3 Things: 📅 ? 👍 or 👎, New Title=New Tools, and Salary Negotiators for Women
Happy Sunday! Each edition of 3 Things will contain a dive into 3 rabbit holes I’ve found myself going down recently. Subscribe to get each week’s edition straight to your inbox and if you enjoy it, please share! This past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about:
“This Meeting Should Have Been an Email” Bot
New Title, New Tools
Compensation Negotiators for Women
1. “This Meeting Should Have Been an Email” Bot
How often do you leave a meeting feeling like it was a complete waste of your time? The studies by all the fancy consulting firms show that the US spends $37+B on useless meetings each year and the average middle manager and above spends more than 50% of their working hours in meetings. Covid and the forced distributed work that almost all knowledge workers across the US (and world) have experienced only exacerbates this problem as you lose the hallway/conference room syncs, chats over lunch or coffee, and ability to just walk over to your colleagues desk and ask a quick question. There’s an additional phenomenon at play; the need to show that you’re “busy” and “being productive”. Many meetings seem to be simply for the purpose of sharing all the things the organizer has done with their colleagues. Now that many of us are in the daily world of Zoom or Google Meet, it’s also very easy to start multitasking and stop paying attention to what’s going which ultimately defeats the purpose of the meeting in the first place.
I started messing around with the Google Calendar and Gmail APIs because I had an idea that started as a joke but I actually think it might have legs. The idea is that if there are 3 or more people from your company invited to a meeting, when the meeting ends, each participant gets a push notification with one sentence: “This meeting should have been an email?” and a 👍 and 👎 emoji for each person to click. The results are anonymized and sent to the meeting organizer. This will provide feedback on which meetings are useful, reduce the number of overall meetings, and hopefully slowly shift behavior around meetings holistically. I have a bunch of other ideas on how to leverage the insights that live in our calendars but that’s for a different day. I think the meeting bot is pretty simple to build so if someone builds it, send it my way and I’m happy to help promote it!
2. New Title, New Tools
I have a general rule/thesis that when you start to see new titles pop up within companies, that is an early indicator of a new category of tools that will be built. Typically when an organization creates a new function or even changes how an existing function is titled, it signifies a shift in KPIs (key performance indicators), core functions and responsibilities of that role, and what the company values for the growth and health of their business. I’m always on the look out for new titles as I view this as a great sign that companies will be built to serve these new users who will demand products that are purpose-built for them and their needs. Here are a few examples:
Community Manager - community has long been important for different segments of B2C companies but over the past few years there has been a massive surge in B2B companies hiring Community Managers. It began in the world of open source and developer tools but has now spread far beyond to most categories of B2B businesses. Companies are realizing that as tech becomes more and more commoditized, building Community can act as both a defensible moat and an engine of growth and retention. This has spawned a newly blossoming ecosystem of community tools and I expect this category will continue to explode over the next few years.
People Ops/People Analytics - This represents a shift in title as opposed to a completely new function. What used to be called Human Resources (HR) has now started to be known as People Ops with some companies even hiring for People Data Analytics roles. To me, this signals the shift from HR being the cleanup crew who dealt with problems to functioning as the primary driver of employee engagement, wellness, performance, and retention (which is one of the largest challenges that companies face today).
Head of Remote - Even before Covid, the number of companies who were operating as distributed companies or even remote-first companies was on the rise. Of our portfolio, the vast majority with over 10 employees had at least 1 or more employees outside of the US. Two years ago, I had actually wanted to incubate a company that is essentially what Remote.com and Papaya Global are building 🤦🏻♀️ (at least I have good instincts!) Now that we’ve had 8 months of fully remote work, many companies have already given up their office leases, told their employees that they can work remotely indefinitely, or at least assume that a majority of their workforce will be distributed in the future. This has caused a whole host of challenges and opportunities from keeping in sync while async to fostering culture to maintaining productivity. Forward thinking companies are now hiring for the role “Head of Remote” to own all things related to remote work. These folks will need specialized tools for this new world of operating.
Head of DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) - Whether it’s the “Me Too” movement, the focus on lack of female founders/investors, the recent light shined on social justice and inequity in the US, or the awareness of the lack of diversity in tech at all levels, companies of all sizes across the country have been forced to take a long, hard look at their organizations and ask the question “how do we become a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace?” A few extremely forward-thinking Silicon Valley companies have had this function before now but for the vast majority, this is a brand new area of focus. Going forward, companies will be measured on the diversity of their employee base, how people are compensated, and how employees feel they are treated working at their company. The media will continue to scrutinize and call out companies who fail and one important way to move the needle is to hire dedicated people whose sole job is to bring DEI into all areas and practices at a company. This is a tough job that involves changing behavior, removing bias, and altering thinking and I believe there will be dedicated tools to enable this tidal shift.
Moral of the story… whether you’re looking for something to build, something to invest in, or just like to stay on top of tech trends, look for new titles to indicate changes to business tools, processes, and priorities.
3. Comp Negotiators for Women
Pretty much every female knowledge worker I know feels uncomfortable negotiating on her own behalf. We all would go to bat for our peers or direct reports in a heartbeat and have no qualms about pushing for them to get what they deserve. When it comes to ourselves, however, we feel and act completely differently. We feel that we should be grateful for what we’ve been given and expect hard work and performance to be rewarded. Unfortunately we live in a corporate environment where asking (or more like demanding/threatening) for what you want is more often rewarded. Even when I’ve prepared and know exactly what I want to ask for and all of the key impact and performance items I want to flaunt, when it comes to the actual discussion, I freeze. When I share this with female friends and colleagues I get the EXACT same answer 100% of the time “oh my gosh, ME TOO!!”
If I look at athletes, actors, or influencers, they don’t negotiate their own compensation, they have an agent who acts as their negotiator and proxy. Why couldn’t this exist in the business world? Why can’t I work with another woman and share with her all of my accomplishments and requests on the compensation/title side? I envision a platform that matches women, likely based on seniority, industry, and potentially years in the workforce, to negotiate on each other’s behalf. You become their champion and they yours. It builds special mentor-like relationships and also provides a way to help decrease the gender pay gap and remove fear and emotion from the compensation negotiating process.
That’s all for today! If you have thoughts, comments, or want to get in touch, find me on Twitter at @ezelby and if you enjoyed this, please share with a friend or two!
~ Elaine