I woke up this morning to the familiar sound of a leaf blower. Every day, I watch homeowners and gardeners in my neighborhood blow leaves and dirt off the sidewalks and driveways into the street. It’s loud and disruptive. 

The dust gets moved onto other parts of sidewalks and driveways off the property line. Overnight, nature blows some of the debris from the street back on the sidewalk. The next day, someone else shows up and blows it back across the property line. 

Each owner pays people to rearrange the dirt but not actually solve the problem, which is that someone needs to pick up the leaves and dirt and put them in the green yard waste bin. And we definitely aren’t addressing the bigger problem that LA has gotten hotter and drier.

We just pay people to blow the dirt around.

It’s a noisy, expensive, performative activity. 

Look at a lot of businesses, and you’ll see the same thing: noisy, expensive, performative actions. Which is why you need to know who you are and what kind of company you want to run. Take what makes sense for you, but establish your own path and playbook. 

This week, I encourage you to look at where you’re blowing dirt around, whether as a CEO or a person. Especially if you’re spending significant energy, money, or time on rearranging that dirt. If something isn’t serving you, give yourself permission to stop. Take steps toward a more permanent solution. 

Change all at once feels big and intractable. But as business owners, we are able to make small changes that add up: how we spend money, what policies we set, how we treat our customers, partners, and team. Even what we do with the profits. 

Take a moment this week to consider something you want to change. Change intentionally, in any amount, toward where you want to go. It matters.

More Federal EEOC Rulings

Last week, I recapped several federal rulings on noncompetes, overtime rules, minimum salary, and net neutrality. (If you missed it, here’s the archived edition.) Two more April updates: pregnancy accommodation and harassment based on gender identity, from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). 

Pregnancy Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). The PWFA update was first published last year, and became final on April 15. The updated rule takes effect on June 18 for employers with 15 or more employees. The new rule expands the scope of conditions to be accommodated, notably adding menstruation, fertility treatments, miscarriage, and loss of pregnancy, and lengthens the eligible period. The rule also limits the documentation an employer can request to protect the employee’s medical privacy. The government still insists that employers let pregnant people drink water, pee, and eat. (That needed to be made official for somebody.) Read the full rule here. 

Gender identity. A significant number of recent EEOC enforcement actions relate to harassment based on gender identity. Gender identity means how someone wants to be recognized in the world. The new ruling clarifies that it is harassment to misgender, refuse to use chosen names or pronouns, or not provide gender-neutral changing areas and bathrooms. If your state or local laws are less protective than the federal guidance, the rule of thumb is to follow the rules that are most protective to the worker. Here's the small business fact sheet and detailed examples from SHRM. All employers are subject to this rule.

Harassment prevention is your responsibility as a business owner and employer. Two of your best defenses are written policies and training. If you would like to train your team and managers in the revised rules, we have a partnership with EasyLlama, an affordable and compliant training platform. 

My California employment law firm, CDF Law, has been on fire with the updates. (I read these first because often, federal law lags California.) Here are their briefs on harassment and the PWFA.

May AMA

My May Ask Me Anything will be tomorrow, Thursday, May 9, at 10 AM Pacific. I’ll be giving California some love, as someone asked how to work with California contractors. I’ll recap how to work with 1099 contractors in general and review why you might need some extra vigilance in California.

Join the AMA using this Zoom link. (Add a reminder with the link to your calendar.) 

List subscribers, look for a reminder in your inbox tomorrow morning. If you’re not a subscriber or you got this email from a friend, sign up here. And if you were my anonymous submitter, thank you for the great question!

Insta-famous. Instagram announced it is changing its discovery algorithm for smaller creators to work more like TikTok’s. In theory, this will help more new interested parties find and follow you. In practice, this may mean that your existing followers won’t see your content with the same urgency. Your reels and posts will be shown to new followers first, but perhaps will take longer to be seen by your Day Ones. Hear it directly from Instagram’s CEO.

Why We Buy. And Click. I’m not a fan of marketing via tribalism, but it sure does work on our human brains. This article, “Everything’s a Cult Now,” and the longer podcast episode on The Gray Area, were two of my favorite things last week. If you find yourself buying into programs and wondering later how you got it so wrong, this is a good one.