The business case for diversity & inclusion

So, if you think of the expression that we’ve probably all heard, the 30,000-foot perspective, and when people use that they're often times talking about big picture perspective or the strategic perspective -- the long-term perspective potentially, the 30,000-foot perspective. I've always believed that 30,000 feet is too high. At 30,000 feet you can't breathe, at  30,000 feet you’re going to freeze to death. If you're flying at 30,000 feet typically all you see is clouds or if it's a clear day the ground is so far below that you can't really make out the detail.

But at 10,000 feet, you can breathe.  You actually can make out the details below, or if you have a clear day you can see a 110-mile horizon, so you can sort of see out into the distance. And so the metaphor 10,000 feet is all about going up, getting a bigger perspective, seeing your world from a bigger perspective, seeing it from a more strategic perspective, seeing cause and effect -- you make a decision here, you have a result out there, being able to kind of take that perspective.

Everything we do is about creating tools and learning experiences that take people up, that allow them to understand who they are or what they do or their impact as leaders in organizations from the bigger more strategic perspective and understand why in fact they need to be more strategic.

How being inclusive impacts an organization… why it’s good for business and why it’s relevant:

Oh yes, I mean we are, you know, the #metoo world… Just from a pure -- and this is not the reason to even be doing it -- but from a pure risk standpoint, organizations who don’t do this and who aren’t paying attention to are putting themselves at risk for a whole lot of reasons.

There are, you know, ways in which they’ll lose key people, there’s ways in which there could be negative publicity, there’s ways in which executives could be called to the carpet, fired, fined, put in jail. And if they don't consciously and proactively every single day attempt to create the environment that is inclusive, then they're not being smart about their business.

But, that aside, but even if that were not the current context -- I mean it should be the current context, it should have always been the current context -- but even if it weren’t, there are two very very important streams of research that also are exactly why companies need to do it:

No. 1, companies that are able to attract a really diverse mix of employees from in diversity along all dimensions and also then are able to really engage those folks in the common objectives of the business and working together are more innovative, they are able to adapt and work in a world market much more successfully, and they make better decisions. And so, strictly from a decision-making standpoint,  which I do a lot of work in, one of the absolute preconditions for good decision-making in an organization is being able to bring diverse voices to the table and to really have them help you stress-test your decisions, to challenge them in various different ways, and so we know that.

We know that bringing diverse perspectives into the process is absolutely critical to good decision-making, but it doesn't always happen. Or, you bring the diverse voices to the table, but then they are ignored or they are marginalized in one way or another, or they don't feel comfortable speaking up, or they speak up but nobody listens, or the culture is “go along to get along,” or the culture is, ”Yeah, we want diversity. Look at all the diversity around the table,” but you know what? There’s only two or three people speaking and they all come from a very similar background.

So, for the simple purposes of being more innovative, for being more globally agile, able to work in a world context or a global context, work with people from around the world, diversity and inclusion is absolutely an important precondition to being able to do that well. Or having a high degree of diversity in your organization and also creating any kind of environment where those folks are engaged is absolutely a precondition to being successful. And, from its pure decision-making standpoint, you need to be able to bring those diverse voices into the mix and you need to really bring them in a way where they are actually contributing to the decisions in a very powerful way.

So, simple business case? The more diverse, the more inclusive you are,  the more successful you’re going to be. And from a societal/legal context, it's good risk management.

The distinction between diversity and inclusion:  I think of diversity as counting the numbers, the different types of folks, different kinds of ways that people are coming into your organization, so I call diversity counting the numbers. Inclusion is making the numbers work -- in other words, bringing that diverse mix of people together in a way that they actually are engaged, they’re switched on, they really contribute to the organization and so how do you create the kind of environment that enables that, that makes that happen, how do you as a leader help bring that diverse mix of folks to the table every single time you’re building a new product, every time that you're making a decision, how do you in one way or another just really make the mix work.

And so The Inclusive Leader is specifically designed to be a highly engaging, highly interactive, fun, and also pragmatic program that leaves you both thinking about what you can do as a leader to show up and be more inclusive, it also gives you very specific actions, behaviors, and a variety of just strategies for when you are leading your team, when you are working with your individuals on your team, and just how do you show up and create that kind of inclusive environment ,or how do you help promote it in the organization, so help other leaders be inclusive, help your team be inclusive, help the organization be that kind of place that everybody wants to come and work at. And, specifically it's a 3-½- 4-hour game-based learning experience, there a couple of different game boards or game maps…

The Inclusive Leader is a wonderful, fun, short, impactful program that’s specifically designed to give managers and leaders a set of just very actionable behaviors, actions, things that they can do to create a more inclusive workplace and that would be both things they as leaders can do but also ways they can influence other leaders, influence teams, and work to create that kind of environment. We talked about inclusion and diversity as being 2 sides of a coin. Diversity is really what we oftentimes refer to as counting the numbers, making sure you've got the right mix of people in the organization or a wide mix, a diverse mix of folks. Inclusion is just making that mix work and so for simple terms, it would be diversity is counting the numbers and inclusion is making the numbers work.  

So what we do in The Inclusive Leader is through a series of fun, game-based experiences very quickly bring people to a place where they are really thinking about themselves, what they are doing, what they could be doing, ways in which they can show up on a day-in day-out basis to create the kind of work environment that’s able to both attract, retain, engage, really just have people show up in a really powerful way within the organization.

What we do know is that organizations absolutely need to be able to make good decisions today, they need to be creative, they need to be innovative.

The Inclusive Leader is  designed for people working together in teams around these two game boards it to just essentially experience a number of different kinds of scenarios, situations where their very ability to challenge each other, their very ability to have those kinds of conversations is actually part of the result they create and so it’s competitive, it’s fun, it is something that just the act of working together and bringing the diverse voices together around the things we, the scenarios,  the different kinds of activities and challenges that the games entail, what happens is they also experience what does it mean to create that same kind of environment just on the team that they're working on, And it’s also something that is very scalable. It can be done with small groups -- 6, 8, 10 people. It can also be done with 100 people or 150 people, or 200 people. It can be used in all sorts of different way … It’s 3 and 1/2 to 4 hours.

Feedback on The Inclusive Leader…

I just read one last week from a company that does a lot of training and one of the participants came up and said, “I've gone to a lot of training. This is the best program, single best program I’ve ever gone to.“ You know, we like to hear that -- of course. But -- and, it’s ironic of course that this company has run two other (programs), they’ve both run Interplay, they’ve run Decision Mojo,  I don’t know whether this participant’s been to either Interplay or Decision Mojo, and even if she… I know those are great programs, so that if she has, then I also feel like this has obviously made an impact.

Basically, what people are saying is they first of all they have been engaged in other programs or done other things that have to do with unconscious bias or and they don't necessarily leave feeling like they know what to do, or “Wow, I’ve got some biases but now what do I do?”  

This is incredibly pragmatic and pretty much everybody has talked about walking out of the session having identified some very specific things that they can start doing, maybe stop doing, just ways in which they as a leader can be more inclusive and also just help their peers be more inclusive. So it’s very actionable. It’s very action-oriented, pragmatic, and in a day-in, day-out basis there’s multiple moments, multiple opportunities where you can work to create that kind of environment.

People leave with a companion piece which has got a whole list of very specific things that people have identified throughout the workshop that they can do. And in addition, they leave with a deck of cards that has 42 different actions and behaviors, and people will have picked, built their own hand -- we call it Play Your Hand -- and so they build their hand of cards, and they put them in some through the priority order of a couple of things that they really want to do, or start doing.

The other thing that I think is a key part of the program is that it’s very much designed so that people are able to come to their own conclusions about why it's important, what kinds of things that they can do to be that kind of an inclusive leader versus being told by some expert, versus being told from the front of the room.

It’s very much an experience that presents people with a kind of a thought-provoking material, scenario, situations, and also the opportunity to have dialogues with their colleagues around the table in such a way it puts it all together where they’re just kind of thinking, “Wow, do I do that?” or “Was I in a meeting where such and such occurred?” or “Woulda, coulda, shoulda… you know, I wish I had said something, but I didn’t, but next time I’m going to be in that situation I will say something.”  

People get this, they do a little bit of mental rehearsal about how they're going to show up in certain kinds of situations or how they’re just going to help their colleagues and organizations be more inclusive.