Move to the Edge, Declare It Center w/ Everett Harper

I'm gonna introduce you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest violence and brilliant ideas. Feel black in building or simply using Texas Secure your back. This podcast is for you. Everett hartper CEO and co founder of Trust, a human center and software development company. He's also author of the new leadership book Moved to the Edge the Player in Center, which was published by Wiley earlier this year. He was previously director of Customer Acquisition

and Community at Linden Lab. Make Your Second Life the CEO and technologist who also hits many stages around the world to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. I asked Effort to speak on this I get it as a more imperative diversity, But is it also profitable to hire, fund, promote, and support black people. The great answer is yes and UH. There is a research um history, both in academia and

in practice for the last decade. UH Cathy Williams, for example, Late Great Kathy Williams, Dr Cath Williams UH documented how that makes UM. Words that have diverse boards have higher returns. Diverse ship teams are returns the UM process of innovation. More diverse teams have better UH, they essentially less blind spots when coming up with a solution. So there's any number at different levels or the business case those things. And that's before saying, oh, if my customers are diverse,

that we need to have representations. So UM, there's a lot of history. At this point, the ship has already sailed.

So when you think about innovation, I remember I don't remember which of the founders of Twitter who talked about this, but there was a founder of Twitter who talked about when you're trying to get people, when you're trying to find a success in a startup, the best thing you can do is not trying to change what people already do, but make what they do more efficient because when you try to get people to change habits, you have an uphill,

you know, battle to climb. And so can you talk about There was an article I head that you had broke this particular line. I'm going to read it back to you and you may remember writing it. It says, we have a culture of innovation quote unquote is a statement found on crumpled banners, rolled up posters, and trash brochures. Failed startups and shuttered businesses. Companies and investors have tried to shift fund or shock their employees into being becoming

more innovative. Um. And then you went on to say, an infrastructure for innovation beats a culture of innovation. So those two concepts, the one that opposition and what you just wrote, how do we how should we think about innovation when we are black founders, when we have a unique perspective in the marketplace and we're trying to build something, hopefully that the world has never seen. That will you know, provide us some capital that we can build, you know,

generational wealth. Yeah, yeah, good points. And I guess I was feeling spicy that day. Um, so I think, um, here's how we think about it now? Twitter's culture. I don't know enough in the detail of how they think about culture to be precise about what they did, because it may include an infrastructure that I don't know. But I do know is when you talk to BlackBerry, and you talked to Deck, and you talk to folks at

companies that Xerox Park that had the innovations. However, they weren't able to put it in a system that enable those innovations to scale, or to be shared, or to be sustainable. And it's really the system part that I'm talking about to make innovations actually come to light. So a different way to think about it is that um, for example, when we with the with the pandemic and ple oh, we're gonna grit our teeth through this, and UM,

we're gonna make it through by sheer will and hard work. Well, after a couple of months, that bill starts to drop. You can't sustain heroism like that. But if you build a system that enables more people to benefit from that system without the same amount of toil, then you're able to get the innovations or any kind of innovations out into the market where it can be tested in and with the customers. So I'm of the mind that you don't have to look far for ideas for companies, but

that there are problems that exist all around us. And can you talk a little bit about how, if how do you admonish would be entrepreneurs to maybe look more at their story and what is going on in their world to help them come up with concepts or ideas or projects that could ultimately become businesses, to UM more authentically practice a new way of doing things that other

people can employ. Also. Yeah, so what I tell entrepreneurs with regard to that question is, you know, you start with a problem that you know that your experience, but you're only one person for the next thing to do immediately is to test it with other people around you. Is this compelling? Is it UM memorable? Does it solve a problem? Doesn't accelerate your life? And be real honest about that. That's actually the thing I love to do

most UM and UM. You'll get some people who will support you, that's still not good enough that takes you to the next level. Then it's people that you haven't met before, and that's where the iteration and you know, whether it's UM being start up principles or other iteration principles where you get out and you see whether your idea takes hold, whether people grab it, whether people are doing things on where you develop a platform for it. So, um, the tent with people that are around you is only

the first step. It's validing that and then it's that might be a good idea, but is it a business? So you have to ask the other kind of topes of questions. Are people going to pay for it? Are they going to devote their time for it? Are they going to build on it? Those are the next level questions that frankly, I find more entrepreneurs step missed that boat than they do with ideas, because I think people

are full of different deals. Um, I'll say the second thing that I tell people, everybody has same tend people the same idea you do right now, whatever it is six of those people, and those people will just be talking about it, thinking about it, whatever, won't even write it down. Seven and eight person might have done a little testing, might have like you know, explored some avenues, but they got busy, got distracted. The ninth person actually

is is um doing something about it? Is actually testing it. Maybe they're using a little bit of money you want to be the tenth person who has done all of that and um gone and put the diligence in the time into that thing. So the idea is not the original part. It's whether you're able to turn it into

something that's a repeatable practice that people will buy. There's this concept of um and I think it's like people like Peter Till who talk about this, like you have to have a unique perspective on things like what is your unique you like, why should you be doing this thing? If you're going to an investor and they're like, you know, okay, we understand that there's an opportunity in the marketplace, but

why are you the one to solve this thing? And when I talk to entrepreneurs, sometimes not not of you know, Black descent or African American descent or African descent, I should say, um, I find entrepreneurs who may be in wildly successful businesses, but they have no passion for the business that they're in. Maybe they do you know, street signs, right,

whatever it is that they do. And I wonder if you could play the other side of that conversation, like when is it okay for us to just be opportunists? And see an opportunity in the marketplace and go do something about it. There's no argument against that, that's for sure. I think it's funny when you talk about why are you the person? If you're not the person, but you have a hundred thousand people saying that you are the person? Done a better with I think you're the person. Or

where the investor things to your person. There's a hundred thousand people back there and they're buying my service who think I'm the person. They don't care about me. They care about the service. And so if you're trying to get funding and you have a whole bunch of tracks, you have a whole bunch of crazy fans. Um that's the volumes. Now they may be look other kinds of

pattern matching, right, but results talk. So I think that that's the first thing I think about when you're when you were when you were saying um, And in terms of like taking opportunities, yeah, because sometimes you practice that this one fails, but you learn some things. You take another crack at it a little while longer, a little bit later, another and then it's the next idea that actually clicks. But if you're waiting for that perfect opportunity

probably aren't going to ever start. So if you see something for it tested out and then hit that wall and say, Yep, this is not the business I want to be, that's much better than sort of waiting back and hoping for perfect situation, because that's not going to ever happen. Who describe what that wall could look like? How do you know when it's time to hang it up? How do you know when it's time that, yeah, I've been doing this long enough, I've been I've spend too

much money, or I'm not getting this. How do you know what is the thing that says, yeah, just ain't it. Yeah, that's a great question because the entrepreneur wants to be persevering and wants to be diligent and like don't take no for an answer. At least that's the ethos, right, that's the story. The reality is um my. From my experience and talking to other entrepreneurs personally, there's like pragmatic things.

You run out of money, right, that's it. And especially for our audience, you don't come with that like historical cash, right, So there's that. I think the more uh spiritual one. I think the heart of your question is when your kind of soul is no longer fed by this, you don't wake up energize to try and overcome the next obstacle, because there will be obstacles. UM. And the market is telling you, hey, na, I'm not buying this. I had a nice spike at the beginning and then it flattened out.

You might try a whole bunch of stuff and if it's not moving the needle, then it's done. UM. I'll tell you a quick story. When I was starting this company, UM, originally doing a product company. It was. It was called tether Pad. It was about doing smart calendars for executive assistance, originally for travel, but you know, it turned into the business thing. And this is around two thousand eleven when

smart calendars are starting to come out. And I had this prototype and I was like, people complicated travel arrangements or whatever. And I went to I said, where where do I find travel people? Where people travel stories when they actually existed? UM. And I went there and I had my little prototype. I went to the travel section and I asked people, hey, excuse me, would you use something like this? They were like pleasant and nice and interested a little bit, but no one said, oh my God,

I have to have that. That is the greatest thing in the in the world. I knew that was not going to be a successful UM product because if I can't sell them face to the base, how am I going to do that when I'm competing with millions of other stides to do travel. Sometimes the business case and the lack of response tells you everything you need to know that you need to go back to a drawbood,

which is what I did. How do you how did you know that it wasn't just another feature that you needed because we can get feature hungary and have scope creep really really easily, because okay, maybe my travel app doesn't you know, while the people. But if I added just this one other thing and then you find us another thing I had to add another thing, how do you know it's not just a feature? How do you know when is the feature is not gonna do it?

Because um, I was trying to ask the or value proposition, which was, do you have a problem traveling and arranging things for complex trabl or your you know, for your family or whatever. The representation of that was my app, But really it was the question about what the core problem was and what I got back was that it wasn't that important a problem to them. So I could add all the features in the world, but if it's

not important to the buyer, it doesn't matter. So what I did was actually say, huh, maybe this is the wrong the right product, but it's the wrong audience who actually cares about this and is willing to pay for it. I went to give assistance because they are paid to do complex arrangements for their executives. When I presented the same prototype with a little bit of you know, be skinning, they were all over it because I nailed their problem.

So that was the difference. I don't care about the features I'm adding until I understand the problem, and I'm trying to solve for the audience. In the audience's own uh words, or their own context, I would consider you, I'm you are a d e I expert and if you would call yourself that, but you're somebody who speaks on d E I and you know are paid to speak on d e I. Uh. What is interesting about the current conversation about D E I that we're having,

particularly at the corporate level. Let's start there. Like some companies believe if they put some money into some inner city you know, youth programs. Then they're being diverse and and you know they're they're doing their job. Other other companies believe if they hired black d e I officer, they're doing their job. Um, what is interesting about this conversation to you? And how do we know if we're

doing it right as corporate executives? Yeah, I would say spicily. Um, most of the the conversation interests me because it's a lot of window addressing UM. Which is not to say that investing in a playground sound in UM community is not a great thing. That's fantastic for the community. But that is not a sufficient d e I response for any corporation of any significant size. It's the initial draw in

the bucket, for example. The reason I say that is the question I always ask people, And this is particularly after George Floyd and everybody's getting involved with you know, d I trying to figure out racial injustice and and and what it's supremacy, etcetera. The question I would ask when people would come to me and say, hey, what do I love your health? I said, well, what are you trying to do it for? How is this connect with your business model? This is a question you started

with and then there's like often a silence. I said, yeah, you need to figure out whether how it's connected to your business model. So that's the first thing is is it connecting your business model? And many people don't have that. Those that do start to start to make progress in

ways that others do not. UM. I think the other thing that's interesting to me about the conversation at the moment is the impact of remote work and how the market changes if you are now not just located in particular place, but actually can recrute and expansively across the country. We've been promote since first since two thousand twelve. We

wanted to have a diverse company. We're like, well, there isn't a full diversity here in the Bay Area, and those who are here are going to be heavily competed with UM for talent. And we have Oh, by the way, we have Google and Facebook who can PLoP a bonus

um larger than someone's annual sale at our company. So we went to rest of the country and we have people in three states, and we have black folks all over and Hispanic or Latin and latinos UM and Mina and and and but the located where they and so that gets mucking or sustainable from mark perspective. Now we have to go to the next level because other people have discovered it as well, So we have to figure out the next thing. But we developed this network of community.

I think they are going to be sustainable in the long run. I wanted to go deeper on the remote work thing in a second, but I do want I don't want to glance past something you just talked about, and that's that corporate commitment to being to actually making

real lasting impact. How after you know, the sizzle is gone from that pen, after the immediate George Floyd you know impact or you know police shootings or elections that have real consequence, after those initial triggers, how do we get corporate commitments to black people, to minorities, to diversity, equity and inclusion, um, how do we get them to

last past that moment in time? Yeah, So the way I think about the questions I would ask, and so is the dialogue that actually kind of starts to supper action One is is connected to your business model, to who's running it. If it is a initiative within a small marketing team, organization. I don't take it seriously. Why don't I take it seriously? Because so it was a budget cut. As soon as there's a downturn, budgets are tight,

that discretionary program goes away. It needs to be led by the executive and needs to be led by the C suite, and needs to be led by the CEO. That person needs to come in front and say I believe in this. It's part of our business, even if we don't know specifically what our goals are. I am personally committed to making this happen. And then I have people who are going to execute, so it's got to come from them, and it's got to be on repeat. So that's the question. I would then ask the CEO

involved how long is their support for that? And then how are you gonna rule that out as a project. I think the other thing in terms of in terms of asking is um I'll quote my friend Damian Hooper Campbell, who I interviewed for the book. He said, diversity is measured in quarters and years. Making a dent in diversity inclusion is measured in quarters and years, not days and weeks. And I absolutely completely agree with that, even for the

well intentioned companies. If it was easy to recruit a bunch of black folks, they would have done it already. But we're heavily competed for, or the networks aren't there, or you're changing cultures internally. Anybody knows about culture change now that takes that text quarters and years, not days of being even if you're well intention So what's your plan executive for having a year's long strategy where you can actually move the needle? And that's where we get

some agreement and some alignment of what's realistic. From my opinion, UM, you probably recognize that there is a quickly moving bt O resurgence. You're like, back to office companies are going back to office AP think Apple announced it yesterday or today, depending on when you're listening to this. Apple recently announced they want the people back in the office. Um is that dangerous to this conversation of UM, diversity in the in the workplace? I think it's really interesting. Um, there's

a couple of different points to it. One, I think the cats out of the bag. Frankly, in terms of people saying, hunt, do I really have two hours of my day or three hours of my day to be commuting in an era where you have housing prices rising and folks can't afford to live near yor city center, that's even more of an issue. And it affects black

books in particular. If I'm in Mississippi or if I'm in Georgia, if I'm in Atlanta, not only do I have an amazing Atlanta based companies, but I'm attracting attention from all over the country. Why would I want to leave Atlanta? Um? If you enjoy that community, I think the other side of it gets interesting is um. Oh yeah, And what I think the other side of it is um.

How do companies that used to be in office and who are going hybrid or fully remote, how are they managing the mentorship and sponsorship of new employees, particularly black and brown employees. Here's how it works. If it's always if it had been in an office and it's a little bit of dry by and so forth, meetings or lunches or whatever. Hey, I'd love to get like a coffee with you and you get some informal mentoring and so forth. That's awesome. If you move to hybrid, how

does that happen? It doesn't just automatically has to have an intention, and so a company would have to say, we understand that, and we're committed to either having identifying our star folks or emerging talent and getting them back in that office for a week a quarter so that we can kind of get that that trust building that happens person to person or a place to space to

face um, or we do some other rotation system. If there was a remote person who isn't getting that kind of mentorship and the culture supports it face to face, they are at a deficit. So what I would have to be thoughtful about setting that up. So what do you say to employ you know, black and brown employees who want to work at the biggest companies in the world. Um, but it's you know, all to live in the Bay is not the chiepest place in the world live, you know,

But I may be talented enough an engineer. Um. And then now you know, six months ago I had this opportunity. What happens when I want to work in some of the biggest places to have some of the biggest impact on the world via the technology perspective, and now they want me to uproot my family and I got to bring all of us to the Bay, or to New York or you know, think of a place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I would say is to broaden actually the landscape here.

You said, we want to work at the biggest companies. I'd say, why do you want to work at the biggest companies? There are lots of amazing companies with great brands that don't have to be the fan companies. And in fact, I think there's probably many, many opportunities that go under the radar for making impact, for propelling your career to having a great sense of culture. So I would broaden the broadens the scale to other sorts of companies. The second thing I'd say is negotiate um enable Sorry,

first create optionality. Right, that one company wants you to move, that's a great time to look are other companies may be looking for me and allowing me to to to stay at home? I bet there are. Now you have some negotiating leverage. UM. And I think the other thing is Upgrooting your family is a big deal, and that support from a family is a big deal to one's happiness.

UM to that serious consideration. The last thing I didn't say is they're definitely conversations I've had with folks, and the market is now kind of a little soft, right,

there's some some layoffs happening, slowing down hiring. I think it's an opportunity to sort of take stock and say, what is it that I'm trying to do with my career, and how can certain companies advance the ball in this situation, because sometimes it might be great to take that one year thing up your family for a year, get the brand, get the money, and then go to another company. UM. So I think brought in the opportunities is the is the message and broaden your options so you're not just

locked into one way of advancing your career. There are

many ways to advance career. Um. A couple of years ago, you guys embraced UH salary transparency and and one I want you to talk about why, why that's important or was important for you guys, and steps to doing that well because I imagine there's um a large opportunity there to cause more ruckis in the beginning, you know, especially in the beginning, but what are the lasting implications of doing that both on the positive hie and negative side

and steps to doing it well? Yeah, So just for context, we did it in two thousand secent team. So it's been in place since then. The reason we did it was for equity, for racial and gender equity. Lots of great companies, lots of bad companies. We're paying people different depending on their gender. Lots of well intentioned companies didn't want to do that, but they allowed for some negotiation. And so for example of you are are if you negotiate a five percent higher salary than I do, right

for the same position, same work. Five years later, you've done fantastic work, You've both got on promotions and both got a tent bump every single year. That difference than amplifies. Right, that's the problem. And then five years later you have a company that says the employee says, wait a minute, I'm being paid how much less? Now the company has lost a valuable employee with all the institutional memory that problem.

So we want to avoid that, And the quickest way we wanted to do it was say, let's make it transparent. Let's make internally transparent, and then let's go through a process for engaging our employees to make that happen so that there isn't a ruckus. So what we did, basically, I just it's it's actually in the book fairly explicitly. There's a step by step process that we use that anybody can follow. But the first thing we did was really simple, are you gonna leave if we make our

salaries transparent? At nine don t? People said no, well not and one person I'm a little uncomfortable, but let's go for it, right, So that's the first thing. The second thing was we involved them in the solution. So there's lots of reasonch to do. Is this the right solving? Are there other alternatives? What other companies are doing this? But we had a committee based on leadership and employees

that participated. Why does that matter because they're gonna bring different perspectives than I would and whatever solution we come up with they're going to participate in. That's going to enable people to feel like, yeah, I designed this. Finally, the big actually the big part of the work. We didn't have our leveling and we didn't have our rubrics very well laid out. That took of a seven month process.

That took about four and a half months to do that. Right, any come you should have that anyway, regardless of whether good salary transparent or not. By the time we announced it for seven months. The reaction was basically a whole hump because we brought everybody along for the ride. Um. We also did one other thing that is a fun piece. It's called the pre Mortem. I talked about it in the book as well, and it's basically a technique to basically it's a technique to enable you to project into

the future and try and avoid problems. So the quick question you ask is we did this, okay, team, it's three months, three weeks before launch. I want you to project nine months down the road. The thing is launched, It reached all the people, etcetera, etcetera. In nine months. It is a complete disaster. Everything's gone wrong. Everybody hates us, We've lost customers. Blah blah blah blah blah. What went wrong? Yeah, And I usually start by saying, yeah, it was me.

I wasn't paying attention. I didn't answer that phone called us slator. Spot right. It loosens people up a little bit because what you're trying to do is have people to be creative. Dan, it starts to come out, well, we didn't that stay colder, We didn't talk to this person, We didn't talk to oh, we forgot this step. Once you gather a bunch of those, you work backwards. So

how could we mitigate that possibility? It is amazing how many things come up that you, even the most diligent person did not think of because they didn't imagine the failure case down the road. So that's what we did with the salary recordees. But I'm sorry, I pay transparency as well. UM. So we tested this thing and we iterated it, and we continue to iterate to this day. UM. I liked what you just brought up, but the pre mortems because it blans very well into this next question.

Is you know you guys were remote even before COVID you talked about twelve you guys were fully remote, Um, and there was obviously some forward thinking there and so others can be f We're thinking, what was the insight you had back then about being fully remote hiring people from all over the world so that other people can try to figure out ways they can be UM successful when they actually write that pre mortal Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Um, we decided to go fully

remote to solve a problem. Kind of going back to your entrepreneur opportunity question, My first co founder and I Mark invited our third co founder, Jem be part of the team to be official co founder. She gave us an answer that we didn't expect. I'd love to join, but my husband just got a fellowship to be in the Balkans and in Western Europe and in Scotland for the next eighteen months on a fellowship. Can we work that out? And I like that is that what I expected?

But okay, let's start to figure it out. The solution we came up was really straightforward, Um, show up on time, get a get an airbnb or a place you're renting that has great WiFi, and make our work transparent. Those are three things, and then we just said let's roll with it and see what happens from there. We started to develop, oh, okay, here's better ways to display the work, and then we started to say, how can we involve other people in the solution. Well, all of those things

are scalable, so but show up on meetings sometimes. Okay, we're using Pivotal tracker display or work. Now there's mirror, and there's all this Asana and all these other places. Um, and get good WiFi. So it was sort of a problem solving exercise that we then could scale and that we can share and it's sustainable, and that's really where

it started from. And we've had to build things of course in the meantime, but I think that's what the corporate So I think the message entrepreneurs is, what are problems that you can solve simply and quickly and make them experiments And it could be anything from HR to remote to a product idea and then just try it out and then learn and trash it and do the next thing if if that doesn't work. Black Tech Green Money is the production of Black Vity Afro Tech on

the Black Effect podcast Network and i Heeart Media. Is produced by Morgan Dubon and Me with Lucas, with additional productive supported by Love Beach and Rose mc lucas. Especially thank you to Michael Davis if neces Serrano. Learn about my guests and other tech this focus and innovatives at afro tech dot com. Video version of this episode. We'll drop the Black Tech Green Money on YouTube next week, so tap in, enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, share

us with somebody, go get your money. Peace and love four