The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Measuring Inclusion: Higher profits and happier people, without guesswork or backlash by Paolo Gaudiano

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Measuring Inclusion: Higher profits and happier people, without guesswork or backlash by Paolo Gaudiano Amazon.com Aleria.tech Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is under fire, but attracting and retaining talent is more important than ever. This book introduces an entirely new approach to DEI, showing how and why measuring inclusion is the key for organizations to enjoy higher performance and greater employee satisfaction, without causing any backlash. Measuring Inclusion offers step-by-step directions, sample data, and real-world case studies to help you make meaningful and sustainable improvements in employee recruitment, engagement, productivity, and retention. You will learn to quantify, track, and estimate the financial ROI of your organization's DEI efforts just as you do with every other business activity―and in the process make your organization more successful and increasingly welcoming for everyone. "A more strategic, data-informed approach to DEI." - Tiffani Wollbrinck, Global Talent Management and Development, Levi Strauss & Co "Practical, measurable strategies that tie directly to business performance." - Kirsty Devine, Head of US HR and Global Projects, The Financial Times "The analytical framework practitioners have been looking for in the area of DEI." - Silke Muenster, Former Chief Diversity Officer, Philip Morris International "A crucial counterpoint to the current backlash against DEI, providing a data-driven justification for why these efforts are essential for business success." - Jennifer Brown, Keynote Speaker and WSJ best-selling author, How to be an Inclusive Leader A former professor with degrees in mathematics, aerospace engineering, and neuroscience, Paolo Gaudiano is an entrepreneur, a teacher, a prolific writer, and a sought-after speaker. His work transforms how people think about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and what they do about it, with the ultimate goal of making our society more inclusive and equitable while driving greater economic benefits for everyone. About the author With degrees in Applied Mathematics, Aerospace Engineering, and Computational Neuroscience, Paolo Gaudiano jokes that he had literally done rocket science and brain surgery before turning to a really hard problem: how to create companies that have happier employees while making more money. A former tenured professor turned entrepreneur, Paolo is Chief Scientist of Aleria, President of ARC, Adjunct at NYU Stern School of Business, and Chairman of the annual Diversity & Inclusion Research Conference. These activities combine Paolo’s decades of experience in business, technology, and academia, to transform how people think about DEI and what they do about it, with the ultimate goal of making our society more inclusive and equitable.

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with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, it's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Well ladies and gentlemen, I cannot do the operatic voice. Ever since hitting puberty, my voice went so deep I can't do those. I can't hit the high notes, so we had to hire an operatic woman to come in and do that. So welcome to the big show, as always, my friends. The Christmas Show family, 16 years, 2300 episodes, like we had nothing better to do.

We're going to give you twice that amount. We're putting out, I think, three shows a day for the next two weeks on weekdays. I take the weekends off folks. Give me a break. Anyway guys, make sure you share with your family, friends, and relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, Ford says Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Ford says Chris Voss. And as always, we have the most amazing guests in the shows, the most thoughtful, provocative conversations, and we don't platform stupid ignorance or conspiracy. Sorry, there are other shows you can do that with. We just give you smart people so that you can be smarter as well and lead a better life

and maybe be a better human to each other. We need more of that these days. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, we have an amazing young man on the show today. We're going to be talking about his newest book that came out September 24th, 2024 called Measuring Inclusion, Higher Profits and Happier People Without Guest Work or Backlash. And before you kind of turn away or go, we've

heard about this, Chris, this DEI stuff. We're going to be talking with a gentleman who's got a new approach to DEI and he's been doing this for I think decades. So we're going to get some of his insights and everything else. Paolo Gaudiano joins us on the show. We're going to be talking to us about his book and everything else. Paolo, did I get your name right? Paolo Gaudiano You got it perfect. So we're going to get into it with him as insights and everything else. He has got degrees in applied mathematics, aerospace engineering,

computational neuroscience. He jokes that he had literally done rocket science and brain surgery before turning into a really hard problem. How to create companies that have happier employees while making more money. Wait, you can do both? Don't tell my people at the office. Anyway, guys, he's a former 10 year professor, turned entrepreneur. He's the chief scientist at Alaria.

He's the president of Arc, adjunct at New York University, Stern School of Business. Is that the Howard Stern School of Business? Maybe not. And chairman of the annual diversity and inclusion research conference is, Mark University Stern School of Business. Is that the Howard Stern School of Business? Maybe not. And chairman of the Annual Diversity and Inclusion Research Conference is that he has decades of experience in business technology, academia, to transform how people think about DI and what they do about it with the ultimate goal of making our society more inclusive and equitable.

Welcome to the show, sir. How are you? I'm doing well, Chris. Thank you so much. Delighted to be here. Thank you. We're delighted to have show, sir. How are you? I'm doing well, Chris. Thank you so much. Delighted to be here. Thank you. We're delighted to have you as well. And I'm interested in your thoughts because DI has kind of gone through quite the wandering

over the past five or six years. Give us a.com. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? So it's a aleria.tech. That's A-L-E-R-I-A dot T-E-C-H. That's the best place for my company. And then if you go to LinkedIn, there's only one Paolo Gaudiano, but it's spelled, it's LinkedIn slash in slash PG, a U D I A and O P Gaudiano, but very happy to be easy to

find, you know, name like mine, Paolo Gaudiano. There's just not that many of us anywhere in the world, including Italy, where I was born and raised. And, and otherwise you can also find me on Ted. I've given a Ted talk and if you go to the TED website and look up DI, mine is one of the first ones that comes up. You're from Italy. How's the espresso over there? It's pretty amazing, isn't it? You know, I have my own espresso machine here and if I don't have that every morning, I get depressed.

Oh, yeah. You got to have that caffeine. I just barely got into the cult of espresso. I joined the cult. I had to sacrifice, I think, Mountain Dew cans or something. But I just barely got into the cult of espresso. I joined the cult. I had to sacrifice, I think Mountain Dew cans or something, but I just recently got into it and I'm about $100,000 in and I'm broke. It's very small. You don't need to spend a lot of money on it, but yeah. That's true. Do you do the Moki Potter? Do you have the big machine, the expensive machine? No, kind of in between. These days I do one of those with the capsules because it's just scattered at the time. Isn't that heresy in Italian culture, the capsules? You know, it's not.

And I buy them in Italy and I bring them back. Every time I go to Italy, I go with an empty suitcase and I come back with like a whole grocery store, coffee and prosciutto and things like that. I guess if it's from Italy, then it's good. If it's just like some K cups from some company in Nebraska. I don't know why. No, no, no. This is like legit. It's like the Nespresso, you know, the little ones. It's the good stuff. Yeah. I'm loving it. I'm loving the coffee, but my bank account is, I mean, the checks

still bounce through there somehow. I don't know. Anyway, moving on from Italy, let's talk about your new book. Give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book on measuring inclusion? Dr. Faisal Al-Khalili As the title suggests, measuring inclusion. What is that all about? Most people that talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, really fixate on the D, on the diversity. How many black people, how many Asians, how many men, how many women. I realized that that was actually a big mistake and that even though diversity is important in some ways, it's really more like the thermostat. If you have too many one group of people, you have another group, it tells you there's something wrong, but it doesn't tell you what's

actually happening. And we have measuring inclusion by which I mean, what are the experiences that happen day to day to people in the workplace that actually cause them to be more or less satisfied? And that ultimately links to the financial success of a company. But basically in the book, I talk about work that I've been doing. So I've been working in this space for 10 years, but it's based on research that I've been doing for more than 20 years about how an individual fits within an organization. So how does the behavior of the organization change the individual's behavior and how does that actually impact the organization? So it's like this kind of ecosystem, if you will. And so the book talks about this entirely new way of thinking about DEI,

where instead of focusing on, oh, you know, how do we treat this group of people or that group of people, you focus on, let's make sure the environment is good for everybody. Which means that if some people are being treated worse than others, that will be the ones who benefit the most. But instead of having to point your fingers and say, hey, let's make your life better, it's like, let's make sure that the whole company is working more efficiently, we're making more money. And the book is a lot about the methodology, but really, it's a lot about understanding what's going on, how do you actually measure inclusion, what does that mean? And then I also specifically in the subtitle, I was very adamant about including the word

backlash. So the subtitle is, hire profits and help your people without guesswork and without backlash. And I did that because I could see already two years ago when I started writing the book that the backlash was coming. I had actually predicted it in 2018. I wrote an article in Forbes saying if we keep going down this path, there will be complaints of reverse discrimination and it might spread to other parts of society, like affirmative action. And I wrote that in 2018. And, you know, how did I guess that? I'm not a

magician. I've never actually made a correct guess on the stock market. But somehow this one, I predicted the backlash. And so the book also talks about that and it talks about what I think are silly mistakes that people have made in the DEI space, but also silly mistakes that people that are making today in the anti-DEI space and why we really need to find common ground and stop listening to these extreme views and realize that this is something that can be truly beneficial for everybody if you do it the right way. Yeah. And I think DEI you do it the right way. Pete Yeah.

And I think, I think DI is forced to the crossroads. I mean, last year, SCOTUS ruled kind of against DI to a certain degree. I remember when it first came out, it first became popular, it seemed, around 2020 with George Floyd and there seemed to be some activism behind that in trying to right the wrongs of some of the things that went on in systems and stuff. You've been doing it for a long time. And yeah, I mean, it kind of seems to have reached a point where, you know, I watched

Mark Andreessen talk about it and some of the things that went on where some of the organizations became just ruled by the DEI department where it really upended and there became a lot of control and overbearing control. And so it kind of ended up with its own pushback. Is that a good perception of, you know, and I think what the SCOTUS ruling was about was it showed privilege to certain people while taking privilege away for other people or the perception thereof. Is that the correct analysis?

Yeah. I mean, yes and no. So I find that with a lot of these arguments, superficially they make a lot of sense. And then when you dig down, you realize that there's some kind of like foundational problem. And then, I mean, in terms of the comment that you made about Andreessen, I think that there definitely have been some approaches to DI that have been really draconian, that in my opinion are mistaken. They were like too strict, they were too stringent. But I think that those are really been really draconian. They, in my opinion, are mistaken. They were too strict. They were too stringent. But I think that those are really the exception to the rule.

They happen, and they do happen in some places. But I think that it's because people have basically been trying for decades to create better situations for all employees. And when you finally realize that things continue to be skewed, people are like, okay, screw this. We're gonna impose some rules, and we're gonna force you to follow them.

Terrible idea, by the way. And nobody likes having things stuffed down their throats. As far as quotas, I mean, I think that there is this, we're going to impose some rules and we're going to make you force you to follow them. Terrible idea, by the way. And nobody likes having stuff, you know, think stuff down their throats. As far as SCOTUS, I mean, I think that there is kind of an interesting story there, which is that, I mean, they basically said, they do it in a very narrow, narrow scope, which is that when it comes to admitting students into colleges, you should not use race or gender as a factor to help some people to get in, even though in theory, let's say their grades or their qualifications are not as good. And what's interesting about that is that it's kind of like, it's ironic because why were

those rules put into place? They were put into place precisely because there were these massive imbalances and people could not figure out how to fix them. And so 40 years ago somebody said, hey, you know what, we realized, or 50 years ago, they said, you know, hey, we realized that there's something really messed up and companies and universities are not fixing it on the Rome. So let's create these pickets and basically say you have to stay within these lines. Well, problem is that the way that it was constructed, it essentially favored one group of

people or let's say different groups of people over other groups. And then then the presence code presence code and well, you know, if I look at it very narrowly, and if I don't believe that there really are these massive inequalities around society, then the fact is that the rule of law, when you look at it, is actually wrong because it's unconstitutional, because you're discriminating. And so they were, unfortunately, technically speaking, they were correct, but what they ignored, that prior Supreme Court said not ignored, was the fact that that's trying to,

it's sort of like a remedy for something that we know that it needs to be fixed, but people don't seem to be able to fix it in other ways. I think it's unfortunate that it got to that point. And I think that after the murder of George Floyd, we're all cooped up at home, we got COVID, we don't know what the hell to do. So what do we do? We watch all kinds of videos, and it's like doom scrolling. And pretty soon becomes this enormous thing and people are marching down the street and you know, they're waving flags and you know kicking cans Which I think in a way was great But what happened is that it pushed the pendulum too far in one direction And that pendulum hit some people that did not like it and now that those people are pushing back really hard in the opposite direction

Unfortunately, what made it really bad was the fact that it coincided with this massive shift politically, where we're now seeing a lot more anger, a lot more division. And because it coincided also with a presidential election, that essentially became a political hot potato or really more like a political weapon, it became politicized. And things have completely, in my opinion, blown out of proportion. I think that the idea that all of the Izevo needs to be shut down is unfortunate because it's really not true and the kinds of extreme cases, you know, they're just extreme. And yeah, we should get away from the extremes. There are extremes on both sides and I wish that people would just kind of calm down a bit and say, hey, you know what? It's not quite as extreme as we think it is. Let's try to be a little bit more mindful of what's actually happening to people. Yeah, I mean, one of the concerns is, is we still are a meritocracy. And it seemed like

a lot of some of these rules were trying to circumvent that and create some sort of thing where certain people, you know, on one hand, I can see where, especially 30 or 40 years ago, 50 years ago, there was definitely some racial prejudice and different things. And I think there always is going to be in human nature. We judge each other whether we like it or not. It's part of our nature. It's part of our fight or flight.

Is this person approaching me endangered to me? It's a little cavemanic really in its thought pattern because it goes back to those days. I mean, I usually don't have to worry about anybody at 7-Eleven coming, walking towards me through a door is going to attack me and I don't know, stab me with a spear or something. But you know, it seems like it was fixing something. But then, like I said, over, it really became a lot about shame and guilt and you had privilege for 200 years and now you must pay. I hear this a lot in the battle of the sexes too, men must be put down so that women can

rise. And there's kind of a scarcity mindset that's out to that sort of thinking where instead of having the attitude like rising tide lifts all boats, which is an abundance mindset. And it seems like things really got out of hand with some of it, especially when I was listening to Mark Andresen talk about how some of the organizations just got overridden as it became the most controlling, most dominant department, the DEI department than any of them.

You know, and I had a friend who walked into a room in Silicon Valley of people, you know, some meeting or something. He said, hey guys, and he got written up by HR, had to get berated by HR and go to a diversity, you know, play nice with other training just for saying guys. And I do that all the time. I call my gal pal, guy friends, I'll say, hey guys, how's it going? It's not that I'm being in any way trying to be offensive to them in any way, in fact, if anything, by saying that in a moniker of men talk, it means we're all

buds here. We're all on the same team. But yeah, I mean, some of these out of control things, I don't know if you want to speak to some of those issues with shame. Well, so first of all, I think that the shaming, the cancel culture, that kind of stuff, in my opinion, it was very short-sighted because even if you are angry about these things, making people pissed off at you, but insulting people, attacking them, it's just not very smart. You know, if you're trying to sell the product to somebody, don't go and tell them you're a bad person, therefore you should buy my product. So I do agree that there were some mistakes that were made there. Now I can kind of understand why that's the case, but I would like to point something

out of Mark Andresen. Last time I checked, Mark Andresen is a white man. And last time I checked, he's still got shitloads of money, way more than most people that I know. And the fact of the matter is a lot of times people complain about, like the story that you mentioned about your colleagues saying, hey guys, that shouldn't happen. But you know why you heard that story in your list? Because that happens so flipping rarely. I mean, that really does not happen very often. So we have to be careful that it's very easy. We hear these extreme examples of like really stupid behaviors. And that, by the way,

happens on both sides, I think it's stupid behavior. A lot of people don't appreciate it. You talked about meritocracy. Here's the problem with meritocracy. If you told me that your company, I'm not saying yours in particular, but if a company comes to me and says, we're meritocracy, I'm going to ask them the following question. Show me the rule that you use. Show me where it's written down. Show me the formula that you use to calculate merit, show me that it actually works and it's linked to the success of your company. And if you're not able to do that for the last 10 years

to show me the proof that it's truly meritocracy, then shut the hell up because what you're saying is, I'm gonna look at you and decide whether you're worth it or not. And the problem is that in a lot of meritocracy, meritocracy is what happens is that it creates homogeneity because hey, I went to an Ivy League school, I kicked ass,

I'm really successful, I'm the leader of this company, therefore, anybody who's done the same things that I have must be meritorious, they must be very good. And when you do that, it's not really meritocracy, it's more like a simulacracy or whatever the hell you want to call it. So we have to be a little bit careful. And the irony of that is, Chris, that if you ask people

in DI, like the ones that have been doing the work originally, meritocracy is exactly what they want. They want, hey, listen, I want to make sure that if I'm qualified for a job, I have the same chance as the other guy to get that job. I want to make sure that if I'm in the work and I'm doing my work and I'm kicking ass and I'm advancing, I want to make sure that I'm getting promoted. I want to make sure that I'm getting the razor like everybody else. And what was happening and what I think is still happening is that unfortunately, when you look at the data, you find that in many cases, that's not entirely true.

And when that's due to these, you know, people talk about unconscious biases. I hate that word. And I honestly, I just wrote an article today in LinkedIn about why I think it's actually a good thing that unconscious bias training is going the way of the dinosaur. But the fact is we do make decisions based on our internal experiences. And to the extent that we allow those sometimes to have a negative impact on some people and on the other, then we're making a mistake. We're shooting ourselves in the foot. So what I advocate for is that, look, instead of just talking about meritocracy, talking about unconscious biases, just make it quantitative. just measure this. You know, we measure everything. How difficult is

it to measure how many people are getting promoted, how many people are getting raises, who's getting the raises, who's not getting the raises, and then find out, hey, gee, why is it that at the entry level of my company I have 70% women, but by the time I get to the executive level I have 70% men? What the hell is going on? Is it really that men are so much better than women? Or is there some weird thing that is going on along the way? Because guess what? If you're losing a ton of women along the way, that's costing you a crap load of money. Because every employee that you lose, depending on their level, it can cost you as much as a full year's worth of salary to recruit somebody, interview them,

hire them, onboard them. So it's a pretty expensive proposition, right? So instead of focusing on, oh, you know, he said, she said, here's a direct, you know, kind of a draconian measure that's great, which those should not exist, you know, cancel culture, in my opinion, really should be canceled, right? I mean, that's kind of a hypocritical thing to say, but if we just focused on, look,

let's just stop the rhetoric and let's measure stuff. Let's measure stuff like we measure everything else, you know, everything a company does, they measure it. So let's measure stop the rhetoric and let's measure stuff. Let's measure stuff like we measure everything else. Everything a company does, they measure it. So let's measure what is actually happening and let's be unbiased and let's truly create a meritocracy. And if we see that something is askew, let's fix it. And if something is not askew,

at least we have the data to say, yeah, you know what? You may think that there is a problem, but there isn't. And the problem is that right now we're all talking and talking and talking and getting all excited about it and not actually checking whether the things that we say are backed up by real data or not. Pete Oh, wow. Yeah, that's really important. What do you think about the attacks? I mean, it seems like we're in January of 2025, those watching this 10 years from now on YouTube. What do you think about the, you know, right now the Trump administration is going hard after DEI.

They're stripping it out of all the federal government. They're eliminating the people. They're really, they're kind of taking the SCOTUS ruling and they're pushing it to the next level. What are your thoughts on that and what is your advice to companies? We're kind of seeing like a couple of companies like Target and a bunch of other companies actually that are dumping DEI or pushing back DEI mainly to, I don't know, keep out of the fire line of the administration. What are some of your thoughts on that? I mean, my thoughts is that I think that we complain about DEI departments being too draconian

and controlling things. I would say what the administration is doing right now is pretty damn extreme. I mean, they're taking, you know, and it's interesting because if you hear the language like we know, we're going to shut down all illegal DI activities, which if you, depending on where you put the comma or how you read that, it could be that all DI activities are now illegal, which is not the case, or that there are some activities that could be seen as illegal because of the SCOTUS rule. Right. So I think that unfortunately right now what's happening is that the backlash basically,

and I wrote about this by the way in 2018, right? So I wrote this article and the reason for that was because it's pretty obvious to me. If you go to somebody and you say, we're not going to hire any more white men until we've hired more women, then the white men are going to get pretty annoyed about it. Same thing with promotions. So you do that systematically. And what ends up happening is that some people are going to get pretty annoyed about it. Same thing with promotions. So you do that systematically. And what ends up happening is that some people are going to be really pissed off.

So the moment that somebody comes along and starts to say, DI is all bad, DI is wrong, DI is unfair, everybody's going to jump on that bandwagon. And that's exactly what we're seeing, right? 10 years ago, if you asked people how they cared about diversity and inclusion, it would have been like a bell curve. A lot of people in the middle, a bunch of people,

so a few people hated it, a few people loved it. Today's like, you either love it or hate it. There is no in-between. The government is basically taking a stance that, in my opinion, is a bit short-sighted. But basically, like, we don't feel like dealing with this. Screw it all. Blow it all up. Now, what about companies?

They have, I've seen multiple different reactions. Some companies have actually run for the hills and they've actually been almost happy to run for the hills. Like, these are the ones that are like, oh, you know what? I was so tired of hearing about this BS. I'm just glad that it's over. And we get that. And we get that for some people. Some companies are more like, oh, you know, we still appreciate how important it is for our people to be satisfied. After all, you know, people are always the largest budget item of every company, every single company on the planet. So companies are like, okay, we can't use

the word diversity anymore. And maybe we should stop doing some of these more kind of antagonistic or these kinds of programs that create antagonism. But let's still make sure that we're doing the right thing by our people. And then there are those like the Costco's of the world and other organizations that have actually seen the material benefit of actually embracing DI, at least many forms of DI, they're saying, hey, you know what? This has been working for us. And if you don't like DI at the government grade, but leave us the hell alone

because we're making money from this. We have happy employees that are making our customers happy. The customers who come back, they love it. And you can't just come in and tell us to throw all of that out the window just because you don't like it, right? So I think my hope is that it's like the phoenix rising from the ashes. I think that this has been basically kind of a scorched earth moment that it's like trying to destroy

all of the AI. A lot of people are losing jobs. A lot of people are being really, really personally and professionally damaged by this. But I think what will come is that the stronger solutions, the ones that are actually showing how to connect the dotted line, how do you go from happier people to higher profits? And those that can do that, I think, are poised to have a huge impact because I do think that talent is the last frontier. Think about how we've increased in terms of digital, internet, and all these things. Now, if we could only figure out how to maximize the value of our people in a way that actually

makes them feel satisfied. So it increases the loyalty, it increases the satisfaction, the productivity, the retention rates. We could make a lot more money and be a lot more efficient about it. So to me, if you truly want merit, if you truly want efficiency,

like the department that Elon Musk is apparently not running, then I think that thinking about how to make your workforce more efficient. You know, I hate to tell you this, but this is one thing that I really don't like. Firing a bunch of people and calling that efficiency, I'm sorry, but it's like even a first grader will understand that. It's, oh, you know what? I got a great idea. Let's just fire the whole damn company. Then my cost will be zero. Wow. Then, you know, as long as I've inventory in stock and I can get out the door, I'm going to be super profitable.

But three months later, the company will be dead. So just blindly firing a bunch of people, really not a good idea, really not efficient, really has nothing to do with merit. So I kind of feel like there's a lot of hypocrisy in that. And I think that some of that will come back to bite them in the rear end. Because I mean, look, you can't do that. You know, our government, it turns out that the size of the government in terms of number of employees has stayed very constant for 20 years or more. It really has not increased.

The budgets have gone up, but the number of people have not. And a lot of people in government that I know are like overworked and overstressed. Now you cut those people in half, and I don't know how the hell they're gonna be able to do things. I'm worried, you know, I'm 62. I'm worried what's gonna happen by the time I'm ready

to cash in on my social security. Is there still going to be money for social security? More importantly, is there still going to be somebody that actually can mail me that check that I need at the end of the month? So I'm not even planning on it. I gave up on that 20 years ago. I was like, you know, I was, I was a professor, so I have to plan on it. Unless my book sells really well. Yeah. I just plan on speaking and touring and creating businesses. Warren Buffett has the thing. He's like, I'll retire seven years after I die. I kind of like it. I have the ability to do that. But yeah, a lot of the people that they're laying off, and I'm not getting into politics here, just from an aspect of running a

business and being a leader. And what you've talked about is the advent of people that are talented, skilled, and have experience. They laid off a lot of the people that were probationary. Now, from the front, you might look at it and go, oh, probationary people are new people who don't have a lot of government experience. They're just starting in the first year or two of the job. A lot of companies have probationary sort of rules, et cetera, et cetera, so they can test people out to see if they're fit. But a lot of the people they're burning sometimes have 20 years with a different department and within the last year or two, they've switched to another department. And because of that, the switches put them in a probationary status but here you're losing by firing those people

20 years, 10, 20 years of experience at Efficiency and you know certainly any large organization, IBM, Apple, I mean you name the largest organization you have 40,000, 50,000, 100,000 plus people, millions of people in your organization, there's going to be inefficiencies. That's the feature of human nature, if not a bug, but it is what it is. And another thing to keep in mind is that people are not like a machine. A machine is like either it works or it doesn't work. And if it doesn't work, you find a part, you fix it and it works again. People are not like that. If you have a department or a company that is not running efficiently, in a lot of cases, it may be because you're creating an environment that makes it impossible for the people to

work efficiently. And so then to go and blame the people and say, oh, you guys are all inefficient, so we're going to fire you, is really short-sighted because people, it's like, and there's so much data, so much research in this. If you create an environment that makes it impossible for somebody to work at their peak, you're losing money. You're throwing money out the window. So why don't you spend a little bit of time figuring out what are you doing or are you doing everything that you can to make sure that your people are actually able to work at peak efficiency? It's like, why do we not think that way? It's unfortunate. I mean, a lot of it has to do

with the way that accounting works, where in accounting, people are only considered as a liability. You buy a computer, you can amortize the way that accounting works, where in accounting, people are only considered as a liability. You buy a computer, you can amortize it. You can say, well, this is something valuable. It's an asset that I can amortize over years. You hire a person, it's a permanent liability in the balance sheet. And so that creates this mindset of people are just like fungible. I can just, oh, I don't like the way this one's working.

I'm going to throw them out and get a new one. But that, as it turns out, it is just a very short-sighted problem. If you want to buy a new computer, you just walk down to the local computer store, you buy a new one, or you go to Amazon, or you go to Apple, and you buy a new one. But if you fire somebody, you can't just go in and look at it. Like you said, you're firing somebody that maybe has a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge, and beyond the cost of rehiring people, you're losing a lot of institutional knowledge, you're losing a lot of things. So to me, that aspect of the approach is really, what I do understand is that it makes zero sense from the business perspective, unless your only goal is super, super short-term

gains that you can somehow monetize in some way. Otherwise it makes no sense. Now I understand that the government is a morass. It's tens, hundreds of thousands of people. And trying to optimize it little by little seems difficult. And I agree, it can be difficult. But I personally find it shocking what is happening right now. And to do that in the name of DEI, they're firing people that really have nothing to do with DEI. And they're firing people that, yeah, as you said, probationary. And by the way, you fire all the people that just came in, you're also creating another problem, which is that you're keeping all the dead wood, right? You're keeping the people that have

been in their job for 30 years that are kind of tired and they're just waiting for their pension to come in. Is that really efficient? I don't know. Pete Slauson Not really. Not really in my opinion. It doesn't seem at all. So, as we round out the show about your book and stuff, let's talk about some of the offerings you do on your website. I believe you do some cults, some consulting or coaching or speaking, things of that nature. Let's talk about what people can do with services that you offer. So interestingly, my goal with Alera is primarily to offer a service where we have these platforms

that make it very easy for us to measure what we call inclusion, which is really about finding in a complete anonymous way, what are some of the things that your employees are experiencing and how do we quantify that in a way that we can make your work better. So we offer that as what we call our journey to inclusion. It's a kind of a series of offerings. But it turns out that lately I've been getting a ton of requests for public speaking training, both inclusive leadership training, inclusive management training, and especially like the last few weeks, like literally, like on a daily basis, somebody will reach out and say, Hey, can you come speak at this conference? Can you come talk at that event? Can you come do

a special training for leadership? Precisely because people don't know which end is up right now. And one of the things that I love to do, I'm starting to get to the point where my travel is becoming pretty brutal. But any opportunity that I get to get out and speak I love it because I ultimately feel like my work has the opportunity to make society better You know, I can show companies as the book says it's like how do you make more money while making people happier? And if I can give the carrot because ultimately, you know what the CEOs one thing that a lot of people in the eye don't get Going to a CEO and say wouldn't it be nice if your workplace was fair and everybody was happy?

Wrong. That's not what a CEO wants. A CEO wants to make money. Yeah. So how do you go from that from one to the other? How do you go from happy employees to making money? And because I talk about that, that's one of my favorite things to do. And that's what we're seeing a lot right now is a lot of requests for that kind of training

and that kind of speaking. So as we go out, give people the final pitch where the dotcoms are, they can go check it out, ordering in the book, of course, and how they can reach out to you to hire you for your services. So the book, again, Measure Inclusion, if you look up Measure Inclusion on Amazon or any of the online sellers, you can find it very easily. My website, my company's name is Aleria, it's A-L-E-R-I-A, and the dot, it's not dotcom, but dottech, dot-T-E aleria.tech. That's the easiest way to get a hold of me. If you go to the website or if you look up my name on LinkedIn, you can find me very easily. Anybody is more than welcome to connect to me. The easiest way again is the aleria.tech website.

And otherwise, if you want to hit me up on LinkedIn, that's very easy to find me as well. Thank you very much, sir, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Great discussion. I think you know, if we can find a way to balance DEI where it's not, people aren't getting written up for saying the word guy, hey guys, how's it going? And it's more inclusive to everybody as opposed to showing privilege to a few. I think they can make all the difference in the world. And of course, there's always a better way to do everything really when it comes down to it. And DEI has definitely some good to do everything really when it comes down to it.

And EI has definitely some good aspects to it of what it was trying to achieve or hopes to achieve. And we'll see how things go in the future. It's kind of interesting how we ebb and tide through our politics of yinning and yaning and back and forth. But overall, I mean, as humans, we need to decide what's best for everybody and see if we can all get along. Absolutely. Completely agree. And Chris, thank you for the great questions. Really

appreciated the conversation. Thank you. And it's a real important discussion to have because we don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We just need to find a good, happy balance for everybody. So thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for your time for tuning in. Order the book where refined books are sold, measuring inclusion, higher profits and happier people without gash work or backlash out September 24th, 2024. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Forchance, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Forchance, Chris Foss, all those crazy places in the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out.