Graham says wrong things

I'm writing this on November 11th, 2024. In most of the world, this is when we celebrate the end of a war so terrible that everyone assumed it would never happen again. 

As the scorpion said, "lol. lmao."

This is a post about leading during politics, but not a post about politics. Leadership has this responsibility regardless of how they happen to vote. If you're in leadership and don't believe that an important part of your responsibility to ensure that working for or with you doesn't carry unfair personal risk for your peers or people, well, I honestly don't know how you found this blog. It is not for you. Leave.

If you've got employees in the US and you are in leadership it is currently your responsibility to go ask HR what the plan is to support/not support people who will be facing targeted hostility from the incoming federal government. Maybe the answer is something, maybe it's nothing, and maybe it's case-by-case. Every company's situation is different, ever industry is different, every budget is different. I'm not intending to throw shade about what your company does or does not do. I'm trying to throw shade at the idea that you don't have to decide, right now, what that will or won't be.

See the thing is, you can't have people who need to make big decisions waiting to see what you will or won't do. Especially if they're used to thinking that you will help them. They need guidance on how your actions influence their options ASAP, some of them possibly in as little as 60 days. Do not leave them hanging.

If you're not sure what to ask about, here's a crib sheet. I make no claim that I got everything here or everything here being right.

1. From where can people work? Where can they self-relocate to without worrying about their job and health care? Would we support such a move actively or passively. If that list isn’t responsive to the problem, can we expand it? Will we?
2. Are we ready to make it so naturalized employees do not need to travel for work? Putting them through airports isn't a great idea.
3. Are we considering access to medical care when deciding where we do or don’t allow/encourage offsites/conferences/etc? If not and someone travels to such a place on our behalf, do we have an emergency action plan if it suddenly becomes relevant?
4. Are we looking into temporary work-from-elsewhere provisions for affected employees and can we give them guidance on where and what’s allowed?
5. Are we looking at a process to emergency convert an employee to a contractor in order to legally support them working from their short notice relocation destination?
6. When can we provide intent? When can we provide real guidance? Our people need to set internal expectations so they can do their own risk calculus as accurately as possible

You may well get pushback about why you're asking all these annoying questions. Here's a crib sheet for that conversation:

1. Affected employees who are self motivated will begin planning job changes in the near future if we don’t provide guidance or at least intent. 
2. Future hiring will be impacted if we aren’t clear about support options and locations, including the potential of expanding locations. 
3. People expect us to support them but those expectations aren’t necessarily clear and this is an opportunity for assumptions to harm employees and therefore the company. We have to close that assumption gap.
4. We don’t have to make this a political thing, and if the company wants to do all kinds of stuff to try to downplay that aspect that’s fine, that’s a business decision. We cannot let concerns about that turn into deliberate inaction when said deliberate inaction would make every company statement we have about our company-employee relationship a hazardously misleading falsehood. 
5. If all that seems too complex then how about this: We’ve used statements of support and inclusivity as part of hiring and retention for years. The chits are being called in. Settle up or accept adverse reactions.

If your audience is listening but isn't sure who to consider at risk, here's my very rough estimate of things. Please don't make life impacting decisions as if this is right. This is based on my read of campaign rhetoric and speeches, as well as which cabinet and White House staffing posts are being decided first. If action is ordered outside of those inputs, then this is all wrong and I'm sorry about that. Additionally, if a group isn't represented here that is not my intent. I'm not trying to exclude anyone from this list.

1. Naturalized citizens are at risk as early as January 10th. Immigrants and naturalized citizens targeting is almost entirely doable via mobilization in service of an executive order and those orders are pre-written.
2. Trans persons will face legal rights issues probably by mid-February, although congress’s and the courts combined schedules make predictions very difficult. 
3. Queer (that don’t present as straight) marriage rights will face impact by summer.
4. People who can become pregnant is the hardest to predict but they’ll get around to them and they may well be number two in priority.