were there to talk about the experience of being a working mother, the truth was that we are all working humans, and that finding boundaries and maintaining balance was a continuous challenge for all of us.

Of course, the stakes are higher for parents.  It’s not just our own lives we’re messing up!  But the truth is that we all deserve a balanced and meaningful life.  And as with advancing your career, finding that balance is fundamentally your own responsibility.  Just as many managers will happily control your every task if you give them that window, your company, your team, your co-workers will happily take over your every free moment if you open it up to them.  Creating, understanding, maintaining, and communicating those boundaries is one of the greatest challenges any of us face, and in working parents it’s perhaps the defining challenge of our lives.

I’m excited that the authors of the Working Mothers Experience book have forced this issue into the light and empowered all of us to have a better conversation about it.  It’s great that we were able to take an hour out of our busy EMC World schedules to start that conversation, and have it in front of our partners and customers.  It speaks volumes about the environment we all are working in, and is one of the reasons I’m proud of where I am right now.

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

EMC World 2009 – Day Three – WME Breakfast

I honestly wasn’t sure what I would learn as I began writing.  What I didn’t expect was people to come out of the blue after reading what I wrote and ask to talk to me.  I sat down with a few different people and got some honest insights into aspects of the EMC culture I was previously blind to.  Some of it made it into my posts, and some of it just worked its way into my everyday working life.  And of course most importantly the individuals I made contact with have become part of my work circle, enriching my life in ways that continue to surprise me.

When I met with Natalie Corridan-Gregg last summer, she told me about a project she was working on.  I’m proud to be able to be a part of the official launch of that project today – The Working Mother Experience, a 250-page book full of individual working parents’ stories.  I was fortunate enough to be given an early copy of the book a couple weeks back, and wrote a review of it which is being used as part of the launch today.  Here’s the meat of my review:

I was cynically half-expecting to read essays dancing around the complex issues, but this isn’t the case. There are moments of self-doubt, guilt, pride, and joy. The flavor of individual people and cultures really shines through in each story, as you are given a brief glance into each person’s life, each person’s world.  A single line of text might inspire you or fill you with sadness, but most of all the stories are authentic.  These parents are brave and honest and I admire the strength of character it takes to tell these stories and invite everyone into their complex and difficult lives.

I’m writing this post not because I think the book is great (though I do!) but because I’m fascinated by how I managed to stumble on to this project and play a small part in it. My interest in the subject of diversity and inclusion at EMC slowly developed from a couple comments on our internal site into a series of posts on my public blog, which led to some faceto-face conversations and some informal networking.  By staying with this in the months since then, I’ve been able to really strengthen my connection with the challenges faced by our diverse workforce.  This all factors into what I wrote about a few months ago, with how hard it is to measure the ROI on increased employee engagement by embracing the social web.

This isn’t just about your company’s investment into its workforce, but your own investment into your working day. It’s a testament to the new world at EMC (and others companies who are embracing the social web) that I can invest more of myself into what I traditionally think of as “work” and somehow end up feeling like I’ve gotten a more healthy work/life balance out of it in the end.

I think if you read the Working Mothers Experience book, you’ll find that same message hidden in a few of the stories.

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Working Mothers at EMC

So, if you speak German (or if you want to give the auto-translator a try; there is one on the page) swing by the site and say Guten Tag!

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Willkommen a new EMC blogger

But I’m not here to talk about that kind of office politics.  I’m here to talk about politics in the office.  Well, politics, religion, and whether you prefer waffles to pancakes.  You know, the hard questions.  I recently saw a discussion sparked by an employee who felt “harassed” by having unpopular political views criticized by others at the workplace.

I have seen this myself — watched as someone had his political stance mocked at the lunch table.  Some of it was in good fun, but when you’re outnumbered 5 to 1, maybe the good fun is in the eyes of the majority.  I’ve also seen some reckless behavior on the part of people who assumed their audience was in line with them on the issues.  I’ve always cringed when someone mercilessly mocks a politician, assuming everyone in earshot feels the same way.  Even if I agree with the opinion, I’ve often played devil’s advocate, hoping to minimize the marginalization someone in the audience might feel.  Of course, this brings about its own troubles.  So maybe the safest option is silence?

Maybe not.  I’ve had some excellent conversations at work with people who brought politically and religiously diverse views to the table.  I enjoy these discussions; in fact, I hate empty political talks (where the entire group expresses the same outrage at some other group) and prefer interesting ones (where people share openly and honest interest is shown in opposing viewpoints).  What’s the point in valuing diversity if we can’t talk about the things that make us diverse?

As with most things in life, I say moderation is key.  Know your audience, temper your posture, and never make it personal.  If necessary, save the lunch table for complaining about the cafeteria food, and chat about real issues on your own dime.

How about you?

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Office Politics

I try to live with an open mind, recognizing the bias of my own upbringing while trying to disregard it.  I account for and value the varying cultural perspectives I encounter in my daily life.  But I also deeply value equality, freedom, and reason.

What do we do when we encounter perspectives which clash with our values?  How hard is it to reconcile the ideal of inclusion with the reality that some ideas deserve to be excluded?

Basically, when does “I respect your beliefs” end and “I think you are dangerous” begin?

Taken to its extreme, it’s easy to see where to draw the line.  You can believe whatever you want, but when you kill someone else because of their beliefs, I no longer respect your belief.

But extremes are always easy, and rarely interesting.  The interesting questions are a lot harder.  The example a lot of people are struggling with this summer is as fresh as the headlines: Can you be enthusiastic about the symbolism of China’s “coming out party” in the 2008 Olympics while still holding them accountable for their human rights record?

Can you talk about all religious traditions being equal when some traditions lead directly to reduced rights for women?  For gay people?  If you value the separation of church and state, how do you respect the beliefs of those who wish to see that distinction blurred?  If the belief you are trying to respect is itself exclusionary, how do you wrap your mind around it?

I tend to cope with the issue by looking at as big a picture as I can handle, and then realizing the real picture is even bigger.  I remind myself that within that big picture are an uncountable number of individuals who impact the issue or are impacted by it in uncountable ways.  I remind myself that I value those individuals and I value the diversity that the complex picture brings to the environment.

But sometimes that isn’t enough.

What do you do?  How do you resolve these conflicts?

(And if you think this doesn’t equate to anything in the corporate world, think again.  Do a little search on Google and China for a hot example.  Or, as a thought experiment, imagine you are choosing someone to serve as a liaison to a Saudi company.  Picture the complex questions that enter your mind.)

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Diversity, Inclusion, and Personal Values

Last week, I posed the question this whole series has been leading to:  If you’re passionate about diversity and inclusion, is EMC the right place for you?

Today, I’m going to do my best to answer it.  The answer shouldn’t surprise you – I am going to say “Yes.”  But hopefully I can keep the reasons interesting.

I am not saying Yes because EMC has this thing all figured out.  I should hope you can piece together from my series of posts that EMC is getting better, that we have some passionate people in the right places, and that we’re succeeding.  But just like anything in business, you never claim victory.  You just keep raising the bar.  EMC knows a thing or two about that.

I say Yes because I want to see that bar getting raised, and the way it gets raised is by dozens of little victories giving rise to a new standard.  I wrote last week about the sandwich, with people at the top and bottom trying to spread their values into the meat in the middle.  We need loud voices, we need smart voices, we need people who won’t say “We’re doing good enough.”  Good enough isn’t good enough for me, and if it isn’t good enough for you, I want you here with me.

I’ve mentioned that I think this is a special time for EMC.  Our internal social network is growing, but still small enough that voices get heard.  If you want to drive change at EMC, this is a unique time to do it.  Lots of people are listening, and in ways the company might not expect.  There’s turning out to be quite a marketplace of ideas forming.

It’s no secret that the business world has some issues to sort out with regards to inclusion, especially around gender issues, especially in the high tech world.  If you’re passionate about the issue, you’re going to find yourself identifying areas for improvement no matter what company you join.  At EMC, I honestly believe your voice is going to carry pretty far.

If I didn’t think anyone was listening, I wouldn’t be standing on the soapbox myself.

This isn’t the last post I’ll make about diversity here.  I’m watching as our GLBT alliance gets off the ground.  I’m seeing new Affinity Circles try to form, in need of volunteers and sponsors.  In writing this series of posts, I’ve established new contacts, people who are operating in corporate subcultures different from my own.  I think this is going to be an interesting topic to revisit in a few months.  In the meantime, I welcome your comments, public or private.

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Diversity at EMC: Conclusions

I’ve talked a lot about diversity, starting with my own personal experiences and looking further and further outwards.  I’ve had some hallway conversations, exchanged private emails, and gotten more of a feel of what some other people’s experiences look like.

Through it all, though, the question has remained: how do you take the overriding spirit of inclusiveness and build it into corporate DNA?  How do you make sure that people aren’t just working on diverse teams, but that they value and seek diversity?  How do you make sure that everyone feels valued?

There are endless ways, and many of them are under control not of the corporate overlords but the front line managers, senior managers, and even peer employees.

For example, many people I work with take long vacations.  They travel home to China or India, and may take 3 or more weeks at a time to do it.  As a first level manager, think of the influence you have in deciding how you respond when someone asks for a vacation like that.

Similarly, if you grant someone personal time to celebrate a holiday outside the norm in your locale, good for you.  But if you make them feel like they’re putting the team out when you do it, you’re sending a powerful message.  “We’re letting you do this, but we wish we didn’t have to.”

Organizing a team lunch or outing?  Are you sure you have taken everyone’s needs into account?  You don’t take a team with a half-dozen vegetarians to a steakhouse, for example.

Do you treat a team member differently when they are talking about traditional spouses versus other kinds of domestic partners?  Mental versus physical health issues?  If a father needs to leave early to take care of a family emergency, do you treat that differently than if a mother does?

The problem here is the same problem we’ve been talking about all along.  The CEO might be passionate about this, and pockets of employees may be passionate about it, but until every single front-line manager embraces this, until every director makes it a priority, until every hallway conversation takes this into account, it’s hard to say inclusion is really part of the company’s DNA.  One fellow employee compared it to a sandwich: at the top, our senior executives (including our CEO) take the issue seriously and have bought in.  At the bottom, most new employees understand and buy in.  In between, there are lots of people who are in varying states … some are holding on to old cultural artifacts, and some are eagerly moving forward.

We’re working on this.  It’s impossible to say “we’ve succeeded” but I can say we’re getting better.  The cultural changes are spreading from the top and the bottom.  I can tell you how it feels on my team.  I can tell you how it feels on the teams of people who have taken the time to talk to me.  Not all their stories sound like mine — some people don’t “get it” yet — but all of them say the same thing.  We’re better now than we were a couple years ago.

I’m going to wrap this series up (for now) next week.  What does all this mean?  If you’re passionate about diversity and inclusion, is EMC the place for you?  Stay tuned.

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Diversity at EMC: Building In Inclusion

In a previous post, I mentioned how new hires into an organization might cluster around a “least risk” demographic.  While it’s not always true, anyone outside that group might be at a disadvantage in competing for recognition and advancement.

As an example, a software developer who speaks English with an accent might write excellent code but struggle with the interpersonal aspects of the job, which become more important as her responsibility in the organization grows.  She is not being explicitly penalized for her background, but is facing a disadvantage other team members are not.  When deciding who to promote, she may be passed over (and in fact that is a defensible decision).

So how do you help people in these underrepresented groups succeed?

One way EMC addresses this is with Employee Circles.  Going by a variety of names (Affinity Groups, Interest Teams, etc.) these are employee-driven (but corporate-funded and executive-sponsored) organizations focused on helping fellow employees.  Their activities have a dual purpose – while they provide assistance for their members, they also increase visibility throughout the entire company.  So when the Women’s Leadership Forum sponsors a speaker to come talk at the company, it both helps those who attend and increases visibility of women within the company to anyone who sees the announcement.

Circles do great things like host classes aimed at helping their members succeed (both traditional offerings like time management and negotiation as well as efforts like English as a Second Language), publicize issues facing their membership, sponsor guest speakers, and hold social events to help their membership network within the company.  The Circles appear to be very successful.  They regularly organize events which attract wide audiences and help keep EMC a lively place to work.

That’s the company line, and I promised to look deeper than just that.

Several years back, a colleague of mine was asked to take a leadership role in an Employee Circle.  He’s an outspoken, successful, talented member of a minority group without much representation within the industry, never mind the company.  He thought seriously about it, and eventually said no.  It’s not because he didn’t believe in the effort.  It was that he was already overworked, and he was told by his manager that any time he devoted to the Circle would come out of his own personal time.  Could he afford to take time away from his family to advance the cause of minorities within the company?  He decided that no, he could not.

Now, I don’t know what the “official company line” is.  Maybe a few years later, things are different.  But as I ask around, it becomes clear to me that the issue isn’t cut and dry.  As I said before, EMC is a very large company, with lots of subcultures.  Maybe in other organizations my colleague would be allowed to dedicate a few hours a week to this task on company time.  But for some groups, there’s a clear line between “work we ask you to do” and “work you take on.”  The lack of a clear policy on this creates an area where the same penalty we’re trying to avoid just comes about in a different way.  There’s a certan irony in a Working Mothers group whose members have to take time away from their parenting duties to run the group.

This aspect of the issue isn’t unique to EMC.  Ask around — plenty of companies have similar groups, going under a variety of names.  Do a Google search on “corporate affinity groups” and see what pops up.  Most of them have identical language about being employee-driven, which tells me they are not fundamentally different from EMC’s approach.  And, obviously, some companies don’t have these at all.  Some corporate sites, though, make a point of describing how their affinity groups serve as diversity advisers on product direction and corporate policy.  Imagine the powerful message sent by a company that not only has a Persons with Disabilities Affinity Group, but runs all product designs past it?

These programs work, but they can be improved. Think, for example, about the subtle difference between a “Working Mothers” group and a “Working Parents” group.  Fundamentally, though, they have a limit … they help address an individual group’s issues, but don’t necessarily impact the overall corporate culture.  How do you teach people to value a diverse environment?  How do you inject inclusiveness into corporate DNA?

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Diversity at EMC: Employee Circles

Even once you accept that diversity is inherently valuable in the workplace (just as it is in finance), there are still business realities which can complicate the situation.  For example, a team competing solely on time to market will be more likely to win if the members of that team share common language and cultural assumptions (no overhead dealing with cultural gaps, communication difficulties, etc.).  Similarly, a sales team might benefit from having a similar demographic makeup as their target audience, even if that audience is homogeneous.

Over time I believe these would turn into weaknesses for those teams, but sometimes “over time” isn’t what matters.

The complexities of business, then, do creep into the hiring process.  No individual candidate is going to be rejected during the interview process for reasons of gender, race, or sexual preference.  But in the whole, the profile of accepted candidates may tend to cluster around the least-risk demographic.  Even more telling, depending on the job, short-term successes might come more rapidly to those in that demographic, skewing your senior and rewarded team members even more (and sending a powerful, if unintentional, message to everyone else).

I sat recently with Natalie Corridan-Gregg, president of EMC’s Women’s Leadership Forum, and talked about this particular issue.  We agreed that this will be a problem in any organization like EMC (that sells into a global market, that has so many geographically distributed business units, etc), and she told me her research has shown EMC is in a similar place as many of its competitors in dealing with it.  She and I spoke on a handful of topics relating to diversity, inclusion, and life at EMC, including many of our strengths and challenges.  At the risk of sounding like a corporate shill, I will say she felt one of our strengths is our CEO, Joe Tucci, who is deeply involved in promoting diversity and inclusion throughout the company.

Of course, EMC is challenged due to its nature as well.  We have grown a great deal via acquisition, and our business units often operate fairly independently.  The current economic climate means many teams are not bringing in lots of fresh talent.  So, change comes slowly, often through reorganizations.  Cultural norms in some parts of the company still carry the legacy of people who left nearly a decade ago.  In addition, a company we acquire might have its own cultural issues, which may not be addressed immediately (when everyone has greater concerns).

As an EMC shareholder, would you demand that the company intentionally cut its profits in order to shake up smoothly-operating teams to artificially introduce diversity?  Just how would you put such a plan into place, if you were in charge?

I can tell you what I see EMC doing.  There are two main fronts where I see progress being made.  First, we try to minimize the penalty someone is operating under as member of an under-represented group.  This can hopefully counteract some of the reasons someone would face difficulties as an outsider to the “least-risk demographic” I talked about earlier.

Second, there’s a spread of inclusion as a core value of the company.  The end goal is a culture where everyone feels valued and needed, regardless of whether the demographic makeup is in line with theoretical equality.  Find a way to weave inclusion into the company’s DNA, and watch as diversity follows.

I’d like to dive a bit deeper into each of these in upcoming posts, both in terms of what our successes have been and what challenges still remain.  There are a couple other points I want to bring up as well.  In the end, I hope I can help paint a more complete picture of the EMC of today, and how it is trying to change for tomorrow.

This post is from: Dave Talks Shop

Diversity at EMC: The Complexities of Business