[TT 026] racism, interview bias, working parents, benefit corporations, prefabbed architecture
Hi there Thrivers,
Today is a special occasion because it marks 1/2 a year of consistent weekly newsletters. Thank you to all the readers that have been sending me articles, responses, and notes of encouragement. Hearing from you all is an absolute joy and, although it may take me a while to respond, I read and reply to every email I get.
This past week I kicked off our sleep & learning project with our reading group. To dial in my own sleep patterns, I picked up a Whoop strap (sleep tracker wearable) from a reader's recommendation. I superficially researched the hardware and the metrics they track and they seemed real enough. Most importantly, I'm already seeing improved awareness and moderate change in my sleep habits. I'll let you know how my goal for next week goes.
I also met with two separate peers in my graduate program that have eerily aligned visions to my Thrive master plan. I don't know if we'll end up working together but it feels wonderful to have brilliant kindred spirits to explore overlapping interests together. If nothing else, this is yet another signal that I'm on the right path (and Life wants to see GIFT come to life, whether it's me or someone else).
With an inspired (and tired) sigh, let's gear up for this week's Thriving Thursday.
On the racism of Brown v. Board of Education
Malcolm Gladwell is a popular modern day writer and thinker. You may have heard of some of his more famous books like Outliers, Blink, or Talking to Strangers. Turns out, he also has a podcast (who doesn't nowadays?!)
For one of our classes we were encouraged to listen to this episode about Brown v. Board of Education. I was never great at history, but I remember Brown v. Board being hailed as a landmark case for racial integration. Turns out, although the ruling may have had that effect downstream, the judges' written opinions were undeniably racist and pejorative.
Just goes to show how deeply engrained racism was back then. And even today, I find (albeit subtler shades) of prejudice and judgement conditioned deep within my psyche.
I think it's valiant to diligently work to reduce our biases - do you think it's possible to eradicate all biases entirely?
On aligning interviews with actual work performance
Speaking of biases, few things are as biased as job interviews. Generally speaking:
- With exactly identical resumes, white names get more callbacks than African American names (also true for Arab American names)
- The primacy effect suggests the first impression, even down to the first 15 seconds, overwhelmingly colors everything about that interaction
- The fundamental attribution error overweights the impact of the person vs. their situation
- The similar-to-me bias says folks that look like or talk like me tend to get higher scores
The best way to reduce biases in the interview process are
- Anonymize resumes and chunk out individual parts like education and experience to be interviewed independently by multiple reviewers and in a randomized order.
- Create structured interviews that define targeted knowledge, skills, and attributes (KSAs). Generate an agreed upon list of questions and distribute those questions amongst ~5 interviewers then meet at the end to compare notes.
- Create work sample tests that simulate specific KSAs you believe are relevant and important for that role and your organization.
I've intuited many of these concepts in the past, but there were some genuine surprises for me as well. You can imagine I'm taking a lot of notes as I'm drafting up the ideal design for GIFT.
On frameworks and resources for working parents
It's incredibly hard to balance work, family, and kids. And it appears our legacy structure of work can be extra difficult for working mothers (and fathers, but especially mothers).
In my study group, one person recently recommended Work Parent and, through the Harvard Business School, there appears to be a workshop coming up soon. A woman in our group also suggested BumoParent as a resource for working parents.
I hypothesize that we'll see radical change in the next 10 years about rights and flexibilities for working parents. Perhaps these communities and creators are a valuable first step in that direction.
On corporate structures with a B-roader lens
The B Corporation certifying body recently released their Best of for 2021. B Corp is a very forward thinking legal structure that incorporate many more metrics of accountability beyond just profit. In economics terms, we'd say that this corporate governance captures and reports on externalized costs that typical corporations actively disregard or hide.
Not surprised to see some familiar names on there (like Dr. Bronner's scoring super high!). I wish the directory were a bit more useful so I could search beyond just industry, but it's a good place to start when looking for ethical businesses to support.
On beautiful pre-fabbed space creation
Dang, the windows on that pre-fabbed living abode are massive!
I wonder how durable they are - anyone have any experience or heard about these pods? Very curious what they are like inside and where they saw them.
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That's it for this week folks! And it's been quite a long week ...
Cheers,
~Henry