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Jeremy Owens: Hello and welcome to On Watch by MarketWatch. I’m Jeremy Owens. This week on the show, we’ll continue a summer reading series. After speaking with Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz last week about his new book, this week, groundbreaking former Apple executive, Denise Young will join us for one of her most extensive interviews since leaving Apple more than six years ago following controversy. She’ll talk about her new book that seeks a more inclusive and productive workplace. Plus, we’ll take a quick look at the news stories we are watching right now and how it’ll affect your wallet. First, let’s talk with Denise Young.
Denise Young got her start in the business world with an entry-level position at a short-lived Apple outpost in Colorado in the 1990s. By the time she left Apple for good in 2017, she’d helped shape the company’s iconic retail stores and cracked its glass ceiling, becoming the first black woman to enter Apple’s C-suite when she became Chief Human Resources Officer. But in her new book, Young says she actually dreaded the final title she received at Apple, Chief Diversity Officer, and the weight of it helped prompt her exit less than a year after receiving it.
Young left Apple not long after a diversity controversy when she said on a panel that there can be 12 white, blue-eyed blonde men in a room and they are going to be diverse too. In her book and in speaking with On Watch by MarketWatch this week, Young said her exit was planned before that statement and the short snippet was missing proper context from a larger point she was making, that representation is actually needed more than just diversity. That experience has not stopped Young from advocating for hard conversations about and in the workplace. Here’s what she told me when I asked about how those comments were interpreted.
Denise Young: It’s really, really difficult to have these conversations because there’s so many elements of it that have to be talked about, that have to be discussed. And some of them are going to be socio-economic, they’re going to be political, they’re going to be personal, they’re going to challenge people’s beliefs and perceptions, and we have to be willing, all of us in the 21st century, in workplaces, in organizations, in academia, within our communities, we have to be much more willing to venture out and start to have these conversations.
Jeremy Owens: Young’s book, When We Are Seen: How To Come Into Your Power and Empower Others Along The Way, celebrates the idea of having these conversations. In it, she tells her own story of being rewarded for bringing her full self to work and recognizing others’ humanity at Apple. And she uses that to suggest that workplaces where individual humanity is recognized, supported and celebrated will be more successful. I began our discussion, which has been edited for length and clarity, by asking Denise for the elevator pitch on that premise?
Denise Young: We have a lot more capability and capacity to impact the culture around us, the cultures within our workplaces, our organizations, even our homes. We tend to ofttimes think that we have to look to someone to do that, whether that’s a leader, a point person, a policymaker, a decision maker, and I think that a lot of the impetus for me to write this book was to say, “But we can do that. There’s so much more that we can do.” And so that would be my pitch.
Jeremy Owens: As workers and managers, right? That’s the thing, is it has to be a communal feel that we’re all working toward a common goal, not a CEO telling you what the goal is and trying to push you there.
Denise Young: Absolutely, absolutely. And that that is a very human mindset to want to be in an environment, in a culture, in a scenario, in a community where everyone is working together toward a common goal and we’re supporting each other. And it sounds very happy, but it actually is a very real human preferred condition, if you will.
Jeremy Owens: You bring up empathy a lot and really bring in your full self to work and seeing each other’s full selves as both bosses and employees and everybody trying to get to know everybody in full. I’ve dealt with this throughout my career trying to get to know employees who worked for me and my bosses, and a lot of the pushback I’ve gotten from an employee side is that there are a lot of people who like that work mask, Denise. I’ve talked to both workers and just friends that really want to put a different face on every time they go to work and not bring themselves and keep that separated. How do you deal with an employee like that, that does not want to bring their full self to work and how does that work in the way you see the workplace?
Denise Young: Sure. And they have every right to do that. People have the right to be human and to be whatever state they are most comfortable in to execute the roles and responsibilities of their job. They have the absolute right to do that. I’m actually not necessarily, Jeremy, proposing that everybody, “Bringing your whole self to work,” but there are so many more dimensions of our humanity. Even in terms of how we like to be greeted in the mornings, how we like to feel in a meeting, how we like to extend ourselves, how we like to experience conversations. Those are the subtle nuances of our day-to-day humanity that still warrant being noticed. There’s so much subtlety to who we are as human beings that even if a person decides, “There are dimensions of myself that I’m not willing to share, that I don’t want to share in the workplace,” that’s fine. We don’t have time for everybody to be their full selves all day long every day.
And in the full spectrum of applying emotional intelligence, that really is what it’s all about, is to know, “Okay, well this is a really good time for me to let my hair down a little bit and exercise a little bit more personal disclosure, have this kind of a conversation with this person, that kind of a conversation with that person.” But the idea of noticing that and noticing our humanity and noticing the kinds of ups and downs and vicissitudes of our day-to-day, that’s where the richness of this kind of interaction really comes in.
Jeremy Owens: And that can be a trouble for a lot of, not just managers but top execs, even small business owners. Right? You actually had a part that I wanted to read real quick that gets into that, that says, “In full days of work pressures and stressors, people have minimal capacity for learning about co-workers, even when it might improve relationships or entire functions. It’s a lot. It’s hard. We just do not have time to know more or to care. Caring requires energy. Caring requires that we feel and few are willing to feel at work, especially among the dominant white and male cultures in tech and corporate spaces in America, those for whom feeling has not been culturally endorsed.”
And I have to tell you, I run into that all of the time, right? My job here is to get the widgets out the door, not to care about the person who’s carrying them. And how do you deal with that pushback from that dominant culture that says, “I’m not here to feel, I’m here to work?”
Denise Young: I dealt with it for years, and because I was always different, whether it was because of my gender, personality, background, experiences, whatever, that difference showed up in a conversation, in a discussion, in project work. Our humanity shows up no matter what. And even the person who is most guarded and most directed, most focused, there’s always going to be that moment where something about their true nature around their true experience as a human being shows up. And if in those precious few moments, there can be some connection, some acknowledgement that really goes a long way.
Take the opportunity, the courageous opportunity to connect them to other ideas or other incidents to say, “Oh, I remember when that happened for me.” Or, “Oh, that reminds me of…” That’s connective tissue for people and for human beings, and we don’t often recognize that enough and understand enough how incredibly powerful those connective moments are.
Jeremy Owens: And I feel like tech is one sector where that is most frowned upon really. You mentioned something here, just an aside, that I thought was fascinating that I want to read one time, and you called it, “Tech culture’s inclusive exclusivity,” and I quote, “The experience of being both in and out with no clear understanding of how you’d arrived there. I was inside of one group, yet excluded from another constantly.” Could you talk a little bit more about that and how tech culture itself intends to exclude people even while trying to cheer them to be more inclusive and part of that culture?
Denise Young: I think anyone who’s lived for any period of time, Jeremy, including yourself, and I think that’s probably why you called that out, the idea of having to be a person who does not feel like you necessarily belong on a project, in a group, on a team, for whatever reason, if you don’t necessarily feel like you naturally possess those kinds of skills, skills of courage, skills of, “Let me just walk over to someone, let me just write my manager, let me just do this,” you’re just kind of like, “I’m just going to do what I’m told and just go along with this.” You are not thriving.
Jeremy Owens: No, you’re sitting in your cubicle doing your job and trying not to be noticed, basically at that point, yes.
Denise Young: You’re not thriving and therefore, it’s a high likelihood that there are many other people that are not thriving. There’s a high likelihood that the project or technology or whatever it is that you’re working on, is not as far along or as enriched as it could be if more people who were working on it were in a situation, in a mindset where they felt like they were thriving, more comfortable, more able to communicate, receiving more information.
Jeremy Owens: We’re going to take a quick break. Stay with us.
Now, your time at Apple, you came back. You had been there, you left and went elsewhere until Steve Jobs came back, and you were recruited back to the company. And that era, Denise, of Apple is going to go down in history books as one of the most important in the history of American corporations and business, which is when the iPhone was introduced and iMac and iPods and the iTunes Store and the App Store and all of these things that have defined the last 20 years.
Denise Young: They’ve defined how humanity interacts with technology.
Jeremy Owens: And that you were a big part of that specific part by working on the Apple retail stores. This is the human contact point that many of us have with this company is in there. And you work to shape how employees experience that, how the shoppers experience that with the employees. And do you feel like that is really what you walked away from Apple with as your greatest achievement, is the feel of those stores and the feel of those employees?
Denise Young: I do, Jeremy, and I have to tell you, it’s the arc of my career that I am probably the most proud of. There was a very unique set of conditions that were going on at Apple during that era, obviously including the products, but in the other areas as well, in music and publishing, et cetera. And so if you integrate that with what was happening with product development and R&D, that was just a recipe for the world to actually be changed.
What I feel like I had accomplished, Jeremy, is I had achieved an executive position and title within a division, within the retail ecosystem, within that business, and that was a first. So I achieved many firsts at Apple, and that was probably the one I was most proud of because that did not exist. The stores did not exist, that business sector did not exist under Apple.
Jeremy Owens: You could go to an Apple retail store and say, “I’m one of the reasons this is alive and operating in the way it is,” and see that physically.
Denise Young: Right. Exactly. And then of course, so many things happened. With Steve’s death and Tim taking on the leadership of the company, and it was when Tim asked me, “Can you help with this larger purview?” And even then, I said, “Yeah, I don’t know that that’s where I really shine. I really love being with the people, in that space and place where I can see and experience and feel that and respond to that.” Right?
Jeremy Owens: Among the workers, not in the ivory tower.
Denise Young: Yeah, exactly. And he and I had a very frank conversation about that and I said, “I don’t know that that’s where I necessarily thrive or aspire to be.” And he says, “Well, we’re going to work really hard to make it not feel like that because I love what you guys have done and I’d love to have more of that in the corporate purview, if you will.” And I think that that was a really aspirational idea for both of us because Apple’s culture was already legendary. It was already what it was, whereas the contrast is we had the opportunity to build the retail business culture from ground up.
And so the idea then became what could I thread through and weave into the retail cultural experience into Apple’s corporate experience? That became the challenge at hand, and where was their openness for people to look at things differently or to experience more of that mutuality that happens in the retail business where employees are learning as much from the customers and how they are utilizing the product and how they can then go onto a next customer and the next customer and incorporate some of those ideas and learnings? That happened constantly on the floor of those doors. And those opportunities, I think there’s not as much room for those kinds of things to happen in some of the more operational tracks of any business, whether it’s Apple or any business.
Jeremy Owens: You were creating something from scratch in the retail. And then when you got corporate, you had to address the tech culture we spoke of earlier. Right? That is very hard to change. It’s much easier to create than to change what has already been created, I think is the best way to say that.
Denise Young: Yeah, but there definitely are some ways to create space, create conversation, and a lot of it is what I’ve talked about in the book and that is creating the space to have those kinds of conversations, give people permission to have those kinds of conversations. If you are a leader, setting the tone, that it is okay to have conversation to discuss the hard topics and not have an immediate solution for them. I think a lot of times in engineering cultures where the idea is to solve a problem, the kind of human conditions that we deal with, the human challenges that we deal with, those aren’t easy solves.
Jeremy Owens: And you talk a lot about the diversity push and how that played out, and it is the same thing where you’re talking about they wanted data, they wanted results, and this isn’t a data, a results-based thing. It is an effort that you show, and that became a really big sticking point when you did become Chief Diversity Officer.
Denise Young: I think when it came to starting to talk about what does the arbiter of success look like for diversity, we’re just so far away from anything like that because everybody’s looking at numbers and people are not numbers. There are stories and experiences behind those numbers. If you only have 6% or 7% women or people of color in a particular area, okay, fine, and I’m sure that we want to increase those numbers, but what do you have? What more do you have that you don’t know about that is contained within that 6% or 7% or 8% that you can learn from, that you can enrich your culture and your environment with? Knowledge can you utilize to expand those numbers that your traditional play of just trying to go out and recruit more people to expand that number is not going to accomplish?
And I’ll tell you one short story. There was a young woman intern that came from an HBCU onto campus when I was working very actively with that program. And she came and she was just so in awe of the campus, rightfully so. And she was excited and she was looking around and she said, “I just can’t believe that a company like Apple would consider someone like me.” And it took my breath away that she would say that and think that. And I said, “Well, of course, why wouldn’t we?” And it was in that moment that stuck in my mind and I said, “She believes that because she didn’t know the story of a Denise Young or a Lisa Jackson, or so many others that are a part of that 6%, 7% or 8%.” Those stories are not known.
And so I became intent from that point forward. I was like, “There got to be more Ashleys that know more stories about the Denises and the Lisas,” et cetera, and facilitating and amplifying the stories of others to be told so that more of all of those students that we haven’t tapped into, all those communities that we haven’t tapped into, those non-traditional schools, those countries, et cetera, that we have not as a technology sector or as commerce as a whole, that we have not tapped into, that they know we exist and we know they exist. There’s mutuality and there’s an easier path for them to come to us and to find a place and to thrive.
Jeremy Owens: And your story is when we are seeing how to come into your power and empower others along the way, that’s how you can read about Denise’s story and what she experienced and hopefully encourage many, many, many millions of others to follow her path. Thank you so much for joining us, Denise.
Denise Young: Thank you, Jeremy.
Jeremy Owens: Before we go, it’s time for what we are watching, a look at the news you need to know for the rest of the week and beyond. Nvidia became the most valuable company in the US on Tuesday, topping long-time market cap kings, Apple and Microsoft for the first time. We’ve discussed Nvidia on the show before, but it’s still worth marveling at this run to the top of the stock market. Nvidia is only the sixth company since 2001 to take the market cap crown, joining Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Exxon and GE. Just five years ago, the company known for chips that power machine learning was not among the 20 most valuable companies in the land, and has now moved all the way to the top of the list.
A retail sales report earlier this week showed more worrying signs about consumer spending. US consumers barely budged in their spending from April to May, solidifying earlier signs that consumers are cutting back after years of inflation. The news was worse for restaurants, where spending declined 0.4% from the month before. Is this just a temporary blip as Americans save up for their summer vacations, or is inflation changing spending habits in a more long-lasting way? Stay tuned to MarketWatch for more.
And while you’re on our site, please nominate your favorite market minds for the MarketWatch 50. Our annual list of the most important people in the markets is now open for you to have a voice in the selection process. We’ll be taking nominations until August 2nd and want to hear from you before making our decisions. You can find a link to the nominations on our home page, or search for MarketWatch 50.
And that’s it for this episode. Thanks to Denise Young and Hannah Erin Lang. To keep following the latest on the labor market and career advice, head to marketwatch.com. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcast, and please do. If you like what you heard, please leave us a rating or review. It really helps others discover the show. And let us know what you want to hear from us. You can reach us at onwatch@marketwatch.com. The show is hosted by me, Jeremy Owens, and produced by Jackson Cantrell. Isaac Gaines mixed this episode. Melissa Haggerty is the executive producer. We’ll be back next week with a new episode, and until then, we’ll be watching.
