Preamble

I have to admit that I am a little surprised to find myself writing a series of articles on ‘organizational bullshit.’ At first glance, this is not my area of specialist expertise. But the more I have reflected on this topic, the more I have realized that I am at least partially qualified to contribute an opinion, as I believe any person is who has spent 30 years working deep in organizations. ‘Organizational bullshit’ is a systemic issue that touches all corners of business, meaning most people who’ve built a career are consciously or unconsciously fluent in its dynamics.

Before you dive into the main content, let me address a few elephants in the room:

Firstly, as you read through these articles you’re going to see the word ‘bullshit.’ A lot. But, this is not mere vulgarity. As you will see, ‘Organizational bullshit’ is a credible and growing topic of academic research. To examine it, understand it and address it, we need to call it by its name.

Secondly, by writing these opinion pieces, I am in no way pointing fingers and suggesting that I am immune to bullshitting. Despite a naturally low tolerance for bullshit, I have also played the corporate game. I have been relatively successful in business, partly because I learned how to balance competence and bullshitability. So, my aim in these articles is not just to shine a light on the phenomenon of organizational bullshit and hopefully help improve the business environment; it’s also to keep myself honest and accountable so that I can constantly get better at this stuff.

As for my motives in writing these pieces: for most of my career, I have received feedback that I can be too direct, even ‘blunt’ or ‘lacking in tact.’ I don’t dispute these comments – I know that I have usually not been particularly diplomatic when I suspect I’m encountering bullshit. As a leader, this has been a struggle sometimes, because while I recognize the need for sensitivity in people management (and have worked at developing this capacity), I’m also careful not to lose the essence of who I am, something that is central to the embodiment of ‘authentic leadership.’ Appreciating corporate bullshit for what it is has not only helped me become better at catching my own bullshit – something I believe every responsible leader should aim to do – but also enabled me to depersonalize it. Hopefully that allows me to be more effective in helping my peers de-prioritize their team members’ bullshitting abilities in performance reviews and promotion cases.

Before focusing on cyber-kinetic security, I was in law enforcement and counterintelligence. For 20+ years, I also ran a non-profit that fought against sexual exploitation of children, and child slavery. So, the well-being of others has always been close to my work and has helped me laser in on what’s ultimately most important. With that clear in my mind, I’ve never had too much time or patience for corporate bullshit, but now it has become even more urgent for me to find a healthy way to reduce bullshit in the teams I lead and work in. As I mention in Part 1, in my area of work – cyber-physical systems security (CPSSEC) / Operational Technology (OT) security / cyber-kinetic security world, previously disconnected specialisms like IT, engineering and management consulting are required to work together. This becomes difficult due to cultural differences, one of which is a varying tolerance for bullshit. So, in trying to make OT / cyber-kinetic security experts out of IT people and management consultants, I need to train them to focus more on objective, measurable, life-saving benefits. We all have to learn to cut the bullshit.

Finally, I recently took a more active role in making PwC Canada an employer of choice for neurodiverse people, and one of the things I’ve learned is that some of the best neurodiverse performers often have a very low tolerance for bullshit and are willing to call it out very directly. I’ve been inspired by this. It has confirmed for me that organizational bullshit needs to be dealt with if we are all to deliver the positive impact we hope to through our work. But it has also made it very clear to me that organizations, and those in leadership, need to learn how to better listen to truth-tellers.

Part 1: Why

In the 1990 black comedy, Crazy People, Dudley Moore plays an advertising executive named Emery Leeson who, in the middle of a nervous breakdown, starts designing blunt, frank ads with slogans like “Buy Volvos – they’re boxy, but they’re good” and “Forget France. The French can be annoying. Come to Greece. We’re nicer.” This drift into truthfulness earns Leeson a stay in a psychiatric facility, but when his ads are accidentally printed and lead to record sales, Leeson and his fellow patients at the sanatorium are hired to be the creative force behind a new brand of “honest” or “no-nonsense” advertising. From thereon, the plot follows a predictable course as Leeson and his crew become the heroes in a battle against the mercenary owner of the advertising firm. However, the filmmaker’s point is still clearly made: advertising is full of bullshit.

There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about this view, of course. Industries like advertising, sales, and marketing are routinely accused of being built on bullshit, but what the film represents is an intention to call that out; an intention that has, until recently, been mainly missing from broader public discourse; an intention that I passionately share.

Because it’s not just the commercial areas of business that have become infected with bullshit, it’s the whole operation. If you’ve ever sat through a 100-slide PowerPoint presentation, or read a corporate mission statement and wanted to wretch a little, or paged through a case study that had no relationship with reality, or been in a meeting where you felt like you were drowning in jargon and corporate acronyms, or felt confused and bewildered as your CEO “moved to align all stakeholders” during a Town Hall, you’ll know what I mean. It’s painful. It’s wrong. And it has to change.

Not just swearing, I swear

As tempting as it may be, I have not written this article as an excuse to say “bullshit” over and over and thereby vent some of my frustration at the state of the world (although there might be a bit of that too). “Organizational bullshit” is not an expletive; it is an academically referenced term at the center of a broadening body of serious and legitimate research. In his 1986 essay, “On Bullshit,” which later developed into a book by the same name, Princeton philosopher, Harry G. Frankfurt, was the first to look at the phenomenon through a more analytical lens, making it something that can be identified and, therefore, addressed.

Frankfurt proposed that bullshit and lying, for example, are not the same thing. This is not immediately obvious when looking at accepted definitions: the Merriam-Webster dictionary recognizes bullshit as an informal vulgar term meaning “to talk nonsense, especially with the intent of misleading or deceiving,” while a lie is “an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker or writer to be untrue with intent to deceive.“

In both cases, it seems deception is the ultimate goal, but Frankfurt points out the subtle but important difference between the liar and the bullshitter:

“The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values,” says the scholar. “In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true.”

In other words, the liar is defined by having some sort of relationship to the truth, even if what comes out of his mouth is the total opposite. In some perverse way, he respects the truth, at least enough to recognize it as something real and worth subverting.

The bullshitter, however, has no such regard for the truth – in fact, he is not interested in it at all. According to André Spicer, who literally wrote the book on business bullshit:

“Bullshitters do not lie. They don’t try to cover up the gap between what they are saying and how things really are. Bullshitters are indifferent to how things really are. They don’t care about whether their claims conflict with reality. All they care about is whether people will listen.”

The guiding line for this type of person is not truth (honesty) or the corruption of truth (lying), but rather whatever needs to be said to further his own interests (bullshit). This disconnection from truth makes a bullshitter more challenging to spot and more difficult to hold accountable because, in effect, what are they actually doing wrong? Unlike lying, which can be measured against some standard of truth, bullshitting is mostly a mix of exaggeration, inflation, misinformation, misdirection, and (often spectacular) invention.

Upon encountering bullshit, you may have an intuitive feeling that something is untrue, but that does not make it a lie, at least not in any black and white sense. And, to challenge the dictionary definition listed above, bullshitting is not the same as talking nonsense. Nonsense is just, well, nonsense, but bullshit pretends to offer some degree of meaning or truth that is non-existent. This is what makes bullshit so uncomfortable and exasperating to deal with – we know that something is not right, but we can’t quite put our finger on why.

As a result, we usually don’t deal with bullshit; we ignore it or tolerate it, often with a mixture of frustration and resignation. We shake our heads at the politician on TV, grit our teeth at the dinner party guest who knows everything, or inwardly roll our eyes when the boss makes another grandiose claim about the future of the business. This tolerance may be understandable, but it’s not healthy and, in my opinion, makes a bad problem worse, especially in the workplace.

There is a global pandemic of business bullshit, except, for this pandemic, there is no vaccine rollout, and self-isolation is not a solution (no matter how tempting it may sometimes be). Tolerance needs to be replaced with action. Bullshit is not harmless; it needs to be dealt with directly, and the conditions that encourage it need to be addressed.

What is organizational bullshit, where does it come from, and why is there so damn much of it?

Bullshit can be confusing – that’s partly why it’s so difficult to deal with – but as the subject is studied more and more, we are learning ways to recognize it more easily. Analyses by McCarthy et al suggest that there are three components to organizational bullshit:

1. Regard for truth
2. Bullshit language
3. The boss

1.     Regard for truth

In his 2006 book, On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt declares that a bullshitter has “a lack of connection or concern for the truth” and a remarkable “indifference to how things really are.” This type of character is not, however, bullshitting for the sake of it (even though some career bullshitters seem to enjoy the game itself) – there is always something at stake. For those looking to climb the management ladder, bullshit – with its hollow language, denial of facts and data, and vague references to unquantifiable phenomena – is often a helpful tool in establishing an aura of authority. Bullshit makes you sound smarter, more knowledgeable and more qualified than you actually are, making you more likely to be promoted.

Even for those less Machiavellian in their motivations, bullshit can provide people with a sense of self-confidence, something to help them cover the gaps between what they do know and what they don’t. It’s easier to feel empathy for this person than for the one who bullshits purely for raw personal gain, but in both cases, the truth is still subverted to personal interest.

Let’s not be too judgemental here, though. Most people have had to ‘fake it till they make it’ at some point in their career, especially when they find themselves in a new role. There is clearly an element of bullshitting involved in such cases. So, it probably has value if it’s short-term and helps create a bridge to a place where the person can operate from genuine experience and understanding. Bullshit can also have a cultural role to play. Banter and exchanges of general nonsense – none of which have much regard for the truth – are often crucial to keeping a team connected and cohesive. But culture is where things start to get sticky.

Different teams and different organizations have different cultural attitudes to bullshit. In my focus area, the biggest challenge is that we sit between traditional engineers (electrical, mechanical, automation, process etc.), IT, and management consultants. These groups never had to work together before the explosion of cyber-physical systems / Industry 4.0. Now they are forced to collaborate, but they keep failing because of cultural differences, one of them being a much lower bullshit tolerance among engineers when compared to e.g. management consultants.

2.     Bullshit language

Business is flooded with bullshit language, and its coziest home is in the painful but ubiquitous jargon that makes up so much of the talk in organizations. McCarthy and his fellow researchers argue that “if a statement is riddled with meaningless language, acronyms, buzzwords, and jargon, then it is likely to be bullshit.” You know the feeling: a meeting in which everyone shares what’s ‘on their radar’, the team tries to ‘align’ or ‘sense check’ before ‘drilling down’ into how to ‘leverage’ a new ‘strategy’ in order to achieve ‘synergies’ (for a head-nodding dig into these terms and other forms of unbearable office jargon check out Steven Poole’s excellent ‘Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower?’).

Of course, there are appropriate and credible ways to use all of these words. But more often than not, in the world of everyday business, they become placeholders for real language. They don’t say what they mean. They are like linguistic balloons of hot air, and they are the main reason people regularly walk out of meetings feeling unclear about what was discussed and what’s expected of them going forward.

Perhaps bullshit language is addictive because it gives people a false sense of security. It helps provide them with a feeling of belonging – if you know what the bizarre mix of jargon and acronyms in your industry or organization means, you’re part of the in-crowd; if not, you’re out. André Spicer maintains this is especially true among managers: “Management jargon can help nurture a sense of self-confidence in the chronically insecure world of middle management.” More than that, Spicer says, managers who wholeheartedly embrace this language and become fluent in it appear more capable and are more likely to rise through the ranks faster. That takes us on to our third point.

3.     The boss

Petrocelli argues that people are especially likely to engage in bullshit when they feel knowledgeable about a subject, as many leaders do, and when they are socially and professionally expected to have an opinion, as most leaders are. Finally, bullshit is more common when people sense that they can get away with it, which the authority of leadership helps to ensure. As a result, bullshit in leadership is widespread, and even if the leader is unaware of it, research by McCarthy et al suggests that it does not go unnoticed by their subordinates:

“… employees believe that their superiors are key players in the dissemination of bullshit. Further, employees are likely to have to take action based on any bullshit communicated by their bosses. As a result, employees are likely to be acutely aware when their superiors use bullshit to advance their own self-interests.”

The impact of this pattern is far-reaching and can be profoundly damaging to organizational culture and outcomes. When employees are given bullshit jobs or tasks to perform, they inevitably reach a point where they feel lost and uncertain of their performance. That’s because, by its very nature, bullshit is vague and unclear, so it’s difficult to measure with performance indicators or connect to objectives and results. This is demoralizing for employees who are unable to point to any progress or development, but it also triggers a vicious cycle: without necessary checks in place (see Part 2 in this series), employees have no way of clarifying what is required of them, so they pass the buck further down the chain, usually by adding some extra bullshit to the mix. In the end, the only work that gets done is the work of bullshit, while the central operations of the business, project or team are increasingly neglected.

As a leader of cross-functional teams, I take this aspect of my job seriously –perhaps too seriously if you were to ask some of my colleagues. Quite simply, I know that the level of tolerance for bullshit in my team is set by me. If we are to deliver on what is expected of us, I need to draw a clear line and call bullshit when necessary. That’s not always easy to do, and it’s not always well-received, but it has to be done.

Why this matters

We are living through the Age of Purpose. Gone are the days of businesses having mission statements plastered across their boardroom walls – that’s ‘so nineties’ – nowadays, the fashion is to have a corporate purpose, a defining mantra that describes why the organization exists. In principle, I like this idea. I believe that being clear on why you are doing something can be incredibly valuable, whether you are an individual, a team, or an entire corporation. Or even a mayonnaise.

Unfortunately, corporate mission and purpose statements are a magnet for bullshit. They invite the creation of grand, abstract declarations of celestial intent, full of generic and contextually meaningless terms like ‘impact,’ ‘stakeholders’, ‘people,’ ‘change’, and ‘the future.’ More often than not, these statements bear little resemblance to the genuine operations of the business, fostering cynicism among employees and customers. But that’s not moderating the tendency towards inflationary bullshit. If anything, the trend is getting worse.

As consumers and top talent increasingly consider a company’s values before making buying decisions or deciding where to work, organizations are feeling the pressure to be seen as socially-minded corporate citizens who are committed to making the world a better place for all. Sometimes there is genuine intent behind this, often coming from a maverick CEO, but in the end, it’s the shareholders who’ll have the final say and, since most investors see profit as a business’ primary purpose, high-minded ideas usually stay just that: ideas. As a result, by the time the message reaches the market, it amounts to little more than ‘purpose washing.’ The older cousin of this bent is ‘greenwashing,’ which similarly tries to position the company as having better green credentials than it really does in the hope of attracting ESG investment and improving its brand image among ecologically-minded customers.

It’s easy enough to wave these trends aside as examples of corporate nonsense we just have to live with, but, just like other forms of bullshit, ‘purpose washing’ and ‘greenwashing’ are not harmless. Business will be crucial to solving the wickedly complex problems we face as a species, and bullshit undermines those players who are sincerely trying to help solve these challenges, steering investment in the wrong direction and damaging public trust.

Bullshit also has a debilitating effect at a more micro level. McCarthy et al. suggest organizational bullshit “can result in lower job satisfaction among the organization’s members, increased distrust in leadership, a reduction in productivity, and ultimately a negative impact on overall performance.” André Spicer argues that business bullshit hampers good decision-making, leading to judgment calls separated from facts and data. He also maintains that corporate bullshit, especially when it becomes culturally established, reduces diversity of thinking as those with differing perspectives and opinions are marginalized when their views compete with the interests of the most influential bullshitter(s) in the group. It’s important to note that these conclusions are based on existing research but that there is still not enough empirical data to make these arguments conclusive.

From my experience, the points listed above are all valid considerations, but at its essence, this is a moral issue. In the projects and teams I lead and work in, bullshit threatens our ability to do the job properly. It slows things down, muddies the waters, and lowers the quality of the final product delivered to the client. This is quite simply unacceptable. It’s not right, and I believe organizations should take more deliberate steps to reduce bullshit in the workplace.

How?

Well, that’s the central topic of Part 2 in this series.

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

The post We need to free organizations of bullshit – Part 1: Why? appeared first on Cryptosec.

Part 2: How

One day, sitting in the shed he called home, the journalist, Oobah Butler, had an idea: he would turn his shed into a fake restaurant and make it the top-rated eatery in London. This audacious thought wasn’t random, though. Before becoming a feature writer for VICE.com, one of Butler’s part-time jobs had been as a review writer. But not just any reviews – these were fake reviews on TripAdvisor paid for by establishments who wanted to improve their business ratings. As he became more entrenched in this work and watched his reviews have real-world effects on restaurant rankings, Butler began to doubt the reality of the whole system, believing that it was all fake, from the reviews to the food, even the restaurants themselves. But surely that couldn’t be possible? Surely one couldn’t fake a physical place? And, if it were possible, wouldn’t that prove that the entire construct was an illusion?

Butler would later acknowledge that the vast majority of restaurants and reviews in the industry are legitimate, but not before he put his suspicions to the test. Over the course of just six months, he managed to get The Shed at Dulwich – a restaurant that didn’t exist – to rise from a ranking of 18,149 on TripAdvisor, perhaps the internet’s most trusted reviews site, to become the number one place to eat in London, one of the world’s biggest cities. How he did this is amusing, impressive, and appalling in equal measure, but he ultimately proved his point: it’s all bullshit.

In Part 1 of this series I introduced bullshit as something that has crept into every corner of society, including business. Especially business. I showed how the word has evolved from vulgar language to an academically-credible term used to describe a growing body of research. In that article, we explored the nature of bullshit, its impact on business, and why it needs to be eliminated. We concluded that corporate bullshit is essentially a moral challenge that requires us to stand up for what’s right. Some of the negative consequences of bullshit include a decrease in job satisfaction, decline in productivity and job performance, ineffective decision-making, growing mistrust in leadership, and a reduction in the authenticity needed for strong interpersonal relationships.

Even if an organization and the careers of those therein are built on bullshit, and everyone is happy with the arrangement, the value generated by that system is significantly sub-optimal. The client, the customer, or society or the environment inevitably suffers.

If you operate from the moral premise that your role at work is to deliver the most value you can – that is, if you believe that providing value is the right thing to do – then bullshit is wrong. It is a hindrance at a time when the world has some major problems to solve. The stakes are even higher in my particular area of focus, cyber-kinetic security. If the work delivered is not up to scratch, cyber-physical systems become vulnerable to attack, and lives are put at risk. In Part 1 of this series, then, we looked at WHY organizational bullshit needs to be done away with; in this article, we look at HOW.

Fighting bullshit with C.R.A.P

In their February 2020 paper, Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit, McCarthy, Hannah, Pitt, and McCarthy propose a step-by-step approach to dealing with workplace bullshit. Appropriately titled C.R.A.P, the framework is more serious than it sounds, mapping out the four basic steps to neutralizing an overabundance of organizational bullshit:

1. Comprehend
2. Recognize
3. Act
4. Prevent

1.    Comprehend

The first step to dealing with bullshit is to understand it. For most people, business bullshit makes perfect sense because everyone has a reference point for it, but few people think of it as an objective phenomenon. So, simply raising awareness of business bullshit – what it is, what it isn’t, how it works, and its adverse effects – can be a simple but accessible entry point for most teams and organizations. As pointed out in Part 1 of this series, there is some unexpected subtlety and nuance in this subject – distinguishing lying from bullshit, for example – and these distinctions can be very useful for individuals to understand.

2.    Recognize

Once someone understands what bullshit is, the next step is to spot it in action. Here the Boy Scouts’ motto holds true: be prepared. Look out for abstract, general language, full of jargon, or unnecessarily convoluted English. Of course, some people develop reputations for bullshit. They are expected to talk a lot of it so it’s easier to spot. More generally, though, a mindset of healthy cynicism keeps one vigilant to baseless claims, avoidance of facts and data, sloppy justification for decisions, and behavior driven by personal agendas. In my work, where cross-functional teams share different expertise, this point translates further into recognizing when people are experts in their particular area and giving that specialist knowledge weight over general opinions. Later in 2020, the same researchers who created the C.R.A.P framework also devised an Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale that measures the volume of bullshit in an organization and the degree to which it is comprehended and recognized.

3.    Act

Even if someone can spot bullshit-in-action, what can they do about it? Typical responses fall into one of four categories:

• Exit: The employee has had enough and leaves the team or organization to get away from the bullshit/bullshitter. For businesses trying to retain top talent, this could be one of the costliest consequences of organizational bullshit.
• Voice: Voicing occurs when employees speak up to confront bullshit, and this is where leaders have a particularly significant impact, for good and for bad. From a negative standpoint, the natural authority of leadership can make bullshitting bosses difficult to challenge. But from a positive standpoint, leaders have an outsized potential to create an environment of psychological safety where people feel comfortable questioning decisions, requesting clarification, asking for data, and holding each other accountable to agreed outcomes – all healthy ways to challenge perceived bullshit.
• Loyalty: This is a typical response to bullshit, especially when the bullshitter holds cultural or organizational power. Employees see the bullshit for what it is but still choose to accept it, often because it is the easiest route or because it serves them somehow. Effectively, though, they become accomplices to the bullshit.
• Neglect: Many people will recognize this reaction in themselves or those around them; it’s a state of willful ignorance or resignation. Employees disengage from the bullshit, the work related to the bullshit (or the bullshitter), and often the organization too; leaving (Exit) would be too costly, so the employee stays, demoralized and negative. Given how often I’ve seen this attitude in businesses, it’s no surprise that global employee engagement levels are still only at about 20%.

4.    Prevent

The final piece of the C.R.A.P framework is to prevent the creation and spread of bullshit in the workplace. This is by far the most effective way to reduce bullshit over the long term, and there are several ways to approach this:

Create environments of trust

As mentioned above, creating psychologically-safe spaces where employees can speak up is crucial to calling out and reducing bullshit. This does not even have to involve calling out bullshit; it can be as simple as a team member feeling okay to say, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying – please could you explain.’ Most people are afraid of looking ignorant, but in a supportive culture, people feel able to ask for clarification. If the person who’s doing the speaking is bullshitting, this simple question is usually enough to make that clear. Creating environments of trust is not a ‘woo-woo’ notion, nor is trust itself an intangible concept. Edelman’s Trust Barometer is a solid example of how trust can be a quantitatively measured factor in an organization, but by showing leaders how trusted (or distrusted) they are and augmenting this type of analysis with group contributions and dialogue, trust can begin to displace bullshit.

Encourage critical thinking

Despite what they like to believe, many organizations do not promote critical thinking, even though most people would agree it’s a vital skill for a successful business. Critical thinking takes time and consideration; it asks you to weigh up facts and evidence, look at alternative viewpoints, and question not only the thinking of those around you but also your own thinking. As such, it is the anthesis of the superficial, often eloquent but ultimately dressed-up thinking that drives bullshit. Unfortunately, the operational pressures in most businesses mean people are inclined to cut corners in thinking and skip the time required for critical assessment; this is one of the reasons bullshit thrives.

Prize evidence and expertise

A dangerous trap for any leader or manager is to begin to assume that, simply because they have experience, they know intuitively what the right decision is in any particular situation. Intuition and instinct based on experience are an essential part of leadership, but every person has blind spots, so to avoid cognitive biases (wellsprings for bullshit), it is better to rely on evidence. And, to the point above, this is necessary to create a culture of trust where people have the right to ask how a decision was made if they suspect bullshit. Also, while group input or crowdsourcing can be valuable ways to gain broad insight, they can equally muddy the waters and result in decisions based on little substance. Those with the relevant expertise in a decision area should be given a stronger voice. In my line of work, this is less of an issue – engineers, for example, seldom have problems pointing out when people are making incorrect assumptions about their area of specialism – but it is something that needs to be borne in mind, especially as more workplaces move towards cultures of democratized decision-making.

Ban bullshit

This is easier said than done and relies on a strong culture where the first three steps of this process (comprehension, recognition, and action) are already underway. Banning jargon and acronyms, for example, relies on mutual agreement and enforcement. Prohibiting bullshit-generating behavior like unnecessary meetings can be powerful. Still, again, it requires the buy-in of everyone in the team or organization. More than anything, this needs to be modeled from the top, so leaders have to embrace a bullshit-free mindset – a challenging prospect for many organizations.

Stop rewarding bullshit

As I described in the first article of this series, business bullshit is rewarded in various ways. In general, jargon, buzzwords, and bullshit language have such lasting appeal because it lends those who use it a sense of confidence and, often, status. The natural tendency for bullshitters to speak in abstract or ungrounded and aspirational terms fits well in a modern business climate that favors leaders who can talk about ‘vision’ and ‘purpose.’ Spicer suggests that one way to counter these trends is to provide alternative sources of rewards and confidence. By banning or limiting the use of buzzwords and jargon, the legitimacy of bullshit language is decreased, forcing people to seek status from actually doing their jobs well. And importantly, those jobs that receive focus and acknowledgement should include the more modest ones that ensure the business runs well, not just the ‘sexier’ jobs that tend to attract bullshit behavior. Finally, and I agree with Spicer again, organizations need to make ‘stupid’ decisions more costly by tying people to the long-term consequences of their decisions and deferring rewards/bonuses for more extended periods.

Conclusion

One thing I have learned as a leader is that there is no growth without humility – the willingness to admit that you don’t know. In putting together these pieces on organizational bullshit, I have tried to share some of the perspectives gained from my own experience, tempered by the growing research in this area. I certainly don’t have all the answers to fixing what I feel is a potentially toxic trend in organizations, but if we (I, my colleagues, and all of us in business) try to remain curious and committed, it will be harder for bullshit to take root, and we will be more likely have the positive impact we seek.

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

The post We need to free organizations of bullshit – Part 2: How? appeared first on Cryptosec.

Diversity has made a dent in the public consciousness. With a long-overdue shift from an ethical buzzword into a brand-defining must-have, emerging nuances to diversity have at last begun to take their place on the front burner.

In fact, neurodiversity is now so widely known that it has quickly risen to become a subject of keen interest. Google Trends drops data-backed hints about how much of a crucial role neurodiverse individuals actually play in corporate and social settings — unlike how we have come to view them as outliers.

A close look at the data around the search for the term “Neurodiversity” reveals a sudden spike in traction, especially from 2018 to present. Forward-looking predictions that neurodiversity is set to garner more awareness over time are as sharp as a tack.

All of us must, at some point, have found ourselves frowning upon companies’ poor performance at the “diversity Olympics” — whether it be embracing gender diversity, racial diversity, or other similar incarnations of diversity. Well, now I’ve just tossed one more in your direction to consider: neurodiversity.

Neurodiversity cuts across a broad spectrum of natural human variation in neurological makeup — namely ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), Autism, Dyslexia, and Dyspraxia. To add to this, a Harvard Medical report also did well to throw mood, impulse-control, and anxiety complications into the mix. In layman’s terms: neurodiverse people are competent in particular areas, while somewhat lagging in others. And while this can certainly be true of neurotypical people, it’s often more pronounced in neurodiverse individuals.

The benefits of diversity, especially in tech spaces, are well-documented. Diversity inspires curiosity in heterogeneous teams, which means more robust creative capacity. Diversity creates a level of discomfort that makes teams perform better. But why, then, are claims of diversity being an ethical and a commercial win-win for companies and the neurodiverse people so often met with knee-jerk cynicism? This points to a knowledge gap. An obvious one, if you will.

“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” – Alan Turing

However, the crux of this article spotlights a less-pronounced knowledge gap — negative impacts of window-dressing, appearance-only effort which saps away energy from genuine efforts that are aimed at ushering in a working model of diversity in the workplace.

To ask a burning question: why has neurodiversity — the understanding that brain differences should be viewed as normality, and not a deficiency, in the workplace — taken on a fat serving of window-dressing with a side of nonchalance in our workplaces?

More worryingly, how has this whitewashed version of neurodiversity chipped away at the true purpose of neurodiversity policies? How is anything less than true diversity self-defeatist for companies — especially in spaces which could function notably better with neurodiverse talent? (think cybersecurity)

Are neurodiversity policies an act of philanthropy or productivity?

The afore-stated questions should be asked within the context of our business reality. The reality is that true diversity shouldn’t be thought of just as an end in itself — it should also be considered a means to achieving a profitable future.

Without taking anything away from the ethical and moral credentials of neurodiversity, it is understandable why businesses might be reluctant to adopt diversity merely for the sake of it in a cutthroat business environment. After all, even the lure of a glowing brand reputation doesn’t necessarily translate to increased equity. Diversity efforts should make business sense.

Companies need more than just high points on their “diversity” scorecard to cut it — first, they need to remain in business, and then they need to drive sustained growth and value. And while the long-term benefits of neurodiversity (think employee loyalty or a healthy brand reputation) might hold a ton of appeal, there is still an increasing need for companies — especially public companies — to demonstrate a shorter-term nexus between neurodiversity initiatives and an increasingly “on-demand” shareholder value.

For these companies, not only does merely assembling a heterogeneous workforce to beef up inclusivity stats miss the mark on the true essence of neurodiverse recruitment, it is also lamentably shortchanging.

Neurodiversity is not something that should be adopted in isolation as an end in itself; rather, it should be treated as a means to a meaningful, economically viable end — using that heterogeneous workforce to fuel innovation, growth, and gain a competitive edge.

Some characteristics of neurodivergent people

If you’ve ever met one neurodivergent person, then you’ve met one neurodivergent person. Each and every neurodivergent individual out there has their own unique strengths and characteristics. As an example, however, some strengths of individuals on the autism spectrum can include:

• attention to detail
• ability to think “outside the box” and approach a problem from a completely different angle
• strong abilities with systems, such as computer programming and mathematics
• above average visual-spatial skills
• refusal to take things at surface value and performing critical evaluation of everything
• intense, focused interest in a subject
• lower intrinsic pressure to conform to social norms

and many others. Those strengths are often accompanied by characteristics that employers sometimes see as issues, such as:

• lower intrinsic pressure to conform to social norms
• intense, focused interest in a subject
• refusal to take things at surface value and performing critical evaluation of everything
• low social interaction
• inability to initiate or hold a conversation
• fixation on certain routines or rituals
• difficulty maintaining eye contact

Neurodiversity’s biggest bane

You don’t need to be David Attenborough to know that biodiversity is necessary for keeping a complex ecosystem working optimally, and you don’t have to be a Certified Financial Planner to know that having a diverse stock portfolio gives you better possibilities. In the workplace, neurodiversity breeds a different approach to problem-solving and a fresh take on issues. It sums up why neurodiverse individuals have been so quick to embrace the term “differently abled” instead of their obsolete label, “disabled”.

Simple as this term sounds, however, there still hasn’t been much done to take stock of these peculiarities by companies. Regrettably, HR personnel mostly tend to optimize their recruitment operations and performance assessments for neurotypical candidates.

In fact, “culture fit” or “team fit” considerations during recruitment have taken relatively higher importance than even competency questions.

On the surface, this is understandable. Hiring those that “look like us,” “sound like us,” and “think like us” means that they would fit into the workplace more easily, take less time to acclimatize, be easier to coach, and — presumably — stay on longer. Complex problem-solving is a team sport, so clearly, building a collaborative team makes sense. And with this in mind, someone who “fits in” is likely someone who will also go with the flow without presenting any challenges.

Despite the evidence about their results, homogeneous teams without friction feel more effective. Homogeneous teams are easier for management. And easier for HR. Team members in homogeneous teams understand each other better, and the collaboration is smooth, which feels like progress.

Whereas dealing with people who are different causes friction, which feels counterproductive.

And that’s the crux of the problem: in a homogeneous team where the collaboration is smooth, how do you progress if no one challenges anything? How do you innovate? How do you solve complex problems? How do you reach new customers? How do you service clients that are different?

Diversity brings with it tension and constructive conflict — and teams that are able to discuss, debate, (respectfully) challenge one another, exchange opinions, and critically evaluate ideas are significantly better placed to innovate and solve complex problems.

The work may feel harder in heterogeneous teams, but the outcomes are undeniably better.

“What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool? You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.” – Dr. Temple Grandin

The systemic rigidity found in existing recruitment and team management approaches that are focused on conflict avoidance, removal of friction in the team, and maintaining the status quo spell out one negative outcome: an untapped pool of potential.

To my mind, this is a reflection of why most neurodiversity policies in their actual application are (at best) window-dressed versions that water down the true essence and meaning of neurodiversity. Achieving true diversity means confronting some of our most ingrained behaviours. Achieving true neurodiversity is probably harder than with any other flavour of diversity. Implementing it can be more challenging than turning a ship in the Suez Canal —so it’s easy to see employees’ tendency to recoil into social bubbles and homogeneous settings. Again, I addressed why we cannot afford to wallow in this comfort zone in this article.

But nothing ever worthwhile comes easy, does it? When responsibility is shared, starting with a paradigm shift that tackles our subconscious bias, the collective burden gets lighter. And the payoff? Enormous. And not just by way of an enhanced brand reputation and public image, but also performance-wise. Of course, this also rewards the company’s bottom line.

Neurodiversity within the cybersecurity space

As traditional HR in the tech space puts a premium on qualities like proficiency in numerical skills, the “team fit,” and other basics, the increasing awareness of neurodiversity benefits has shown that they just might well be missing out on a big piece of the pie.

Vacant cybersecurity jobs globally are projected to clinch a whopping 3.5 million in 2021. Further, the global study undertaken by the ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) and the ESG (Enterprise Strategy Group) shows that this shortage in the cybersecurity space can be linked to more cybersecurity challenges that threaten company operations.

One is tempted to think that the current shortage in cybersecurity should force the hands of HR to tap into a pipeline of neurodiverse employees. After all, it is estimated that around 1 in 7 people (more than 15%) are neurodivergent. But in truth, most often, even when they try to attract neurodiverse candidates, this leads to unrewarding “busywork” lacking in meaningful value contribution.

We, cybersecurity professionals, know better. We are increasingly finding that neurodiverse talents easily hold up to the scrutiny of performance and value — thanks to their uniquely fresh perspective and out-of-the-box thinking they bring to the table. Seemingly opposite angles to problem-solving deliver strong results when dealing with complex cybersecurity issues.

The gist is that diversity — when harnessed on any team — unlocks a greater balance of skills, which thus means more productivity. In neurodiversity terms, it becomes clear that what has hitherto been seen as a skill deficiency is, in fact, a secret weapon. And this is particularly pronounced in the realm of cybersecurity. The possibilities for neurodiverse individuals are limitless, seeing that the cybersecurity industry is suffering a skill shortage that could leave companies short in their bid to combat cyber warfare.

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” – Frank Zappa

To further zero in on how neurodiverse talents can prove to be valuable assets, it is worth considering that the cyber battleground is characterized by legions of malicious perpetrators that can mutate their attacks in a blink of an eye, once they have been spotted. They are equally targeting software, hardware, and wetware — the human brain (through social engineering attacks). They are well-funded and patient, which allows them to continually innovate in their attacks.

People on the autism spectrum are known for their uber-concentrated approach to work, a sticky brain (good memory), thorough analysis, and meticulous attention to detail that makes the strenuous tasks of spotting anomalies a doodle. This would undoubtedly prove an asset to any cybersecurity department or company.

But all of this would be from a defensive angle only, which — in my opinion — is a little reductive of the offensive angle to their “superpower” — the true depth of high-functioning innovation that neurodiverse talents possess. Some of the best cybersecurity researchers, exploit developers, pen testers, and red teamers I met in my career were differently-abled.

In the cybersecurity world, these are absolutely the people we want on our side.

Marie Schaer, head of the Autism Outpatient Clinic in Geneva, Switzerland, reinforces this in her observation: “A lot of individuals on the spectrum tend to outperform in domains that are strongly rule-based, such as mathematics or engineering.” She further states: “That might explain why we find more people on the spectrum in tech-related jobs: they’re simply good at it.”

Having neurodiversity on your team offers a fresh perspective, as their minds work differently to those of neurotypical employees. They’re wired differently. They will push the bar on established procedures, and keep their eyes peeled for opportunities or irregular patterns. They will find “needles in haystacks”. Most importantly, they will refuse to take things at surface value — a hallmark of some of the world’s finest innovators.

Neurodiverse employees often have no difficulties side-stepping their emotional bias to determine the root cause of problems. In cybersecurity, they’re more mentally equipped to peek beyond the veneer of OK-ed systems to optimize for tighter security and even greater possibilities.

Ultimately, neurodiversity is companies’ sure-fire ticket to bringing a fresh perspective to recognize and create value.

Companies are now moving away from the notion that hiring neurodiverse talent is some sort of “charity”. They’re finding that neurodiversity should form a crucial part of their talent acquisition strategy, as it benefits both parties — the clients, who are beneficiaries of their genius neurodiverse employees, and the companies themselves. In a smart move, IBM and SAP have started making wholesale changes to their hiring process in order to accommodate neurodiverse talent.

What’s with the “window-dressing”?

If it’s worth doing at all, then it’s worth doing well. When the only evidence you have to show for your neurodiversity effort is a few diversity webinars here, a handful of diversity training there, and a few inclusivity stats, then chances are you’re probably just window-dressing.

Window-dressing doesn’t only include tokenism — simply making symbolic, “tick-box” efforts to include neurodiverse individuals, or an exercise that involves bringing in a few neurodiverse faces so that you can plant your brand in the Cool Kids Club. Window-dressing also manifests itself in good-intentions-poor-outcome initiatives (such as throwing oodles of diversity training, certifications, or diversity quota targets at the problem and calling it a day). The latter version of window-dressing is more prevalent.

Implementing a working neurodiversity policy model starts with rejigging the recruitment process. An overhaul of company workplace culture to engineer a more inclusive environment should be a priority in the workplace. And with steep long-term gains on the horizon, the juice is definitely worth the squeeze. Microsoft gets this, and they’ve successfully leveraged high-functioning autistic talent to foster more creativity for solving technical niggles within their ranks.

It is also worth noting that ultimately, the responsibility to oversee the implementation of neurodiversity lies at the feet of senior management. A study carried out by Forbes Insights on Global Diversity and Inclusion sampled the opinion of ten companies — seven of which claimed that the buck stops at the C-level and their board.

When it comes to the strategy and implementation of a diversity program, responsibility for the success of the company’s diversity/inclusion efforts lies with senior management, with 35% ultimately tasking the CEO with the role of championing true diversity and closely monitoring the success — or otherwise, progress — of their impact-measurement initiatives.

Anything short of the afore-stated amounts to window-dressing. If you belong to the category of companies that will not just talk the “diversity” talk, but also scream it from the rooftops till it wears out your staff (PwC CEO Dennis Nally, in his 2013 opinion piece, calls this “diversity fatigue” — a state in which employees are inundated with diversity talks), then a follow-through plan should be put in place to implement and track your progress.

A failure to follow-through with your neurodiversity ambitions spells either (or all) sour outcomes:

1. Failure to follow-through with your neurodiversity ambitions means you’re not bridging the gap between policy and practice. And like any well-intentioned project without any means to track progress and steer itself from veering off course, it wobbles.
2. A lack of follow-through on your diversity initiative means little to no insight. Little insight translates to lagging innovation, and thus, it’s only foreseeable that sentencing your employees to death by a thousand diversity pieces of training without having a transparent, trackable way of monitoring this policy will only leave them damning the consequences (if any) of non-compliance. To put it simply, they will have little to no regard for your attempts to change the corporate culture.
3. Organizational efforts which are perceived as disingenuous lead to potentially negative effects, including lower job satisfaction, increased distrust in leadership, and reduced performance by all employees — not just neurodivergent ones.

In short, a window-dressing approach not only fails to capture the benefits of a neurodiverse workforce, it could also negatively impact even the existing neuro-homogenous workforce.

Weaving neurodiversity into corporate consciousness

In a previous piece, I addressed the harms of deeply ingrained subconscious bias and gave a few recommendations on how we can spot and best address it using a systemic approach. Neurodiversity, being a nuance of diversity as it deals with cognitive variations in individuals, equally demands a more nuanced strategy.

A report by CREST about neurodiversity in the Tech Security workplace hints that challenging lazy thinking patterns at work is a good place to start. And when you think of it, it is. Ditching stereotypes and exercising restraint to outrightly dismiss ideas without giving them true thought only makes teams one-dimensional in their thinking and less creative. Such a dismissal also breeds an air of toxicity, which is not an optimal condition in which for employees to thrive.

Neurodiversity objectives require switching up a gear, which means taking positive action to reflect this mind shift — that is, from the false notion of accommodating people with “conditions” to acknowledging that neurodiversity is nothing but variations in cognitive processing that exist among individuals.

As noted earlier, though, the buck of this change stops at the feet of managers and team leads. In the end, it is up to them to tweak the workplace and the bulk of its processes and systems to become blind to unconscious bias. The “culture fit”-focused hiring process is a perfect case-in-point of one such workplace system — it gives hiring officers ample medium to express their subconscious biases.

The hiring process needs to undergo an expansion to accommodate neurodiverse nuances. The operational communication style should do away with non-verbal communication such as eye contact. You want to ease their nerves with a less crowded atmosphere, as well as a more relaxed line of questioning. And that’s only if you insist on continuing the old way of recruitment through evaluating CVs and interviewing. Ask yourself: are you trying to get people in who are successful at writing CVs and interviewing, or are you trying to get people in who have the best talent?

“Rigid academic and social expectations could wind up stifling a mind that, while it might struggle to conjugate a verb, could one day take us to distant stars.” – Dr. Temple Grandin

Maybe CVs are not the best way to assess talent. Consider the fact that ~78% of job applicants lie — something which might come hard to some neurodivergent people who are often unwilling to follow established, but illogical, practices simply because “everyone else is doing it.” This might serve to disadvantage the neurodiverse talent right from the immediate outset of the selection process.

It is prevalent for neurodiverse talents to find it difficult to navigate social settings or apply social skills. With this in mind, concepts like verbal communication should instead give way to actual job trials. Microsoft opted to forgo the interview process, rather inviting people to come in and work, to see how they could code. Then, hiring managers looked at the different ways in which people solved problems.

But beyond hiring, the workplace also needs to be a breath of fresh air for these neurodiverse individuals. Even those neurodiverse people who were able to find gainful employment are oftentimes spending most of their energy and motivation on blending in, masking their true selves, and absorbing all the barriers the workplace throws at them. To further drive this home, I find the opinions of these two neurodiverse individuals in the cybersecurity space quite instructive, as they know where the shoe pinches. Michael Seborowski, an incident response investigator who joined through the Autism at Work Program initiative of SAP, weighed in on the most effective way leaders can coax the best out of neurodiverse individuals in the workplace:

“Biases and stereotypes that might affect a colleague on the spectrum need to be replaced with caring, and companies need to be able to work with colleagues constructively to figure out problems.”

Megan Roddie, another professional on the autistic spectrum who is a cyber threat researcher with IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence team, thinks neurodiverse individuals are just as functional as neurotypicals:

“Often when management and executives hear ‘disability accommodations’, they’re thinking of physical or medical things to do,” she argues. “They’re not thinking about the fact that autistic people just think differently, and most of us neurodivergent professionals function fine.“

One thing stands out clearly from these sampled opinions: that if anything close to “true” neurodiversity in the workplace is to be achieved, managers have to act — and proactively, too.

For instance, neurodiverse individuals may not be willing to signal their status for some reason. It then behooves hiring managers or team leads to ask these questions. Once these individuals open up about it, then the manager should be trained to manage workflow patterns or create an enabling environment. These wholesale changes should be implemented not just at the hiring level, but throughout the entire employment lifecycle.

Tech giants like SAP, Microsoft, and the UK’s GCHQ intelligence and security organization have implemented these solutions, and it has proved rewarding. I see an opportunity for a similarly successful application in cybersecurity companies.

More broadly, governments could wade in with their fair share of responsibility to expand and publicize neurodiversity empowerment initiatives. Corporations also have an important place in the conversation to build a pipeline of opportunities for neurodiverse individuals.

Wrap up

There is enough anecdotal evidence (and even some empirical evidence) to suggest a link between a diverse workforce and innovation.

While the difference in our backgrounds would almost certainly mean that true diversity is an uphill struggle, the tangible gains in the undertaking — both for the neurodiverse individual and company productivity alike — are certainly worthy of contemplation. Companies stand to lose out big when neurodiversity is just another box to be ticked. To make matters worse, when companies try to raise standards and employees get the impression that they are “window-dressing” or tokenistic in their approach, this triggers a breakdown in confidence and breeds a poor working environment.

A workplace with neurodiversity becomes more inclusive to a broader range of individuals, thus enhancing company reputation and brand image. Naturally, this can only ensure a healthy, morale-boosting environment for all employees to ramp up productivity levels.

“Nowhere am I so desperately needed as among a shipload of illogical humans.” – Mr. Spock

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

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The benefits of diversity, especially in tech spaces, are well-documented. Diversity inspires curiosity in heterogeneous teams, which means more robust creative capacity. Diversity creates a level of discomfort that makes teams perform better.

Vacant cybersecurity jobs globally are projected to clinch a whopping 3.5 million in 2021. One is tempted to think that the current shortage in cybersecurity should force the hands of HR to tap into a pipeline of neurodiverse employees. After all, it is estimated that around 1 in 7 people (more than 15%) are neurodivergent. Despite all that, traditional HR recruitment practices often miss out on the neurodiversity opportunity as they fail to engage with neurodiverse candidates adequately.

“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” – Alan Turing

Why Embracing Neurodiversity

We, cybersecurity professionals, know better. We are increasingly finding that neurodiverse talents easily hold up to the scrutiny of performance and value — thanks to their uniquely fresh perspective and out-of-the-box thinking they bring to the table. Seemingly opposite angles to problem-solving deliver strong results when dealing with complex cybersecurity issues.

Neurodivergent individuals may possess strengths that are particularly well-suited to the cybersecurity field. For example, individuals with autism may have a natural affinity for technology and an ability to focus intensely on specific tasks. At the same time, those with ADHD might excel at multitasking and adapting to rapidly changing situations. By incorporating neurodiverse perspectives into cybersecurity teams, organizations can tap into these strengths and foster a more robust and resilient approach to tackling cyber threats.

Other cognitive abilities that are highly valuable in the cybersecurity field may include exceptional pattern recognition, attention to detail, logical thinking, and problem-solving skills. By embracing neurodiversity, the cybersecurity industry can tap into these unique strengths, resulting in more effective threat detection, mitigation, and prevention strategies.

Neurodiverse employees often have no difficulties side-stepping their emotional bias to determine the root cause of problems. In cybersecurity, they’re more mentally equipped to peek beyond the veneer of OK-ed systems to optimize for tighter security and even greater possibilities.

The cybersecurity landscape is in a constant state of flux, with new threats and vulnerabilities emerging daily. Neurodivergent individuals are known for their ability to think outside the box and approach problems from unconventional perspectives. This innovative thinking can lead to the development of creative solutions that address emerging cybersecurity challenges. From new automation solutions in security operations to out-of-the-box approaches to testing cybersecurity, neurodiversity hires often excel in them.

Embracing neurodiversity in the cybersecurity industry offers significant benefits, including access to a diverse range of skills and perspectives that can help fuel innovation, address skills gaps, and strengthen overall cybersecurity capabilities. The time has come for the cybersecurity industry to fully harness the power of neurodiversity and drive forward a more secure and inclusive digital landscape.

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

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“Organizational bullshit” is a term coined to describe deceptive, vague, or otherwise misleading communication within an organization.  “Organizational bullshit” is not an expletive. It is a legitimate academic term and the subject of serious and growing academic research on leadership. In his 1986 essay, “On Bullshit,” which later developed into a book by the same name, Princeton philosopher, Harry G. Frankfurt, was the first to look at the phenomenon through a more analytical lens, making it something that can be identified and, therefore, addressed.

Frankfurt proposed that bullshit is different from lying. Unlike a liar that intentionally subverts the truth, a bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth as long as they can further their own interests. Bullshitting is mostly a mix of exaggeration, inflation, misinformation, misdirection, and invention. It manifests itself, for example, as: exaggerated performance claims; vague jargon or buzzwords; misleading communication about company policies or strategies; promotion of superficial, feel-good initiatives with no real substance; and so on.

According to André Spicer, who wrote the book on business bullshit:

“Bullshitters do not lie. They don’t try to cover up the gap between what they are saying and how things really are. Bullshitters are indifferent to how things really are. They don’t care about whether their claims conflict with reality. All they care about is whether people will listen.”

As a result of this vagueness of bullshit, we usually don’t deal with it. We ignore it or tolerate it, often with a mixture of frustration and resignation. By not challenging it, we are now dealing with a pandemic of organizational bullshit. It has become an all-too-common phenomenon in today’s corporate world.

The Problem With Organizational Bullshit

The problem is, organizational bullshit creates a culture of dishonesty and manipulation, ultimately eroding trust and undermining organizational effectiveness.

When employees are consistently exposed to organizational bullshit, they may become skeptical of the information they receive, leading to a breakdown in trust between employees and management. This loss of trust can negatively impact employee morale, productivity, and loyalty to the organization.

Organizational bullshit can suppress critical thinking and dissent by creating an environment where employees feel compelled to conform to the company’s narrative, even if they disagree with it or find it misleading. This can lead to groupthink, where employees prioritize consensus over critical analysis, resulting in suboptimal decision-making and stifled innovation.

When employees perceive that their organization is engaging in bullshit, they may become disillusioned and disengaged. This disengagement can result in reduced productivity, higher turnover, and lower overall job satisfaction, all of which can be costly and detrimental to a company’s success.

Organizations that engage in bullshit risk damaging their reputation and brand. In today’s interconnected world, such practices can quickly become public knowledge, leading to a loss of credibility among customers, partners, and potential hires.

Getting Rid of Organizational Bullshit

Some of the key approaches to reducing organizational bullshit include:

Cultivate a culture of transparency and honesty where employees feel comfortable questioning the status quo and expressing their concerns without fear of reprisal. This includes fostering open communication channels, encouraging critical thinking, and promoting a genuine commitment to ethical behaviour.

Eliminate jargon and buzzwords to reduce the likelihood of creating an environment where bullshit thrives. Companies should emphasize clear, concise, and accurate communication that is easily understood by all employees.

Hold leaders accountable for setting the tone for their company’s culture. Employees should be encouraged to hold their leaders accountable for their actions and decisions, ensuring that they model honesty, transparency, and ethical behaviour.

Provide training and support to help employees recognize and address organizational bullshit. This might include workshops on critical thinking, ethical decision-making, and effective communication, as well as access to resources and tools that promote a culture of honesty and transparency.

Monitor and address organizational bullshit for signs of bullshit, and take corrective action as needed. This may involve revising company policies, reevaluating performance metrics, or implementing new communication strategies that prioritize clarity and accuracy.

Conclusion

Organizational bullshit is a pervasive and insidious problem that can have far-reaching negative consequences for both companies and their employees. By recognizing and addressing the issue, organizations can foster a culture of honesty, transparency, and critical thinking that not only benefits their employees but also contributes to their long-term success and competitiveness. It’s time for organizations to cut through the bullshit and commit to genuine, honest communication that fosters trust, engagement, and innovation.

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

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Can anything be done to make diversity less of an uncomfortable topic?

The answer is no. Nothing about diversity will ever make it into the general business population’s comfort zone. I say that not out of cynicism, but out of practicality. At its root, diversity is uncomfortable. But, surprisingly, the discomfort it creates is what makes it so valuable.

Implicit biases, perceptions and reality

A 2016 Harvard Business Review article that brought together some of the most advanced research on implicit bias in the workplace shows that ridding oneself of implicit bias takes more than just a casual decision to hire people from other backgrounds. Implicit bias has profound psychological effects not only on how we perceive others, but on how we perceive group interactions.

In one study described, groups of three members of a college fraternity or sorority were assigned to study and discuss details of a hypothetical crime and come to a joint decision about the perpetrator. Five minutes into their discussion, however, a fourth person was added to the team. In some teams, it was a member of the same house. In others, it was someone not a member.

After discussing and naming their suspect, the groups were asked to rate the effectiveness of their discussions. Homogeneous groups were more positive about their group’s discussion and more confident of their answer. Mixed groups were less comfortable with both their discussions and answers. The results, however, were the exact opposite of their perceptions. Adding an outsider to a group that had not already settled on the right answer doubled the right answers from 29% to 60%.

The failings of homogeneous groups

The reason why results were so different from perceptions can perhaps be explained by examining a lesson that PwC learned in its early efforts at increasing diversity. A group of men were tasked with reversing a trend in which PwC’s workforce was disproportionately low on women, despite an aggressive effort to hire women straight out of college. The group’s initial assumption was that the women who left did so to start a family. The men thought the problem could be solved by PwC developing more programs to support new mothers.

But further, data-driven analysis showed that those who left were doing so from entry level positions – a time before women typically left the workforce to start a family. At all other levels, a larger percentage of men left than women. But the aggressive effort to hire women for entry-level positions was not being carried into hiring for positions that required more experience. There, the replacements hired were overwhelmingly men. The problem was not that women starting a family were finding PwC unsupportive. It was a breakdown in diversity hiring at more experienced levels.

Had the group gone with its initial assumptions, their solution would not have addressed the real issue. That typifies why homogeneous groups are less effective than diverse groups. Their shared experiences and viewpoints can lead to premature conclusions that overlook the real issue. Fortunately, PwC’s practice of data-driven decision making ultimately saved the group from pursuing a plan that would have been a costly dead-end.

These examples confirm the old saying, “When you think you have the answer, you stop asking questions.” Homogeneous groups are quicker to reach consensus because their similarities lead them to consider fewer details. Diverse groups consider more details and make a more comprehensive analysis.

Another Harvard Business Review article described other studies that supported the same concept. In one series of studies, some financially literate individuals were grouped in homogeneous groups and others in diverse groups and tasked with pricing stocks in simulated markets. The diverse groups were 58% more likely to price stocks correctly than the homogeneous ones. And, in another study of 4,277 existing companies, researchers found a direct correlation between the level of diversity on the companies’ research and development teams and those companies’ introduction of radical innovations over a two-year period.

Five steps to further diversity

So, what practical steps can we take to further diversity? Here are five to consider.

Use more granular metrics

Rethink the metrics you use to assess diversity. Recall the PwC example earlier. There, the group’s initial “solution” to the loss of female workers came in response to numbers from all levels of the organization. It wasn’t until they looked at more specific data that they overcame their faulty assumptions and spotted the real problem.

Expert Aubrey Blanche takes the idea of diversity and inclusion metrics further in a 2017 Wired article. She points out that measuring diversity company-wide does not actually measure diversity but, instead merely representation. Even if a company has attractive numbers across the company, diversity can still be lacking if minority representation is clustered in small pockets of low-level positions.

She says that measuring diversity by job function and even by team are much more accurate ways to assess your efforts. Measuring progress on a year-by-year basis can also be helpful in companies where employment numbers are too large to show more than a hint of workforce transformation over a short time span.

Measuring more granularly can also provide apples to apples comparisons of similar job functions between different companies. How does your diversity progress in engineering, for example, compare to the diversity progress of engineering in similar companies? Only by using more granular metrics can you see a true picture.

Carry a diversity focus beyond entry-level hiring

Diversity activist Bärí A. Williams talks of taking diversity into the full spectrum of business in her 2017 Fortune article. To what degree do your minority employees get access to “special” projects, where learning something new is the key element of the project? At what level of pay and title do minority hires come into your company? Do they come in at the same level as a non-minority hire with the same skills and experience, or at a slightly lower level commensurate with the individual’s past – perhaps slightly dampened – history from their past job?

Are the criteria for advancement in the company and exposure to upper management applied equally to minority and non-minority employees, or do minority employees find themselves progressing at a slower pace? And what about supplier diversity? Does your supplier list include new and innovative suppliers from all demographics, or is it stuck in the old, established networks of the past?

Be realistic about diversity

Rethink your expectations. Diversity will challenge employees’ comfort zones. Recall the results of the study mentioned in the first Harvard Business Review article. The diverse groups got better results than homogeneous groups, yet felt less confident of their decisions because they had considered more details. The same unease will affect diverse groups in business – even as they function more effectively.

Recognize that friction is part of the process, and realize that fears of that friction are natural – but overblown. Another study asked participants to read transcripts (and in later sessions to view videos) of a group’s interactions and assess whether that group’s request for more resources to solve a problem should be granted.

The transcript was the same in all cases. The only difference was the pictures of the group members shown to participants. In one case, the pictures showed four white individuals, in the second case, four black individuals and in the third case two of each. In the later videos, what was said in the discussion was exactly the same but, again, actors in the videos matched the three groups shown in the pictures.

In each case, participants in the study rated the level of conflict witnessed as approximately the same when the groups were homogeneous. Participants also were generally agreeable to providing the group the resources they had requested. In the case of mixed groups, however, participants rated the level of conflict much higher and were less inclined to devote more resources toward that group’s resolution of the issue.

This expectation of an unhealthy level of conflict in diverse groups often leads managers to resist or water down diversity. But the study shows that expectation to be illusory, just part of our implicit biases. The benefits of applying diverse points of view to solving problems or forming strategies far outweighs the unease that examining additional points of view creates.

Create a climate for diversity to succeed

Creating diversity goes beyond merely hiring people from different backgrounds. Strive to recognize and celebrate diversity instead of striving to build a homogeneous group of diverse people.

Placing one person from a different background in an otherwise homogeneous group does not promote diversity. In practice, it can lead the group to grant wary tolerance to the “outsider” and the “outsider” to feel pressure to “fit in” with the culture of the homogeneous group to have their opinions heard.

Another study from the first Harvard Business Review article asked two people from different backgrounds to have a conversation. In one case, the conversation was prefaced with an encouragement to practice colorblindness and ignore each other’s differences. In the other case, the conversation was prefaced with a message of the value that could be gained by exploring those differences. In the first case, the pair tended to be more awkward and condescending of each other. In the second case, conversations were more positive.

A Cornell University study on diversity best practices recommends ongoing monitoring of employee acceptance of diversity, with employee climate surveys that ask questions about welcomeness, trust, transparency and fairness, and then analyze responses across various demographics. Of course, doing this requires the courage also to act on any problems that the survey uncovers. If minority groups under a particular leader have lower scores on trust, transparency or fairness, the organization must address the issue with that leader, help educate them and measure progress in their teams more carefully.

Make diversity training more than talk

Traditionally, diversity training has been largely talk. Employees are herded together and lectured on the value of diversity. Results have been unimpressive. It’s time for another approach.

For some time now, global professional services firms have adopted global mobility programs where employees get to spend some time in other countries, or even relocate there. Such programs have been treated more as a perk than as training, but the interactions that those engaged in such programs experience teach far more about the value of diversity than any canned lecture ever could.

Participating in diverse teams, working abroad, etc., should be a personal performance metric. Many companies still measure the benefits of the global mobility programs merely through staff satisfaction and retention. The scientific research that supports the idea that diversity leads to better business performance, however, suggests we should budget more for such programs, involve more personnel in them and figure out how to calculate the benefits they bring to the company’s bottom line.

Wrap-up

Working in a diverse team feels harder, but is actually more effective. Negative perceptions caused by being forced to step outside our comfort zone to consider other viewpoints provides a comfortable excuse to resist diversity efforts and retreat to our comfort zone.

But the scientific evidence is clear and it is unanimous: Working in diverse groups encourages more comprehensive analysis and leads to superior results. Achieving diversity involves far more than just entry-level hiring practices. It needs to become part of the DNA of not only the company as a whole, but of individual teams. When pursued at this comprehensive level, it pays benefits far beyond what can be imagined.

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

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Technological Upheaval

We are in an ever-shifting maelstrom of change. Climate change causes more frequent and intense natural disasters. Changing climate patterns could potentially wipe out whole island nations on one hand and create new trade routes and energy opportunities in the melting Arctic on the other. In the last 25 years alone we saw thirty-four new nations formed. Borders, political alliances, migration and trade patterns transform ever more swiftly. Technologies emerge or become redundant overnight, disturbing established industries and altering economic futures of entire countries. These or a host of other changes threaten to render our products or services obsolete, cause dramatic shifts in the market and change our customer base for better or worse.

Forget, for a moment, the Internet and the mobile revolution, or potential cryptocurrencies and blockchain revolutions. Just look at the example of desktop PCs. A mere decade ago, they perched in every workspace as the main computing platform. Now, sales of such devices have largely died, outside of a few remaining markets[1]. Their work today occurs on mobile devices, with back-end computing and data collection moving to the cloud and connected devices.

Or look at stand-alone GPS receivers. Not long ago, they were the pinnacle of navigation technology; today they are merely an incidental feature standard on the lowest entry model smartphones and IoT devices. Their makers, such as Garmin or TomTom, survived only by adapting to changes.

Others, like Kodak Co. or Nokia Corp, were not so lucky. These pioneers in film-based photography and digital mobile phones, respectively, failed to adapt to technological upheaval and lost their prominence. Kodak, for decades a corporate giant, was even forced into bankruptcy.

Adaptability is critical in today’s market. We have no all-knowing oracle to predict future developments. Change is on an ever-accelerating climb; a new or disruptive technology may emerge at any moment and upset all our carefully laid plans. Resilient enterprises can take greater risks and respond more quickly when unexpected change occurs. They can better cope when plans go awry. Organizations that have a greater risk tolerance have a distinct advantage over those that do not.

First-hand Observation

I was lucky in my career to experience companies on both ends of the spectrum. I saw both, those that used radical changes in their business environments to prosper, and those that failed to adapt and suffered.

I worked with IBM, Apple, Experian, Accenture, Toyota, Expedia, AXA and other regulars on the lists of most innovative companies. I observed how they used changes in their business environments to their advantage.

On the other hand, Kodak enlisted me in efforts to optimize and automate film processing in their futile attempt to reverse digital cameras’ dominance of store shelves. I promoted Nokia’s Symbian OS when iOS was already gaining ground. Other change-impaired clients included Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and European dotcom web technology darling Reef, on whose domain one can now buy sandals. No, correlation does not imply causation.

As I observed those business cycles first-hand, I was also building a background in technology risk, business continuity and disaster recovery. That pairing of backgrounds and interests moved me to jump at a chance to lead PwC Enterprise Resilience – a field that grew out of business continuity and related disciplines and now helps organizations survive, or even prosper, when faced with radical changes in their business environments.

Traditional Business Resilience

Business resilience, at its core, is an organization’s ability to adapt to disruptions and maintain, or quickly recover, continuous business operations, assets and brand equity.

Resilience typically contains four major capabilities[2]. The first is preparedness. Preparedness encompasses the tactical plans we will enact in case of a disaster or crisis. Preparedness must be implemented cross-functionally through all critical parts of our organization.

Secondly is protection. Protection hardens us against both identified and, where possible, unidentified threats. Protection also includes our contingency plans and the alternatives we will enact if we are completely disrupted.

The third is response. Response encompasses the steps we will take during and immediately after a crisis. It is essential to formulate our comprehensive response before a crisis begins. If we try to devise it in the middle of an emergency, we have already lost.

Lastly is recovery. Recovery describes the activities we will employ to bounce back quickly. We might mistake recovery for activating our Disaster Recovery (DR) plans. DR plans, however, focus on getting us back on our feet at only a basic level. That makes them more of a response function. Recovery has a distinctly tactical bent. It focuses on maintaining or recovering the level of business operations existent before the disruption.

Disciplines that have matured over recent decades to support the traditional approach to business resilience include Crisis Management, Emergency Management, Disaster Recovery, Incident Response, Operational Risk Management and Business Continuity Management.

Today’s Enterprise Resilience

For a somewhat different take on resilience, let’s consider these definitions: “Enterprise resilience is the capability of an organization to anticipate change and react to it, perhaps even to evolve, in order to survive”[3]. Enterprise Resilience enables us “to change before the case for change becomes desperately obvious”[4] and to “withstand systems discontinuities and adapt to new risk environments”[5]. British Standard, BS65000(2014) defines “organisational resilience” as “ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, and respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper.”

In addition to the PwC and the British Standards Institution, many other organizations and academics increasingly view Enterprise Resilience as a more strategic capability, enabling organizations to respond to any kind of change, not only to maintain the level of business operations, but ideally to prosper from the changes.

The framework proposed by PwC gives an example of such a strategic approach. We see resilience defined as adaptive capacity, agility, coherence, relevance, trust, and reliability[6]. These aspects are segmented into two groups: an organization’s ability to respond to change, composed of adaptive capacity, agility and coherence; and an organization’s outside relationships, relevance, trust, and reliability. These areas are defined as follows:

Ability to respond to change

• Adaptive capacity – Ability to reorganize for change
• Agility – Ability to make decisions at required speed
• Coherence – Ability to make mutually beneficial decisions

Outside relationships

• Relevance – Consistently delivering on stakeholder needs
• Trust – Knowing how to create investment-worthy relationships
• Reliability – Consistently delivering to expected quality, on time

These two sets of definitions have somewhat different focus areas. They are not mutually exclusive. The mix of these factors, or even inclusion of others, will vary from one organization and situation to another.

In the new thinking about Enterprise Resilience, we still want to build an ability to return to approximately where we were before we entered the crisis. We may, however, have evolved along the way, grown stronger as we responded to crises. We want to capture and retain those benefits as well.

A concept related to enterprise resilience is antifragility. Antifragility was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who explains it as a step beyond resilience or robustness, “that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish,” or “Antifragility is a property of systems that increase in capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.” For example, when we exercise, our muscles and our whole body and mind get stronger and more resilient. Furthermore, we get stronger in a healthier way when exercised in a wide variety of ways.

It is then a fortunate confluence of events that, just as the pace of change accelerates, we see disciplines that support business resilience mature and get adopted across enterprises. With this maturity come the practices, methodologies and standards that enable us to integrate these concepts into an organization. That brings us, who manage the larger body of enterprises, to a juncture where we can apply those concepts of Enterprise Resilience to a wide variety of changes and issues, and not just disasters. Adapting and adopting traditional business resilience disciplines and exercising them in a response to any change, positive or negative, is what will make us stronger and build up our enterprise immune system.

Enterprise Resilience is not a Magic Bullet

Lest we mistake Enterprise Resilience for some buzzword magic bullet management fad, let’s consider where these ideas originated. Enterprise Resilience grew out of traditional and by now well-established business resiliency disciplines and is a superset of most of them. While the individual capabilities are important, Enterprise Resilience is more than just reacting to crisis events as they happen. It is not even just about proactive crisis-proofing the organization. It is about embedding the capability to adapt to any change deeply throughout our organization and regularly exercising it.

The practices behind Enterprise Resilience require more commitment than just approving the idea in an executive meeting and walking away claiming to espouse them. These concepts require hard work to implement well, but, the good news is, Enterprise Resilience is not a new buzzword that would require organizations to adopt a whole new methodology. Even most moderately successful organizations have already built some of the foundations on which Enterprise Resilience can rest. Organizations now have to recognize the broader applicability of traditional business resilience disciplines and make an executive commitment to exercise them regularly.

Are we Resilient Enough?

Most organizations unfortunately still struggle to implement the basics of the various disciplines that support resiliency, let alone exercise them regularly.

Others embrace Enterprise Resilience and antifragility concepts and apply them to every aspect of their business. One such organization is Netflix. Netflix, in its cloud infrastructure, has implemented an internally developed tool called Chaos Monkey. Chaos Monkey simulates system failures by intentionally causing them – not simulated failures, but actual, randomly generated failures in their production systems. This drives an effort to create a system capable of withstanding serious problems without failing, while simultaneously exposing vulnerabilities so the entire environment can be fortified.

Most IT executives would view the idea of intentionally causing failures in production systems as terrifying, if not downright unthinkable. But ask yourself, when a real disaster strikes, which organization will have a better chance of survival? Such efforts can launch us toward a much stronger stance for resilience.

Wrap Up

The pace of technology drives the pace of change we see in the marketplace. Every passing day seemingly brings advances in existing technologies: faster networks, increasingly dense storage and faster and smaller processors. Additionally, we see new technologies emerge: self-driving vehicles, IoT, blockchain, hyper-efficient renewable energy and spaceflight technology driven by corporations and private companies. Technology innovations create immense opportunities, but also make organizations increasingly vulnerable as they become more complex, virtual and interdependent.

To fully understand the potential impact of evolving technologies, a technology background and baseline understanding are key. Technology management should thus drive Enterprise Resilience adoption within our organizations so we can use technological changes to our full advantage and to use technology to be more resilient to other changes in our environment. Building resilience is a prerequisite for taking risks. As Mark Zuckerberg once said “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

 References

1.   Darrow B. PC Sales Are Worse Than You Think. In: Fortune [Internet]. 9 Jun 2016 [cited 15 Oct 2016]. Available: http://fortune.com/2016/06/09/pc-sales-are-worse-than-you-think/

2.   Building a Resilient Nation: Enhancing Security, Ensuring a Strong Economy – PolicyArchive [Internet]. [cited 15 Oct 2016]. Available: http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/9662

3.   PricewaterhouseCoopers. Increase enterprise resilience. In: PwC [Internet]. [cited 15 Oct 2016]. Available: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/advisory/consulting/risk/enterprise-resilience.html

4.   The Quest for Resilience. In: Harvard Business Review [Internet]. 1 Sep 2003 [cited 15 Oct 2016]. Available: https://hbr.org/2003/09/the-quest-for-resilience

5.   Randy Starr JN, Delurey M. Enterprise Resilience: Managing Risk in the Networked Economy. In: strategy+business [Internet]. [cited 15 Oct 2016]. Available: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/8375?gko=1c92d

6.   PricewaterhouseCoopers. The emerging capability every business needs. In: PwC [Internet]. [cited 15 Oct 2016]. Available: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/advisory/consulting/risk/resilience/publications/enterprise-resilience.html

7.   Definition of RESILIENCE [Internet]. [cited 17 Oct 2016]. Available: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resilience

8.   Taleb NN. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder [Internet]. Random House; 2012. Available: https://market.android.com/details?id=book-5fqbz_qGi0AC

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

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Announce a round of diversity training, or of progress toward reaching diversity hiring goals, and one thing is guaranteed. Eye rolls and sarcastic comments among workers will abound behind management’s backs. Why so much distaste for something that many of us recognize, at least on some level, as worthwhile?

Why seek diversity/gender equity?

I won’t detail many of the individual benefits of seeking a diverse workforce. I’ll mention only two.

No. 1: In a recent blog post, I stressed the benefits of fostering curiosity in your team and how diverse perspectives spur more creative thinking. In that, I meant more than just individuals with different perspectives from the same culture. I meant far wider perspectives present only across multiple backgrounds, mindsets and cultures. By incorporating such widely varying perspectives, you spur greater curiosity and, ultimately, more innovative thinking.

No.2: Research shows that gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform the financial median for their industry. Ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely. Enough said.

Why diversity/gender equity emphases are often disliked

So why are efforts to incorporate these perspectives often reviled? Too many companies have no idea what they’re trying to accomplish, so they do nothing more than talk about it – and talk about it until workers become fatigued with hearing about it.

Too often, companies handle diversity training sessions by asking people whose backgrounds are different from the dominant group of workers to talk about their backgrounds. Presenters often get little direction on what to present and end up either relating ways they’ve felt slighted, or describing traditions common to their culture.

Rather than bringing increased understanding between cultures, such approaches only build resentment. Rather than gaining understanding of core perspectives that differ from their own, majority workers resent what they perceive as whining or as imposing boring presentations about irrelevant traditions on them.

Why traditional diversity efforts fail

Statistics show that current diversity efforts don’t increase the percentage of targeted groups in businesses or in management. Seemingly every small gain for one group comes at the expense of larger losses for two others.

In fact, rather than what should be the goal of diversity efforts – reducing biases – they actually do the opposite. They often inflame biases against less represented cultures by allowing dominant cultures to stigmatize those hired or promoted through diversity efforts as less-qualified candidates, chosen only to fill a quota.

Ironically, perhaps diversity programs’ biggest accomplishment to date has been to shield companies that have them from discrimination lawsuits. The courts have shown a tendency to find in favor of defendants based solely on defendants having discrimination policies on the books, regardless of how energetically they enforce them or how successful they are.

The root of the problem

We can’t just outlaw biases. Differences that separate us go much deeper than surface issues. Our biases toward our worldview are deeply ingrained and typically go unrecognized. We simply assume that our perspective is accurate and any other is flawed. That can lead us to misidentify and pass judgment on others’, differing perspectives.

A person from one culture may perceive himself as being direct and speaking his thoughts forthrightly, while a person from a different culture may perceive the first as being harsh, confrontational and needlessly aggressive. The second person may perceive himself as being diplomatic and polite, while the first may perceive the second as being manipulative and deceptive.

The same applies to gender. A woman may perceive herself as being inclusive of other team members and building consensus, while a man may perceive her as being incapable of reaching a decision and overly dependent on others. The man may perceive himself as being decisive and efficient, while the woman may perceive him as arrogant and uncooperative, running roughshod over others.

With each example, both individuals demonstrated admirable values: honesty, politeness, inclusiveness, decisiveness. In each case, the difference is not between desirable and undesirable values, but between which value each holds in higher regard.

Their judgments of each other go far beyond a simple disagreement on which they could compromise. Each one views the other not just as wrong, but as morally inferior. And all this occurs at a level of core values so deep that neither recognize what fuels their judgment of the other.

The sad truth about biases

Even those who want to avoid bias find it difficult. The fine arts world is often perceived as a bias-free bastion of progressivism. Yet inclusion of women in symphony orchestras stood at less than 5% until recent years, and even its recent growth has resulted more from a bias-eliminating approach that I’ll discuss shortly than from the mindset of those who judge auditions.

If you wish, check your own implicit biases. These Harvard’s Project Implicit tests may surprise you. Go on, test yourself. I’ll wait. I’d be surprised if the tests don’t show that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about. The tests confirm that the problem does not lie in the disparity that diversity programs seek to correct. As the 1960s comic-strip character Pogo famously concluded, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

New approaches to achieving diversity

Addressing deeply ingrained implicit attitudes that are unconscious and uncontrolled is not going to be done through tick-box training, certifications or diversity quotas. Just as biases lie deeper than mere surface issues, solutions will require deeper approaches as well.

Possible strategies

For inclusion to grow in businesses that, for decades, paid nothing but lip service to it, businesses need to replace stale, ineffective approaches with fresh, innovative ones. One such approach that reduced gender bias in orchestra auditions was blind auditions, which many orchestras have adopted.

The person auditions behind a screen. In some orchestras, judges don’t know the individual’s gender in only the first round of auditions; in others, anonymity remains all the way to the final decision. Even when used only in the first round, results have been dramatic. Elements of this approach could be adapted to business hiring, such as stripping information related to gender or culture out of resumes and other documents before initial decisions on who to interview are made. Could we do more? Make the interview process blind throughout?

Another approach was developed by global tech consulting firm ThoughtWorks. Their interview process relies on teams who, after interviewing a candidate, immediately debrief each other to detect what they call “bad smells” in each other’s impressions.

These “bad smells,” though, are not negatives in the candidate, but in the interviewers. They are the negative gut reactions that undetected biases often create. By examining vague negative feelings such as, “he didn’t feel like a good fit” or “she talked too much” that, in most companies, would exclude the candidate from further consideration, interviewers can better determine which impressions are qualifications-based and which are bias-based.

Another strategy that has proven effective is to stop telling people to be more inclusive and start involving them in the process of growing more diverse teams. Research shows that involving people in diversity taskforces that approach the issue in the same no-excuses way that the business approaches profitability helps break down implicit biases. The more a person works to enhance diversity, the more that person comes to recognize its value.

Redefining the issue

Perhaps it’s time to change our terminology. PwC CEO Dennis Nally, in a 2013 opinion piece, gave reasons why the word diversity itself has become divisive:

“When we talk about diversity globally, word choice can impede progress. In mature markets, people are often tired of talking about it – they have ‘diversity fatigue.’ In emerging markets, they don’t always believe diversity is relevant, because they see it as an ‘imported’ concept.”

He, instead, suggests focusing on its benefits while avoiding the hot-button word.

Wrap-up

Can we bring about the true, functional diversity I describe? No. We live in an imperfect world, among imperfect people (ourselves included). Even if, by herculean effort, we achieved 100 percent success in building such diverse and accepting teams in our own business, we would still encounter the biases of those that surround us.

I have encountered several instances in my past where a client asked me explicitly to exclude members of one culture or a race or another from teams working on their projects. Not only did I reject those projects, but, with the support of my management or my partners, I got my firms to drop those clients. We lost money, but it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, other firms didn’t have the same objections about working with those clients. In the end, those clients’ biases were reaffirmed.

Does this mean we should abandon efforts toward creating a business environment where we include a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives? Absolutely not! Even if you don’t recognize inclusion as a moral imperative, consider its benefits to business innovation and growth. As such, it deserves serious contemplation – not only of how our businesses can make achieving diversity’s goals more realistic, but where we can broaden our own perspectives in its support.

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

The post Can we Rescue Diversity from its own Failings? appeared first on Cryptosec.

Curiosity is a vital element in all aspects of innovation, yet is tightly confined by many companies to only certain stages of developing solutions. It’s a characteristic that all companies claim to value, but that many companies, in their actual culture, firmly suppress.

Curiosity increases employees’ value to the company and amplifies employees’ enjoyment of their jobs. The idea of actively fostering it in their teams, however, often makes company leaders uneasy. Why does this disconnect exist, and what can leaders do to encourage the benefits curiosity brings to both employees and the company?

Why curious employees are good for a business

First, let’s see what benefits curious employees bring to a business. A 2012 Gallup study pointed to presence of curiosity, optimism and self-motivation in entrepreneurs. Tony Vartanian, co-founder of mobile game company Lucktastic, takes those findings one step further in a CIO article, applying the value of curiosity also to employees.

Vartanian points out, “Intellectually curious persons bring their willingness to invest in themselves throughout their tenure with [the company]. … Those that don’t continue to grow will become outdated rather quickly and provide less value to their teams and the company.”

Lest we think that the notion of curiosity being good for business is new, decades ago Walt Disney stated that his company is managing to innovate “because we’re curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

Curiosity instills greater optimism. And with optimism comes a willingness to pursue solutions beyond the point where a less optimistic employee would give up.

Curious employees also show greater interest in job-related learning and a greater ability to retain and apply what they learn. Rather than seeing training as a chore, they embrace it and keep learning long after less curious employees decide that they have learned enough.

This makes curious employees better able to adapt to workplace changes. By not stopping at just what they need to know to perform their work, they are more prepared when change takes them beyond initial work requirements. Which is increasingly happening in today’s fast-changing, innovation-driven marketplace.

Why being curious is good for employees

Embracing learning is not a selfless gesture for the benefit of employers. A 2014 study on curiosity’s effect on the brain showed some fascinating results.

When a person feels curious, it launches a chain of events. It first activates the pleasure center of the brain, which, in turn, activates the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for forming new memories. Thus, the learner feels pleasure due to stimulating the pleasure center, and retains the learning better due to the hippocampus embedding the learning more firmly in the brain.

Not only does this phenomenon affect what someone learns about the subject that sparked the curiosity, but also any other subjects the person encounters while the brain is in this state. In other words, curious learners will better absorb and retain any – even unrelated – subject matter they encounter while engaged in satisfying their curiosity. Curiosity supercharges the brain for learning.

It should be no surprise, then, that curious employees feel a greater sense of mastery of their jobs and greater job satisfaction. In fact, a Rackspace survey of employees showed that 85% of respondents that came from what were deemed to be “curiosity-encouraging” employers expressed satisfaction in their jobs, compared to only 45% of respondents that came from “curiosity-discouraging” employers.

Importantly as well, Harvard Business Review believes that “…Curious People Are Destined for the C-Suite.” As do more than a thousand CEOs that in a recent PwC survey[PDF] cited curiosity as a critical leadership trait necessary to navigate challenging times.

Why most businesses fall short in fostering curiosity

One would think from these studies that businesses would highly value employee curiosity. The truth is, though, that, while almost all businesses “talk the talk” about the importance of curiosity, far fewer “walk the walk.”

A study done by noted curiosity researcher Todd B. Kashdan in connection with Merck KGaA reported that 65% of respondents felt that curiosity was an important element in developing new ideas, yet almost the same percentage reported that they felt constrained from asking questions on the job. That same study also showed that 84% of respondents claimed that their companies valued creativity, but 60% described barriers by which their company essentially stifled it. What leads to this disconnect?

Many companies discourage questioning of systems or processes that leadership has already established. This effectively locks those companies into a single course set by past decisions rather than exploring possible better courses.

To counteract this, leaders must be willing to accept questioning, even of our most prized decisions. Beyond that, we must demonstrate our willingness to consider alternatives and to encourage that same willingness in employees so they will not feel that asking questions puts them at risk.

Another barrier that companies place in the way of curiosity comes from leadership reluctance to give employees time to explore and practice new approaches. Many curiosity-encouraging companies provide time during the work week for employees to explore projects that, while not directly related to that employee’s assigned tasks, could benefit the business.

Such time for independent exploration is often lost in hectic work schedules and sometimes viewed by wary leaders as time wasted on endeavors that might not align with leadership goals. Refusal to explore any potentially useful new avenues, however, will eventually stifle all useful new avenues, except those proposed by an anointed few at the top of the pyramid.

The way to keep independent exploration from drifting into tangents is with clear communication. If employees clearly understand leadership goals, they are less likely to wander off course. Curiosity, when guided, offers employers far more benefits than drawbacks.

How we can identify and hire curious employees

With employee curiosity clearly something to seek and nurture, we then come to the question of how to do so. Before we get into specific strategies, though, one thing bears mentioning.

Seek diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. When assembling a team, sameness is not necessarily beneficial. New perspectives fuel curiosity. Although progress requires cohesive teamwork, leaders should not hesitate to include people from varied backgrounds and perspectives, provided they can work in a diverse environment and are not lone wolves who are incapable of considering any perspective but their own.

Clues to identifying curious workers before the interview

Assess cover letters for curiosity. Cover letters can provide valuable hints of applicants’ curiosity. Cover letters that show a solid grasp of your company reveal applicants who were curious enough to research your company instead of immediately sending a generic cover letter.

Assess resumes for curiosity. Resumes also can reveal an applicant’s curiosity level. Look for efforts toward self-improvement that do not appear to be strictly job related. A San Francisco State University study reveals that creative activities outside the workplace have a significant effect on workplace performance. Resumes that cite non-work-related self-improvement, volunteer accomplishments or pride in hobby achievements reveal applicants that have curiosity and self-motivation that will carry into the workplace.

Clues to identifying curious workers during the interview

Test applicants’ curiosity when you invite them to interview. Describe an intriguing situation they might experience on the job, and ask them to be ready to discuss how they would handle it as part of the interview. The level of engagement they put into the exercise will tell you volumes about their curiosity and their ability to direct it toward-solutions.

Explore applicants’ past use of curiosity on the job. Have them give examples of how they thought outside the box in previous jobs to achieve positive outcomes.

Ask about past self-learning endeavors and how they tackled them, even if they didn’t cite any on their resume. If their resume was loaded with job-related accomplishments, they may simply have not had space to include curiosity-revealing indicators. The same goes for asking about what they are proud of having accomplished in volunteer activities and hobbies.

Explore applicants’ ability to apply curiosity in a team setting. Ask them to describe the most satisfying task they have ever done as part of a team and to walk you through the workings of the team, their contributions to it and the results they achieved.

Pay attention to their questions. Do they ask generic questions that show little originality, or do they display curiosity and incisiveness?

How we can help employee curiosity flourish

Having identified and hired curious employees, how do we keep that curiosity active in the workplace? Fueling employees’ curiosity takes determined effort.

Make curiosity part of the DNA of work efforts

Model curiosity. First and foremost, if you want to encourage curiosity in your team, model it. Keep an open mind. Be willing to question the status quo. Be always in search of a better way.

Clearly communicate desired outcomes. Give employees the autonomy, though, to seek the best way to achieve them, rather than giving them an unalterable roadmap that they must blindly follow.

Include curiosity as one of the criteria in feedback and promotions. Make it clear that experimentation done for long-term benefit is good if the insights it produces can yield future benefits, even if doesn’t produce immediate benefits.

Make curiosity a team endeavor. Encourage team members to share perspectives on problems rather than limiting themselves to only their own.

Assess the role that curiosity played in completed projects. After a project is finished, debrief employees, asking them to describe their thought processes and choices along each step. Encourage them to assess where what they learned could enrich future projects.

Encourage curiosity in continued learning

Support ongoing learning. Company policies that incentivize continuing education are valuable, but don’t stop there. Provide learning opportunities, such as presentations, lunch-and-learns, organized study of books or professional journals that expand understanding of new technologies or trends important to your work responsibilities.

Encourage employee initiative. Instead of always scheduling outside experts to give presentations, invite employees to expand their own expertise by researching and presenting key topics to the team. Similarly, you can make it a practice that, whenever a team member returns from a conference, they present what they learned to the group. This not only benefits the team, but also helps the presenter retain more of the insights they learned.

Make learning opportunities active, instead of passive. When you have a presentation or other learning activity, challenge team members to find ways to apply what they’ve learned directly to their daily work. Invite them to explore how the team could apply those insights to improve business processes or benefit clients.

Encourage curiosity outside the workplace

Considering the findings of the San Francisco State University study mentioned earlier of how employees’ nonwork passions improve workplace performance, giving employees affirmation and recognition for nonwork curiosity and creativity makes perfect sense. Here are some ways.

Organize events that recognize employee creativity and initiative. Showcase employees’ creative pursuits in events, such as art and craft shows, cooking competitions or other creative platforms. Such events can easily serve double duty, as well, by linking them with a charitable endeavor through a nominal donation as an entry fee for participants or to allow nonparticipants to sample foods prepared in a cooking competition.

Give recognition for volunteer accomplishments. Call out the volunteer efforts or special outside-the-workplace accomplishments of employees through a monthly recognition program that publicizes outstanding accomplishments.

Conclusion

Companies routinely strive to be ahead of the curve, on the cutting edge, leading the way in their industry. Yet how can a business be any of those things if it does not foster creativity throughout all levels of the organization? Even at the levels where workers are counted on to do mundane, repetitive tasks, opportunities still exist to find ways to do them more efficiently.

Creativity does not have to be constrained to keep it from becoming a distraction from leadership’s goals. Creativity, nurtured and directed toward those goals, can help achieve them—and even help them evolve into superior goals that never would have been envisioned without the infusion of further creativity.

When you stop asking questions, thinking that you have all the answers you need, you stop finding better answers. Curiosity is the lifeblood of innovation. The unleashed curiosity of an entire organization can make the difference between merely adequate solutions and truly visionary ones.

Thanks

I give hearty thanks to those commenters who nudged my mind into this exploration, as well as to the activities at PwC that gave clarity to it.

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

The post Innovative Businesses and Employee Curiosity appeared first on Cryptosec.

Table of Contents

Businesses, facing an ever-increasing variety of complex problems, are in desperate need of good interim managers to help solve them. Such positions are highly rewarding, with the opportunity to explore new places, meet new people – and fill your plate with a steady diet of fascinating challenges.

Perhaps you’ve considered entering this growing field and becoming one of these people who jump into new companies at their moment of need, solve their problems and move on to the next sticky situation. Maybe it’s time to stop imagining this challenging lifestyle and think about making it a reality. So, what do you need to be in order to become an interim manager?

Why do companies seek interim managers?

Companies seek interim management services to fulfill a variety of needs that lie outside the expertise of their existing staff. Three of these reasons are tied to desired change within the company. One is tied to convenience.

Managing a turnaround

When firms undergo a crisis, they may seek interim managers who have experience troubleshooting – and solving – such problems. This kind of interim is the true Lone Ranger of the interim industry, riding in, setting things right and then riding off to the solve the next company’s problems.

This kind of interim requires an exceptional level of problem-solving skills and innovative thinking to pull the company through an unexpected crisis or shake it out of overall stagnation. It also requires the ability to quickly build consensus around solutions and lead staff in successfully implementing them.

Managing structural change

When organizations undergo strategic change, they may seek interim managers who have experience with that change. This change can involve external entities, such as with a merger, acquisition or disposal of the firm or its units. Or it could involve purely internal change, such as a major restructuring, reorganization or launching the company in a new direction.

This kind of interim requires extensive experience navigating the change in which the company is engaged. Experience in the company’s industry is also a strong plus.

Managing projects

When firms incorporate new technologies or enter other unfamiliar territory, they may seek interim managers to fill the knowledge gaps among the firms’ employees. These interims work towards fulfilling whatever tasks are needed to complete the project.

This kind of interim needs extensive skill in the element that the firm seeks to incorporate, as well as strong teaching and leadership skills to bring employees up to speed.

Filling vacant positions

When firms experience the unexpected unavailability of key personnel, they may seek interim managers to fill those vacant posts as a stopgap solution until the regular manager returns or the firm can find a permanent replacement. These interims simply carry out the job responsibilities of the vacant position.

That doesn’t mean that this kind of interim position requires no special skills, though. In addition to requiring a high degree of proficiency in the position he or she fills, the interim requires a great deal of flexibility to step into someone else’s shoes, quickly develop a rapport with other employees and keep things running smoothly until the position is filled.

Required base skills

Interim managers are normally specialists in their field, with extensive knowledge and relevant experience in the company’s industry. Overall, they play diverse roles in an organization. From handling crisis situations to introducing new technologies to keeping things afloat while a permanent solution is obtained, an interim manager must be quick, intelligent and fast to assess the situation.

In addition, interims need soft skills so they can manage the people with whom they work. Because they join a company for a short time, these skills play an extremely important role in their ability to successfully complete the job.

Other important skills

In addition, when an interim joins a new organization, he or she must quickly adapt to the corporate culture. Interims often arrive during a crisis. Thus, ability to adapt to the external environment is critical to success.

One of the most difficult tasks interims face is introducing change to the organization. To achieve this, the interim’s interpersonal skills must be very strong. He or she not only must lead, organize and motivate people but, at the same time, ensure that the job is completed per schedule.

Also important are speed and efficiency in solving the problem. This requires extensive experience with and knowledge about attaining the desired results

Finally, an interim manager must master the art of moving on. With the position tied to a specific goal, closing the book on one challenge and starting anew on the next is what being an interim manager is all about.

Conclusion

Companies are becoming increasingly specialized. That creates a need for people who can formulate ideas and solve problems quickly. The job of interim manager offers the reward of being able to constantly test yourself against almost limitless new challenges.

In other words, it provides a perfect opportunity to exercise your mastery of your field, your ability to assess situations correctly and your skill in delivering quick results. If these qualities describe you, the position of interim manager might be a good match for you.

Cryptosec is a leading provider of security solutions in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi. Their specialist investigations arm, Crypto Investigators, offers expert services in blockchain forensics and legal investigations, leveraging deep industry knowledge and advanced investigative techniques to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

The post Do you Have What it Takes to be a Great Interim Manager? appeared first on Cryptosec.