Roe v. Wade: What Can Business Owners Do

So, good morning to everyone, except the Supreme

Court of the United States, which seems to believe that

bodily autonomy and freedom are not somehow American values. I'm

confused. And this is a bonus episode of PowerPivot, where we

talk about power, ethics, leadership and community, and

how we as business owners can do something to make the world a

better place. So obviously, I could not keep quiet the Roe

decision just dropped this morning, I have been mulling and

chewing and drafting and redrafting, because, oh, my God.

What do you say? We knew this was coming. It's not a surprise.

But I'm still mad about it. And what happens now? What happens

next? All kinds of things could happen. I'm not a lawyer, I'm

not a jurist. I'm not qualified to be commenting on that. But I

do know that there is a narrative that has been building

for quite a while, that your average rank and file person

can't really do anything about it. That we're kind of helpless

in the face of gerrymandering, and the filibuster and

capitalism and all the other factors that are making the

world such a hard place to be right now. And making it

especially hard for us who are business owners, to function in

a way that feels like it has any kind of integrity, because so

many of the people around us are invested in the idea that we

don't have any power, that we can't do anything; and that if

we do have power, if we do amass power, then we're somehow

violating the code and that we're not supposed to do that,

we're not supposed to want to do that. As you know, that's not my

perspective. I think we are supposed to do that. We have to

do that if we want to prevent this kind of thing from

happening more, again, still, we have to accrue power, we have to

become more powerful ourselves. And this is hard. It's a values

conflict, because on the right they value conformity, they

value followership. And on the left, we do not. We value the

opposite of those things. We don't just not value, feel

neutral, about conformity, and obedience; we actually actively

fight conformity and obedience. Most of the time, a lot of our

identity is often shaped around fighting conformity and

obedience. So how do we get ourselves to pull together? How

do we get ourselves to work together, to move together? And

what, as business owners, can we do to actually affect some

useful change? Well, there are a couple of things. First of all,

if you're a business owner, and you stand out and you do

something clearly politically aligned that that makes you

distinctive, that makes you that kind of rebel outlier, that the

left likes so well. So go ahead and be a rebel outlier company.

And provide, like Dick's Sporting Goods, like a couple of

other companies that have crossed my feed, like Chili

Piper, provide financial support for your employees if they need

to access reproductive health care outside the place where

they live.You can do this, whether you've got all remote or

whether you're on site, you can do this, whether you're small or

whether you're large. If you have full-time employees set

aside just a little bucket of money to help them access care

if they're not going to be able to access care in their home

area, in their home state. You can make a public statement

about doing that. So you can lead. People will know. People

will align themselves with you because you have made it known

who you are, and how you are in the world, and that you are

putting your money where your mouth is. This is not

complicated. It's not hard. And it does make you an attractive

employer. It does make you an interesting employer, it marks

you in a good way. So you can be public about what you're doing.

And you can do something concrete for the people whose

lives you directly affect. If you have a database business and

there's any chance that the data is going to contain something

about reproductive health care, something about activism, you

can go ahead and make sure that your privacy is watertight so

that nobody can get to it. End to end encryption, that kind of

thing. You can take a look at whatever industry, whatever

space you're operating in, and ask yourself in what ways could

my business be used for evil? And then take steps to

counteract that.

In the book 'Stealing Fire,' which I do not 100% endorse at

all, but it is interesting. In the book 'Stealing Fire,' the

authors write about a DARPA experiment where they were

working on figuring out how to direct a donkey. Like how to get

a donkey to go where they wanted by implanting pleasure-oriented

electrodes in the donkey's brain. Right? Better than

hitting the donkey when it goes where you don't want it to go.

Give it a jolt of pleasure, when it goes where you do want it to

go. Seems like a great plan, right? Yeah, well, you know what

they use that for? Walking a bomb into a desert.

Anything can be misused. So take a look at whatever it is you're

creating, and figure out how it could be misused, and see what

you can do to prevent that misuse and to promote good use.

Now, of course, to do all of this, you have to have an

ethical grounding, right, you have to have an ethical basis,

you have to know what your personal ethics are, what your

company ethics are, you have to have a way to uphold those

ethics in an unfriendly environment. And you have to

keep your ethics up to date, you have to keep moving them forward

as our collective understanding of what is right and what is

wrong moves forward. It's not a static thing. The tradition is

alive, right? So in order to do that, you might need supports,

you might need structures. I do this kind of training with my

client companies, I help them figure out like, what do you

believe, what are we going to do about it? But also, but also,

you can take a look at, you can take a look at what you what you

mean to be doing in the world, what your, you know, Simon

Sinek's "big why." You can you can take a look at what you mean

to be doing in the world as individuals and as an

organization, and make sure that everything you're doing is

aligned with that. And then again, be public about it. One

of the hardest things is being out there doing something that

is countercultural, when you feel like you're really the only

one doing it. When suddenly there are 10, or 20, or 50

becomes a lot easier to do because you know you're not

alone. You know you're not alone. Humans are social beings,

our brains are wired to want to be in sync with other human

beings. And so when we find ourselves alone, it's very hard

to persist. When we find ourselves in good company, it

becomes much easier. As a leader, you also have access to

spaces that a lot of people don't have access to, you might

have access to business owner spaces, you might have access to

accelerator spaces, you might have access to spaces of

particular kinds of wealth, or prestige, or whatever it is. You

have access to some spaces that nobody else has access to. Use

that access. And it doesn't necessarily even have to do with

your status as a business owner, you might have access to places

because you're white and blonde, you might have access to places

because you're not white and blonde. Wherever you have

access, you can make inroads, you can make changes. You can

shift the culture, you can communicate clearly and expect,

and require, clear communication back. You can help people

understand what they need to know so that they can be in

better relationship with you. And you can develop better

relationships with them. And that creates not only a good

setup for your business, but also a good setup for other

kinds of interactions, interactions around heated

topics, interactions around politics. You can violate the

rule about talking about politics and religion in polite

company. We do talk about politics and religion and money

and sex in polite company. That's what we do. That's how we

change the culture, is by saying those things. It's like that

invisible rule about not talking about your salary with your

colleagues. No, no, you got to talk about your salary with your

colleagues. You know why? Because the only person who

benefits from not talking about your salary with your colleagues

is somebody who's making a profit off of somebody not

knowing what their work is worth. And that's not an ethical

setup. So if you're an employer, you want to create an atmosphere

where people do and can talk about what they're getting, why

they're getting it, and where you can have open conversations

with people if they feel like they're not being fairly

compensated. So all of this is like, it's business owner

ethics, but it's also business owner, socio-political

engagement. Because when you change the atmosphere when you,

like Chani Nicholas did, when you publish a job description

that lists all these amazing benefits that most people have

never even thought of, then other business owners feel like

they have to step up and meet that standard. And that's good.

You're changing the entire business, you're disrupting the

business of hiring. Likewise with providing reproductive care

access. Likewise, with being public about the fact that

you're providing reproductive care access. All of these things

will change the atmosphere, will change, the conversation, will

change what's normal. And when you change what's normal, you

are actually changing the world, the space that you occupy. Maybe

just a little piece of the world at a time, but you change your

industry, and then it leaks across to the next industry

that's adjacent. And suddenly everybody wants, I don't know,

good, good benefits and reasonable working hours and

great pay? And then suddenly, you have a stable, healthy,

happy workforce.

This doesn't seem like a complicated business question.

That's a great business decision. You want a stable

workforce, you want a happy workforce, you want a healthy

workforce. So when you're moving yourself into public space, when

you're recognizing that, as a business owner, as a business

and as a business owner, your business occupies volume, it

takes up space in the world, and that people will pay attention,

people will perceive you people are going to follow your lead.

That's a great time to decide deliberately what your lead

should be, and how you're going to show up. So that it doesn't

happen under pressure. Ideally. This is a moment when it might

be happening under pressure, because this decision just came

down. A lot of people are under stress. Somebody in Texas gave

his company the rest of the day off to celebrate. But you know,

not everybody that took the half day off was celebrating. You can

recognize that, especially the more vulnerable people in your

employe or in your company, or clients, everybody is going to

feel more vulnerable right now. They're going to feel like their

rights are more at risk right now. And so you can offer a

little flexibility, you can offer a little more grace, you

can offer a little more room, if there's something that you can

send out to people that will be comforting, do that. If there's

something that you can send out to people that will be

invigorating, do that. If there's something that you can

send out to people that will be nourishing, do that. Give people

whatever it is you have, you don't have to have everything,

we're all out here doing something. But give people

something; recognize that this is not a non-issue, that it's

not a non-moment. That it actually is occupying a huge

part of people's brains right now. Because it impacts our

lives so heavily. Just publicly recognizing that is a great

step. But then do more, take it further. Make it bigger. Ask

yourself, if you were your own employee, or if you were your

own client or customer, what would you really want? What

would you really want to get from the person that you're

connected to? What would you want to see them putting out in

the world? What would make you feel better about what they're

putting out in the world? What will help? Because when people

tell us that Mr. Rogers said "look for the helpers,"

sometimes it turns out the helpers are us. And we're all

going to help differently. And not every kind of help is going

to help every kind of person. But we are not powerless. And we

don't have to do nothing. A final note, if you know someone

who would be good in office, start cultivating, nourishing,

supporting that right now. Encourage them to run for

something, something small and local to start. Right now. Get

them involved. Because, especially for public service, a

lot of people don't even think about it until somebody says,

"Hey, have you considered running for office?" Because if

we want a different kind of leadership, we have to not just

elect it, we have to create it. And we do that in our businesses

by offering people leadership opportunities, by offering

people support, by offering people encouragement. The skills

that people develop with you, they can take into the world. If

it occurs to them, if you encourage it, and if you model

it. Take a deep breath. Make sure you're staying hydrated.

Take lots of naps. We're gonna get through this. Talk to you