I'm pretty excited
to be here.
I have had Canada on my bucketlist for I don't know how long,
and I've been able to tie in, um,catching up with friends, uh, both in
Vancouver, uh, in Montreal, and here.
And, and to be able to wrap itup with the Word camp is great.
It's gonna be awesome contact tax time.
But, uh, it's also awesome because theword camp is a great opportunity to catch
up with, with friends from community thatI've known for a really, really long time.
Um, this is the first time I'vedelivered this talk, so I'm sorry.
I'm gonna be reading quite a lot of it.
I'll do my best to try and keep myhead up and, and, um, keep you engaged.
I prepared it because, uh, the impactof remote work and the management of
diverse, uh, and cross-culturally diverseteams is something that I love dearly.
I'm passionate about bringing othersaround to the value of diversity in
their teams, learning how to manageand accommodate our differences.
So that we all bring our authentic selvesto work regardless of where we are or
who it is that we are working with.
We're gonna start with a, let mejust set the scene with a story
and your sprint retrospective.
Priya, a senior developer from Mumbai,quietly says, I think we are asking
the wrong questions entirely, andshe brings the meeting up short.
This is team three months into aworkplace build for a major retailer.
The client's stakeholder isdifficult, responding to technical
questions with vague statements,like just make it work better.
Now we are not gonna talk about theindictment on the project manager.
This, um, this is an illustrationof other parts of the story.
Um, but they built asophisticated product catalog.
It worked perfectly in testing, but Markkeeps insisting it's wrong and doesn't
explain why he joined a call saying,this isn't what we need, and then hang
up without any actionable feedback.
The team had beenstruggling, they felt with.
Something that was a WordPressproblem, but Priya's insight
completely reframed everything.
Now for context, this imaginaryteam is wildly diverse.
The PMs from New Zealand, Marcusfrom Australia, saris from Jakarta.
Priya from Mumbai.
Ken from Singapore, and Ra Chen.
And during the tense meeting, Priyaspeaks up and says, sometimes when people
say the solution is wrong, they mean itdoesn't fit their mental model of how
the work should flow, and sorry, nodsand says in Indonesian culture, if I said
something was wrong without explanation,it would mean I'm too embarrassed
to admit that I don't understand it.
Or Ken says, sometimes thisisn't what we need really means.
This makes me look incompetent to my team.
So instead of asking what was wrong,technically the next time they had a
call, Priya suggested Mark, show themhis actual Monday morning workflow.
And what emerged was eye opening.
Mark wasn't managing products,the neat categories and taxonomies
like they had built it out.
He was constantly respondingto urgent requests, updating
pricing during phone calls, makingquick changes between meetings.
They're beautifully organized.
Interface required multiplescreens to update a device.
Something he did 20 or 30 times a day.
Now again, this is avery fictional situation.
I'm not sure it would come up like this,particularly if you have product owners
and project managers involved, at leastproject managers involved, however.
This experience revealedtechnical problems.
Well aren't always technical problems,sometimes by cultural communication
challenges in discuss, and thesolution they come up with was a
custom dashboard with lots of bulkactions, but that doesn't mean matter.
This is.
Right.
It gives us an insight into the thingsthat I'm gonna be talking about.
We'll look at some of the challengesof homogenous workplaces, hidden
algorithms that flow through theteam, and the effect that harnessing
our diversity can impact our work,our business, and our productivity.
And then we'll sprinkle in some howtos, and I'll challenge you to leave
this talk with some plans to explorewhat this could look like in your teams.
So let's dive in.
The problem we don't see is thetrack of our workplaces becoming
homogenous to the dominant culture.
If you've been part of globallydistributed teams, consistently
hitting targets, but perhaps notexceeding them, we are on paper.
Everything looks perfect, diversebackgrounds, strong skills can get
process that something is missing.
You might be delivering great competentwork, but not innovative work.
Maybe the issue is that you areall solving problems the same way.
There are, in my view, three layersthat inform what we are going
to call the homogeneity trap.
I'm using big words, but what I mean ishaving everybody conform to the dominant
cultural narrative in the workplace.
The first is the skills first fallacy.
We hire for technical competencies,experience, and cultural fit.
We measure performance againststandardized KPIs that are the same
for everyone, and we promote peoplewho solve problems efficiently,
but when we say efficiently, weactually mean the way that we expect.
And we design our processes, thatis to use one optimal approach.
And the hidden cost of this is thatCultural fit often means things like us.
We reward conformity to existingproblem solving patterns.
And alternative approaches get miscastas inefficient or unconventional.
I'm gonna do a lot of this today.
Sorry, there's lots ofhidden quotes in here.
And as an example, I once hada team member who was brilliant
in one-on-ones, but silent inour sprint planning meetings.
I was planning to give the feedbackabout Speak up more, contribute
more, become more of a team player.
But before then, I did some reading.
To explore solutions on how toaddress when you have a team
member who doesn't contribute.
Instead, after bringing that, Ichanged our approach and all I did
was send an agenda 24 hours beforethe meeting and ask people to
prepare and you, what a revelation.
And suddenly this person becamethe most valuable contributor.
Their analysis was more thoroughand strategic than anyone else's.
And when I ask them why, theyexplained in my culture, you don't
think out loud in meetings that wastespeople time with half formed ideas.
You think deeply first and thenyou share something valuable.
I've been running meetings thatvalue quick verbal processing, my
cultural algorithm for collaboration,but it was silencing them.
And once we mixed that asyncpreparation with real time discussion.
Our planning improved dramatically.
Layer two of this trackis the innovation paradox.
This is the contradiction that we create.
We say we want innovation and freshthinking, but our systems reward
predictable, familiar approaches.
We celebrate to diversity in our hiringannouncements, but then we homogenize all
the thinking in our workplace in practice.
And different perspectives get filteredout through professional socialization.
The real impact of this isthat teams develop group
thinking without realizing it.
Solutions become incremental rather thanbreakthrough and cultural problem solving
wisdom gets buried under best practices,but who are they best practices for?
Layer three of this track isthe algorithmic thinking track.
There's some big words.
I really should, um, I should spinthis out because, um, even as I
was looking at the screen at thebeginning, what does that even mean?
And I really appreciate this.
So many of you here, and I'msure if you were here because you
know me and you're like, I justwanna see what he's doing anyway.
Um.
The algorithmic thinking track.
Here's how this manifests.
This is how we've always done it.
This way becomes the default processoptimization, replaces process innovation.
We're trying to make things more andmore conformist for more and more
predictable, and we, uh, remove some ofthe op uh, opportunity for innovating.
We are risk averse and thisgets disguised as efficiency.
And cultural algorithms or theway the dominant culture does
things becomes the only right way.
And when this happens, thisis what gets diminished.
Uh, you lose, uh, the opportunity toexplore or to draw from alternative
problem solving pathways that havedeveloped over centuries within,
um, the DNA of your team, uh, orthe people that are in your team.
You get D different definitionsof what success looks like.
You get varied approaches over time,relationships, and decision making.
And the other thing that getsdiminished is creative tension
that can spark innovation.
And the invisible cost of a homogenousworkplace is stagnation solutions
that are good enough rather thantransformative, missed opportunities
for breakthrough thinking.
And competitive, potentially competitivedisadvantage in global markets.
Uh, the other cost, and this is onethat's dear to my heart, as somebody
who really loves people firstworkplaces, is that high potential
contributors self at their contributions.
If you're anything like me and havebeen in the workplace for quite a while,
uh, you, as you transition betweenworkplaces, you want to be able to
draw from your previous experience.
To make your new workplace more efficient,more collaborative, more transparent,
and ideally this is what you've beenhired for, to contribute your learned
skills and your experience to makethe place that you are better or more
efficient or um, more productive.
But you get hinted for contributingthose things because that's
not the way we do things here.
And rather than rock the boat, uh.
We, we feel like, or we can feel likewe have to contract our contribution
to fit what the prevailing culture is.
Uh, and skills and contributionsthat go unrecognized and run rewarded
in turn become retention issuesas people feel their full capacity
isn't valued and so they go elsewhereor they seek to go elsewhere.
And another, and, uh, the lastin this list is the impact
could be market blindness.
Solutions that only work forfamiliar contexts, missing cultural
nuances in global customer bases andproducts and services that may not
translate well across other cultures.
The good news is this track isa tidy, uh, entirely avoidable.
In fact, the solution has beensitting in our teams all along.
We just haven't been looking for it.
The question isn't whether our team havevaluable algorithms that we can tap into.
It's whether we are creatingthe space for them to be shared.
So let's get somedefinitions out of the way.
I've talked about these big words.
Let me actually tell youwhat I mean by using them.
Uh, the term cultural algorithms isn'twidely used, widely used in academia
if you are wanting to explore thiskind of thing further, in existing
research, this would map to whatpeople call cultural transmission.
Social learning and gene, uh, looselyattached to gene culture co-evolution,
but those are the fields that youwould dig into if you were actually
interested in digging in these fields.
Incorporate the study of inheritedbehavior patterns that function
like code running on humanbehavior rather than things.
We also might come away from thistalk with a handout that maps existing
cultures to specific characteristics.
Even though I'll give you a coupleof examples of what I call cultural
algorithms and can point you in thedirection of excellent resources to
help understand how different culturesmight show up in your workplace.
My intent with this discussionis to challenge you to explore
leveraging the diversity you alreadyhave or taking steps to increase
the diversity of your workforce.
To expose yourself and your teamsto other ways of thinking as a means
to ignite the possibility of moreinnovative approaches to solving
your current and future problems.
So what are they?
Cultural algorithms are inheritedproblem solving patterns developed over
generations that are like software code,but run on human behavior that have been
passed down through stories, practices.
Social norms and family structures theyform through geographic challenges like
island nations or landlocked countries.
They form because of historical survivalneeds like scarcity and abundance, and
they form through social structureslike a collectivist or an individualist.
Society will have differentapproaches in these areas and some.
Examples of such algorithms fromvarious people groups might be the
Shawnee Seven Generations principle,which is actually one that comes
from the northeast parts of Canada.
We'll talk about what thatactually means is Dutch ing.
Again, one that I've never heard of untilI started researching some of this stuff.
But again, we'll talkthrough what that looks like.
And you might have heard of theNigerian Ubuntu philosophy because of
the software that is named after it.
And that's a philosophy that says Iam because we are and is a principle
that is centered around, um, thecollective benefit of people.
I'm gonna expand onto the first, theseven generations principle from this
area or the northeastern part of Canada.
Comes from the great law of the ShorneConfederacy with written concepts that
date back to between 1142 and 1500.
Its algorithm is that every decisionhas to consider the impact of the
seventh generation into the future.
Decisions made today shouldresult in sustainable world
seven generations from now.
It is transmitted through oraltradition and the great law of
peace and embedded in governancestructures where leaders are mandated
to think this way, and this createsa distinct problem solving pattern.
Always look forward.
Always consider the long-term consequencesand prioritize collective wellbeing
over short term individual gain
in Holland.
Holders, which are central to Dutchwater management system are the
sections of land developed afterdikes have been built around the
marshal lake and the water pumped out.
And this is, you can see the holderslike the, the fields on the right.
As you are driving down a road,you'll often often have a on one
side, three or four meters belowyou and a canal on the other.
Almost at road level.
And if the dikes aren't wellmaintained and water isn't
constantly pumped out, the pole wouldrevert back to marshland or lake.
You're like, what does thishave to do with anything deep?
This is weird, but maintainingthe system of 30,000 poles and the
intricate weather canals can only happenwith a huge amount of cooperation.
You can't keep yourproperty dry by yourself.
Everyone needs to cooperateduring the Middle Ages.
Warring cities in the same holderwere forced to cooperate to maintain
them, or everybody would be flooded.
The fact that this had to be maintainedin order to maintain the landscape
has bled into the culture of Dutchorganization and become not just a
noun, but a verb to describe the actof cooperatively building consensus.
This is a very exor early example ofwhat is called co-opetition and it's with
companies both competing and cooperating.
And in actual fact, uh, this is whyI chose this one 'cause it feels
quite analogous to the workerscommunity where people are affecting,
effectively can meet competing inWordPress or in the CMS markets, but
also cooperate to make the softwarewhat it is that we use to compete.
Why did this matter?
Now?
Because global complex challengesrequire diverse approaches
and remote work makes culturalalgorithms more accessible than ever.
While we are learning that AI can handleroutine tasks, humans in my opinion
will always be needed for creativeproblem solving and better understanding
the variations humans bring to thatunderstanding makes for better outcomes.
Now we get to talk about the effectof understanding these cultural
artifacts and their impacts.
Before we had remote work, thealgorithms were tapped by geography.
To experience bouldering, you wouldmove to Rotterdam to experience
indigenous consensus building.
You would work within thosecommunities, but something remarkable
happened when work read remote.
We had access to more than just theprevailing culture in our region.
Culture frames the way people look atthe world and approach life events,
communication, and their work tasksin cross-cultural remote teams.
Different cultures literally seedifferent problems in the same situation.
Like wearing differentprescription lenses.
Each reveals what the others miss,and exploring a workplace challenge
with people from different culturalbackgrounds, they don't just give
different answers, they end upidentifying completely different problems.
A Nordic might notice a power imbalance.
An East Asian guest spots group harmonydisruption and an indigenous Canadian
sees a seven generating impact.
Same situation, three different lenses.
It isn't about opinion, it's aboutinherited pattern recognition.
Each culture is spent generationsdeveloping sensitivity to specific
types of problems based on what matteredin their survival and their contact.
Different issues, different pathways,but as we'll see pathways to
solutions that we can also leverage.
The multiplication effect ofleveraging these algorithms is
that one plus one equals three,and when they combine, here's why.
Combination, in my opinion,creates innovation.
And let's use product orweb project development.
As an example.
Western algorithm approach mightbe move fast and break things.
The result might be a quicklaunch, but it could come with
potential long term problems.
But if you attempted a sevengenerations approach, which advises
extensive collaboration consideringall the angles, it would take such
a long time to reach a resolution.
You might actually even miss alaunch window or a market window.
But what would it look like to combinethe two move fast and break things in
the decisions that are easily reversed,but be deliberate in your choices
about things that are not the result.
Speed when it matters,wisdom where it counts.
So a couple of examplesmight be UX or UI iterations.
You can change those quickly.
You can revert them quickly.
So they don't need a sevengeneration approach to resolve,
uh, feature experiments.
For our feature flags, youcan turn those on and off.
So again, a quick approach is valuableand valuable, but a deliberate track
might be, or the seven generationsapproach or mindset might be
useful when you're talking aboutdecisions that are low reversibility,
like your data architecture.
Why so?
Migration costs are enormous andprivacy implications last for a long
time or environmental footprint.
Why slow climate impactcompounds over time?
So thinking back through as you makeyour decisions around how you're gonna
to structure or develop this labor reportand of course accessibility, why would
you take a slower approach to that?
Because retrofitting accessibilityis 10 times harder than actually
building it up from the get.
Now what the leadershipchallenge then becomes.
What cultural algorithmsdo you have access to?
What might you be missing?
How does one audit your team to maptheir cultural problem solving heritage
and look for innovative opportunities?
What breakthrough is waiting yourteams combine the algorithms?
Most teams, all teams alwayssay have these algorithms
running in the background.
So they're just invisible, unacknowledged,and therefore unavailable for the
team to learn from the solution isto make them visible, and there's
a number of ways you can do this.
You could use interview techniquesand actually sit down in one-on-ones
or in groups and talk with yourteam and ask them questions, but
not straightforward questions like.
What's your approach to decision making?
Ask something that's a little bitleft of center like, how would your
grandparent or parent, or familyor community approach this problem?
This works because it bypasses thatprofessional polish people drop into
their authentic cultural memory thataccesses transmitted wisdom, not
just personal preference, and itcreates a storytelling mode which
reveals the why behind the what.
You could dive in to more backgroundexploration, asking people about
their environmental origins,what challenges shaped your
community that we don't face here?
And you might be listening for somethinglike, we store food for months, but
we also practice evacuation drills.
And that might come fromsomeone who lives in a typhoon
earthquake or wildfire region.
They're primed for rapid response,but with long preparation, and you
can translate this into approachthat exemplifies dual thinking, fast
response, slow resilience building,and that can be applied to incident
management and technical debt prevention.
Story collect is another way to buildup your library of accessible cultural
algorithms, create a living repository.
The format of a collectedstory might be from an.
Indigenous.
I always struggle with that one.
Indigenous Canadian member.
My grandfather taught me beforeyou cut a tree, explain to her why.
If you can't explain it,you shouldn't cut it.
Not because trees have ears, but becauseif you can't articulate your reason,
you don't understand your own need.
Translation for the team might be.
This is why James writes detailedRFC documents for small changes.
He's running on an algorithm that says.
If you can't explain it, you don'tunderstand it enough to do it.
However, it's important to state thatin order for this kind of culture
to flourish, we as leaders have tocreate the space that allows it.
When people feel comfortable,engaging, authentically,
everyone learns something new.
However many prevailing workplacecultures avoid weird approaches.
So in order to allow differenceto be leveraged, you need a
permission architecture thatcreates psychological safety.
And when you are talking about thingsusing explicit statements that create
remission, rather than saying everybody'svoice is welcome, say Sarah is going
to share the Dutch holder approach,it'll feel slower than we used to.
That's the point we are testingwhere the slow consensus creates
better outcomes than fast voting.
And it works becauseit names the algorithm.
It acknowledges that it's differentfrom what's dominant in the culture.
It frames the differences as anexperiment, not the deviation, and it
creates curiosity instead of judgment.
The next way or another way ofmaking that space open for people to
experiment or to talk about or to andexplore these cultural differences
is celebrating it instead of Thanksfor that perspective in a meeting.
You could say Marcus justapplied seven generation
thinking to our database design.
That 800 year old algorithm just saveus from creating technical debt in 2025.
And the pattern to do that is namesthe algorithm, acknowledges its origin,
connects it to business value, andmakes that invisible software visible.
And the other way is in.
Communication style accommodation.
The way that we see these algorithms,or my experience of them has been most
common is in our communication styles.
And this is an area where smallaccommodations can make a big difference.
The reality.
Some cultures value direct confrontationlike the Dutch or the French.
Some consider directdisagreement, disrespectful.
Like many Asian cultures, some culturesrequire a relationship before business.
And before you can get to a pointof disagreement like Latin America
or the Middle East, and somecultures separate the person from
the idea like I do, as someone whohas a western analytical mindset.
Our job as leaders is to createmultiple valid, multiple valid
paths for the same outcome.
For example, around disagreement.
You can offer options and make it clearto people that there are, that you
recognize and respect that there aredifferent ways that people will disagree.
You might say that we have four options.
Option A is direct challenge in a meeting.
Option B is private feedback tothe person proposing whatever
it is that you're discussing.
You might say that option C is a writtenalternative, or option D is build on.
Yes, add to the idearather than to oppose.
Make it explicit.
In this team, there arefour valid ways to disagree.
Pick the one that letsyou show up authentically.
And there are hands-on strategies that youcould also use to explore, uh, integrating
cultural algorithms like in projectplanning using a rotating perspective.
In sprint one planning, you mightuse a seven generation land.
And the person running the meetingmight say, what permanent consequences
will this create in sprint two?
You might use the Ubuntu lensand say, I am because we are,
and ask, who isn't at this table?
Who should be?
How does this affectthe collective sprint?
Three, you might approach with the Dutchlands, who has veto power, should they?
Can we achieve genuineconsensus or just majority?
The key is not which lens isright, but what does each lens
reveal that the others miss?
You might have a cultural algorithmbrainstorming session, and again,
we, I must come up with differentways to describe this, a less tongue
or, but traditional brainstormingmight say, everyone bring your ideas,
or Everybody shout your ideas orput your ideas on a post-it note.
But instead of just say, bring yourideas, why not talk about, bring your
inherited problem solving approachand structure the workshop to elicit
these underlying approaches, notjust assume that everybody's going
to come at it with the same approach.
Or you can have mentoringpartnerships, but not just where
seniors, mentor juniors, but insteadhave a cultural exchange where
people from different cultures.
Mentor each other reciprocally abouthow they would do things so that
each can learn from the other asleaders, our or facilitators, in
trying to expose these algorithms.
Your job isn't to decide which is bestor to make everybody think the same way.
Create a melting pot where culturesor, or to create a melting pot
where these cultures dissolve.
Your job is to make these visible.
To create safety for authenticexpression, build infrastructure for
cross-cultural learning, and recognizecultural contributions as innovation.
Fuel the question, how many generatorsof inherited wisdom are running
in your team right now, and areyou letting them teach each other?
And then, because I'm also about the data.
Uh, track these innovation metricsbefore and after implementing
cultural algorithms to see how theyadjust and change the output and the
outcomes that you're working towards.
And the key is measuring both the quantityand the quality of innovative thinking,
not just the final outputs, so you cansee the benefits and iterate and improve.
Am I going for time?
Um.
You have 12 minutes.
Oh, easy.
Okay.
Yeah, I can do the last slide.
I just wasn't, so here are some innovationmetrics you can track before and after.
Quantitative metrics like the solutiondiversity, number of distinctly
different approach approaches thatare pro opposed for each problem.
Time to an alternative solution.
How quickly teams generatea second approach when the
first one hits obstacles.
The frequency of how often you seecross-cultural collaboration happen and
the success rate, percentage of innovationideas that actually get deployed or
innovative ideas that get deployed.
Then there are qualitative in indicators,breakthrough versus incremental ratio.
Are you getting more game changingsolutions versus more small improvement?
How often does someone questionthe fundamental premise of
how you approach problems?
Which team members are contributinginnovative ideas, and is it
expanding beyond the usualsuspects and fail fast learnings?
Are teams able to quickly identify whena culturally influenced approach isn't
working and then pivot to change it?
And then there are innovation metrics.
Output quality of meetings?
Are you getting more actionable?
More diverse ideas?
Decision making speed are better.
Cultural algorithms, awarenessshowing up in your team, are
they leading to faster decisions?
Because you can explore theright approaches up front.
And then insights from yourretrospectives, the number of aha
moments about differences in problemsolving during team reflections.
So here you have it.
Um, this, this has been an, uh, anenormously interesting for me to
kind of research and pull together.
I really love reading about otherpeople from this region and being
able to, uh, to pull that in there.
Obviously different approaches where Icome from where, uh, Australian, very
Western, but I have the opportunity to doit for a lot of people in Southeast Asia.
So there'd be lots of opportunitiesto kind of learn through there,
which is really interesting.
And I have recommended materials thatI'll post up on my blog, um, in the
next week or so, probably on the plane,on the way home, uh, on the weekend.
So, which your log?
Uh, D-T-L-D-E-E-T-E-A l.com.
D My name, full name.
D-E-E-E-T-E-A l.com.
Um, and here are some of theother places you can find me.
Uh, as Michelle mentioned, I'm a,a trustee for the future of team.
If you are at all interested in, uh,seeing more women get into C-suite
positions in the WordPress community.
Um, we have this mentoring program.
We put people in existing, uh,leadership roles with people who are
interested in getting there and have a.
Six or eight week mentoringseason with them, and they've
seen some really great results.
And it's like Michelle said,a really rewarding experience
to be on either side of that.
Um, oh, that's the podcast.
And I'm also on the Future of Teampodcast with James Drew, who you might
know as one of the organizers here.
And there's WP Codes if you'reinterested in that code, the website.
Uh, now, oh, sorry.
Did I do that too quickly?
Um, any questions?
Do my best to answer
for questions
I'll come up
ask.
So, if one is not in aleadership position, but is
at an organization that, um.
Like you mentioned in in the talk,there's this idea of like, oh
yeah, we're gonna hire diversity.
We're gonna celebrate diversity.
But then when you're actually inthe thick of it, you have this sort
of mantra, this thinking and justsort of this an assumption, and the
things that get rewarded are thethings that always get rewarded.
That's sort of how, fromsort of a, do you have ideas?
I haven't thought that.
How do you do that from thebottom, rather the top down?
Yeah.
I,
and I don't know, is an okay answer.
Yeah.
I,
I don't know, but I wouldlove to explore that.
I love, I I, and I love being able,if you are working with people
that are from, I mean, you can't dothat at a, at a macro level, right.
So what can you do at a micro level?
What can you see?
Who do you have access to?
Who are you working with?
What are the problems and solutionsthat you are trying to resolve where
you are and how can you access thatin one-on-one conversations in being
able to sit down and say to somebody,so this is how I would approach that.
How would you approach that?
How would your grandparents approach that?
Is there something that we canlearn from each other here?
Like that's reciprocal.
Mentoring doesn't have tohappen across the board.
That's something that you couldstart on the smaller teams.
And I think one of the interesting thingswould be to see, as you are starting
to do that, if you were starting to dothat, how much that was spill over, how
much you can then leverage that throughthe people that you report to and say,
Hey, we've got this thing going on here.
This is really cool.
How can we start spreading that out?
But ask those questions,build those relationships.
'cause it's not justsomething that happens.
Overnight.
This is relationship buildingand getting to know people.
It's, it's that whole sense of eventhat thing I am, because we are, it's
like I'm not just seeing how we dothings and the checklist of all of the
parts and processes that we go through.
I'm seeing the person here, what do theybring and how can we learn from each other
and share that with the wider attack.
And I really liked thething that you said too.
Uh, you dropped a, a phrase thatlit up something in my brain.
You said melting pot.
And, and you said it in a way that meantthat you should not have a melting pot.
And that coming from the UnitedStates, uh, I remember growing
up in all our classes, everybodytalks about the United States being
a melting pot, and the idea of.
Melting everybody together and meltingeverybody's cultures together and just
becoming this conglomerate as being a, abad thing and actually like, no, actually
we should pick these apart and likeidentify where these things come from.
That's a really, like, I, I, I love that.
Thank you.
No, thanks.
I, yeah, it's, I mean, it's notnecessarily good or bad, but I
feel like losing that sense of whatmakes us who we are and what we
bring, I think is disappointing.
It's like I've got.
I've got some amazing, I'm having,I'm staying with friends in Vancouver
on the way home who I met throughhuman made who are from India and I,
and growing up where I did in a very,very white part of a very, very white,
well, not strictly white country.
I grew up in New Zealand, but all ofmy, every my frame of references was
all very specific and all of thatnod to let's melt everybody together.
Would've completely removed theopportunity that I had to go, that
I have now, or that it wouldn'thave even crossed my mind.
It was like, oh, that's too different.
That's too unusual.
Whereas now I'm, you know, eatingvegetarian food and, uh, you know, joining
with this family that I'm like, I, this,I would never have had that opportunity.
And I would hate to feel likewe have to make everybody be the
same because we lose so much.
Thanks Chris.
I didn't have a question ora comment on, on the melting
pot as we were talking here.
When I was, uh, I grew up rural Alberta,which is kind of by Rock Mountains
in Vancouver, 12 hours driving.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
I love it out there.
But, um, my rural teacher, and I wasmaybe grade four, very innocent at the
time, described the US as a meltingpot, but Canada as a tossed salad.
Cool.
Which I
thought was really great andI kind of take that as well.
And you know, but with building teams isthat we want to enjoy the tomatoes and
the lettuce and the whatever else, and thecheese and the whatever is in the salad.
Yeah.
Um, as opposed to that melting pot idea.
So I guess it's something asan idea to kind of consider.
It sounds kind of funny because
I think it's interesting.
I mean, in the times that we are livingat the moment and we are seeing so many
initiatives towards diversity beinghindered, squashed, removed, erased.
I grew up in New Zealand and we havevery strong indigenous community
there, but even now in thesedays, and I value that enormously.
I claim no indigeneity at all, but I walkunder the arcs of the Maori carvings as I
come into Auckland and cry because I feelso proud that this is part of my heritage,
but I'm seeing so many more initiatives.
I wanna get political now, but so manymore initiatives to reduce that because
there are so many people that are afraidof that difference rather than, and
are trying to make, either trying tomake New Zealand more homogenous and,
but reduce that difference insteadof celebrating it and valuing it.
And, and so a big part of why I'mkind of interested in diving into this
stuff is that sense of, hey, we do allhave something valuable to contribute.
Indifference doesn't have to be scary.
It can be valued and appreciated.
And
how, how do you walk the line betweenthe dominant culture basically
appropriating somebody else's cultureand ways of thinking and celebrating
and uh, honoring and, uh, that culture
that's really.
A really valid, valuable question, andI don't have a whole lot of solutions
and answers to it, but I think partof it is, is that continual naming
of that difference, that this sevengenerations approach here, if where
that was where we use it, or DutchFoldering as an example, is keeping the
name of it there rather than foldingit in and saying, this is us now.
Um, I think it's keepingthat recognition and.
Talking about and
promoting the value of it or orrecognizing the value of it and talking
about the value of it, not as somethingthat is yours, but as something that you
see that you have borrowed or that you areusing and sharing rather than something
that is now, it's that sense of openhandedness of it rather than holding it.
And I feel like doing that as abig part of that would probably be,
and again, I haven't worked thisthrough in terms of a, here's how
we are doing it in our organization.
'cause this does not live in theorganization that I'm with, but
that's how I would see it happening.
Do you have any ideas?
Anybody else?
Lois?
Um, so I came from Vancouver,uh, from the NC Mission Center.
Um, and one thing that we do,uh, according to their protocol.
Um, is that we ask them permissionto share their teachings and
they always give permission.
Beautiful.
But it's that act of as aspect,um, and, uh, and connecting with
the elders and the knowledge.
Uh, so whatever culture that you're,um, learning from, seek out the,
the knowledge teachers, um, and,uh, uh, those connections and
acknowledge their, um, their culture.
Yeah, we have a similar thing and Iheard the acknowledgement of the land
from, we do the same thing in Australia.
It's becoming more and more prevalent.
There are multiple thousands ofindigenous tribes and regions.
Um, and we do the similar kind ofthing here in terms of acknowledging
the lands that we're on, but thenalso I love that idea of actually
talking to people and seeking thatout and asking that permission thing.
That's beautiful.
Um, you used the term cooperation.
Oh, cooperation.
Yeah.
Um, I'm not sure if you're aware, butthere's a, a stem, uh, competition in,
um, called First Robotics Competition.
Yeah.
And they use that term,they do their game design.
Um, so each year.
There's a cooperation element in theirrobotics game, and it basically means
that the two teams have to do a skill tohelp them succeed in the rest of the year.
That's cool.
Yeah, I just wanted to, yeah, I love that.
Thank
you.
Add a little joke, but um, please.
Yeah.
Last night I was, I, I wastalking to my wife for 23 years.
She's in the us I'm here, andI said something to her to help
her, but the way I said it.
She didn't like it, but I now,I saw her last night, so I'm
gonna show her this thing.
I don't know if you'll watchit to show her that my coach is
different than she's from Trinidad.
Ah, and I'm from the US froma hard part of New York.
And I'd say things in a way of howI grew up and I was even thinking
about it last night and I grewup very different than she did.
Yeah.
I'm
still trying to gether to understand that.
Maybe you'll talk for hug.
We'll see.
Maybe
that be really, I would bereally interesting to hear
about your relationship.
Thank you Chris.
Thank you Lois.
Thank you all for coming.
I appreciate it
for coming by.
There's gonna be abreak, uh, and it's next.
Talk is a keynote.
They might be tearing down thiswall to make the room bigger.
That's what I heard.
I heard rumor, my notes say that, thatto be here, uh, for our next keynote
at 1115, which which is Dave Pointer.
Uh, and I'm sure that it'll be obviousat the time when it happens, but,
uh, I think you all, you have break.
Go have some
copy have.