the Shortlist

Our best ideas, quick and curated | October 29, 2021

This week, maybe it’s time to dig out that astronaut costume for Halloween. Plus, why the average CFO has a lot more responsibilities these days, and how to become a better software innovator.

The final frontier. As an earthling, you might be aware that Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic both sent their leaders on suborbital tourist flights this summer (with the former also hosting William Shatner, aka Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, earlier this month). In the spring, China launched the initial module for its Tiangong space station, and SpaceX followed with the first crewed mission from US soil since 2011. The International Space Station has also had some drama recently, with the arrival of a Russian actress and director, a first for thespians in space.

SPACs in space too? As technology and cost barriers continue to fall, private companies are creating opportunities for growth. Some countries are helping them by creating more permissive, encouraging policies—and other forms of support to spur innovation. These trends, in turn, are generating investor interest. For instance, many special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are targeting space companies for acquisition, based on their projected future revenue. In a recent article on space tourism, we look at industry trends, investment patterns, and the obstacles ahead, including bolstering safety and performance.

From science fiction to fact. Although questions remain about the exact size and durability of the commercial-space market, the industry appears poised for growth. If the private companies that are planning launches in late 2021 and 2022 meet their timelines, we can expect an even greater surge of interest from both investors looking for opportunities and from passengers wanting to book flights. Beyond such ventures, three recent uncrewed missions to Mars, including the landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover, are also creating a sense that we are in a new age of exploration and opportunity. The real question is whether we will see economic activity in space (for instance, asteroid mining or manufacturing) that goes beyond tourism.

Collision course. Matching all this space enthusiasm? Concerns about increased human activity in our atmosphere, including what to do about space debris and how to avoid collisions between satellites. Since the first Sputnik launched, in 1957, about 11,000 satellites have been sent into orbit. And over the next few years, roughly 70,000 satellites could enter orbit if proposed plans come to fruition. They will remain there for months to hundreds of years unless actively deorbited, joining thousands of bits of orbiting debris created by collisions and explosions over the decades. That means that the latest puzzle for NASA and international agencies is space sustainability, a terrestrial topic that will be familiar to readers on Earth.

off the charts

For CFOs, the O is for oversight

The CFO’s responsibilities have grown in several important areas—particularly digital. Between 2016 and 2021, the share of finance leaders who say that they are responsible for their companies’ digital activities has more than tripled. Investor relations has also grown dramatically as an area of focus for CFOs. Nearly two-thirds of finance leaders say that they are responsible for these activities, up from 44 percent in 2016.

Check out our chart of the day here.

podcast

‘Tech illiteracy scares the pants off me’

Mary “Missy” Cummings, one of the US Navy’s first female fighter pilots and now an engineering and robotics professor at Duke University, recently spoke with McKinsey about the promise and peril of automation. During her three years of flying fighters, one person a month died in training accidents on average, leading her to see the “stark reality that we had started to design aircraft that far exceeded the cognitive capabilities of humans. So that’s what motivated me to get into this field and say, ‘We can do this better. There’s got to be a way to take a principled approach to designing technology to consider the strengths and limitations of humans.’”

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This year’s Women in the Workplace report delves into the power of allyship, as well as the “allyship gap.” Can you explain what those are and why they’re important?

Allyship from more privileged colleagues can make a big difference in the experiences of women of color: when these women feel like they have strong allies at work, they are happier in their jobs, less likely to be burned out, and less likely to consider leaving their companies.  

But although more than three-quarters of White employees consider themselves allies to women of color at work, the number who consistently perform actions to support women of color is far lower. Only 10 percent consistently mentor or sponsor women of color, 21 percent advocate for new opportunities for women of color, and 39 percent actively confront discrimination against women of color, the research shows. These are some of the actions that women of color told us they need the most.

Don’t get me wrong—identifying as an ally is encouraging. But without actions, allyship doesn’t solve problems, and it risks becoming an empty slogan.

What other challenges are specific to women of color?

In terms of representation, women of color lose a significant amount of ground at the top of the corporate ladder. As a Brown woman myself, I am struck by the finding that while Asian women account for one in 15 women who enter the corporate pipeline, only one in 50 will rise to the C-suite.

In terms of inclusion, women of color face significantly more microaggressions that are “othering.” For example, they are around two times more likely than White women to have overheard insults about their culture or people like them.

Women experience more bias and discrimination when they are the only woman in the room—for women of color, there’s another layer to this experience. Roughly one in eight women of color are “double Onlys”—often the only woman and the only person of their race/ethnicity in the room at work. These double Onlys are two to three times as likely as non-Onlys to experience disrespectful and othering comments.

How can companies make progress in combatting the issues that women face in the workplace?

For the first time, we assessed companies that have led the pack over the past seven years in our longitudinal review of the data. We found that 100 percent hold senior leaders accountable for meeting diversity goals, compared with 69 percent of companies overall. Ninety-two percent of these leading companies track and set numerical goals for representation—women and people of color—and 85 percent provide evaluators with reminders on how to avoid unconscious bias before performance reviews. Ninety-two percent provide services to support employees, including emergency backup childcare services, parental leave, and mental-health resources. 

Beyond these actions, companies should hold managers accountable for people leadership. Senior leadership must challenge managers to do more to alleviate stress and exhaustion, and reward them when they do so. At the moment, neither is happening often enough. For example, while more than three-quarters of companies have instructed managers to check in with employees about their workload and well-being—another positive—these efforts are generally not incorporated into formal evaluations or performance reviews, which limits their effectiveness.

As we found in our research, women managers are notably more likely to step up this way, but when the work is not formally part of the job description, it can be overlooked. Without accountability and formal recognition, this critical work could be at risk of being relegated to “office housework,” or that which contributes to the business but doesn’t typically lead to advancement or compensation. Investing in people leadership should be a serious aspect of evaluation during performance reviews for managers. We must measure it just as we measure sales objectives or operational targets in any business.

— Edited by Barbara Tierney