You will be assimilated

Freedom is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You must comply.

Borg Collective

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Hugh

In "Conversion and Acquisition", I wrote about the inverse relationship between conversion and acquisition, possible causes of the inverse relationship and how it might be fixed. In this (much shorter) post, we're going to look at this same issue from another angle.

Let's assume that you have not implemented a forced acquisition method and you ask yourself "what do I know about my customers" and then ask the same question after you implement a forced acquisition method - will your answer be the same? Unlikely. The motivation and values of repeat customers are likely different than the motivation and values of people who are occasional users. Let's consider the simplest of these differences - repeat customers are have a vested interest, to at least some degree, in your continued operation whereas those who intend to be a single-use visitor are not invested in your business to any degree.

Why is this important? Every day we make assumptions and decisions based on what we know about our users. If our representative sample changes, those assumptions and decisions must also change. There may be simple assumptions about the design of a web page that are incorrect - assumptions that we can address by A/B testing, but what if there are assumptions associated with the risk of a transaction or possible fraud - those are considerably more difficult to test and correct.

In short, the more you rely on knowing your users the more contraindicated a forced acquisition method is.

Oh yeah, it's a bloody evil thing to do, too...just look at the Borg.

What's in a name?

Women face a number of barriers in science-based endeavors, perhaps more so than in other fields1. This matter is not really even open for debate. What is up for debate is whether or not it's justified and whether or not we will actually do anything about it.

Much debate surrounds the causes of the gender disparity evident in many fields. Some argue that girls and women do not pursue STEM2 educational programs and therefore either show a lack of interest in the topics or aren't generally qualified to pursue the programs. This is, almost certainly in part, due to traditional gender roles, but it cannot be limited to that as the limitations based on traditional gender roles have decreased as time has passed and societal norms have adjusted.

Another portion of the lack of pursuit of STEM programs by women is almost certainly self-inflicted doubts. This can be seen in a (1946) conversation between Einstein (yes, that Einstein), and a South African girl named Tyfanny. In corresponding with her, after she revealed her gender, Einstein said,

I do not mind that you are a girl, but the main thing is that you yourself do not mind. There is no reason for it.3

Einstein recognized, in Tyfanny's words, the self-doubt resulting from generations repeating the societal refrain "you're a girl".

These problems are significant, and we must fight tenaciously to overcome them; however, these facts alone are not enough. These are facts of history - facts that society has dealt with for years and yet, one might argue that while female representation is much lower in STEM-related fields, it is significantly imbalanced in many fields4. Why is this? Why are we not convinced that especially science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are about ideas and not something as trivial as gender? Are we really so blinded to not be convinced that women can think as well as men?

I refuse to believe that it is something in our conscious behavior, and I posit that our bias goes much deeper than we originally thought. Even though we have convinced ourselves that even if the larger populace does not subscribe to a meritocracy those of us in STEM-related fields are well into a meritocracy, we have deceived ourselves.

In what should have been a mind-blowing study written more than a decade ago, Rhea E. Steinpreis, Katie A. Anders, and Dawn Ritzke revealed that both men and women demonstrated gender bias in hiring recommendations.5 The subjects for this particular study were all PhD-level psychologists - people who should recognize that science is about ideas and not gender, people who should recognize trivial and non-trivial information for what it is. In a similar study, written just last year, it was demonstrated that even among science faculty at research-intensive universities, gender biases favor male students.6

What these two studies illuminate is that our gender bias is so thoroughly ingrained that even individuals who are trained to deal directly with data, identifying what is trivial and non-trivial on a daily basis, are incapable of suppressing something as trivial and unreliable as name-based gender bias. Before anyone starts with the 'academia vs. real-world' arguments, a cursory search regarding this topic yields some very interesting anecdotal evidence that supports the same hypothesis.7

We are, like the characters in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, using names as a priori judgments. These two studies also speak volumes about our decision quality, our hiring and staffing policies, our integrity and values, our knowledge about our ability to evaluate people and ourselves, and even our ability to manage diversity.

When otherwise qualified candidates are eliminated from the process based upon their name it's easy to see where a significant portion of the disparity originates. We can work to correct gender stereotypes and eliminate gender roles from early education, we can do a number of things to encourage girls to enjoy and pursue STEM education and programs, we can even build gender-based groups that encourage and promote not just gender balance, but women in the work-force on university and work campuses across the country. None of our efforts to increase education, ban words, or anything of the sort will mean anything until we address eliminating the gender bias that is demonstrated to occur at the first step in any selection process.

Of course, one of the worst parts of this situation is that even though this has been a known issue for more than a decade, we've done nothing to change the situation even though it is incredibly easy. How easy? Here are four simple policies that every organization could adopt with little to no impact to their schedules or bureaucracy, which would alter the landscape significantly:

1. Publicize the existence of gender biases in relation to CV's and resumes and what is being done to compensate for it or correct it.
2. Replace names with unique codes on all CV's and/or resumes that are submitted prior to their being screened.
3. Restrict access to names and codes during the selection process
4. Identify discussion of a candidate's name as especially problematic and a punishable offense

As a bonus, when these policies are introduced, other name-based biases will be reduced or eliminated as well - the most notable are race, nationality, and religion, because when Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet, asks...

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II

...as it turns out, there's more than enough information, and if you don't believe me, just ask Romeo.

Notes and references. Links in the notes and references list open in a new window

1. You can find the research regarding the types of barriers women in science face, published by AAUW in "Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics", at http://www.aauw.org/research/why-so-few/
2. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
3. This tidbit is revealed in "Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children" by Alice Calaprice, along with views on gender's relationship to the study of science that were far ahead of his time - i.e. it doesn't matter.
4. One recent edition of philosophers' sound-bites (Philosophy Bites, by David Edmonds & Nigel Warburton) references 44 males and 8 females - a paltry 15%.
5. The study is called "The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study" and you can easily find it online and read it in its entirety - which I recommend.
6. The study is called "Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students", by Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoll, Mark J. Graham, and Jo Handelsmana. You can read it at http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html.
7. In the blog post "I understood gender discrimination once I added 'Mr.' to my resume and landed a job", an individual seeking employment in a non-STEM-related field relates how self-identifying as a male on his CV made a positive change in the response rate to his inquiries.

One last note: If you follow this blog, you might have noticed that I've been missing of late. To offer explanation (not justification or apology) I will say that sometimes personal lives get very busy, we have a temporary shortage of creativity (e.g. writer's block), and we need time to work up the courage to say what we need to say how we need to say it rather than just exclaim "WTF!" and be done with it. For me, it's been a mixture of all of these as I've seen my oldest niece married, contemplated my daughter's education, and ruminated regarding how to address gender disparity in hiring for quite some time, even discussing the policies that will correct this with women in technology companies before writing this post.

Trust everyone at the table, but cut the cards anyway (Robert's Rule #18)

[Tweeted 2011-06-06]

Living in an area where there are multiple casinos within a short drive or a long walk, I've learned to see some things using gaming metaphors. One of these metaphors is trust everyone at the table, but cut the cards anyway (Robert's Rule #18), and if you are an empiricist like Hume, then this rule will automatically make sense.

How does it apply to work? First, if you are not able to trust your colleagues, work (and probably life) will be miserable. Of course the reverse is also true; trusting your colleagues will go a long way in making work not be the worst part of your life. In fact, I've had some jobs I should have hated because they were such a poor fit and yet I didn't because of my colleagues.

Second, not only will the inability to trust your colleagues make life miserable, it will be very difficult to accomplish what you need to accomplish as well. The amount of time you spend countering the machinations of office politics in a hostile environment will outweigh whatever other successes you have. In addition, those times in which you don't succeed your discomfort will be worse because of the negative self-talk that comes out of the lack of trust and your assumptions about yourself.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you should just blindly trust. After all, your trust can be pretty easily misplaced, and this is your livelihood we're talking about here. You can't just go about willy-nilly assuming that everything your colleagues do and say is true, and even a series of lucky guesses ends sometime, which is a very good reason to confirm what you believe to be true.

Of course all of this is to say trust everyone at the table, but cut the cards anyway.

When working with rock stars, get your M&Ms ready (Robert's Rule #6)

[Tweeted 2011-05-02]

Most managers I know claim that they would love to have a team of rock stars. Most of the time it's pretty clear that's because a team tends to make a manager look awesome (or not). It makes sense that managers would conclude that a team of rock stars would make the manager look like a rock star as well. Not all teams are comprised of rock stars though, and those that are tend not to maintain cohesion.

For a while I tried to determine why this is the case...why is it that a group of people, especially one where the majority is highly skilled, would spin apart after a period of cohesiveness. Here's what I've discovered: highly skilled people tend to not only be highly skilled but also have their own style, and everyone else's style is not as [insert your descriptor here]...and, simple as that, you find your rock star has become a diva, a word that has connotations beyond the "star" quality that it denotes.

There are two ways I've seen managers react to divas on their team:

• they tighten control as much as they can, making sure the "diva" knows the manager is in charge
• they stay out of the way of the "diva" as much as possible, working behind the scenes to make sure the obstacles are cleared

Having been on both sides of this particular equation, allow me to share the following. Reacting by making sure the diva knows the manager is in charge will backfire. The manager may be in charge, but yanking a dragon's chain seldom ends well. At the very least, the rock star will become miserable and rebel, reducing team morale and in some cases the rebellion has resulted in political intrigue that results in the termination of one or more of the parties. Keep in mind that even as a manager, you're only in charge as long as you're actually employed and have employees reporting to you.

In contrast, one of my best managers, one who dealt with several highly skilled technical people, all with strong personalities, said her formula for success was to hire rock stars and stay out of their way. That she enjoyed the success of a team that delivered solid, feature-rich, complex products ahead of schedule and under budget with extremely low defect rates is a testament to the validity of her approach.

She didn't sweat the small stuff and made sure that her team was rewarded adequately, and most importantly, she made sure that even if she didn't initially understand the reason for a request, she tried to move towards honoring it at the same time that she sought to understand it because, as it turns out, rock stars tend to have very good reasons for seemingly odd-ball requests (one of the most famous examples).

All this led me to Robert's Rule #6: if you want your team to be rock stars, expect a few divas and get those M&Ms ready.