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STEP 7: TRANSFORM YOUR ORGANIZATION, INDUSTRY, AND SOCIETY

You’re learning, unlearning, and relearning. You’re taking steps to do no harm. You’re taking action as an advocate and standing up to do what’s right. You’re helping lead the change in your work and on your team. The next step is to help create much-needed systemic change in our workplaces, in our industries, and across society. The following pages contain several different ways you can help to create a world that aligns with your values and motivation for change. Whether you work at a large organization or a small business or startup—or you’re retired and wanting to give back—there is a lot you can do.

Create More Equitable and Inclusive Systems and Processes in Your Workplace

We discussed several systemic interventions that can reduce biases and microaggressions in the workplace in “Step 5: Stand Up for What’s Right.” Not all inequities and forms of exclusion are micro, however; we also have macroaggressions and systemic inequities in our workplaces. The norms around systems, processes, and even culture were often created in different generations, before there was a focus on a diverse workforce. As a result, these don’t work for everyone and often need to be re-envisioned. We all have a role to play in fixing these systemic inequities in our workplaces.

While it would take another book to deeply address the many methods for improving DEI, the following are some ideas for you to consider. (If you’d like to learn more, we have some training and toolkits at changecatalyst.co to deepen your understanding in several of these areas.) Your next step is to choose what change you want to implement, collaborate with the folks that can help you create the change, and ensure everyone is held accountable for creating the change.

There is an action plan template at the end of this chapter. I recommend choosing one or two projects that would be quick wins, as well as some more long-term projects that will create significant systemic change. This way you can celebrate achievements, show success, recognize members of your team for the hard work they put in, and also invest in deeper change. Use your inclusive leadership and decision-making skills to ensure the team is empowered and inclusive, courageous, collaborative, committed, culturally intelligent, cognizant of biases, and curious about diverse viewpoints. Don’t get caught up in planning for too long; choose a lean, agile, or kaizen process to learn, build, test, deploy, and iterate. You may not get it all perfect the first time; make sure you’re building in feedback loops and allowing the project to evolve over time. Here are specific things you can do:

Work to develop an inclusive hiring experience for candidates with underrepresented backgrounds and identities. Raise the bar by committing to increase your diversity beyond the status quo of your industry, and hold yourself and your teams accountable for significantly improving year over year.

Do an audit and reboot of your hiring process to remove biases and microaggressions and make it more inclusive and accessible, so you’re not missing out by excluding people. Map out your hiring experience and redesign it with and for diverse talent from outreach to job descriptions, screening, interviews, offer, and onboarding. Remember all you’ve learned about historical oppression, systemic inequities, cultural marginalization, biases and microaggressions, and their impact—and design a complete hiring experience that centers around welcoming, safety, and belonging for everyone, especially people with historically underrepresented and excluded identities.

Make sure you and your team are not blaming the pipeline for a lack of diversity; do the work to find the diverse pipeline that is out there through expanding your networks. And work to improve the pipeline. Since most industries have excluded people for some time (it’s an intergenerational problem), you might consider developing programs that bring in new talent early in their careers—like apprentice or internship programs—and grow leaders from within your company. You can also recruit talent from adjacent industries.

Diversify the board and key leadership roles. You might consider making diversity a requirement of your board or adopting a policy of interviewing at least three to four quality candidates from diverse, underrepresented identities for each role (an updated version of the Rooney Rule).² Note that interviewing just one candidate from an underrepresented identity for a role can significantly decrease their chances of being hired, so do the work to find several good candidates.³ If there are no open positions currently, create a succession plan—it may include associate board members and/or future leadership teams.

Diversity in most organizations dwindles at leadership levels, due to biases and inequities throughout people’s careers. Audit your compensation and promotion processes to ensure they are equitable. It’s important to do these together: one of our clients audited their compensation a few years ago, and was pleasantly surprised that it was nearly equal across gender. Then they took one more step to audit their promotions, and found severe inequities: on average, women were remaining in the same position for three years longer than men. They launched an internal investigation and found the issue centered around performance review biases, lack of quality feedback between reviews, disparities in how projects were assigned, and in-group/out-group experiences on the team (e.g., project assignments often formed in the bar where several of the men met after work to watch football games). The company immediately instituted a multifaceted approach to address the inequity.

The best way to develop diverse leaders is to develop them from within. Establish transparent and flexible professional growth and leadership development pathways. You might offer executive coaching, tuition reimbursement, mentorship opportunities, volunteer roles with leadership positions, and speaking and writing opportunities. Of course, make sure these programs have a focus on inclusive leadership.

Align your brand, messaging, and storytelling with your inclusive values. Conduct a cross-platform brand audit to see how your brand and messaging align with your DEI values. You might develop a style guide that includes diversity and accessibility, and a quality control process that includes auditing for diversity and inclusion. Make sure your images and messaging are diverse and inclusive, you’re thinking about proactive messaging during times when it’s important to diverse employees and customers, and of course, that you are taking action on what you say in your messages. Consider using your brand platform to counter stereotypes and other biases, and speaking out against systemic racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, eurocentrism, and other forms of discrimination.

Build inclusive and ethical products and services. A good portion of my work is in the tech industry, which has notoriously built products that have violated ethics, developed solutions that lacked inclusion and accessibility, and launched artificial intelligence and other products that are racist and sexist—which have caused loss of life and injustice.

Encourage your organization to design and develop products and services with a diverse team that is representative of your customers. If that’s not possible right now, bring in diverse consultants and potential customers to be part of the design process. Build accessibility into your work from the beginning, as it’s much easier to do it as part of the process than retroactively. And audit your products and services before they go out the door to ensure they are ethical, accessible, and inclusive, and that the images and messages you’re conveying reflect diversity and inclusion.

Earlier in her career, my colleague Nancy Douyon found a gap in the product design process at Google and worked to fill it by leading research on end-to-end experience for new product launches with ethics, accessibility, and inclusion in mind. Nancy said this about the importance of her work:

In the work I do as a UX researcher, designer, engineer—I help build technology from this corner of the world for the entire world. I’m impacting so many countries and it’s all from the perspectives of first world America and Silicon Valley. It’s imperative with the work that I do that we get other insights in, so that we’re building audits that are more inclusive and globally minded versus just building something that only works for white male Americans.

And I have seen in my work, time and time again, products that have had so many issues—whether it’s a dispenser that can’t pick up your skin color, or whether it is some AI that’s labeling Black people as gorillas, or a chat bot that’s running around finding Jewish people and insulting them. . . . We want to make sure we understand the perspective of the audience that we’re trying to build better solutions for.⁴

Enact an inclusive and transparent reporting and supporting process. I’ve worked in the entertainment and tech industries, which are both notorious for harassment. When I worked on films and TV, sexual harassment was prevalent—while on set I experienced regular pats on the butt; arms thrown around my waist; strokes on my arm or hair; comments about my figure, my skin, or my hair color; questions about my sexuality or sexual history. . . . Daily. Hourly. On every set I worked on, harassment and sexualization was prevalent.

This experience combined with seeing women directors not given the same chances as men, and women writers not given the same credit or pay as men, contributed to my leaving the industry. Even though I was really good at it and gaining success. As so many people with underrepresented identities do—I left because I didn’t want to fight every . . . single . . . day. There was no reporting structure; in fact, the people I would have reported harassment to were the same people harassing.

Later in my life, I was sexually harassed as an executive and while it was resolved, it was the straw that broke my ability to thrive at the company. That was when I stopped wanting to be there and began making plans to leave. Many people who have been harassed leave the workplace, because it can eat away at your ability to do your work well, tear up your confidence, or at the very least be very distracting. It can be incredibly demeaning when your colleague thinks of you as a sexual object rather than as a leader.

To fight harassment in your organization, create a transparent reporting process, with multiple people available to report to, where people can trust that real action will be taken and there will be no retaliation. But don’t stop there. Work to create a process for supporting people as well—after someone experiences harassment, bullying, microaggressions, systemic inequities, what will you do to repair the impact? They may need a break, to be reassured that they are valued, the ability to transfer teams, a safe space to talk about their experience, therapy, executive coaching, or other methods of support. Provide those opportunities for healing, and don’t assume what someone needs—ask.

Make sure your supply chain is diverse. A supplier diversity program can be incredibly impactful in the local community, supporting small women-, minority-, veteran-, disabled-, LGBTQIA+-owned businesses to grow and thrive. Vendors are often chosen based on networks, perpetuating the same network bias issues as our hiring practices. There are several companies doing this well who are publicly sharing their impact, and many templates for this are available online.

If sustainability and overall social impact is important to your company as well, combine impact measurements and ask vendors to report sustainability, social impact, and DEI efforts. Like all DEI programs, make sure you are measuring and holding teams accountable for achieving supplier diversity goals. You might share your commitment to supplier diversity—and even give some publicity to your suppliers—on your company website to share how you are doing the work.

Ensure your physical spaces and events are diverse and inclusive. Our surroundings can help facilitate welcoming, safety, engagement, commitment, and belonging—or they can do the opposite. At one company I worked with, a breastfeeding colleague had to sit on a stool in a corner of the dusty supply closet next to the mop and bucket to pump breast milk, carefully coordinating with the office manager and taping a handmade sign to the unlockable door so she wasn’t disturbed. A Muslim colleague had nowhere to pray in the office, so he “made up for” his daily prayers when he got home, but always felt guilty about it. Neither colleague felt a sense of belonging in the company.

Wayne, my team, and I have been hosting diversity and inclusion events around the world for many years, and we’ve found little, thoughtful actions can make a big difference in how someone feels—whether in the office or at an event. Here are some of the things we’ve learned:⁵

   Put together a diverse design team.

   Design marketing materials and an outreach strategy that are inclusive and find people where they are.

   Have a code of conduct that protects people, and enforce it.

   Organize inclusive content and diverse speakers.

   Create informal gathering spaces as well as quiet spaces for introverts and people with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

   Choose a space that is accessible by public transit and easily accessible for wheelchair, walker, and cane users. Provide areas designated for wheelchair users at the front, middle, and rear of the event space, and make sure pathways are wheelchair accessible (ADA compliant in the United States).

   Post signage that is inclusive of people with disabilities (low enough for people in wheelchairs to see, high contrast and large font sizes for people with low vision and color blindness, available in braille for people who are Blind).

   Design decor that reflects DEI.

   Arrange live captioning, sign language interpreters, and volunteer guides for people who are Blind—without people having to ask, because inclusion is walking into a space and belonging, not having to ask to belong.

   Train volunteers and vendors to use inclusive language, prime them to filter their biases and microaggressions, and teach them how to support people with disabilities who need accommodation.

   Arrange for a mother’s room, prayer room, and all-gender, accessible restrooms.

   Launch a diverse, inclusive, and accessible website and agenda (available in PDF). Make sure you ask if people have additional accessibility needs.

   Offer inclusive snacks, beverages, and meals (vegetarian, vegan, kosher, halal, gluten free, dairy free, and so on, with ingredients labeled).

   Provide a ticket option that is free (scholarships can work), and a sliding fee scale.

   Cultivate a diverse supply chain.

   For online events, most of this still applies. In addition, choose an event platform that is inclusive and accessible—most are not yet. Just like in-person events, hire live captioning (no, AI can’t do this well yet)—and sign language interpreters if you can. Offer accessible PDFs of your agenda, and describe your slides for people who are Blind, Low Vision, or on the phone. Make sure to build in breaks for the captioners and interpreters.

You can apply most of the preceding principles to your office design as well as events.

Work to build systems and processes that don’t currently exist or need to be redesigned with DEI in mind. Take a leadership role in developing programs to address DEI. You might put together a DEI committee or advisory board, and keep in mind that coalitions work best when they comprise a wide diversity of people across offices, regions, and departments. Use the inclusive decision-making processes to guide the group.

I recommend starting with an assessment: measuring what matters through surveys (demographic, inclusion, and engagement), listening sessions, and one-on-one interviews. Also consider working with your HR or people teams to do an equity audit across compensation and promotion. Once you know the state of DEI, you can begin to prioritize, develop goals, and create an action plan for achieving them.

Create Change in Your Industry

As we have seen throughout this book, there are so many ways that inequities appear in our systems, processes, cultures, words, and actions. Collectively we have the power to change this beyond our workplaces as well. Here are a few examples:

Convene industry leaders and work toward change together. One of the most impactful steps you can take in any sector is to convene industry leaders and collectively commit to creating change, then hold each other accountable. It can be powerful for leaders to come together formally or informally to discuss the state of the industry, share learnings, brainstorm solutions, and build best practices. You don’t have to be an industry executive to convene leaders. When we first started this work at Change Catalyst in 2014, as entrepreneurs and consultants we worked to convene tech industry leaders to focus on solutions to DEI. We did it by asking people to come together, developing a shared purpose, and building relationships one at a time.

You can also facilitate smaller meetings or convene people with similar roles to your own across your industry. You might host industry-wide events, industry roundtable discussions, town hall gatherings, CEO meetings, online groups, invite-only events, or backroom conversations alongside another event. It could even start with a coffee, lunch, or happy hour meeting and turn into something bigger.

Shine a spotlight on DEI in your industry. Industry leaders are now paying attention to DEI in the tech, entertainment, and advertising industries because people in those industries spoke up and helped lead the change. Aside from convening, how can you spotlight DEI and contribute to building DEI best practices in your industry? You might start by telling your own story if you’ve experienced exclusion and propose pathways to change, elevating and amplifying voices of people with underrepresented identities in your industry, and writing articles and social media posts addressing the need for a focus on DEI. Publicizing your organization’s diversity metrics and strategies can be a good catalyst for change, if you’re in a position to do this or advocate for it. Also encourage your colleagues at other companies to do the same.

Partner with and support organizations working on systemic change in the industry. They often need corporate backing to do the work they do—whether they focus on events, research, education programs, policy, or other advocacy. Help fund their work if you’re in a position to, or find other creative ways that you can partner together for mutual gain.

At industry events, advocate for diversity and inclusion. Often industry event organizers have not done the work they should do to make their events diverse and inclusive. If you see an event is not diverse or accessible, they don’t have a code of conduct, or they have messaging that isn’t inclusive—contact the organizers. Assume good intent, and work to educate them. If you’re asked to speak at an event where the event or panel is not diverse, offer to help make it more diverse through your connections.

Continue Creating Change Across Society

While this book is about how to be an ally in the workplace, as we’ve learned, the inequities and injustices across our society affect us all. Here are a few ways to get started continuing to create change across society:

Raise children who have empathy and work for justice, inclusion, and equity. Talk with them about why you are working on being a good ally, and perhaps enroll them in working with you to create change. Buy toys and books for children that represent diverse experiences and cultures. Work with your child’s school to ensure they are offering diverse and inclusive classroom and after-school programs, physical spaces, language development programs, textbooks, and readings; and they are encouraging empathy, understanding, and collaboration.

Do your civic duty. Vote, advocate, and demand change. Call your local, state, and national leaders to let them know you care and want change. Vote for candidates with underrepresented identities, who have a reputation for correcting systemic inequity and injustice, and building economic wealth and health for everyone. Help organizations that are fighting voter suppression. If you protest as an ally, do listen to the organizers and follow their lead. Help keep people safe—remember, never instigate violence or vandalism at a peaceful protest. Some allies peacefully put their bodies between police and protestors with underrepresented identities to help keep them safe.

If you’re like most people with busy lives, you view a summons for jury duty as an unwanted hindrance to your work and personal schedule. Reframe your thinking and do your jury duty. Biases are prevalent in the court systems. People with underrepresented identities need allies, as they are disproportionately incarcerated and receive longer sentences.

Align your dollars with your values. Consider how and where you spend money and strive to align your dollars with your values. Financially support organizations working to create change. Make investments in companies and portfolios that support DEI and social impact. Support businesses owned by women, people with underrepresented racial and ethnic identities, veterans, people with disabilities, people who are LGBTQIA+, and immigrants.

When you see something, do something. Intervene when you see harassment, bullying, biases, and microaggressions outside your workplace as well. And record in case the recording can be useful in prosecution later. Be an upstander.⁷

You have the power to create change. Keep learning, keep advocating!

Create an Action Plan

Leading the change and transforming your workplace requires commitment and taking steady steps to pave the path for change. What actions will you take to develop inclusive team norms and/or create more equitable and inclusive systems and processes in your workplace?

EXERCISE