Karen McFarlane: 0:32

Hi Brittany, hi Karen.

Brittany S. Hale: 0:35

How are you? I am swell. It's a full moon today. I feel a little bit wonky, but right now I'm happily serving as a bed for Mina.

Karen McFarlane: 0:48

Hi Mina. She's resting as usual. As usual, yes, a permanent audience member. I know, I know I need to come back as your dog.

Brittany S. Hale: 1:01

Yes, it is always a great idea to come back as a childless single Black woman's dog. Her birthday was recently. I thinly sliced a chicken breast breast, sauteed it for her.

Karen McFarlane: 1:20

She had a great time oh nice, you gotta come to their house for dinner exactly I just baked the chicken breast for my dog. There's no sauteing and stuff going on.

Brittany S. Hale: 1:34

Listen, it's still, but you did it. You did it. Only the best from our list.

Karen McFarlane: 1:43

So we are. What are we? A little more than one week out from the election? Yeah, and, as our listeners should know, we are both very disappointed in the outcome, given who we had supported, or still support, I'm not gonna say had, but still it's been a year of a week, yeah but it has, although, to be honest, I've mostly stayed out of the news and social for the most part.

Karen McFarlane: 2:15

Just to you know, there's a flurry of activity, can be very overwhelming and I had some things I needed to focus on and this would distract me quite a bit. But I think this weekend I'm ready to kind of dive into what's really happening. I see, you know people call me and you know, obviously we talk and then the notifications that come up on my phone are unavoidable, yes, but um, yeah, it's going to be a really different time and, um, you know, there's so many things to unpack in what's going to be happening in the coming days, months, years. But you know, one piece of that pie is the. I don't know what the repercussions are. What's next for diversity, equity, inclusion in this new political climate?

Brittany S. Hale: 3:13

Yeah, I think that is top of mind, I would say, for everyone but the professionals that I know who are in the DEI space, the chief diversity officers of organizations. You know everyone's thinking about it, especially since president elect Trump mentioned that he's going to issue some sort of retributive justice for people who've been wronged by DEI, which ironically sounds like reparations, which he seems not to be a fan of unless it advances his own agenda, which is interesting.

Karen McFarlane: 4:03

It's interesting, and I think the scary part is it's very possible that would happen, right, if we just go back to history, slave owners were compensated when slaves were freed and their property was freed, and so it's really just going back to the old playbook to further advance certain groups of people on the backs of other people.

Karen McFarlane: 4:32

And so, you know, one of the things that I think is super scary right around this new world is that there aren't any real guardrails around it.

Karen McFarlane: 4:47

I think we learned that from his last presidency that a lot of the things that we thought held our democracy together were not necessarily done by, you know, laws or other regulations. They were mostly done because people had ethics and values and a belief in how to hold that democracy together, and so I think the anything is possible is possible. You know, the mantra here is like it really fits what could happen in the future and what those policies will be right. And so we see a lot of companies. We saw a lot of companies retreat from their DEI programs with things like what Trump is talking about with Stephen Miller, who was one of the architects of one of the you know one of the things we talked about in the very beginning of our podcast around the fearless fund and dismantling programs that supported, you know, underrepresented groups, particularly Black groups and also around the affirmative action ruling With him as deputy chief of staff, right.

Karen McFarlane: 6:06

a lot of these things are amplified in very scary ways. So what does that mean for inclusion in our world?

Brittany S. Hale: 6:16

What does that mean for inclusion?

Karen McFarlane: 6:18

in our world.

Brittany S. Hale: 6:19

You know it's a great question and so, just to kind of take it back, I know, when it comes to the branches of government the legislative, executive and judicial branches we have, within our representative democracy, checks and balances.

Brittany S. Hale: 6:40

You know we've traditionally relied on these checks and balances, whether it's the Supreme Court issuing a ruling or an opinion, whether it's the legislator, you know, putting forth laws right through the House of Representatives through the Senate or the executive right, the president issuing executive orders, and we saw with the last Trump presidency, I believe he issued some of the most, if not you know the um the highest number of executive orders, and so you're right, I think. Well, now we have um within the Supreme court. I want to say it's six, three in favor of conservatives. Republican majority in the Senate. Yep, we have a new speaker, Republican, still contested, but it seems like Republicans will maintain a majority in the House. Yeah, and we now have an incoming Republican president who I don't know if he would identify himself as a Republican right, he would just identify himself as himself. And so I think what we've seen?

Brittany S. Hale: 8:10

Compliance from a vast number of Republicans who are focused on advancing Trump's agenda, and this year they issued a report on C-suite executives, about DEI, and, for those of you who don't know, CHIEF is a membership community of women executives. Across the United States executives polled, we see that about 80% of companies are maintaining or increasing DEI initiatives or investments, which I thought was interesting. About 44% are expanding efforts and 40% of executives view DEI as a core competency for C-suite leadership view DEI as a core competency for C-suite leadership Thoughts.

Karen McFarlane: 9:24

I mean, I agree it's a positive trend. I would love to see that survey taken again, again in this new political climate. I do believe that most people feel like it has value, whether it's social value or business value. I do believe when they apply it strategically and they measure it, they can see those outcomes. And I do believe a lot of companies do try to embed those principles, whatever they may call it, within their organizations. Right?

Karen McFarlane: 9:59

My concern is, you know, because of the climate, because of you know proposed, you know new mandates that we have yet to see, right, but how does that affect corporations still embracing it? Does it cause some organizations to back off of it completely? Does it cause some organizations to rebrand it? Right? Is the movement going underground rather than being amplified out loud, and what's the repercussions of it going underground versus the amplification? Do people think it's going away because it's going underground? Right, the goal of DEI has always pretty much been to not need it, been to not need it, but we're absolutely not there yet. So my concern is, if it does go underground, a great, it's still happening right In some form or fashion, but people don't know it's happening and don't understand its benefits. So it loses some of the gravitas that it needs to have. And if it's being rebranded, fine, as long as those outcomes are still being measured and talked about in a positive way.

Brittany S. Hale: 11:36

You know, as you were talking about the options, and I've heard a lot of the same executives thinking about ways that they can develop community as they seek to go underground. My question is, and probably has been for a while, whether or not DEI has a PR problem. Are we? And I would say this, and I'm curious to know what you think, from a marketing perspective, it seems like DEI has a messaging and a marketing issue, because most, I would argue everyone in the workforce is an example of diversity, and DEI is not solely just about race and gender. As we've spoken about, equity is not solely just about race and gender. Those are examples and components, but it's not just that. The fact that you're wearing glasses and I'm wearing contacts right now is an example of equity.

Brittany S. Hale: 12:43

Right, we're provided with resources to allow for us to be able to see something people don't think about. When I hear people talk about going underground, my initial response is when we think about what we're facing, some people may say fascism, other people may say an unduly restrictive government or are anticipating an unduly restrictive government, which is atypical for Republicans right Because.

Brittany S. Hale: 13:20

Republicans are in favor of small government and deregulation. Right Is the tenet and, I guess, the advice that you don't comply in advance, yeah Right. When I hear people say, oh, we need to go underground, or don't call it DEI, let's do ideas, jedi, all of this stuff To me that seems like compliance in advance that there's something wrong with saying that. What's your take on that?

Karen McFarlane: 13:51

Yeah. So also going back to, does DEI have a PR problem? You know, I don't think it did. I think that you know a small group of people you know I'm not little bit followed by gender, but primarily race and to use that to, I want to say, manipulate people into thinking that it was a negative thing. We talked a little bit about this on one of our earlier podcasts around DEI and MEI right, and so MEI was merit.

Brittany S. Hale: 15:07

Oh shoot, I don't remember yet. To be fair, Elon. Musk didn't stay on the topic for very long either, so I think you're forgiven for forgetting.

Karen McFarlane: 15:15

Yeah, it wasn't even important. Okay, right, but my point is that there's, like you, all, this propaganda against the EI right, focusing primarily on race and then adeptly again using, like the Civil Rights Act and you know, other regulations to fold around that so that it looked as if this kind of reverse discrimination was going on, when you know we're forgetting historically why this law was created in the first place, right, and so we're ignoring, you know, the real reasons behind the actual need and the inequitable barriers that have been, you know, risen against certain groups of people over decades or centuries. And so I don't know that it has a PR problem, but you know it's hard to fight propaganda when, when, especially in the beginning of something where people were really just starting to embrace it and they're really trying to understand it and do good, and it leans into fear you know, um, in terms of compliance early, complying early yeah, I don't think you should try to comply early, but you should be prepared for what's to come right.

Karen McFarlane: 16:47

If this was a different again different Republican administration, you could figure out your next step in a well-thought-out, meaningful way, right, and you probably wouldn't even be asked to do it. Right. You wouldn't really be asked to change, to be honest, right. But because you don't know what's going to happen next, you don't know the extremities of what's going to be proposed, because of the people who are in office that focus on the fringe, because in the previous administration we saw so many horrible things, right, that we couldn't believe, didn't believe could happen, and then, when they did happen, we were shocked, right. I think that's where you get early compliance from. You get people thinking about, you know about how not to be caught in the, but how to keep the momentum going and track your outcomes so that when the time comes back around, you can talk about it in a meaningful way and show your progress.

Brittany S. Hale: 18:22

I think that makes a lot of sense, I predict, and I guess it's good news for risk management specialists, business strategists around. I think it's going to be really interesting for us to figure out ways to navigate through, and I think conflict is going to become a huge point and we've not to resolve it.

Karen McFarlane: 18:58

You know me.

Brittany S. Hale: 18:58

I'm never in favor of conflict resolution. I am in favor of conflict curiosity, because I think our approach to conflict resolution is to step away from conflict and avoid it at all costs, at the cost of developing responsive and innovative solutions to conflict. When we think about it, conflict isn't fighting. It's not folks tussling in the streets, right. It's, if anything, that gap between what we want and what we're experiencing. Yep and, more than anything, organizations, companies, especially those who advance and support DEI initiatives are experiencing and will continue to experience that space between what they want and what they're experiencing, and the goal is to figure out how to navigate through that. It's not going away.

Karen McFarlane: 19:58

No, and you need conflict Conflict stretches you Like. Not all conflict is bad. Conflict, right. We experience conflict within ourselves all the time to challenge ourselves, to do something different. It could be something small, like what am I going to wear today, right, but it could be something other than that Ordering out or cooking, exactly, exactly.

Karen McFarlane: 20:20

So I think that there's a redefinition. I agree with you, and people think about conflict as being a bad thing and I think about it as being the necessary friction. You need to level up and think differently. And so, even with diversity, that conflict between people because of those differences is what levels you up to think differently. That's why you can't have all these like-minded people Like who's going to stretch you? Right, when you think about your performance evaluations and goals? Right, like you have your achievable goals, but you have your stretch goals, your target versus your achievable right. Like don't you have. Like you have your achievable goals, but you have your stretch goals, your target versus your achievable right. Ceos have those as well, because you need to be pushed and you can only be pushed through conflict.

Karen McFarlane: 21:11

And so I don't think that companies should, you know, avoid it. Right? They should lean all the way into it to find those innovative solutions on how to still create community, how to still build culture, how to still embrace the diversity of people and ideas that make them better. So I guess the thing is for people to be brave in a very different way than they have been before, and we don't exactly know what that looks like, right, but I think the other flip side of this, too, is what happens when you walk away from these principles and behaviors. Right, what do you open yourself up to? So you just talked about risk behaviors, right? What do you open yourself up to? So you just talked about risk management, right? So you know legally what does that mean? Right? So I don't know the answer to this.

Karen McFarlane: 22:14

I think this is an interesting debate, right, but like if the mandate says, hey, you can't focus on inclusion, right, diversity, equity, inclusion and someone who is of an underrepresented group experiences inclusion, the lack of inclusion in some way and can prove it what legal consequences are there for you as an organization? You know equal opportunity still exists. Anti-harassment, anti you know all of these things still exist that you have to abide by, and those are mitigated by making sure you have inclusive practices within your organization. So you're caught in the middle of a rock and a hard place, and I'm just scratching the surface when I say that right, how are you going to manage? And this is a huge question for boards, a huge question for senior leadership.

Brittany S. Hale: 23:28

One practical tidbit that our listeners will get for free is, of course, I want them to think about the administrative backlog and absolute overwhelm that is in store for them, as well as US courts. If you thought the pandemic was bad, there are some court districts that are still dealing with cases from 2020, 2021, just because of the sheer backlog. Yeah, yeah, with these questions to be interpreted both on a federal and state level, I know most state courts, even federal courts, are not equipped to deal with the sheer number of cases that are poised to come through their halls Without DEI, without expanding the workforce, without expanding opportunity to government that the Republican Party advertises what makes them most appealing is going to be completely discredited by what seems to come.

Brittany S. Hale: 24:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I want our listeners executives leaders within these organizations to be aware, if you're looking at DEI through solely a moral lens, through a heart space lens, it's not incorrect, it has its place, but practically we're stalling innovation, we're stalling business growth. We're going to stall everything that seems to have been at least articulated through polling, important to the American people the economy, so we're talking glasses. Economy right, so we're talking glasses. Perfect example the conflict experienced by people who, for one reason or another, couldn't get out to go to a store.

Brittany S. Hale: 25:57

Spur the innovation and the development of a startup were be parker. Right now, you, you don't have to leave your home for whatever reason. Agoraphobes could now purchase right, people for whom mobility is a barrier, or even just convenience, right, you can purchase items from your home and have them delivered to you. If we're shirking away from the conflict, if we're moving away from innovative and inclusive solutions because that's a bad thing and we're going to be receiving prescriptive recommendations against that at a state and federal level what innovation, what business growth is there going to be throughout the country?

Karen McFarlane: 26:54

Innovation and inclusive practices are also marketing practices, right, because it is about inviting your audience, a broader audience and community, into your fold. And so what do you do? How do you grow and build your audiences if you're not talking to them specifically and connecting with them on who they are? We are emotional beings, right. Markers want to tap into those emotions to get people to make purchases, but we've learned that we've had to connect with people in a very different way, and so you know leaders need to really think about exactly what you're saying from that lens as well and understand how it impacts their business negatively. It's not just about people talking with their pocketbooks and wanting to be aligned with organizations that share their values. That's an important and huge part of it, right, but ultimately organizations need to expand, right, and so how are you going to do that without some of these practices in place?

Karen McFarlane: 28:11

It was on a webinar the other day. It was about executive compensation and stuff, and they were talking about the future and how to think about setting your CEO's targets, and a big question which I thought was really interesting was around ERG, and the reason why ERG was there was because they kind of bifurcated how people thought about that. One was people would move more towards sustainability when they talked about ERG or more towards DEI. And one of the cautions on this webinar was that if you make ERG a target for your CEO, would it be diluting some of the other targets? And so there's now conversation about ERG from a D-I-Lens really, right, that's the code.

Karen McFarlane: 29:16

Maybe it should no longer be a target. So the counter to that is really, you know, indicative of what we've seen in the marketplace, right? So companies who were being more performative about it right, they've gotten rid of their programs by whatever name they've called it, right. But companies for which having an inclusive audience right, having let's take the word inclusive out having a larger audience that you know welcomes in the largest group of people, no matter who they are, right, you know, if that is important to you, then you're going to lean more into ERG. Which codename for that at that time was DEI, right, and talking about this. So it just really encourages organizations to understand their customers and their business and apply it accordingly, but I thought it was super interesting that this is now.

Karen McFarlane: 30:19

the conversation is do we even need it as a primary target for our CEO and if it's not, what does that mean for the rest of the organization? How does that filter?

Brittany S. Hale: 30:31

down, correct, correct. And I was having a conversation with a woman about the generational differences in the workforce and she's now retired, but she'd worked about 40 years in financial services, but she came from the eastern block, okay, so she had a very. Her perspective on the differences in the workforce was uh, eventually they'll comply, because they'll have no choice. People will either work in offices or they will starve. And as simple as that seems, we've seen that's not the case. And so for those who are shirking away from that problem, right, how do we quantify ERGs? Maybe we don't need them at all, maybe we can. Just, you know, people will need jobs, people will need us, and so we don't have to engage with DEI. We can skirt around it. We're not in that space.

Karen McFarlane: 31:47

We definitely not. It really does not speak to the intelligence level of intelligence they put on their potential employees or their current employees. Right, like, people want to live, you know, a good life for themselves. They want to make good money, they want to obtain wealth and, while people may have to take a job for a period of time, you don't want them taking your job and finding ways to get out of it Like, what's my next move? Because my next move is not here.

Karen McFarlane: 32:14

So while you may get some of those people, it's not going to be all of the people. You may not get the very best people right. You'll get somebody right, but is it really going to be the person that's going to move your organization forward? We see a lot of gig workers now. We see a rise of the fractional worker. You know I used to be one of like a couple. Ok, now there's a sea of fractionals. We're seeing people create opportunities for themselves and using all the available tools out there. So you're not only in competition with the next organization that is like yours, or not even like yours, because we're more skills based now at this point, but you're also in competition with their dreams and aspirations that can be achieved outside of a traditional organization, so it's something to think about.

Brittany S. Hale: 33:13

I think we've given them a whole lot to think about and I think I know we'll continue to keep ideating along the way and definitely keeping leaders accountable.

Karen McFarlane: 33:28

Absolutely, and I think the bright side if I can find one right is really in the part that we're talking about conflict, right, like that friction that's going to make us all better. So there's going to be a lot of friction, I think I can predict coming up right and we're going to be learning together because this is really a new era, right, and so, yeah, we'll continue ideating, we'll share ideas, right, and hopefully we'll figure it all out and mitigate some of the damage that could potentially occur.

Brittany S. Hale: 34:10

Yes, and hopefully you'll stick with us as we do.

Karen McFarlane: 34:16

I hope so it should be an interesting time. Well, it looks like Mina needs to take a nap.

Brittany S. Hale: 34:25

So we're keeping her up.

Karen McFarlane: 34:29

All right, we'll be back next time with the E word See ya. See ya.