Karen McFarlane: 0:32

Hi, brittany, welcome back. It's good to see you. It's good to see you too, and you have to see our guest, our producer, mina Mina. Hi, mina, new haircut growing in New hair.

Brittany S. Hale: 0:55

Who's this?

Karen McFarlane: 1:02

I saw her earlier. You know I was joking that I you know she reminded me of thundercats from back in the day, you know, with the hair growing in. So you know, now I feel like I need to watch an episode of a fine one. You have to.

Brittany S. Hale: 1:15

Absolutely. That's what we'll do after this. Okay.

Karen McFarlane: 1:20

Exactly, and you know, the Thundercats fought chaos every single episode, and we're living in a world full of chaos right now.

Brittany S. Hale: 1:30

We are, we are, it is. It is a quite plot twist in this latest season of America.

Karen McFarlane: 1:42

You know, some years from now someone's going to write an episodic and they're going to have at least seven or eight, maybe 13 seasons. This might be the longest running episodic television show ever, by the time they start and finish. Stunning, you know, episodic television show ever, by the time they start and finish. So Absolutely.

Brittany S. Hale: 1:58

I just hope that they they portray us correctly, accurately.

Karen McFarlane: 2:03

Hopefully we'll make the cut. But you know, there's so much, so many different things happening in the world today, right, like, obviously we talk a lot about DEI, but this is really, at the end of the day, a leadership issue, right? So we see this flurry of executive orders being signed that affect large swaths of people within our country, outside of our country. It has a domino effect across the board that I don't know that we as people fully understand, because some of these things that have surfaced, some of us may be hearing about for the very first time, right, or have like some vague understanding of, but don't really can't really get to the heart of the matter because it just hasn't been part of our lexicon for a really long time. But you know, again, it just boils down to leadership.

Karen McFarlane: 3:06

You know, I just one of the crazy executive orders is like oh, plastic is back, we need to switch. You know there's going to be executive order about paper straws, right, oh, plastic is back, we need to switch. There's going to be executive order about paper straws. Is that really where we need to focus? Do we need to level that conversation up? Is that a critical determinant?

Brittany S. Hale: 3:26

in our day-to-day. I don't know.

Karen McFarlane: 3:29

Right. I think that one of the things we could spend a little bit of time on today is helping people understand, despite the fact that this flurry of activity that's happening around diversity, equity, inclusion, what they can do or continue to do as leaders while all of this stuff is being sorted out.

Brittany S. Hale: 4:11

I think, at the end of the day, that's one of love, a system. And I put such emphasis on those because most of the time we believe we're far more in control of our actions, thoughts and behaviors than we actually are.

Brittany S. Hale: 4:31

And because taking time to process and make a decision takes more energy and time than we often like for it to. When you plug into a system, that is the energy efficient way to move goals forward. And most people, I think, when you present them with the idea of DEI initiatives, incorporating DEI into their culture, defining their culture, most people think, oh, this is going to be super hard. Oh, we have to start from scratch.

Karen McFarlane: 5:14

So I like that we'll be talking about this today.

Karen McFarlane: 5:16

Yeah, let's just say this part up front.

Karen McFarlane: 5:20

What I think more people have come to understand is that DEI is not just about race, about race or gender or gender.

Karen McFarlane: 5:39

It is about a series of characteristics that differentiate all of us but have meaning to us as individuals, as a group, as a society, and that the purpose of diversity, equity, inclusion as a whole is to make sure that everyone feels like they belong as part of the greater society, as part of the organization, whichever group they sit in, Because we are recognizing that there are differences that we hope to appreciate, celebrate but also, in some cases, make some accommodations for, so that they can feel like a full part of this society. And that's it. And you know the fact that the conversation you know the fact that the conversation, particularly during the campaign, focused on very polarizing issues confused people and they didn't quite understand that they may be included in the DEI definition and are getting a wake-up call that they also are included. So I just wanted to set the tone there, but you may have some other things you want to say about what DEI is and what DEI is not.

Brittany S. Hale: 7:13

I think you did that perfectly. I think that makes a lot of sense. The only thing that I would add is that DEI facilitates and furthers merit. It doesn't replace it, and I think that is the number one concern that we've heard is that organizations should be merit-based, and DEI and merit, or MEI as we've seen it touted by others they're not oppositional others. You create DEI frameworks so that you can focus on merit.

Karen McFarlane: 8:00

That's all. No, that is an excellent point that needed to be highlighted Because, as we also saw, just as an example, when the plane crashed in the Washington DC area, there was an automatic assumption that DEI was a culprit before there was even any investigation. Right, that DEI was a culprit. And it also the president at the time basically said that people with disabilities are DEI hires and potentially were hired to be part of the NTSB, and that was a factor in this crash.

Karen McFarlane: 8:55

Right, which was incredibly irresponsible to say and also offensive to say, because it leans on a trope that people with disabilities are less intelligent, right, don't have the capability to be excellent in their work and don't deserve any merit. Right, like, because there's something wrong with them and, first of all, having a disability does not mean that anything's wrong with them. You just have different challenges that you have to face and the definition of disability is pretty broad. So, like, what are? What are we talking about? And it also ignored the fact that there are a series of merit-based steps to become part of the NTSB. Right, like you just don't walk in off the street and be like yeah, you know this characteristic, this DEI characteristic, and you should hire me and I can just skip through all of your protocols. That doesn't happen. As a matter of fact, those things might even be harder for you, especially if they weren't built in consideration of some of your differences, and the fact that you got through them anyway actually speaks volumes about your capabilities.

Brittany S. Hale: 10:26

I have to admit the my own bias and I think we were speaking when we heard about the crash. And I think we were speaking when we heard about the crash. I heard the president's statements about DEI and I immediately thought the pilots may look a particular way and that was what caused the statement about DEI and I was wrong.

Karen McFarlane: 11:15

And I was wrong, they all presented to be people that at least the president and his administration would, I believe, find to be highly capable and competent people, because they were all white men. Yeah, well, I have to admit that's what I thought too, because, you know, the conversation around this has been primarily that DEI equals race and then secondarily, gender, right, and I thought that too, because that because, if he's talking, that's what I think he's talking about and was surprised to learn that he was talking about a whole different group that is inclusive of white people, because white people can be disabled. So it was really interesting to see him, I think for one of the very first times. Well, that's not true, because he mocked them during his candidacy for the previous election. So, you know, but it's not as prevalent as you know the, you know other things that he's talked about.

Karen McFarlane: 12:12

So I also found myself like kind of falling into that exact same trap, right, right, and so it was like we have to still, like we all have to still retrain ourselves. So it's it's easy to see how other people can kind of fall into that trap If we as, as people who are very focused on DEI, do it too. So if you didn't, you know, you're forgiven and everybody out there is forgiven.

Brittany S. Hale: 12:38

We just need to do that and to that point it's being forgiven, and continuing to stay curious and say, huh, okay, let me unpack that Right.

Karen McFarlane: 12:50

Exactly, exactly, and so we're seeing that play out now on an even broader scale, right? So we see that he was talking about. When he talked about DEI, it wasn't just race, it was women, and I think some women didn't really believe it was really women, right, it was. But now they're they're seeing evidence of that. We just talked about disabled people. Veterans were seeing that pop up right, like we're seeing certain groups, like the Venezuelans, right, for example, who were very pro-Trump that he was also talking about them, right, and maybe they would have still voted the way that they voted. Something tells me that, if they thought it was going to affect them negatively, I think that most people, if they thought that these things were going to affect them negatively, may have reconsidered or thought differently about their approach to their vote. And he was dishonest let's just be honest about what his positions were but it's a huge wake up call for a lot of different groups here.

Brittany S. Hale: 14:03

Yes, yes, and that is the point. I'm so glad you brought that up, because to anyone listening listening who may think that they don't occupy a particular group, that fits within DEI, you're probably mistaken, because DEI covers white people, black people, latin people, asian people, right All, all races, all genders, non-conforming people, people who are binary, people who are veterans, people who are disabled, people who have invisible disabilities, people who are able-bodied, people who believe in progress and innovation, people who are parents, people who are caregivers, people who are caregivers of parents. I mean, I could go on, I won't, but the point being is, 99.9% of people fit within some of those categories that I mentioned.

Karen McFarlane: 15:25

Absolutely. I mean, let's talk about parents for a second. Yes, so incredibly universal to many people, not everybody. Yes, so incredibly universal to many people, not everybody. But the fact that you have changing tables in bathrooms, the fact that you have family bathrooms, the fact that you have lactation rooms, the fact that you have parental leave, family leave right, all of these things help you and your families. They support you in meaningful ways.

Brittany S. Hale: 16:11

It being extended to the non-birthing parent right, which is why we're calling it parental leave versus paternity leave Extended to parents who adopt Right IVF right, even being covered.

Karen McFarlane: 16:26

I think in some cases it can be covered, but in all cases right, all of these different things right. They're in support of helping you be able to do something, something that's more convenient for you, so you have a, your quality of life is better, or something that you can't do, like IVF, for example. That's going to help you build your families and give you a different opportunity in life and that's by no fault of your own right. It's helping you through. So, like you said, brittany, everybody kind of fits in that definition.

Karen McFarlane: 17:11

You know of DEI and you know I've been hearing a lot on the news. You know you have the pundits kind of just vacillating about, like what's going on in the world, and one of them talked about the fact that you know that white men are very fearful and that's where some of this is coming from and I'm like, well, that's interesting, but they also fit under this category because all of the intersectionality, right. So what white men are fearful? Can we define that scope of what the idyllic situation looks like in America where you don't need any layer of DEI? I would love to know what that looks like Absolutely.

Brittany S. Hale: 18:07

Because let's say again and I think it does a disservice to white men right For that to be their only identity, but let's say you do have a workforce of solely white men, you're going to have people still different abilities, different hair colors, different you know, what I mean, and we don't. We would not want their how they look to replace what they could do Exactly.

Brittany S. Hale: 18:45

And so, in an odd way, we all agree that the way a person looks should not speak to their ability Mm-hmm. Some of us are just a bit more, I would say, forthright about that than others Mm-hmm Right about that, than others, mm-hmm Right. So when we're talking about so, I kind of want to go back to these frameworks and these operating systems. Yep, I'll share three that I've worked with. I know that you are incredibly well-versed and well-studied in this as well, so I'd love to hear your perspective. And just really quickly. So I worked with collective accountability frameworks, intervention-based frameworks and systemic change frameworks. Okay, so for those who are unaware, collective accountability is exactly what it sounds like. So if we take an organization, this particular framework would seek to make everyone within the organization responsible for advancing DEI.

Karen McFarlane: 20:07

DEI.

Brittany S. Hale: 20:08

Whether you are a first-year associate, whether you are in the C-suite or you're somewhere in the middle, everyone is aware of and accountable to DEI within that organization. So I've said you know, trickle-down economics may not work, but trickle-down culture does right. So that looks like your CEOs, like at a Costco or at a JP Morgan, saying we're not getting rid of these frameworks, these systems. We found them to be highly beneficial, highly lucrative and we're going to continue. And that is echoed at every level, not only verbally but through practice.

Brittany S. Hale: 21:01

Right, you have intervention-based and that's where you take notice. Whether it's through recruitment promotion, something happens where we say, huh, we realize that we don't have any women in the C-suite, we realize that our marketing teams are not very diverse in their global experience and develop models and systems to shift that. So from a recruitment piece it could be we realize that we've only recruited from three schools. Does this make sense? And should we expand our reach to see the types of talent that we may be missing out on? Right, race and gender is not part of that conversation, right?

Karen McFarlane: 22:10

No, I didn't hear it yet.

Brittany S. Hale: 22:11

Yeah, but that's what it is. And then, finally, you have systemic change frameworks, which, again, that's where, exactly as it sounds, you want to change the system as a whole. That's where you're looking at policies and procedures. You're looking at corporate governance procedures. You're looking at corporate governance.

Karen McFarlane: 22:32

you're looking at maybe even you know the opportunity to leverage legislation to advance this within your organization.

Karen McFarlane: 22:45

So I'll pause there. Yeah, I mean it feels very cyclical in my view, right, like you kind of explained it, linear, but it's just a circle. So it starts like you just said. It starts with what the mandate is at the top and then everybody understands the mandate and looks at their respective areas to figure out where they can make improvements. So that's the intervention piece and then as you start to look at those and everybody's identifying areas of opportunity to improve, based on the mandate from the collective accountability structure, then you are putting in more permanent measures, systemic permanent measures, so that you're not doing one-offs. It just becomes part of the endless loop of productivity or accountability Sorry, accountability. So I think that's incredibly simple to think through right, it's what people do for their data, like for other problems and situations. For other problems and situations, it's just about applying it to culture and how you want to represent your culture for your organization, and I think that's incredibly helpful to think about it in those terms.

Brittany S. Hale: 24:11

What do you think for anyone listening who says, yes, we want to keep DEI or we want to keep an eye on DEI, focus on DEI within our organization. What do you think some of their biggest challenges are outside of legislative shifts, because we know for nonprofits that can be an issue. Any organization that's receiving any sort of federal funding, that could be an issue. But just within the organization, within, let's say, having conversation with key stakeholders.

Karen McFarlane: 24:54

So I had this conversation the other day, actually, and we were talking about marketing, and one of the comments that I made was I actually don't think, whether you call it DEI or not, because that's a different conversation anything actually changes for marketers Because, at the end of the day, a marketer's job is to know their customer but also assist in growing the business. If your business requires more customers, right, then I don't think any business is in the business of saying we don't want this particular customer based on their physical characteristics, for example, unless they make clothes for people that are five, two and under petite clothes only, right, for example. Right, but they're not in that business. They're in the business of understanding what motivates people to purchase their product, what problem they're trying to solve for certain personas, right, but it's not typically based on some physical characteristic, with some exception, don't get me wrong. And so segmentation in marketing, for example, it has. It's just been a thing that we do, right, we're supposed to segment our customers by certain characteristics and that's how we grow the business, so expanding that a little bit more.

Karen McFarlane: 26:37

For most companies that we're dealing with, they're global companies and so not having some sort of cultural intelligence or cultural competencies on your team, whether it's internal or external talent, is actually a negative, because how are you going to connect with those customers emotionally, really understand what problems you're trying to solve, because they're not the same for everybody. Some of those are based on culture or region. How are you going to tap into that if you don't build those competencies on your team? Even if you are a US company, you are still dealing with various different cultures. United States is a your job, right? And putting out again from a marketing perspective, putting out content of whatever type I think a lot of most of marketing is a ton of content of whatever type is about appealing to that persona in a very specific way, and we also know personalization is a key driver of engagement, and so how do you personalize that content in a meaningful way? So I don't actually think it changes that much in that respect. You zero out a little bit more from a leadership perspective, right.

Karen McFarlane: 28:17

I think your biggest challenge is how do you communicate that nothing's changed, although some things have changed in a way that doesn't look like and these are for people who want to do DX it doesn't look like you are backing out of your goal for inclusion and belonging, because I think all businesses understand that at least, at the very least, the people that work there need to be connected to you in some way in order for them to be productive and be innovative. So how you do that within this new world order can be tricky if you don't have the support from your, you know, board of directors, or if you're just responding to external pressures, because we see some companies scrubbing some pieces of information from their website, but does that necessarily mean they've given up on all of DEI? Well, that remains to be seen. So I think that's a big challenge is the communication piece, which is always a challenge, like communication is, like, I think, one of the biggest challenges in every single corporation ever, because you can never find the right way to say the right thing to every single person. So I think that's it.

Karen McFarlane: 29:48

And the other part too is just and we talked about this before it's like standing on your own business, like you know ultimately how to run your business and what's good for your business, and if you for some reason feel like people not feeling included, like you want to run a you know one size fits all factory for your business, like you think that makes sense for you. Well, go ahead. You have actually the right to do that and it may be successful for you, but in many other companies it's not going to be. What do you think the challenges are?

Brittany S. Hale: 30:29

I think first, I think that was perfectly stated and I'm just I guess this is, this is the crux of it. This is what makes sense. You can't have, you can't be um. Create this personalized experience that people relate to, while also trying to deny what makes it personal to them.

Brittany S. Hale: 30:59

I would say, especially as it pertains to leaders Leaders there's a certain level of candor that is going to be required to maintain and deepen the trust between leadership and teams. There have been people who are emailing their resumes to leadership you know to say I am not a DEI hire and that's the wrong approach, as I see it, because that person is doing it because they're afraid. They're afraid or they don't like what could happen to them.

Brittany S. Hale: 31:59

Right what could happen to them.

Brittany S. Hale: 32:03

Right, and the way that I would look at it is that should not ever be an issue.

Brittany S. Hale: 32:10

The fact that you were hired is demonstrative of leadership's belief in your ability, but there should be proactive communications and ongoing communications from leadership about what DEI means, the value that it brings to the organization and tying it directly back to business goals.

Brittany S. Hale: 32:34

How does creating ERGs, for example, further our business goals? Ergs, for example, further our business goals? How does expanding into global markets further our business goals? And how can we more authentically show up for these markets, both existing and, you know, the markets that we have our eyes on? We have to do that through repeated practice, and we have to do that. People have to be able to trust that their experience of the brand will be comparable to the experience that other people have had, To your point, that they can see themselves reflected in it, that they can get what they believe they need from the organization. So that doesn't happen if the organization isn't communicating internally. The team should not be surprised by any marketing pushes or any of the you know any of the headlines that we've been bombarded with Six weeks. No one should be surprised by that.

Karen McFarlane: 34:00

I mean, I agree with you. I think one of the things that has been a challenge is the measuring of those CEI goals and laddering them challenge, and you know you can't. It's hard to keep something and justify something when you haven't been able to measure it, and that's been tricky. But also, at the same time, you know a lot of these organizations. Not that many of them weren't thinking about it before, right, but since 2020, it just kind of really surfaced in a way where they also had to report on it, right, and so they really only had a short time to try to figure out how to measure it in a way that made sense for the business or laddered up to some of these external benchmark reports and things of that nature. So, in their defense, in some of the company's defenses, you know that they haven't had enough time to do it.

Karen McFarlane: 35:09

Those that could rally some resources around it have been able to prove that it has a benefit on their organization in a very meaningful way, or they folded it in into their like they didn't separate it out, it was just, it's just part of their DNA, and so they lean into their DNA, um, and so you're right. So this, this opportunity for dismantling it. Yeah, um, and also, people hadn't didn't fully understand it, right? Because, I mean, we're literally still teaching people what the acronym means, and because we turn it into an acronym, the weight of it becomes lighter, so there's all sorts of things.

Brittany S. Hale: 36:13

Absolutely, and I would love for you to kind of to just emphasize the point about benchmarking Because, again, I'm not a quant Numbers are important and they tell a story, but you still need context around that story, right?

Brittany S. Hale: 37:06

So if you take a snapshot bit more for people who want to understand the point of having benchmarks,

Karen McFarlane: 37:14

Well, one of the biggest questions that I heard or got over the years, past few years is how do I know if I'm doing well? And they wanted to look at other companies to understand where they stacked up so that they could create goals for themselves. Right, and benchmark. We do bet, you know you do benchmarking and so many other aspects of other uh, the other sides of your business that that becomes like a very natural question, like, especially if you're starting from scratch, like I'm, where am I, is this good and where do I need to be so I know how to chart my goals, what kinds of investments I need to make to get there, you know in one year, two year, five years, right, years, right, whatever that is. So I mean that, I think, is really the impetus for benchmarking, like you said, like, unless you have the narrative around that, because you can have a company that, um, they've been doing this for 20 years. They just might not have been calling it DEI, right, they started to measure it. So they're much further along in the process than you that had just started. So you also need to understand relative to where you are. Maybe it's based on your annual revenue, years in business, number of employees, things of that nature, like how do you kind of stack up? So you know it's a useful tool, but it shouldn't stop you from progress. So your story, like you said, is your story.

Karen McFarlane: 38:55

What's right for your business is right for your business, even if you're looking at 10 other businesses that are somewhat like you, for example, or a hundred other businesses are somewhat like you, they're not you, and so you have to build your own goals around where you think you need to be in a year, three years, five years, 10 years, and map them to your business goals.

Karen McFarlane: 39:23

Because, while some aspects of any part of your business are amorphous right, you can't really measure their soft metrics, right, there are some very specific metrics that everybody has to come up with, no matter where they are. What are those? And just start and start to build on that and, just like you, take into account the softer elements of your business, figure out how you express those right. So, for like for marketing, well, there's a lot of different metrics, but we have to show how we've contributed to the business, and that's going to be in hard dollars and cents, but also things like brand awareness. Now, some of that can be measured based on sentiment and some brand analysis, but some of that is really not as specific, right, or just you know as you would like it to be and you drive a narrative.

Brittany S. Hale: 40:31

Absolutely. I was just thinking. You have groups. We've talked about parents and caregivers groups. We talked about parents and caregivers. Those groups could easily be connected to an organization's sustainability goals mm-hmm, which could easily be connected to retention rates. Right, just those three points there. How are these parents? How are they thinking about the future? Why are they here? What is it about? How we're showing up for sustainability that not only attracted them here, but keeps them here, and how can we guarantee that these people who are willing to work in furtherance of our goals are going to stay here?

Karen McFarlane: 41:26

Absolutely.

Karen McFarlane: 41:27

So, yeah, and that's just like you said. That's just one element. There's a few data points and listen, companies figure out how to measure the darndest things. You're right, they can figure it out and it's okay. Like you might be a pioneer in a particular area and be a pioneer, go talk to people about how they're measuring it, share how you're, you know, thinking about this and help people along. Like we don't have to always have everything completely figured out before we start doing it. We can evolve a lot of our practices. It's called innovation.

Brittany S. Hale: 42:12

And I think that lends to trust. Yes, yes, absolutely. If I know that you're starting and that there's room to grow and there's room for me to share my view, I'm more invested in seeing you get to the next point.

Karen McFarlane: 42:33

Yes, and helping you get there. Yes, I mean part of the train, you know. Yes, I mean part of the train, you know. So I think the message we I hope that we're leaving our listeners with is you don't have to stop. You can keep going, obviously within the parameters of your organization, obviously within the parameters of your organization, but being inclusive is really not optional.

Karen McFarlane: 43:11

Going back to your frameworks, right, collective accountability, intervention and oh shoot, systemic change, right. Even in your small like, let's just say you work in one department and you're a manager in one department hiring, like maybe you're a hiring manager in one department, it can start with just you thinking about your team, what's best for your team, right, what kind of skill sets you need, what type of leadership capabilities that you need, and you start with that and then you think about you know you are a manager that's like focused on DEI principles. You think about how you bring that level of diversity and diversity of people, diversity of thought, however you want to call it right Into your team and in the work that you're producing and you measure it right. You can just start with just you. You don't necessarily need a huge mandate from the top. You don't need the words DEI plastered on the website.

Karen McFarlane: 44:31

Dei is you, because you are representative of it, except for that small microcosm of people that we talked about, that we need to identify. You are a product of it and you need to extend that grace to other people. That's what I think. Mic drop, I'm not going anywhere, so we will see what the world brings us this week. No, but the listeners have their marching orders, I know, but the listeners have their marching orders.

Brittany S. Hale: 45:04

Yes, you have homework. I'm sure you didn't think that you would, but you do yeah.

Karen McFarlane: 45:10

So drop in the comments what you did for your homework. Yes, absolutely, until next time. Bye, bye, bye, mina.