The Reckoning: Donald Trump, Ozempic and Pharrell Williams

Nothing substantial happens without a reckoning; that moment when you realized you are going to be judged and punished for your actions. When you are emotionally invested and you philosophically change your point of view. What get’s mistaken for change is often forced compliance. Donald Trump has a 5.5 million dollar judgement against him for defamation of E Jean Carol. Immediately after he lost in court, he went on a public rant against Ms Carol and another lawsuit was filed. The judgement against him is forced compliance not to slander people. Hence, Mr Trump’s behavior has not changed. If you don’t see something as a problem, you use options over change, there is no reckoning.

At dinner this week, a friend posed the issue of an innovation competition in which none of the participating companies have sent women. The question posed to the table was how to get women included. Is there a metric, a scorecard, a requirement? No, because none of those things address the real issue. The issue is not that women are not represented, that is the impact. The issue is women are not valued by the gatekeepers. You can add a requirement, a metric even a penalty, but that is forced compliance. You can do a campaign on why women are valuable, but, without that reckoning, that fundamental philosophical shift, nothing will happen. Everything is just an “option.”

Just witness the phenomenon of Oz. Ozempic is a diabetes drug which can effectively be used for weight lost. However, the demand for the drug for use in weight loss has caused a supply shortage for diabetics. There is debate among medical professionals to prescribe or not to prescribe. Some medical professionals have had a reckoning and will not. The Ozempic drug manufacturer, Novo Nordisk has made statements that warn about counterfeits, non FDA approved drugs and filed a lawsuit against some wellness spas for the sale of products they claim to contain semaglutide, the key ingredient in their diabetes drugs. There are champions for the diabetic patients who need the drugs, but no gatekeepers to support them. Novo Nordic has options.

Options have kept women and minorities out. Exclusion of these groups is not seen as a problem; inclusiveness is not seen as a benefit. Yet, there are numerous examples of product failures as a result of the exclusion of women and minorities in design. From an 2019 Harvard Business Review article:

As with facial recognition, web searches, and even soap dispensers, speech recognition is another form of AI that performs worse for women and non-white people. And speech recognition now influences important aspects of people’s lives, including immigration decisions, job hiring, and transportation, among many other things. That means that speech recognition accuracy — or lack thereof — could prevent you from immigrating to a new country, getting a job, or traveling safely. This is absolutely a matter of social injustice.  But if that alone doesn’t convince companies to fix the problem, they should consider that the accuracy of speech recognition also affects customer purchasing decisions. Remember that women and minorities have huge purchasing power — why wouldn’t companies want to solve this problem? It’s a missed business opportunity. And it’s something we all need to keep talking about.  Because these biases have serious consequences in people’s live, and because everyone deserves to have their voice heard.

Voice Recognition Still Has Significant Race and Gender Biases

It’s not that it is a missed business opportunity, there has not been a reckoning, yet. These gatekeepers of design have options.  Well, women need to speak louder, minorities need to speak clearer, well the soap dispenser works for some people. This is why DEI is not effective. A diverse team is not embraced and valued. Until the gatekeepers see it as a problem that needs to be reckoning.

Jeff Bezos wanted to pay the city of Rotterdam to disassemble a bridge so his super-yacht could pass through. Alas, the gatekeepers had a reckoning and refused. Citizens organized protests and the company building the super-yacht was so taken aback by the backlash, they withdrew the plan. Did Bezos change? Nah, but the yacht builder, they probably won’t take that tactic again. Why do we need DEI? We shouldn’t and we wouldn’t If women and minorities were seen as valuable, there would be no need for a scorecard. Women are 50.4% of the US population and yet the Equal Rights Amendment, giving women equal rights under the law has not passed. Well, that’s the start of your issue there. There has not been a reckoning, so what do we expect for minority populations, Latino – 18.9%, African American – 13.6%, Asian  – 7.3%, gay – 7.1% and  trans – 5%. Without a reckoning, there will not be a change.

Why was the Montgomery bus boycott effective to address racial inequalities in public transportation? Because it was strategic effort by negroes not to ride the buses for over a year. It was an economic reckoning that ushered societal change. Protests have to be strategic to have an impact. They can raise awareness and get increased commitment. At the same time, gatekeepers can distort. For example, while George Floyd protests were an effort to force acknowledgement in inequities, one of the rallying cries was defund the police. This gave counties and municipalities carte blanche to make monetary cuts to police forces while solving their immediate budget problems. Sure, we’re defund the police, give them what they want and let mayhem ensue. There was no reckoning for the gatekeepers to change, only options.

Gatekeepers are all around us. A podcaster, repeated the refrain and outrage on an episode after Pharrell Williams was named as creative director for Louis Vuitton. “…he has no training, he is a musician, he should’t even have a skin care line; that’s just him being a celebrity. He is a skateboarder, but he doesn’t know fabric.” She went on for 15 minutes with her “gatekeeper” methodology and musts. Jennifer Lawrence, Johnny Depp, Ben Kingsley never took acting classes. Prince, Thelonious Monk, and Eric Clapton never had music lessons. By her requirements (and others like her) actors, musicians, etc should not be considered. Yet, gatekeepers like to hail innovation as new and different, but that definition is nonsense and gave us Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried.

In the case of Pharrell, the bigger picture is he can tap into the zeitgeist. The Louis Vuitton Men’s Spring-Summer 2024 Fashion Show by Pharrell Williams in Paris this week was epic. What are the three biggest issues that bother you? This week consider, are there gatekeepers, are there options to avoid the problem, what would cause a reckoning and the likelihood of that happening.