I want to know who was in the room at Prada when they decided to launch little monkey keychains with black faces and red lips. Did the executives who greenlit these products think these monkeys were just adorable, in a kind of Paul Frank circa early-2000s way? Was there no one in that gorgeously decorated boardroom who thought, “Huh. You know, this is vaguely reminiscent of blackface?”
Clearly not. Prada has just launched a new line called Pradamalia, a set of figurines in the shape of “mysterious creatures” that were developed at Prada Labs, the company’s design department. But actually, the black monkey called Otto is not really that mysterious. Anybody who is familiar with history will immediately recognize this character, as it immediately draws to mind many hurtful stereotypes that have been directed at black people through racist blackface portrayals and references to monkeys.
After a Facebook user posted photos of these trinkets on display at Prada’s New York store–and pointed out how racist they were–Prada appeared to respond by taking down the display. In a statement, the brand said that it is withdrawing the monkey from display and circulation.
And yet it still denies that it had any connection to blackface: “Prada Group abhors racist imagery,” the statement says. “The Pradamalia are fantasy charms composed of elements of the Prada oeuvre. They are imaginary creatures not intended to have any reference to the real world and certainly not blackface.”
Racism is nothing new in the world of Italian luxury fashion. In 2016, Dolce & Gabanna released a pair of summer shoes, which it named“Slave Sandals.” And just last month that same brand launched a video for the China market featuring a Chinese woman struggling to eat pasta and cannolis with chopsticks. The video caused a major uproar in China and led to a boycott of the brand.
In this context, it’s surprising that Prada was not more sensitive to how this monkey trinket might be interpreted when it left Prada Labs and went out into the world. The products are so offensive, we initially wondered if they were a hoax. Sadly, it turns out they weren’t.
WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming service has a new face: Kevin Reilly, the veteran TV exec, most recently at Turner Broadcasting, has been hired to head content strategy at the service that is launching later next year.
The service is at the core of the digital strategy that WarnerMedia is pursuing since the company was formed earlier this year, the result of AT&T’s $85-billion acquisition of Time Warner. Not long after the acquisition was finalized, a new streaming service was announced, signaling how eager the company is to compete with rivals like Netflix, Amazon, and Disney in the content wars. Disney’s own entertainment streaming service is also launching at the end of next year. The WarnerMedia platform will include content from Warner Bros., HBO, and Turner.
By hiring Reilly, who oversaw programming at NBC, FX, and Fox before landing at Turner, WarnerMedia is bringing on an executive who is not only well-liked and forward-thinking, but who also will be able to smoothly settle into AT&T’s highly corporate culture. He also has a strong track record of working in the youth market. Under his leadership, the Turner brands TNT and TBS were reinvented from sleepy rerun channels to the home of buzzy, award-winning shows like Full Frontal With Samantha Bee and The Alienist. Reilly also oversaw an innovative digital distribution strategy at TBS. In 2017, the company launched all 10 episodes of Search Party, a dark comedy about self-absorbed millennials, on demand in order to encourage binge-watching. When the second season launched, TBS put the first season on its app, ad-free, allowing viewers to watch the show without the usual authentication from cable or satellite subscribers.
Reilly will continue to head content for Turner even as he oversees the new WarnerMedia app.
Last year, a jury awarded a California woman $417 million when she developed ovarian cancer after almost a lifetime of using Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder. The award included $70 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $347 million in punitive damages. If a new Reuters report is accurate, though, that may be just the tip of the iceberg for Johnson & Johnson.
Reuters reviewed internal documents indicating the company knew its baby powder was sometimes tainted with asbestos, a known carcinogen, but kept that information from regulators and the public, thereby letting its customers sprinkle asbestos on their bodies–and on their babies–for decades.
Both talc (the basis of talcum powder) and asbestos are naturally occurring minerals that are found together in the earth, making it easy to accidentally mine asbestos along with the talc. Because of that, Johnson & Johnson regularly tested its talc and, according to Reuters, “from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos” and executives and other employees failed “to disclose it to regulators or the public.”
Johnson & Johnson, of course, denies these claims and even Reuters admits that most tests did not find asbestos, but points out that “only a tiny fraction of the company’s talc is tested.” But to be clear, the World Health Organization says there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos.
We’ve reached out to Johnson & Johnson for comment and will update if we hear back.
Johnson & Johnson shares plunged 9% after the report came out, CNBC reports.
Per Reuters, around 11,700 plaintiffs are claiming that Johnson & Johnson’s talc caused their cancers, including thousands of women with ovarian cancer, and some juries are starting to find in their favor. The company has said it will appeal the recent verdicts against it.
A decade from now, city transit agencies in California will no longer be able to buy a bus that runs on diesel or natural gas. The California Air Resources Board, the state’s clean air agency, just voted on a new rule that will require cities to shift to 100% electric buses over time.
It’s happening at a time when many California cities are already starting to buy new electric buses; more than 100 zero-emissions buses are already on roads in the state, and hundreds more are on order. But the new rule will make things move faster.
“The rule is necessary because it sends a clear market signal that the fifth largest economy in the world is serious about zero-emissions transit buses,” says Adrian Martinez, a staff attorney at the nonprofit Earthjustice. “Even though you’ve had a lot of transit agencies step up to the plate to commit to 100%, getting the stamp of approval from a state as big and as powerful as California is important to send a signal nationally.”
The rule applies to all transit buses; school buses and privately operated buses aren’t covered. Starting in 2023, large transit agencies will need to buy electric buses 25% of the time (small agencies have a few extra years for this goal), then 50% by 2026. By 2029, agencies will no longer be allowed to buy a bus that isn’t electric.
It’s a change that took several years of work to make happen. “The natural gas industry tried to derail this legislation,” says Martinez. “They have a lot to lose, because public transit buses are a pretty core part of their business. This rule threatens them.” Some transit agencies also pushed back. But regulators were persuaded by the ability of electric buses to help with California’s air pollution problem–Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and other cities in the state make up eight of the top 10 most polluted cities in the country–and help lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The change in California could also help transform other parts of transportation. “Transit agencies have consistently been pioneers in developing cleaner vehicles,” Martinez says. “A lot of times that work translates into the trucking industry, which is a critical industry to clean up.”
Some key players in the electric bus industry are based in California, such as Proterra, which recently secured a $155 round of investment led by Daimler. The company, led by a former Tesla executive, says that its buses are cheaper than diesel or natural gas over the lifetime of a bus. Some battery electric buses can travel hundreds of miles on a single charge of the battery. But the technology still needs to evolve even more–San Francisco’s transit agency, for example, says that it still needs more proof of the ability of electric buses to handle steep hills and heavy ridership (though electric buses using fuel cells already do operate on the East Bay’s similarly steep hills). In L.A., some electric buses have broken down. “Like with any technology, there’s work that needs to happen,” says Martinez. When L.A. originally shifted to natural gas buses, he says, the transit agency there had to take dozens off the road because of fires and diesel bus breakdowns don’t make the news. In general, electric bus tech is ready.
California’s shift is actually happening far more slowly than in China, where heavy government subsidies are driving the transition. (In California, some support for electric buses is coming from the state’s gas tax and utility programs to help upgrade infrastructure for charging.) This year, the city of Shenzhen finished converting its entire fleet of 16,000 buses to electric. That’s more than the number of city buses in all of California.
The maps we use to navigate planet Earth, to tell us what’s what, lie to us all the time. Take New York City’s transit map, for example. Manhattan is wildly out of scale. The warping of reality is best illustrated by comparing the world famous Central Park to Prospect Park: the former (843 acres) appears to be at least six times the size of Brooklyn’s finest park (526 acres), when it’s not even twice the size.
Zoom out now. Chances are pretty decent that, relying on similarly flawed maps, everything you understood about the world is wrong. Did you know that California is bigger than the U.K. (all of it)? Or that the contiguous United States could blanket Australia?
If you did, good for you. If you did not, well there’s hope for you yet, young scholar.
Interactive mapmaker Neil Kaye has animated a world map that is true to scale. In this version, Greenland is shown a full 16 times smaller than its likeness in the classic Mercator projection, which distorts land size so that countries farther away from the equator appear larger.
Animating the Mercator projection to the true size of each country in relation to all the others.
Notice that some other textbook titans–including Canada, Russia, and China–all shrink, while the continent of Africa, and its 54 countries (home to varied climates, cultures, cuisines, and more), flexes its properly mapped might. Perspective–and reality–matters in how we think about the world. Hopefully, we can all unlearn what we’ve been taught by maps our whole lives.
Something will happen to potentially hundreds of thousands of Tumblr’s 12 million blogs on December 17. That’s the date the company plans to hide from public view all content flagged as “adult” by its image-tagging software. Given how error-prone Tumblr’s algorithms have been, users fear that entire blogs could disappear. Even if the glitches are eventually remedied through an appeals process, lots of content currently on the service (like porn) will not pass the new restrictions.
Since Tumblr announced the ban on December 3, bloggers with NSFW content have been scrambling to move to other sites, build new sites, and/or archive blogs till they can figure out next steps. As the deadline looms, here are some tools, companies, volunteer projects, and individuals offering lifeboats.
Making emergency backups
As a first step, blog owners should make a backup before December 17. Tumblr says that users will still be able to do this afterwards, but given the buggy-ness in the AI system, and the scale of the take-down project, why risk a technical glitch that may wipe out content?
Tumblr offers its own export tool under Account>Help>Your account>Blog management>Export your blog. This will download a zip archive of folders and files containing posts, media, and messages. Getting that compressed content back into something functional could be quite a challenge, although some new sites are working on ways to help.
That said, the process appears to be rather glitchy. It took about 18 hours from the time I pressed the button to back up my small blog until I got a message that the 4.2MB zip file was ready to download. A Tumblr spokesperson declined to comment on my experience, or on efforts by users to migrate from its platform.
In the meantime, a group of volunteers called the Archive Team is in the midst of a mass download of 700,000 Tumblr blogs identified as NSFW and plans to preserve as many as it can get on the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive. To date, it has saved over 100,000.
Migrating to a new blog
There are a few options to keep your Tumblr blog up and running on a different server. For now, this is more about staying online than maintaining anything like the community you had on Tumblr.
Timbr. The platform was quickly built by engineer Kirill Nikolaev after the content ban was announced as a refuge for blogs. Simply enter the blog name in its import tool, and a functional copy quickly appears on the server. Timbr aims to ultimately re-create what Tumblr has been: a community with all kinds of people and ideas, including NSFW material. Several other projects aspire to do the same thing. It’s unclear which, if any, will succeed. But Timbr is at least a place to keep your blog alive in the meantime.
WordPress. The blogger juggernaut’s Tumblr import tool works even if you just use WordPress software on your own web domain. If your blog also lives on WordPress.com, you will face restrictions against “visual depictions of sexually explicit acts . . . that can be considered pornographic,” but not, “text, images, and videos that contain nudity, offensive language, and mature subject material.” Expect headaches arguing over which bucket your content falls into. But WordPress policies are more permissive than those of Tumblr, Squarespace, and Blogger.
Joining existing communities
Twitter. Given its pretty liberal content policies, Twitter has emerged as a reluctant refuge for many folks with edgy blogs–even though it lacks the customizable community feel of Tumblr. You can find the Twitter handles (and some other accounts) for nearly 1,000 popular bloggers on a crowdsourced spreadsheet called The Tumblr Exodus Lifeboat.
The beginning of the slow move of my art from Tumblr to here. This is defiantly still my favorite piece pic.twitter.com/dzJlzPlJxl
Dreamwidth Studios. This labor of love has been hosting all kinds of material for a decade. Porn is welcome–except, of course, child pornography. And offensive speech is tolerated as long as it doesn’t incite real-world violence. Over a decade, Dreamwidth has emerged as an eclectic collection rich in erotica and fan fiction. Surviving on modest subscriptions from power users, the 10-year-old platform lacks funding for slick design and multimedia. Accounts provide just 500MB of storage, only for still images.
Pillowfort. This Kickstarter darling has emerged as the hottest hope for NSFW refugees. Pillowfort has the feel of Tumblr, with Facebook-like privacy controls. For instance, each post can be made viewable to everyone, followers, followers whom you also follow, or just you. Users can also turn on or off reblogging and commenting for each post. Though still in beta, the site—founded by Julia Baritz—has absorbed 10,000 new users in two weeks and halted new signups until an unspecified future date.
We’ve gained over 10,000 users in the last two weeks, and the site just isn’t ready to handle such a large community yet– so we’ve decided it would be better for us to close registrations for a little while, to give us time to improve load balancing, our moderation system, etc.
TumblrX. Emerging from a humorous conversation on Twitter, this site is now under construction, with a demo home page showing a sparse design. Despite the name, it aspires to be a diverse site with more than just NSFW content. The platform is temporarily housed on the very permissive image-hosting Booru Project, but will eventually live at tumblrx.com. One of the organizers—who goes by the handle @Riot_Cinema—says they aim to create a tool for importing zip files of Tumblr blogs.
Mojo Fire. Like TumblrX, Mojo Fire is founded by the sex-positive community and wants to welcome less-kinky members, too. The creators aim to build and import tool, too, says a spokesperson who goes by @MsLolaBohemia. Also like TumblrX, Mojo Fire has just a teaser page on public view.
Given the challenges—financial, logistical, inertial—it remains to be seen if anyone can re-create, or maybe even top, the freewheeling community vibe that Tumblr has fostered over the years. But it’s a testament to how important that community has been that so many are trying.
Americans tend to have fiercely varying tastes when it comes to entertainment, which might explain why Game of Thrones remains bafflingly more popular than Match Game. But one thing we can all agree on is that we’re all paying for way too many streaming services. Between Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video, HBO Now, CBS All-Access, and a bundled service like Sling TV, consumers could easily be paying north of $75 a month to stream all their favorite content—to say nothing of future costs incurred from forthcoming services like Disney+ and whatever WarnerMedia comes out with.
It’s daunting to think about, especially when you consider that the reason you cut the cord in the first place was to save money.
A new report from analyst firm MoffettNathanson might help you figure out where to trim the fat. Using rankings from IMDb, the firm looked at the top 50 shows TV shows of all time, and then it figured out which of those shows are available on one of the top three streaming platforms: Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Netflix came out on top, with 22 of the top 50 shows available on its platform. Hulu had 16 of the shows, while Amazon had only five. The remaining eight shows were not licensed to any of the services, MoffettNathanson found.
Of course, it’s not a perfect metric. By IMDb standards, the top five most popular shows of all time are The Big Bang Theory, Friends, Game of Thrones, Supernatural, and The Walking Dead, according to MoffettNathanson’s analysis. So take that for what it’s worth.
Still, it’s interesting in the sense that Netflix has a sizable head start that will prove a commodity as the streaming wars heat up. As we’ve seen with the fight over Friends a few weeks ago, that’s already happening. WarnerMedia owns Friends, in addition to Big Bang Theory and Game of Thrones, and that will certainly offer leverage when its parent company, AT&T, rolls out its planned streaming service next year.
In its analysis, MoffettNathanson also found that Hulu has the edge when it comes to controlling its own top content: Of those 16 top shows we mentioned, it gets 12 of them from one of its parent studios. Conversely, only five of Netflix’s 22 top shows are made in house.
Amazon, with five of the top 50 shows, only makes two of those on its own, so clearly it has some catching up to do. Then again, the company owns IMDb, so it really doesn’t like what it sees here, it can always just shut it down.
Back in July, Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat used billboards to cheekily welcome Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to Finland, “the land of the free press.” Now the paper is marking other Earthly disasters with a limited series of Christmas sweaters. But instead of gaudy reindeer, the sweaters represent the ugliest news of 2018. So it’s war, climate change, plastic ocean pollution, sexual harassment, and technological manipulation. Except, y’know, on a wool sweater. Onward!
Aviation Gin “The Process”
What: A sneak peak at possibly the most twee supply chain ever.
Who: Aviation Gin
Why we care: Look, we all love Deadpoo…er, Ryan Reynolds. (As a Canadian, I have to say that before I can get my passport renewed.) And here the actor/booze proprietor doesn’t disappoint, with a self-aware pisstake of alcohol advertising that hits the buzzed nail on the head. Basically, the opposite of this. It’s funny, laid back, and almost makes you forget that gin once had the nickname “mother’s ruin,” and its introduction into polite society is associated with “historical accounts of violence, widespread addiction, and social devastation.” Refreshing!
Helsingin Sanomat “The Ugliest News of the Year”
What: The ugliest news of the year depicted on holiday sweaters.
Who: Helsingin Sanomat, TBWA/Helsinki
Why we care: The holidays are meant to be fun, but here the newspaper is able to creatively use a quaint Christmas-themed gag to illustrate the severity of the issues facing humanity.
Anomaly “O Human Being”
What: WHAAAAAT.
Who: Anomaly
Why we care: Easily the weirdest Christmas video you’ll see this year. I won’t spoil it, save for two reasons to drop what you’re doing and watch it immediately: 1) It’s narrated by Richard E. Grant. 2.) It’s narrated by Richard E. Grant.
Lyft “Nope/Yep”
What: A new Lyft campaign that evaluates the pros and cons of driving your own car.
Who: Lyft, Wieden+Kennedy
Why we care: A very simple idea, creatively and effectively executed. Basically, driving sucks, so why not let someone else do it for you? The great casting and solid comedic timing are no surprise considering its directed by funny ad master Tom Kuntz, and the spot provides two convenient answers to the crucial questions, should I drive? (Nope.) Or take a Lyft? (Yep.)
Sandy Hook Promise “Point of View”
What: New PSA from Sandy Hook Promise, marking six years since the tragic shooting.
Who: Sandy Hook Promise, BBDO New York
Why we care: Echoing 2016’s “Evan” and last year’s “Tomorrow’s News” , this year Sandy Hook Promise once again highlights the importance of awareness, observation, and communication, when it comes to school shootings before they happen. The gun control status quo persists, and so does the ongoing tragedy that we still need powerful reminders like this.
Business Insider’s Rob Price is reporting on the end of Building 8–a much-ballyhooed skunkworks within Facebook dedicated to wildly ambitious hardware research. Its Portal videophone is now a commercial project, and a recent reorg has shuffled its other projects elsewhere at Facebook. As Facebook VP for AR and VR Andrew Bosworth pointed out to me on Twitter, the shift is more about the end of the Building 8 branding than Facebook pulling back on bleeding-edge research. Still, it feels like a notable moment in a six-year-long saga that spans both Facebook and Google.
Announced in 2016, Building 8 was originally headed by Regina Dugan, the former director of the U.S. Department of Defense’s iconic Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA is known for its, well, innovative approach to innovation: It believes in small teams that work intensively on big ideas over relatively short periods of time, and sees failure not as an embarrassment but a necessary aspect of invention.
Prior to Building 8, Dugan headed a similar skunkworks for Google, ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects), founded in 2012 and modeled on DARPA’s philosophies. (The group originated as part of Motorola, but Google kept it after selling Moto to Lenovo.) At ATAP, Dugan talked about way-out-there technologies such as an authentication system you could swallow. ATAP’s Tango 3D space mapping was subsumed by Google’s ARCore AR platform, and the Project Ara modular smartphone never reached consumers. But the lab’s Jacquard smart jacket project, a collaboration with Levi’s, remains extant. (It’s the primary subject of ATAP’s Twitter feed.)
Officially, Facebook’s Portal group is the successor to Building 8. That is not out of whack with the practice at DARPA, which believes in nudging its fully realized creations out of the lab once they’re no longer experiments. And Business Insider’s Price reports that work continues on some of Building 8’s more visionary experiments, just within a different research arm called Facebook Reality Labs. But the fact that Dugan’s time at Google and Facebook didn’t seem to transform either company may be a sign that DARPA’s alluring philosophy is tough to turn into new research arms that are built to last.
In my past career, I never thought that this would happen. Most of my life I’ve been a maker: working as an engineer, solving technical problems and building apps, products, or just circuit boards.
People management was a huge change. I learned a lot of things the hard way through trial and error, success and failure–but also by reading a lot: books about management, stories about teams and culture, and articles by others who went through the same transition from maker to manager as I did.
I thought I’d take the chance to return the favor by writing about the five things that helped me transition from maker to manager, and to level up and grow into my management position.
1. Say goodbye to your work and say hello to your team
I know this is a really tricky one: to stop doing what you’ve been doing for the past several years, and what also ultimately got you to this point in your career.
Here’s the perspective that I needed to embrace: Becoming a manager is not a promotion, it is a career change.
Viewing it this way, change is normalized. In my case, I realized that, after a while, coding became a distraction for me. At the beginning of this shift, I was still shipping features and bug fixes while also doing one-to-ones with the team on a weekly basis. I couldn’t fully concentrate on one or the other, and that resulted in me doing a bad job in both areas. Both areas are important, but you have to choose one. In my case, I chose the team, and not the code.
As a manager you need to put the company first, your team second, and your team members last.
Now this may sound harsh, but in practice, it leads to the best outcomes for everyone involved. For example, let’s say you mixed up the order of these priorities: You put team members first and the company last. You could easily find yourself with an amazing team, building something that doesn’t move the needle in any way for the company. Or worse, you could end up with a group of empowered individuals, each going off on their own way and not producing much valuable work.
It is incredibly important for you as a manager to understand the higher-level vision of your company. You need to know where the ship needs to sail. Only then can you help your team get there and help them grow in the right direction.
2. Own your education
This one is probably pretty straightforward and could be said about any role or any job. But it is still worth mentioning, especially in a career shift similar to mine, going from maker to manager.
I always use this quote from Albert Einstein to highlight how important learning is for us humans (just replace “moving” with “learning”):
Life is like riding a bicycle. In order to keep your balance you must keep moving.
The main thing I did in my first few weeks and months was to read, read, read. I needed to learn what management actually is. What are some effective management styles? How do I facilitate great one-to-ones? How can I be a great manager without ending up micro-managing everything?
I learned how important it is to be open and honest, and to build trust in my team, and to encourage discussions.
I learned more about everyone in my team, what they like and don’t like. What is their work style? Do they flourish in chaotic situations or dread them? All these details are important to understand, to help each individual grow and perform at their best.
I learned about the different processes we had or were missing at Buffer. Your job as a manager is to make the life of your team easier and to move obstacles out of their way. So knowing how things are done and where you can improve them is highly important.
Here are a couple of books I would encourage everyone to read, who leads a team or manages one:
Managing Humans by Michael Loop
Really insightful for first-time managers, and learning what’s it’s all about, and foremost, learn that it is all about humans.
The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier
Awesome overview of the what roles an engineering team normally has, and what the expectations in those job might be.
The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
I would call this my favorite book when it comes to building great teams. Although it is written in a fable style, it is so insightful, and so resourceful! Really recommend this to everyone who works in a team.
3. Build Your Megazord
If you grew up in the ’90s or know the Power Rangers, the Megazord is the big robot they create together when they need to fight a bigger, more powerful enemy. They could never fight an enemy that big alone, so they come together and form this huge, invincible machine.
We all know that the sum is always bigger than the parts. It’s true for Power Rangers. It’s true for management. In other words, as you’re making the transition from maker to manager, it’s vital that you create a support network.
Find people who will push you out of your comfort zone and show you a new way of doing things. Surround yourself with people from different backgrounds and with different experiences. Find psychologists, design leaders, or even a kitchen chef. Understanding how others approach problems or find solutions is so key in broadening your horizon.
And there was even an easy way for me to do so. I signed up to two Slack Communities at the beginning of my transition. Just by learning how others approach those things or learning that bigger companies or more experienced leaders still struggle with similar problems was super helpful to me.
4. Don’t do it all
This fourth point is something I just discovered recently, and it opened my mind. We all know that delegation becomes more important the more people you might lead or the more work you have on your hands.
Delegating sounds easy, right? I just tell everyone what to do!
Well I thought so, too, but I discovered that it is not easy, and that it requires active work to do delegation the right way.
I thought I was doing great in my job, everything was going well, then I discovered this article by Camille Fournier: When Being “Helpful” Is Actually Hurting. (Notice the airquotes around “helpful.”)
This article opened my eyes! I wasn’t doing bad, but there were a lot of improvements I took from this article. The biggest learning, which I have written in front of me on a sticky-note at my desk, is:
I need to stop taking over work in the name of helpfulness.
For instance, if you tell someone on your team that you want to look over all the proposals and be the last one to have a say in something, you limit their growth.
As soon as I understood that, I felt bad. Here I was, thinking I was helping. But essentially when I took over someone’s work or helped them out, I was blocking my team from growing!
5. Being productive in a different way
Last but not least is something almost everyone changing jobs has to cope with.
When you work as a maker/engineer, your output is easily measurable. You know what you are doing, and you have something to show at the end of a day. Either something written, something working in your app or your website, or even something you can touch. You can say to yourself–“Nice, I did something today, I was productive.”
Here is a quick comparison of what I used as a productivity indicator when I was an engineer:
But now as a manager all I had was this:
As you can see in the screenshot above, your calendar automatically fills up, and at the end of a day, you have meetings to show, not features, bug fixes, blog posts, etc. This was pretty hard for me, I didn’t know if I was productive in a day or not. I had nothing to measure it with until I realized that my job now is to make the team work, to chat to people and resolve problems, and help the team to flourish. If the impact of your work as a manager is not immediately visible, it’ll play out over the long run.
Having patience and trust is key when shifting jobs from maker to manager. Feel comfortable with what you do. If your team is doing great, you are doing a great job.
A version of this article originally appeared on Buffer and was adapted with permission.
Since Amazon bought warehouse robotics company Kiva Systems in 2012, its efforts in automation have been well known. The retail and tech powerhouse has introduced its cashierless Amazon Go stores, flirted with plans for drone deliveries, and rolled out tens of thousands of robots to shuffle goods around its fulfillment centers.
“In fulfillment centers that have drive units, we’re able to store up to 40% more inventory and move customer orders in a faster, more efficient way,” wrote VP of robotics Brad Porter in an email to Fast Company, referring to the Kiva-derived warehouse transport bots. “As a result, we can make faster deliveries, offer lower prices, and ultimately, deliver a better customer experience.”
But Amazon hasn’t been alone in pushing to bring robotics to the world of retail. Archrival Walmart has been adding bots to many of its warehouses and stores. A grocery distribution center in Shafter, California, is set to open in 2020, with new technology in place to shuttle even perishable goods around the warehouse without damaging them. In a Salem, New Hampshire, Walmart, automated carts will soon shuttle components of online grocery orders from an attached warehouse to be packaged up by human workers.
Other store bots include an autonomous scrubber that’s set to clean floors in 360 Walmart stores by the end of January, a robotic truck-unloading system that can sort and triage new deliveries on their way to shelves, and even machines that roll through store aisles to track inventory and spot misshelved goods.
“This robot can do in about two-and-a-half hours what it was taking an associate around two weeks to do, which is go through all of a department and scan the merchandise and determine where are the [out of stock items], where do we need to get the merchandise, the out of stock levels, those type of things,” says Walmart spokesperson Ragan Dickens.
Automated pickup towers in many stores also deliver customers their online orders without them having to wait on a store employee.
Separately, supermarket chain Kroger last month announced plans with a U.K. online retailer to build “an automated warehouse facility with digital and robotic capabilities” outside of Cincinnati, and Bossa Nova, the San Francisco company that’s brought shelf-scanning bots to dozens of Walmart stores, is working with at least five other as-yet-unnamed retailers on similar projects, says chief business officer Martin Hitch.
“This is the most exciting time in retail in roughly the past 100 years,” says Sterling Hawkins, head of operations and venture relations for the Center for Advancing Retail & Technology, which connects retailers and tech vendors. “Finally, this emerging technology–automation, AI, robotics–is at a point where it can actually deliver on the vision technically and economically.”
Will jobs be destroyed or created?
Stores say automation can help them get goods to customers more efficiently. Those Amazon robots mean warehouses can store more goods and enable the fast deliveries that the company’s become known for, according to the company. Similarly, Walmart says its robots mean fewer customers will be unable to buy their favorite products because they’re sitting on the loading dock instead of on the shelf where they belong.
But some critics fear robots will inevitably also take jobs away from retail, warehouse, and maintenance workers.
“Make no mistake, Walmart’s move to autonomous floor cleaners is not about better serving customers and workers,” warned the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union’s Making Change at Walmart project in a statement last week. “This latest job-killing venture has the potential to destroy over 5,000 maintenance jobs in the U.S. if it is implemented in every Walmart store.”
The union, which based that number on an assumption that the devices would ultimately mean one less maintenance position per store, has had similar criticism for Amazon’s push to automation.
“Amazon is clearly determined to profit by creating a future where automation replaces good jobs,” UFCW President Marc Perrone said in an open letter to Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey last year, as that supermarket chain was being acquired by Amazon.
More recently, he’s expressed concern about a Wall Street Journal report that Amazon is testing its cashier-free systems for larger stores, potentially including Whole Foods locations.
Amazon declined to comment to Fast Company about that report, but in general the company has said automation has helped it create jobs, not replace human workers.
“We are both creating jobs and adding automation,” Porter wrote, saying the company has added more than 300,000 full-time workers since 2012. “Automation has allowed us to offer increasing selection with faster delivery at lower cost. This is a virtuous cycle allowing our business to continue to grow and create more jobs.”
Walmart’s Dickens, too, says the chain’s robots are allowing employees to focus on tasks machines can’t do, like cleaning areas where robots can’t reach or restocking shelves that a robot has pointed out are running low. And, he emphasizes, newly automated tasks like scrubbing floors, checking out online orders, or checking shelves for products in need of replacement aren’t the entirety of anyone’s shift.
“These are portions of a larger role that the associate is playing,” he says.
In some cases, they’re also automating away the more unpleasant parts of tasks like unloading trucks in the back of a store, potentially improving the job and reducing turnover. They also let staff spend more time directly helping customers, he says.
“While yes, there’s robotics in the store, it’s assisting the associate with their job rather than replacing it,” he says. “What we’re working on is providing our associates good jobs and providing out customers good experiences.”
Walmart typically employs about 300 people in its “Supercenter” stores and about 90 in its smaller “Neighborhood Market” locations. A 2015 Reuters report found the stores employed fewer people per square foot that year than 10 years ago, with store space per employee rising to 547 square feet from 407 square feet in 2005. At the time, Walmart attributed the change to efficiency improvements, including “shelf-ready packaging,” motorized devices to transport shopping carts, and the rise of self-checkout.
Dickens declined to speculate on what employment numbers might look like in the future, saying stores will continue to evolve to meet changing customer needs.
“The store is changing,” he says. “It’s different today than it was 10 years ago, and I imagine in 10 years it will look a little differently than it does today.”
That new technology will let workers spend more time working with the public instead of putting them out of a job is a common refrain, heard from police departments installing crime cameras and airlines shifting to biometric check-in as well as retailers. It may sound hard to believe, but it has happened in other industries: As bank customers moved many transactions from the teller desk to ATMs, bank employment actually went up, since banks could afford to open more branches with fewer tellers each, says Jim Bessen, executive director of the Technology & Policy Research Initiative at Boston University.
“The nature of the job changed so it was much more of a marketing job,” he says. “They would play a more crucial role in helping sell products that the bank offers to customers that are higher margin than cash handling.”
So far, the shift to e-commerce has created more jobs than it’s taken away, and fulfillment center jobs often pay better than traditional retail hours, says Michael Mandel, the chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute. “We estimate that e-commerce jobs in fulfillment centers and
e-commerce companies rose by 400,000 from December 2007 to June 2017, substantially exceeding the 140,000 decline of brick-and-mortar retail jobs,” he writes in a paper published last year.
“Historically, we’ve seen that increases in productivity are very often linked to increases in employment because you can do things you couldn’t do before,” he says. “In this case it’s been super clear that people are now using online [shopping] to buy all sorts of things like kitty litter rather than going to the store.”
Mandel says he’s optimistic that automation will lead to job creation, even if retailers continue to automate. If the retail sector ultimately cuts jobs because it’s cheaper to replace humans with robots, it’s likely that will mean cheaper distribution costs for manufacturers, which could spell new business models popping up and product makers employing humans in new roles.
Kroger’s first customer fulfillment center–an automated warehouse facility with digital and robotic capabilities, also known as a “shed”–will be constructed in Monroe, OH, a suburb north of Cincinnati. [Photo: courtesy of Kroger]
Rocky transition for longtime retail workers
To Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and a longtime critic of Amazon and big box chain stores, the concern isn’t so much the rise of automation but the fact that community businesses, small manufacturers, and entrepreneurs pursuing a better life can’t thrive amid price pressure from the retail giants.
“I don’t think we should want to hang on to these terrible warehouse jobs,” says Mitchell. “What I am concerned about is the effect that consolidation is having on new business formation.”
Even if automation does create new jobs, it could be a rocky transition for some longtime retail workers. An influential report on workplace automation released by McKinsey last December warned that while technological changes often do create more jobs than they erase, it will be essential to ensure people have access to training to let them quickly move into those new occupations.
“Increased investment and productivity growth from automation could spur enough growth to ensure full employment, but only if most displaced workers find new work within one year,” according to the report. “If reemployment is slow, frictional unemployment will likely rise in the short-term and wages could face downward pressure.”
About 3.4 million people currently work as retail cashiers, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates, and UFCW communications director Erikka Knuti argues it’s unclear what sorts of work they’d switch to in a world of largely automated commerce.
“Those are good jobs that can provide a person with a living and a way to provide a better living for their family,” she says. “They’re not going to all go to Silicon Valley and start coding, and not everybody can do warehouse work.”
Despite a federal judge striking down the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) as unconstitutional on Friday, the healthcare law remains in effect during the appeals process. The case may very well head to the U.S. Supreme Court, but for now, the estimated 4.1 million people who signed up for plans on Healthcare.gov will be insured for 2019.
Unfortunately, the open enrollment period ended at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, December 15, in most states. If you’re reading this because life or work got in the way, and you missed the deadline, you’re not completely out of luck. Here are a few options:
You can still apply for ACA coverage if you qualify for a Special Enrollment Period due to a life event like losing other coverage, moving, getting married, having a baby, or adopting a child. In a few very limited situations, you could qualify outside the enrollment period thanks to a Special Enrollment Periods for complex issues.
Plans that aren’t minimum essential coverage, including short-term coverage, fixed indemnity plans, critical illness plans, accident supplements, etc. are not regulated by the Affordable Care Act, and allow year-round enrollment.
States that run their own exchanges can extend open enrollment, before or after the regularly scheduled enrollment period. For 2019 coverage, that includes California, Colorado, Rhode Island, New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Colombia.
If you applied, but your coverage was denied, you can appeal a decision. Download an appeal request form for your state from healthcare.gov.
New analysis: 15 million people, or 55% of those who are uninsured, don't have health insurance but are eligible for ACA premium subsidies or Medicaid/CHIP. December 15 is the deadline to qualify for premium subsidies for 2019 in most states.https://t.co/Ul6m3Ux09tpic.twitter.com/aKFS2Ktgr5
If you’re a leader or a manager, you probably wear a lot of hats. You’re a project manager, delegator, spokesperson, and most importantly, a coach. But the problem is that no one ever tells you how to be an effective coach, or even what that means. Are you supposed to act like a sports coach? A therapist? Perform some bizarre (and arcane) HR ritual?
The answer is none of the above. In fact, it’s about making one tiny change to your behavior, one that will bring a significant impact. Being a coach is about being more curious, and being slow to give advice and take action.
Now, I’m not saying that that coaching never involves giving advice. At times, your job is to provide an answer. If the building’s burning down–for example–you don’t want to have a conversation about how people are feeling about the smell of smoke.
But the truth is, most of us are advice-giving maniacs. We don’t listen as much as we should. Think about the last time someone talked to you about a complex issue. Did you listen intently? Chances are, after about three sentences, you formed some initial thoughts, and you probably jumped in to voice them.
Start with a simple question
It’s a simple concept to understand, yet it’s difficult to implement. According to a 2015 survey, on average GPs interrupt their patients after 18 seconds. I wouldn’t bet on managers doing much better.
Being curious involves asking questions–and they don’t have to be complicated ones. Start with, “And what else?”
Yes, it’s hardly the probing, introspective coaching question you expect. But it works really well.
It is based on the understanding that the first answer someone gives is never their only answer, and it’s rarely their best. Far too many of us spring into action before we’ve uncovered the truth. We don’t probe a little further to dig beyond their half-baked thought or the first thing that’s come to their minds. “And what else?” allow us to push a little deeper.
This question works so well is that it’s a self-management tool. You know you have an ingrained habit of leaping in with advice, solutions, opinions, and ideas. We all do. “And what else?” is one of the most effective ways of taming your inner advice monster and staying curious a little bit longer.
How to ask the question effectively
This question is powerful because it’s almost always usable. You can generally get more bang for your buck by following up with “And what else?”
Of course, tone matters. You can ask this question from a place of boredom, frustration, disinterest, or disdain, and it’s unlikely to be effective. But when you ask from a place of genuine curiosity, the other person won’t even register that it’s a question. They might not even click that you’ve asked this before.
If you feel like you need to move things forward or end the conversation, ask them, “is there anything else?” This indicates that you’re prepared to end the discussion, but you’re giving room for anything important that they might still want to bring up. It’s an emotionally intelligent way to send a signal that you’re about to close the conversation.
Coaching is an essential leadership behavior. Curiosity is the driving force in being more coach-like. Questions fuel curiosity. If you’re looking for just one question to add right now to your leadership repertoire, “And what else?” might be it. Remember, as a leader or manager, your job is not to have all the answers–but to guide your employees to come up with the right ones.
Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of The Coaching Habit and the founder of Box of Crayons. Box of Crayons works with Fortune 500 companies that believe coaching is an essential leadership behavior.
What: The only sketch you will ever need to see about Weezer.
Who: Leslie Jones and Saturday Night Live guest host Matt Damon
Why we care: Author and known KISS superfan Chuck Klosterman was once asked what album he would take with him to a deserted island. His answer: the KISS premium gold edition box set. Not because the collection contained some of his favorite jams but because he thought he might be able to use those gold CDs to barter with an indigenous tribe. Klosterman’s answer reveals how the question itself is paradoxical; music’s only inherent value while you’re stuck on a deserted island is in whether it can help you survive–and it probably can’t. As passionately as pop culture obsessives tend to nerd out about Marvel movies, Game of Thrones, or Carly Rae Jepsen, all of those things are ultimately frivolous.
It just doesn’t feel that way when someone challenges your beliefs about those things.
SNL’s fantastic Weezer sketch holds an unflattering mirror up to the face of extreme fandom so that all of us who hold serious opinions about trivial matters can see how we look while airing them. With surgical precision, the sketch uses hyper-specific details about Weezer’s career to paint dinner table arguers Matt Damon and Leslie Jones as two distinct flavors of fans. You might only understand some of the references if you haven’t closely tracked the evolution of Weezer’s career, but if you feel strongly about any pop culture thing at all, this sketch is about you, too.
It’s been said that it’s not what you know but who you know. And there is a long history of men getting to positions of power by leveraging their connections. Now, a new study published in the journal Human Relations suggests it’s not just because men have more access to power and face less bias (although that certainly plays a role), it’s also because men and women build their networks differently. According to the study, women often hesitate to ask for help because they don’t want to “exploit” their network and they’re too modest.
When women seek a mentor, the study says, they tend to look for someone they want to be friends with rather than someone they can learn from. Studies have shown women aren’t getting the tough feedback they need to move ahead. The best mentors will push, dare, and confront mentees, and challenge them to take on projects they might otherwise avoid.
Men, on the hand, look to form alliances. Men are willing to do business with anyone, even someone they don’t necessarily like, as long as that person can help them achieve their goals. Men understand that this is a work relationship that can be dissolved when it’s no longer convenient, not a long-term friendship. Yet women are leery of capitalizing on social ties and tend to overemphasize the moral aspects of networking, the study finds.
“I think men are socialized from the get-go to understand that mixing business and friendship is what you do” to get ahead, says Rachel Thomas, president of LeanIn.org. “We, as women, aren’t as comfortable doing that.” Here are six ways to feel more comfortable building an effective network that you can rely on for career advice.
Ask for help and recommendations
It’s no secret that networking is the key to getting selected for stretch assignments that often lead to promotions. Yet, women are less likely to be hired into manager-level jobs and they are far less likely to be promoted into them. In fact, for every 79 women promoted, 100 men are promoted, according to the 2018 Women in the Workplace study by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.org.
“You know, the guy in the office next to yours is asking for help and recommendations,” Thomas says. “Remember that men are doing it every day, it is completely acceptable and they are getting huge benefits from it.” Yet, Thomas admits that it’s fundamentally harder for women to build powerful networks because women receive less day-to-day support at work and less access to senior leaders. Women are less likely to have someone coach them on company politics, or recommend them for stretch opportunities or advocate for their promotion, says Alexis Krivkovich, a managing partner for McKinsey’s Silicon Valley office and an author of the Women in the Workplace study. This lack of interaction with senior leadership is even more pronounced for Hispanic and black women, making it even more essential for women to be proactive in building and using their network, she adds.
Think of networking as a strategic tool
Be careful not to confuse friendship and mentorship when you are networking. “Write down the names of the people you think of as part of your network, not your best friends, but the people you can go to for career advice,” Krivkovich says. Be deliberate in creating that network by mapping out which person you would ask for career advice, for sponsorship, for a sounding board and to challenge you. “Understand what role you are hoping for—sponsorship, mentorship, or an ally,” she says. “Sponsorship is about opportunity creation, mentorship is about advice, and an ally equates to someone who will be your personal champion. There are a range of roles you want to have in a network to make it robust.”
Focus on work from the beginning
Although networking is about building relationships, that doesn’t necessarily mean developing a deep personal friendship with someone. Instead focus on sharing your career aspirations by talking about what you are doing at work and what you hope to accomplish. Then when you ask for an introduction or career advice, it won’t feel unnatural, Krivkovich says. “If you don’t talk about what you want to do, other people will fill in the blanks and create a narrative for you,” she says. They might assume you don’t want to advance in your career, or that you don’t want to travel for work or move to another city.
Don’t exclude men
The majority of leadership positions are still held by men and they continue to be the gatekeepers for most stretch assignments and promotions. Your male colleagues are more likely to socialize with their manager outside of work, and this creates a camaraderie that can lead to opportunity. Even in a post-#MeToo world, women need to find ways to build connections with male managers that feel comfortable, Krivkovich says. That might mean meeting for breakfast or coffee instead of dinner, she says.
It’s not transactional if you reciprocate
Don’t hesitate to ask someone in your network for help, even if you don’t know them that well. Just be sure to offer to return the favor. “Most people are flattered to be asked for their ideas and want to help each other,” says Karen Wickre, author of Taking the Work out of Networking: An Introvert’s Guide to Making Connections that Count. “You’re not exploiting someone if they agree to help you.”
If you’re actively involved in your networking community, you’ll have an opportunity to help them or someone else in the group. “Go into an event with the idea that people are there to help each other,” says Shelly Yorgesen, founder of the Veranda Virtual Network. “Networking is about helping and serving each other.”
Use your network to help others
Women don’t always feel comfortable advocating for themselves so Krivkovich encourages women to use their network to champion other women. For instance, she says, in every conversation with a senior leader, mention something praiseworthy about a colleague.
Unlike men, women often get social pushback when they promote themselves, Thomas says. “This is why networks are so important to women,” she says. “You can ask someone in your network to highlight and promote what you’ve done without fear of pushback.”
On Air Fest—the Coachella of podcast festivals (or maybe the Form Arcosanti of podcast festivals?)—just announced its 2019 lineup, and it’s bigger and better than ever. Headliners include U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith; Still Processing‘s Jenna Wortham; infamous editor Tina Brown; and Dan Taberski, the man behind the Missing Richard Simmons and Surviving Y2K podcasts.
But there’s a lot more happening over the course of the four-day festival. From February 28 to March 3, 2019, On Air Fest will send podcast fans, creators, and industry leaders running all over Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for performances, conversations, listening parties, art installations, live podcasts, and more.
The festival kicks off an invite-only podcast industry business summit cohosted by Hot Pod editor Nick Quah and the creative studio Work x Work, and then opens to the general public for three days of events with favorite podcast creators, including Design Matters host Debbie Millman, The Antlers’ Peter Silberman, Crimetown creator Zac Stuart-Pontier, and Love + Radio’s Nick van der Kolk.
Highlights include:
A listening party and meet-and-mingle with hosts and producers from Radiotopia, including a special feature presentation by the legendary Kitchen Sisters.
Radiolab sound designer (and Marcy Playground bass player) Dylan Keefe shares his secrets for creating rich and layered stories through sound.
A conversation with filmmaker and podcaster Zac Stuart-Pontier about the creation of his series Crimetown from Gimlet and Crimetown Presents with Cadence13.
ESPN’s excellent 30 for 30 podcasts will talk about how they merge video and audio storytelling in their documentary work.
Artforum editor-in-chief David Velasco will share his thoughts on the art form.
The Heart‘s Kaitlin Prest takes you into the world of her new podcast, The Shadows, where she pushes the boundaries of audio fiction.
Live performance by musician-storyteller duo James & Jerome.
A rare stage performance from Science Friday’s Undiscovered, blending audio and projections to tell the overlooked history of the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.
If you think you’re interested, but want to know for sure, here’s a video of everything you missed in 2018:
Engineers have found a way to recycle potato peel waste from chips factories into medium-density fiberboard panels. Compared with traditional MDF, which you find in pretty much everything from tables to cabinets, it sounds like a dream: It doesn’t use toxic materials, and it’s fully recyclable.
MDF is made by turning wood into fibers and combining them with some binder agent at high temperature and pressure. That creates an hard material that is widely used in construction and furniture. If you have any Ikea furniture at home, you probably have MDF. After all, the Swedish manufacturer is the biggest user of MDF on the planet.
Although standard MDF has many benefits–it’s much harder than plywood, it has a relatively low carbon footprint, and it’s cheap–it’s still bad for the environment. You have to use toxic formaldehyde–a gas used as a binding agent–and other toxic resins to make it. And, because of that, you can’t recycle it, you just burn it.
[Photo: Chipsboard][Photo: Chipsboard]The new and patent-pending Chip[s] Board–the invention of London-based designers Rowan Minkley and Robert Nicoll plus biochemist Greg Cooper–is just as strong as traditional MDF but it doesn’t use any of the bad stuff, the designers claim.
Minkley and Nicoll initially developed it through trial and error, then refined it with the help of Cooper. The new material uses potato peelings refined in a proprietary process as a binding agent, mixing in bamboo, recycled wood, beer hops, and unrefined potato skins. They haven’t disclosed exact details about how their method works; they’re now in the process of patenting the technology.
The mixture is then subjected to the same high-pressure, high-temperature process of MDF manufacturing. The final result are the boards you see above, which are strong enough to make furniture or be used in construction, the designers say.
When you’re done with the material, you can turn it into compost and use it to grow some more potatoes in an eternal circle of potato life that will not only produce more furniture for your home and give you chips to stuff your face with, but help save the planet in the process.
Here’s hoping this works as they claim and Ikea and other manufacturers can turn it into actual products.
As many strides as the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have made in a short time, they still have a long way to go. Exhibit A is the latest allegations against a well-known actor.
On Sunday, the New York Times published a piece by Bari Weiss (categorized as Opinion) about Orange Is the New Black actress Yael Stone’s struggle to share her experiences with Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush. The piece shares in detail the many difficulties Stone has had bringing her complicated accusations to light in her native Australia–where Rush is considered a national treasure.
“Most women who go public with #MeToo stories are fearful for obvious reasons,” writes Weiss, whose outlook on #MeToo matters hasn’t always exactly seemed enlightened. “There is the pain of reliving traumatic experiences. There is the rage of not being believed. And there is sometimes the discomfort of admitting, as Ms. Stone readily does, that she didn’t say ‘no’ and at times even encouraged some of his [Rush’s] behavior. She did so, she says, out of fear of offending a mentor and friend.”
Weiss goes on to list Stone’s accusations, which include Rush dancing naked in front of her in a dressing room, using a mirror to watch her while she showered, and sending her occasionally erotic text messages while she was 25 years old and starring with Rush, who was 59 at the time, on stage in The Diary of a Madman in 2010 and 2011. Stone admits that she never forcefully declined Rush’s advances (she was intimidated by his stardom and power), but the fact remains that he behaved inappropriately with a coworker, abusing an uneven power dynamic. He could claim he was merely flirting or acting on signals Stone sent, although Stone’s account makes it sound like those signals were nonexistent.
Adding to Stone’s fears about coming forward, Australia’s defamation laws put her in great financial peril. As Weiss lays out:
In the United States, the legal burden is on the person who claims to have been defamed: He or she must prove that the allegations are false. In Australia, in the area of libel law, it’s the opposite. The burden is on the publisher to prove that the allegations against the plaintiff are true. In addition, public figures who sue for libel in the United States must prove that the publisher acted with reckless disregard of the truth, even if the statements prove false.
(Rush, in a statement to the New York Times, says that Stone’s allegations “are incorrect and in some instances have been taken completely out of context.”)
Weiss backs up her case for how much more difficult it is to achieve #MeToo justice in Australia by pointing out that Rush had previously been accused of “inappropriate behavior” during the Sydney Theater Company 2015-16 production of King Lear, to no avail. Once the Daily Telegraph published an anonymous accuser’s allegations, Rush sued the paper into removing the articles from its website. The resulting legal battle caused the Daily Telegraph to out the accuser, actor Eryn Jean Norvill, who has since spent the past several months in and out of courtrooms.
Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
Lucie Gikovich, a longtime friend and former member of California Governor Jerry Brown’s staff, repeatedly lobbied his office on behalf of a group of oil and gas companies that won major concessions from the governor on important state legislation, according to a report released today by a New York-based nonprofit organization.
Gikovich’s decades-long friendship with Brown has previously been reported by the Sacramento Bee, including the fact that he stays at her home while on official business in Washington, D.C. But her oil and gas industry ties have not received attention prior to this report, according to report author Derek Seidman, a research analyst with the Public Accountability Initiative, which is funded by foundations and the American Federation of Teachers.
“She’s someone that Brown clearly completely trusts and yet is being extremely well-paid by her clients to lobby on behalf of their interests,” said Seidman, whose report is titled, “The California Oil Veto: The Lobbyist Behind Governor Jerry Brown’s Concessions to Big Oil.” Gikovich, who works with the D.C.-based Crane Group, has lobbied Brown’s office on behalf of corporate clients for a range of industries since 2011. Gikovich, her business partner, and her firm have donated $114,500 to Brown’s campaigns over the years.
For her part, Gikovich denies having an outsized influence on Brown and minimizes her role in legislation that the report says she influenced. “Governor Brown, more than anyone I know, makes up his own mind after hearing from all sides and carefully analyzing all aspects of the issues,” she wrote in an email. “He makes his decisions on the merits, regardless of his relationships with those involved.”
Evan Westrup, a spokesperson for the governor, added a few choice words about the then unpublished report, when it was described to him in an email. “This report is about as factual–and substantive–as a tweet from Donald Trump,” said Westrup. “On these bills–and the thousands of others that have crossed his desk–the focus has always been on what’s best for California, which is why the state’s record of climate action is unmatched in the Western world.”
The Public Accountability Initiative’s report builds on a longstanding critique of the California governor who, many environmentalists claim, has been too cozy with Big Oil interests in spite of his reputation as a national leader in combating global climate change and reducing demand for fossil fuels in the state. The report also calls on incoming governor Gavin Newsom to investigate Gikovich’s lobbying efforts in California and to “sever the state’s ties to Gikovich.”
One of Gikovich’s clients, the oil refinery operator Phillips 66, has paid her $937,500 in fees and retainers to lobby the governor’s office and various state regulatory boards since 2012. She was the Houston-based firm’s highest paid lobbyist in California, according to the report.
Gikovich served as a top aide to Brown during his first two terms as governor, and he hired her as his federal lobbyist when he was mayor of Oakland, a job that earned her $780,000 from 2001 to 2007, according to the report. She also served as Brown’s press secretary during his failed 1982 run for the U.S. Senate. As governor, Brown has included her in trade delegations to China and Mexico.
Brown reportedly stayed with Gikovich in her Washington, D.C., home in 2013, at the time she was lobbying on behalf of Phillips 66 and Halliburton, and other corporate clients. Such hospitality might not violate ethics laws if the stay “is related to another purpose unconnected with the lobbyist’s professional activities,” according to the state’s ethics rules at the time.
“I find it hard to believe that they would’ve not talked about any official business but no one can know for certain, of course,” says Seidman, whose report says those visits may constitute a “possible violation of ethics rules.”
The visits were “all personal, not business” and evidence of Brown’s frugality as well as his desire to visit with friends, according to Gikovich’s email.
Gikovich’s client during the battle over two bills to extend California’s landmark climate program, known as cap-and-trade, was Phillips 66, which operates oil refineries in Santa Maria and Rodeo. The package that the governor signed last year included major concessions to the oil industry and split the environmental community, with mainstream environmentalists supporting the compromise and environmental justice groups turning against it.
Gikovich said that her work on the cap-and-trade program—for which she reportedly was paid $105,000 in 2017—was mostly confined to monitoring the legislation. “There was no contact with the governor personally on these issues,” she wrote.
In 2013, Gikovich also reported lobbying Brown’s office on behalf of Houston-based Halliburton, the oilfield services giant, on a proposed Senate bill sponsored by then State Senator Fran Pavley (D-CA) that regulated hydraulic fracturing—”fracking”—an oil extraction method that brings with it the risks of drinking water contamination and of inducing earthquakes, as well as air pollution.
That bill lost the support of environmentalists after the oil industry lobbied to amend it to allow fracking to continue while the process was being studied, as High Country News reported at the time. Westrup countered via email that “prior to this bill, there was no integrated, comprehensive regulatory oversight of this production stimulation method, which has been used in California for more than 30 years.”
Gikovich wrote that the Crane Group “had a small subcontract” to provide strategic advice to Halliburton, and that she “never spoke even once to the governor or staff on their issues, including fracking.”
The report also credits Gikovich with playing a key role in advocating for the Southern California Gas Company after its Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility sprung a massive methane leak in 2015, causing the evacuation of thousands of nearby residents. She lobbied Brown’s office on behalf of the utility in opposition of a bill that would have granted disaster victims more latitude in litigation against the company. In an email, she said that she submitted a lengthy policy memo, but did not speak to Brown or his staff.
It’s no secret that venture capital is relationship-driven. That partly explains the demographics of the industry, which skew heavily white and male–and, in turn, the types of founders VCs often gravitate toward. Nearly three quarters of U.S. firms don’t have a single female partner, and in 2017, women-led startups received just 2% of venture capital dollars.
But founders can take certain steps to foster relationships with investors over time. Whether you’ve snagged a meeting with a VC firm or secured funding, five VCs share how founders can better navigate and strengthen their relationships with investors.
Be up front about bad news
“There is a saying that bad news should go out to investors instantly, while good news can wait,” says Upal Basu, a general partner at NGP Capital. “The opposite is far more common.”
But the bad news is often just as important–if not more important–than the good news. If your company has customer retention issues or is on the verge of missing quarterly numbers, your investors should be in the know.
“The most successful relationships are where the founder reaches out very quickly to their investors when they foresee a problem,” Basu says. “Good VCs are patient and recognize that a company will have ups and downs through their process and do not get flustered easily.”
As Sam Wick, the head of ventures at UTA Ventures, points out, sharing that kind of information freely can also help guide VCs through future investments. “While an investor’s insights can help founders grow a successful business, the founder’s insights and relationships are equally as valuable,” Wick says. “It really is a two-way street.”
Make time for face-to-face meetings
J.J. Kasper, the founder of Blue Collective, recommends a simple strategy for maintaining good relationships with investors: Carve out time for them the way you would for friends. “This means take time out of your schedule on a regular basis to meet with VCs face-to-face,” Kasper says.
It might be tempting to stick to offering updates via email or sending your investors gifts during the holiday season. “That’s not the recipe for a strong relationship with a person, let alone a VC,” Kasper says. Investors may not be your friends–but Kasper believes face time is the most effective way to build rapport with them, as is usually the case with friends. “Just treat VCs as you would treat anyone you are trying to be friends with, which requires spending time together,” he adds.
Treat any introduction like the start of a relationship
Caitlin Strandberg, a principal at Lerer Hippeau, sometimes meets founders whose ideas are interesting but aren’t a fit for her firm. Even in those cases, she says, founders shouldn’t let the relationship fizzle. “With early-stage companies, particularly seed-stage, it’s important to remember that the community is generally small and you’ll likely be in the community for a long time,” Strandberg says.
One way to keep investor contacts in the loop is by giving them consistent updates on your company’s progress. A monthly newsletter that highlights your company’s successes and growth is an “easy and seamless way to stay connected,” according to Maxine Kozler, the co-managing director of LDR Ventures. “This simple technique allows VCs to feel connected to your company and ‘in the know’ when your company comes up in conversation,” she says. “Make it easy for them to stay up to date on all your hard work, and they’ll become advocates.”
Even if an investor passes on your company, their network and know-how can prove useful. “I stay in touch and follow the company’s progress, connect them to potential hires, introduce them to other investors, and even call them for domain expertise or perspective,” Strandberg says. “I think any meeting–from a coffee chat to a pitch meeting–is the start of a relationship, which compounds over time if you invest in it.”
As you can see in the screenshot above, your calendar automatically fills up, and at the end of a day, you have meetings to show, not features, bug fixes, blog posts, etc. This was pretty hard for me, I didn’t know if I was productive in a day or not. I had nothing to measure it with until I realized that my job now is to make the team work, to chat to people and resolve problems, and help the team to flourish. If the impact of your work as a manager is not immediately visible, it’ll play out over the long run.
