Pocket Change: “Business as usual”
Pocket Change is a monthly series of notes on disruption, authored by 18 Coffees co-founder Caleb Gardner. Be the first to read Pocket Change — subscribe to the email newsletter here.
It’s become a cliche to say that the past few years have been unprecedented and chaotic, but the past month has been especially hard. Early in May, a draft Supreme Court opinion leaked outlining the Court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion in the United States. Then last week, an 18-year-old gunman motivated by White Replacement Theory murdered 10 people in a Buffalo grocery story in one of the most gruesome hate crimes in recent memory.
After the Roe news, a few CEOs and corporate leaders reached out to me wondering what they should do for their employees, especially those living in states with so-called “trigger laws” that would make abortion illegal the minute the Court’s ruling takes effect. Similar discussions are happening this week after Buffalo about how to support Black employees. Many business leaders never expected to be in the position of providing this kind of support for their employees, but we live in an increasingly blurred business environment that demands leaders consider societal impacts on employees’ well-being.
The solutions aren’t easy, and can be very subjective, depending on the size and make up of an organization. But what’s clear is that these kinds of crises take up more mental space than most employers acknowledge, and that employees are willing to reward employers who make an effort to address them with meaningful policy changes. In a tight labor market, that matters for employee retention. But I believe it’s also the right thing to do.
If addressing abortion in the workplace makes you uncomfortable, it might be time to throw away your idea of “business as usual.” The new normal is making risky decisions, and making them with an uncomfortable amount of speed.
Side note: The 18 Coffees team is building tools for our clients to address exactly this – if you need help navigating this new normal, drop us a line.
Keeping an eye on:
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS – Speaking of abortion, brands have mostly been silent since the leak – despite most Americans wanting to hear from them.
PROFITABLE NFTS – Whoa alert: Time earned more than $10 million after launching its first NFT project. A harbinger of things to come?
ATTENTION ADJACENTS – Fascinating new research was released last year about “tangential immersion” – the idea that habits that demand too little attention are best paired with others that demand more.
GOOGLE ANNOUNCEMENTS – Google I/O was this month, and boy, am I excited about the idea of glasses that can interpret in real-time. (But Google’s work around skin tone improvement was probably more immediately important.)
WORK HABITS – Remote work flexibility has changed our working hours around life demands, for better or worse – just don’t judge us if we need to multi-task during meetings.
OIL DISPLACEMENT – Some good news for EV owners (and aspiring EV owners): the industry is displacing an increasingly tangible global amount of demand for oil.
