Countering gender bias

Negotiation is everywhere. 

Though not always obvious, negotiation rarely happens in isolation. How you negotiate in one area (like salary) immediately affects other areas (like long work hours, unpaid overtime, and possibilities for promotion). 

One place where this is critical is the powerful, often unspoken, element of gender bias. For women and non-gender binary confirming individuals, “good” negotiation is a double bind. You sometimes have to play the game the way that men do, but you also face punishment for reasons that are difficult to call out (think Hilary Clinton being attacked for being “too aggressive” vs. criticism for being “a weak leader who cries in public”). 

It’s a very subtle line to walk, and there’s already great deal of research into how gender bias works… 

The Ellen Pao suit against VC firm Kleiner Perkins from earlier this year illustrated how troubling that double bind truly is. If you pay close attention to workplace dynamics, many of the scenarios from that case, like preference in seating charts, will sound familiar (some of Pao’s testimony is here, and the full stack of court documents is here). 

And while hidden negotiations and bias have implications for people on the unequal side of a power balance, it also, as the HBR piece from above suggests, has an effect on everyone. Creativity, productivity, autonomous decision making, and quality of work all suffer when gender bias is at play. 

But how do we realistically and practically combat gender bias when it is hidden in so many cases? Here are a few insights from a recent email exchange I had a few months ago with two of the smarter folks I know who work in technology / startups… 

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Where creative projects go wrong

Over the years I’ve worked with creatives on projects that include graphic and website design, physical product design, and UX / UI for apps and online platforms.

There are a few ways for a project to go to hell and leave everyone hating the process. The most common is when the ideation doesn’t match the expectation of the client (can be internal or external), even though they might already have approved it. 

Anyone who’s managed a project with a design component will recognize the cycle… 

  1. The ideation is approved, but is slightly broad / general
  2. Creative realizes they have room to stretch and gets excited, or conversely, plays it safe — leading to a 1st draft that is either specific but not what client had in mind, or overly generic
  3. Client provides extremely detailed feedback on a piece of work they don’t really like, which confuses the process
  4. Creative gets frustrated trying to fix something client doesn’t like, or creates entirely new draft which may or may not please the client (who by this time isn’t always sure what they want)

The critical moment usually happens between #2 and 3. At this point it’s still fixable but deadlines are tight and depending on how many people are involved there may be some serious frustration. 

What has to happen but often doesn’t, is a very timely, concise revisiting of ideation with the end client. You can’t fix wrong or misaligned ideation with more design, no matter how good the concept is to begin with. 

One other note: the phrase “end client” is an important one. A good project or product manager can sometimes alleviate confusion between the different people who are involved (brand, legal, marketing, PR, etc.) but whoever will actually own the end result needs to approve the ideation. That doesn’t always happen, and it’s also why big agencies rarely run a tight enough design communication cycle to avoid cost overruns. But that’s a topic for another time. 

Delivering value in design vs. engineering

Ken Norton published something the other day called 10x not 10%.

If you’re not familiar with Ken, he was a long time product manager at Google and is now a partner at Google Ventures where he works directly with their portfolio companies on engineering and product. 

In the piece he talks about Kodak, and the concept of risk in product development and design. It’s worth reading in full (including the references) but it got me thinking about something else: how online platforms weigh design vs. engineering. 

Early stage companies often struggle to balance the two. A good core product that delivers value is worth a lot even if it’s not sexy. But, of course, you’ll eventually need good, clean UI / UX design in order to deliver your product to a larger audience. There’s value in that, too. 

My experience is that the relationship between engineering and design works on a spectrum, but that spectrum is very different based on whether you’re going for 10x or 10%. If you don’t know which you’re aiming for it can really mess with your product. 

More simply, if you are providing 10x value via engineering you can get away with design being clunky, sometimes for a very long period. But if you’re aiming for the 10% increase in value, than design + user experience + on-boarding are most of the battle. 

How to tell if a startup actually has traction

Entrepreneurs have a lot of ideas. It’s easy to tell when you’re talking to one because they’ll come up with at least 2–3 business ideas in a half hour conversation on nearly anything. 

But an idea is not the same thing as a business. In a startup the most important people are those who execute, who get shit done when others simply talk about it. 

Something I’ve learned from both investors and experienced entrepreneurs is not to worry about keeping secrets in the early stages of a business. 

There are exceptions — like security software or the first idea in a niche market— but for the most part ideas are worthless because everyone has them, and reaching 400,000 customers has a whole different set of concerns than reaching 40 (or 40,000, for that matter). It’s mostly the execution, and team, that matters. 

So how do you know if the walk matches the talk? It’s a critical question if you’re investing, partnering, or considering working in a startup. 

Here are a few things I’ve noticed about companies that are experiencing significant traction… 

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Framework for building an email newsletter

People and businesses send crappy emails all the time. We tolerate it because there is some value being exchanged or because we have some type of relationship with them, but ultimately if you don’t respect your audiences’ time and attention they’ll unsubscribe the second they think they can get that value elsewhere or if they just get annoyed enough.

Seth Godin wrote something related to that back in 2011 (links here and here) calling it the “attention economy.” With technology increasing the things that demand our time, it’s an idea that will probably continue to grow in importance. 

The most important thing to keep in mind with email marketing / newsletters is that while they are usually labeled as owned properties, they are also earned via the trust of your audience.

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