Tips to get started on your culture transformation initiative
Not sure where to get started? Check this out.
Over the last two weeks I've been digging into feedback from my teams and leaders about how we can kick start our equity, diversity and inclusion programs to create lasting cultural change inside of our organization.
What I've realized is that it's easier to get started than I thought. If you are at a small business or start-up you have a unique advantage of building a culture from the ground up. If you are inside of a large organization, with time and diligence, you too can fundamentally shift your organization's culture to create a safe space for all employees to have a sense of belonging.
With help from my teams, I'm excited to outline the first 5 steps to get you started on your transformation journey, principles for success, topic areas to consider (whether you have an HR or not), and next steps to keep you honest.
Guiding Principles
As all people related ambitions, the topics of equity, diversity and inclusion must take a human-centered approach that encompasses empathy, compassion, and willingness to learn:
Open ears, open heart: Be willing to listen and learn from each other’s experiences and value them as personal truths. When someone is brave enough and willing to share their story of previous injustices at work — take it as data, not a debate. It is ok to mistakes and feel uncomfortable. Be willing learn and grow in the process.
Build with not for: Consider your transformation effort as a collaboration instead of a top-down approach. Solutions must be created with your teams not for them. To do this, you will need to create seats at the table for volunteers who want to drive solutions and be involved from the start.
Be human with your teams: Now is not the time for business as usual. As leaders, show how you feel and acknowledge that our teams are hurt, distracted and desire empathy from their leaders.
Bias to action: It's ok to not have all of the answers. Start by leaning in and moving forward, step-by-step, even if you don't have the perfect plan, solid KPIs/OKRs, or success metrics defined from the start.
5 Steps to Get Started
This journey truly starts by acknowledging that there is a problem to be solved. Issues of systemic racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia/transphobia exist both within and outside of your organization. Although you can't change the past, make it clear that your goal is to transform your organization, and if purpose aligned, the communities where you do business.
As leaders, it’s ok to not have all the answers. Learning will always be part of the process in the journey for equity, diversity, and inclusion. Your job for creating better spaces, policies, and structures for your organization must be ongoing — even if KPIs/OKRs or success metrics are achieved, the work is never complete. Here are some tips to get started:
Start with self-education: All leaders can start with self-education and learning from each other. Consider both internal resources available from HR learning/training teams and external resources that can give you a fuller picture of injustices within our society. Here is a list that can get you started on external resources (scroll to the bottom).
Create a safe space: As a leader create a safe space to share vulnerabilities, feelings, and fears within your peer group. Self-organize into ways that encourages storytelling, knowledge sharing, and gathering insights from each other.
Take accountability and listen: As leaders it is important to listen to your teams and learn from their experiences about how they're feeling to better understand how you can organize initiatives. Let your teams feel heard by you and other leaders. I created this conversation guide that you can use with your teams.
Prioritize immediately: If you plan to lead an ED&I initiative or program, prioritize the effort by scheduling a full-day or half-day working session to identify focus areas for improvement (suggestions below). Then, determine how team members from all levels can volunteer to join you in being solution drivers.
Develop open communication channels: Create communication channels that accelerate transparency. Over-share communications in places like Slack and MSTeams. If necessary, lead Q&A sessions that address concerns from your teams. Be clear that you may not have all the information or answers — this level transparency builds trust.
Keep Momentum Going
Once you’ve got your first 5 steps up and running, be mindful that your initiatives don’t lose momentum. If you are lucky enough, work with an executive sponsor to drive initiatives into your quarterly planning or annual strategy. Be sure that you have the same level of support of any other business priority. With this, you can keep the executive sponsor accountable for driving the work forward and help with any roadblocks that might slow you down.
ED&I Topic Areas to Consider
By no means is this an exhaustive list of topic areas, however, here is a quick list that can get you started on the types of things your ED&I initiatives can focus on. This list is somewhat agonistic of an HR function, meaning any team whether HR is able to be involved or not (especially if your organization does not yet have an HR function), should be able to move the needle in any of these topics.
Communications and reporting: Regular ongoing communications that highlight progress and share updates. Track and measure success. Hold leaders accountable for moving the work forward.
Inclusive language: Focus on culturally relevant language that is not rooted in discriminatory stereotypes. Depending on your business, language will vary. Some examples include: business partners instead of "assets," risk group instead of "blacklist," leader/follower programs instead of master/slave programs, gender neutral sizing instead of "unisex sizing," etc.
Community engagement: Bring local communities into your organization through experiences, learning, and mentoring BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and/or refugees. These types of community initiatives create job training and skills in communities that might not have access to businesses like yours.
Mentorship programs: Create spaces to mentor (formally or informally) your talent. Open leadership opportunities for junior team members so they gain practical on-the-job leadership development skills.
Recruiting: Diversify your talent pipeline, improve your hiring processes to be cognizant of unconscious biases, and build relationship within BIPOC talent networks. Depending where you are geographically, it might not be legally possible to quantify diversity in your organization. If you find yourself in this situation, I encourage you to interrogate your surroundings —look around, if have no people of color, or very few women, start with focusing on creating a pipeline that brings new identities into your organization.
Procurement: Ensure that your partners are also living your ED&I values — do they have a diverse board? Are women in leadership positions? Some companies offer clear guidelines for partnering with business when it comes to things like sustainability, consider a similar framework for ED&I topics.
Training and education: Develop and educate all teams on the importance of daily, ritual behaviors that build a more inclusive environment that fosters a sense of belonging for all team members.
Safe community spaces: Create safe environments within teams for anyone to be able to speak up when they have experienced or witness hate or discrimination of any kind. Consider policies that elevate issues of discrimination that include an external or 3rd party to investigate, mediate or terminate those with offensive behaviors.
