In this Season 6 Premiere of Your Brain at Work, our panel reviews the President’s recent Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility that continues to drive positive change in the federal workspace and the organizations they impact. We'll examine some of the key points within the order through the lens of neuroscience and identify potential pitfalls that can snag even the most well-meaning leaders in their efforts. Dive deep with us on the challenges of mandating a path to equity, and learn how to avoid the traps and gain solid ground towards diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. While this session focuses on the public sector, the insights will be pertinent to DEIA efforts in the private sector as well.
S6E1
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:02] SW: Welcome back, as we launch the season six premiere of Your Brain at Work podcast. This summer, President Biden continued his efforts for the largest employer in the nation by signing an executive order to establish action toward diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in federal workplaces. The order includes milestone requirements, a timeline for execution, and guidance on data collection for evidence-based practice. It calls to define standards based on leading policies and practices in the public and private sectors. This is what we'll be diving into for our first conversation.
In this episode, Dr. David Rock, the CEO and co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, is joined by two esteemed guests, Janet Stovall, a senior client strategist at NLI; and Javier Inclan, the Deputy Office Head for the Office of Equity and Civil Rights at the National Science Foundation.
During this conversation, they address key points of the executive order, unpack potential traps when working toward implementation and science-driven solutions that can also influence the expansion of equity in the private sector. Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives are a monumental effort requiring all hands on deck. Government leaders have significant autonomy in how to do it effectively for their agencies and can pass that autonomy to their teams. Approaching the executive order with science and a little growth mindset will be the way to move the needle towards an equitable and accessible future of government work. That's what you'll learn in this episode.
I’m Shelby Wilburn, and you're listening to Your Brain at Work from the NeuroLeadership Institute. We continue to draw our episodes from a weekly webinar series that NLI has been hosting every Friday. This week, our panel consists of NLI’s CEO and co-founder, Dr. David Rock. NLI’s Senior Client Strategist, Janet Stovall. Javier Inclan, the Deputy Office Head for the Office of Equity and Civil Rights at the National Science Foundation. Enjoy.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:02:06] DR: Javier, great to have you with us. Obviously, I’m a huge fan of the National Science Foundation, with the word science in there. Actually I remember giving a talk there about change a few years ago. It's really a fascinating organization. We look forward to your insights. Tell us about Hispanic Heritage Month, obviously something you're passionate about there. Give us a little education on the backdrop to that.
[00:02:27] JI: Sure thing, David. And September 15th to October 15th, it's a little odd because it's not one particular month, but it does have to do with specific dates that are important to the Latin-American community. My dad was Cuban. He left Cuba in 1960. Went to Spain for a couple of years and then came here to the US in 1962. He married my mom who's from Spain in 1965, and they came here and they raised my sister and myself in New Jersey, Northern New Jersey. My dad unfortunately passed away in 2011. And my mom, after she retired a year after that, moved back to Spain. But with today's technology, it's great to be able to communicate with her even more so than when she was living here in the States. So very proud of my heritage. As you can see from our background here, a multitude of countries that share in this heritage. And it's just an exciting time for us. Thank you.
[00:03:16] DR: Great. Thanks very much. Appreciate the backdrop and background to the backdrop. So let's dig in a little bit. For those of you new to NLI, we're actually 21 years old this year, or 23 years old. Gosh! Got my age wrong. 23 years old this year. We've actually done a lot in the public sector. Usually we just can't talk about it. We've worked with over half of the fortune 100, but it actually turns out that globally we've worked over 120 federal agencies, and each agency is enormous. Particularly big in APAC who are working right now with about 20 big federal agencies across the gamut. But what's really interesting is the very first work that we did, which was now more than 20 years ago, it was actually with government. And the company NLI started out in 1998, which feels like last century, because it was. We started out teaching people to be coaches, executive coaches and really building coaching capability. And the first organizations that we started working with were federal agencies that said, “Can you turn our managers into coaches?” And we started working with some big government agencies and creating hundreds of internal coaches inside these federal agencies. And that's still work we do today.
For me, it was really interesting to see how much the government side of things really valued culture and growth, because they didn't have money necessarily to inspire people with. So they needed to make sure the culture was right and the people were growing a lot, like being stretched. And the thing that really surprised me was the civic mindedness of everyone pretty much who worked in government, and if people are in government, because they're civic-minded because they want to give back. And if the processes inhibit that, it's really difficult.
So there's a lot of work in government about kind of freeing up some of the burden of administration so that people feel like they can contribute. And that's what we worked on back then. And we're still helping agencies with that question. How do you help folks kind of contribute?
And certainly DEI is a critical part of that. So a critical part of people contributing is feeling included, feeling that there's no bias against them, feeling like the recruiting process is fair, all these things. So we've been in the DEI space for about seven years now. It's been a real focus for us. The first significant research we published in 2015. We're currently looking at launching soon a program, an educational program for people to actually understand all the deeper science of DEI, because we've done so much. There're eight significant papers that have a lot of different research in them and many different pieces. So we're looking at the moment about developing a DEI-specific education program for DEI practitioners, because there's so much to think about. I can't even keep up sometimes with kind of what we've done in the space. In relation to DEI in the public sector, we've published four pieces that are directly relevant to this space mostly on our own blog. And you'll find those on Your Brain at Work in our own website.
But let's jump in. Let's talk about the order. And I know, Janet, you've been working with this a lot. Talk to us a bit about the order from your perspective and what you've been seeing.
[00:06:33] JS: The thing that's so fascinating to me about this order is that if you think about the big issue and the fact of equity, equity is a systemic issue. So when we talk about who is most positioned to make significant, really big change in the field of equity, it's the public sector, I mean, that is the system. So this order is exciting in so many ways for that reason. And the reality of it is that this is the fourth of several orders. The Biden Administration issued about three or four other orders before this. And this is supporting that one. But this particular one is different and that it has some things about it that we're going to talk about today that have significance across both sectors, but are huge within the federal government. There's a long list of things that are in there. We're not going to go through all of those. But I’m going to very quickly kind of point out some of the key points of the ones that are the bigger ones.
The DEI plan. That plan, it says that basically within a hundred days, different agencies, various agencies within the federal government will prepare preliminary assessment of the current state of DEIA. The a is accessibility. So that's something that's new to this in many ways. And if you look further down the list, it talks about advancing equity for employees with disabilities. So they've actually expanded the term. That's a huge part, is they're expanding the concept of diversity to include some folks that we don't normally think about, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+, formally incarcerated. There're some other groups in there. So they're expanding it. That's what's unique about it.
The plan is unique. Like I said, it starts off within 100 days of having an assessment. And then 150 days is going to be a strategic plan for the federal government. And that plan is going to lay out some standards and strategies. It's going to talk about using data-based decision making, which means you got to collect data. It's going to have ways to deal with demographic data differently. So there's more transparency and accountability. And that's sort of huge. They don't quite know exactly how that's going to roll out, but that's a huge part of this.
Then there are other things in there like paid internships. I mean, we think about all the interns that are on Capitol Hill. A lot of those unpaid, that limits who can do that, who can afford to live in DC, who can afford to work without a salary. So they're looking at things like that. They're looking at DEI training. And they want to increase the availability and use of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility training throughout the federal government.
And what's interesting is they're specifically saying that these programs are going to focus on systemic and institutional racism and bias against underserved communities. And pay equity, that's a huge one. What's fascinating to me is that not only does this affect a huge population of people. It affects the processes that affect even more people. And what this is a major change for the federal government, but it's also a framework and something that the private sector can emulate. The federal government is now saying that DEIA is top of mind, high priority. And that gives the go ahead to everybody else to make it a part of it too.
So I’d like to start with somebody who's much more of an expert on this than I am with Javier. Javier, let me ask you. Now that you're looking at this, and I know it's new and there's a lot to be figured out yet, what are you feeling and what are people saying? How do they feel about this order? What's the mood?
[00:09:53] JI: I think the word, and you mentioned it before, Janet, is excitement. All of the stars aligned over the last few months. As you mentioned, there have been a slew of executive orders. Many of them could be described as mission-focused. But this executive order, 14035, is really about the people and the culture, right? It's about internally-facing.
For example, at NSF, we issue grants to institutions and researchers, and we're very involved and very interested in the diversification of the STEM field. But how do we do that externally without looking at ourselves internally? And I think that's the excitement. We are looking at this in a way that we've never really looked at it before, in my opinion, because it's a more holistic view of DEI and A, as you mentioned, the accessibility component, and what agencies can do in order to transform their operation so that DEIA is ingrained in the culture of the organization. That we don't have to worry about where the wind is blowing today, or next year, or five years from now. That we look at it so that regardless of the climate, regardless of the environment that people are using and feeling and working through, DEIA is used every day to make that agency better.
[00:11:11] JS: Thank you for that. And if you look at that long list of things, talk to me about the ones on there that stick out most to you, the ones that you are most excited about, for example?
[00:11:20] JS: To my point before, I think the one that really gets to the heart of this or the crux of this is the elevation of the diversity program. So the establishment or the elevation of a chief diversity officer or a diversity and inclusion officer as mentioned in the executive order, that demonstrates a commitment from the highest of levels that this is important. Agencies have chief human capital officers. Agencies have chief financial officers, etc., etc., part of the CXO community as they say. Absolutely, it's the right time to establish a chief diversity officer position. Some already have it, whether it's an additional duty or they've done it independently. But I really do think it has to be a function that is elevated enough to the point where it has agency-wide depth and agency-wide type of solution-making authority.
[00:12:11] JS: It's interesting that you say that, because if you think about it, that's the same thing that's happening in the private sector with the just huge number of positions that have been opening up and being created for chief diversity officers. And one of the challenges is always figuring out where that person reports within the organization. So I appreciate your point about the fact that the elevation factor, because one of the discussions has always been where does it report? And when it reports to the very top, it has a strategic ability that that position does that it doesn't have if you bury it down somewhere else. So I agree with you, the concept of elevating. Establishing is great too, but elevating I think is a huge concept in this.
[00:12:49] DR: I think what's really resonating for me I think, and it's kind of the elephant in the room, is that it felt like many steps backwards with the last administration in terms of the DEIA. And with this next administration, how do we put in place the real systems at a level that they're very hard to take out so that DEIA is woven into the fabric of the machine, whatever administration there that sits. I guess it's sort of the elephant in the room. No one really wants to talk about that, but it's kind of what's driving a lot of the urgency and importance of this work now.
So as you guys think about this and you think about the science of this, the question becomes how do we make sure these things become absolutely ingrained habits that are very hard to undo? As well as systems that are just the way things are done now? How do we make sure that the systems are embedded as part of business as usual now?
Let's talk a little bit about the upsides, I guess. I mean, Javier, aside from that kind of the elephant in the room issue, what are some of the other upsides for you of this situation? Like what are some of the big things from your perspective at NSF?
[00:13:53] JI: Certainly, I think it's visibility. Demonstrating that the agency considers this an important function and an important process with the understanding that Rome wasn't built in a day, right? So we're not going to solve any of our problems. And let's be clear, there are problems, whether they're embedded, ingrained, conscious or unconscious, there are issues. We need to make sure that we establish a plan that is reasonable that we could actually make actionable within a defined period of time, but then to make it a live document. So they talk about creating a DEIA strategic plan both you know from a government-wide perspective. And then each agency creates their own based on that government-wide plan or with inputs from that government-wide plan. But we need to make sure that it's a living document. That's why the executive order is intentional in saying that every year it will be updated, right? So that we could flex and change as agencies grow. As they mature, maybe they could pick their game up a little bit the next strategic plan or the next update. So I think the visibility of that is very important.
The other thing is that there is momentum here. There is a momentum that if we don't act now, I don't think we're ever going to have an opportunity like this to act again. And lastly, I just want to say that it is an opportunity to ensure that we're doing the best we can with the data we have. Making sure that folks understand that the collection of data is super important, that we need to make data-driven decisions.
And one of my struggles is this voluntary demographic information, right? Some people may share that feeling. Others may not. But we need to, as a government, especially the federal government, we need to establish trust with the public, and with our applicants, and with our employees to make sure that they understand that we're collecting this data not for any nefarious reason, but to make sure that our DEIA program is working. That we're focusing on the right areas. That we're making sure that we're progressing in this area so that we could then claim success at some point and then move on to the next big thing.
[00:15:58] JS: Javier, can I ask you a question? Follow up on that a little bit, especially about the data. I agree with you. I mean, that's the biggest issue on both public and private sector. How do you get the data? Because otherwise you're just guessing what it is you're trying to do. So I love the fact that this is starting off with this assessment, because the assessment puts in place that you need to figure out where you are, and you have the data to do that.
But some of the issues I’ve heard, some of the challenges I’ve heard, are the issue about personally identifiable personal information, and the sense of people being afraid to share that for some reason. Another topic that I’ve seen tossed around a little bit is the issue of developing sort of standards for human capital data. What are you collecting? What does it look like?
And I do believe that there are some, and don't quote me on this, but I think there's some talk, some language in the order about that these standards being developed both for the public and the private sectors in the sense that they have a shared sort of language to talk about. Have you heard anything around the issues? You talked a little bit about the privacy issues, but what are some of the really big challenges with the data collection?
[00:17:04] JI: I think that the trust piece, Janet, is the most important. Some folks just don't trust government at any level, even if it's something as minor as what my gender is or what my demographic is, what my background is. They just don't like sharing that information because they don't know how it's going to be used. And I think we need to do a much better job of explaining why we need this. Make it personal to the folks so that it's a positive, right? It's not a loss on their part, but that they are contributing to the greater good, that by them submitting their information that they are helping with this process.
I’ll give you an example. There's a huge impact of sexual orientation and gender identity. So SOGI demographic data. I did hear the other day that one agency is using one of their data collection agencies to collect SOGI data, and I’d love to know how that's going, because that's crucial, right? There are folks out there that are not going to answer the question because they don't identify as male or female. So now we're automatically creating this barrier of a non-demographic because we've created ourselves.
Now there's a challenge, right? How do we do it? What do we include there? There're some folks that may say it should be an open text. And then if that's the case, then how do we collect that data and make it something that we could report on? So a lot of challenges, but I think there's a lot of smart people in the federal government. And I think if I put our collective heads together and make sure that we're not duplicating efforts, that we could get to the crux of this and solve the problem.
[00:18:31] JS: Agreed.
[00:18:32] DR: Yeah, I think that – I mean, the opportunities here are really interesting. Having much richer data about these issues across organizations, I think there's a real opportunity even if it's not done perfectly to gain real momentum and to really see change happen. There's so much willingness and commitment out of events of last year and out of the pandemic itself just making people more thoughtful about the needs of humans. I think it's a real opportunity with this order to kind of leverage the momentum of the last year into real action and develop practices that maybe are harder to do in the public sector that you can kind of then follow the science, experiment, and then share the data, right? You can sort of do things in the public sector, it might be harder to do, and sort of do these big experiments and collect data and share out what's happening.
And, Janet, do you want to talk a little bit more about that, about inspiring the public sector and kind of the opportunity there?
[00:19:25] JS: Well, I mean, like I said, the thing is if you think about it, and I’ve said this in several presentations where I said I thought that corporate America was the entity that was most able to factor in change. That's true. It's a huge entity. The resources of the power, but really the most powerful entity to do this is the federal government. I mean, so if the federal government says this is important enough to the point that we're going to invest time, energy, effort, manpower and all these things to this. That says everybody else is important.
What can happen with this order in the federal government is systems can be built, priorities, habit, systems can be put in place, that those frameworks can then be picked up, emulated and put into the corporate sector. They'll operate differently. But if you think about how amazing it could be if the things that the private sector has, the money, the resources, the ability to access innovation, combined with those same things on the federal government and in the public sector level, combined trading that information, creating standards so that we can share this and make it applicable where it needs to be made. That's how we're really going to move this.
And you as you said earlier, there's some urgency here because we have a four-year window, where this is a focus right now. But if we can engage together, and the private sector can be inspired by this to engage, to help, to contribute, to be involved, to expand the work, then that's how we get it entrenched. Because then we're all working on it together. And then it doesn't matter as much what happens in four years, because it's already in place. To me that is the most hopeful thing that I can think about with this.
[00:21:03] DR: Oh, that's great. Let's talk a little bit about the other side of this, I guess, the challenges. And maybe as you think about NSF, Javier, what do you think the challenges will be of the man that have executed the order?
[00:21:15] JI: Sure. And we already talked about datas and probably hit that over the head a number of times. So I won't mention it yet again. But data certainly is a problem. I think apathy. I think because of potentially failed efforts in the past or perceived failed efforts in the past, a check the box attitude, “Oh, they're just doing this because the executive order mandates them to do that.” As opposed to saying and trying to explain to our community, “Hey, this is why we're doing it,” and it's not just to check the box. It is going to be an actionable document when we do this assessment. It is going to be an actionable document that's publicized when we have a strategic plan in place. And by the way, hold us accountable. Make sure that we're communicating our progress with the correct cadence, right? To make sure that we're getting input from folks.
I think there's a challenge in convincing people that have faced barriers in the past, whether it's through promotion, or retention, or professional development opportunities. Their perception is their reality. And whether there was a barrier or not, they feel that they were wrong. And in many cases they may be right. So how do we change that perception? Why is it now that we're going to do something different and make it actionable? When in the past 20 years we've done nothing to move the needle?
[00:22:32] DR: Yeah. It's really interesting. I mean, at NLI, we didn't actually set out to build a DEI practice at all. We didn't sit around and say, “We're all passionate about DEI. Let's go and do this.” It turns out many, even all of us, are incredibly passionate about DE&I, myself included. But where this started was we said, “Where's the biggest gap between what science knows and what business does?” Like we literally assessed that question. This was about like seven or eight years ago now. We said, “Where's the biggest gap between what science actually knows about humans and how they work and what business is actually doing?” And we looked at all these different areas and the biggest gap, and it was an enormous outlier compared to everything else was in addressing bias.
And at the time we were like, “Wow! That's incredible. It's not only a big gap. It's probably going to get bigger. Huge money is being thrown at it, and nothing's really changing.” And it was like literally billions of dollars being thrown at educating people about unconscious bias and almost nothing was changing.
And we were blown away, and we ended up studying this for years before we started working in it. We studied this whole question for three and a half years before we talked to a single company about this issue. And what we found was something that we found across DE&I, and it's almost heartbreaking, is that this huge commitment to driving change for many, many people. But in many cases, the kind of thing that feels right actually doesn't do much. That there's this big difference between what feels right you should do in the space and what the science actually says works. And it is literally kind of heartbreaking at times, because we see these really well-intentioned organizations who throw big resources at something, and we’ll look at the strategy. And pretty quickly, as scientists say, “Hey, look, here are the things that are like working against you. Don't do it like that. That's actually going to backfire. Don't do it like that.”
And so for us, and of course we have a hammer. So lots of things look like nails. But for us, the science is a really, really important thing here, because the sort of gut instincts that we have about how to fix this stuff often do nothing. And in some situations, they actually make things worse.
And in fact, one of those that we'll start with is the mandate question. It seems so intuitive to say, “All right, if we want everyone to really commit to diversity, equity and inclusion, then everyone should go through a training program,” right? We're going to require everyone to go through training to ensure we get compliance. That feels like a huge breakthrough for people. If a company says, “All right, we're going to make sure everyone does this.” Well, it turns out that mandating a program has a greater than 50 chance of making things worse.
And the reason is the autonomy reaction people have that a large number of people feel like they're being told that they're biased or something and they're being forced to do something, and people push back. And generally, what they also found in the research on this was that if people were really against DEIA, then they would tend to push back even harder and actually become even worse if forced to do a program.
But even the people in the middle, a lot of those were really annoyed and just would kind of do it because they had to, but wouldn't actually really do much. And so on the whole, there're a whole lot of different studies about this. But on the whole, mandating DEI program is a real problem. Now we've done a number of different research projects on this and talked about it a lot. But for us it's shifting from mandating to creating compelling programs. And again this is where the data matters. Like if you get 95% of an audience into a mandated program, but 90% of those people don't pay attention, you haven't done much. But if you can get 60% of an audience into a program and 55 of them are paying attention and caring, you've done literally 10 times better. So we don't sort of think about that ratio enough. So you might not get everyone in the program, but actually you might move the organization considerably.
Janet, do you want to speak to that at all? It's really an interesting one.
[00:26:37] JS: It's interesting. And then the question that came to mind for me, assume it comes up for me, is when you think about this happening within the federal government, which in general mandates things, and that's kind of how things get done, how they get scaled. But if I’m correct about this, and again, Javier, you can check me on this. Let me know if I’m right. I believe that there is some autonomy written into this order so that the different agencies can do this differently. So this may be an opportunity to do this in a different way. Am I correct about that?
[00:27:04] JI: You’re absolutely correct. And I believe the DEIA initiative across the federal government has done a really nice job of stressing that autonomy while providing the goal posts of what needs to happen, but letting the agencies figure out, “Hey, you know your community better than anybody else. You figure out the best way to accomplish these things and comply with the order.”
We have weekly calls on this, say, office hours they call them. And it's sometimes frustrating to people because they're saying, “No. We want more guidance. Let me know exactly what I need to do so that I could do my job.” But that's not necessarily the best approach. I think that sense of autonomy, although frustrating at times, is really important. And by the way, we've been able to establish such a tight-knit community that we're now talking to each other across agencies, right? And I think that was the goal, “Hey, what's your promising practice?” “Hey, how are you doing your assessment? Do you have a contractor doing it?” NSF, yes we do. We're doing it internally. Can you share some information? How are you conducting the assessment? Those are just so powerful because it really makes it real for people. We understand the generic order, but how are people actually complying with it, and what could I learn from somebody, and what could I teach somebody?
[BREAK]
[00:28:24] SW: You love listening to Your Brain at Work, and we love hearing your feedback. It's a beautiful working relationship. And it's why we'd appreciate it if you could take just a few minutes to complete our listener survey. Visit neuroleadership.com/podsurvey to let us know what you love about the show, what we can do to improve it, and topics you'd like to hear more about. Now, let's get back to the show.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[00:28:52] DR: If you think about kind of autonomy versus certainty, most organizations kind of swing too wildly. They kind of swing too wildly uncertainty and end up at mandatory, because they want to feel certain that everyone's doing this. And then no one has autonomy. Well, but they often then swing too far the other way and they say, “All right. Well, let's just let people do this whenever however.” And they try to maximize people's autonomy but end up reducing certainty.
There's a really interesting kind of middle ground that you can play with, and we've been thinking about this for a long time. But for example you say to people managers, our target is 100% of audience. We don't think there's anything wrong with you, but we want to give you some content for you to share with your teams. And here are three different ways you can do that. Ask your teams what they prefer. And you choose how you want to share this. But we're expecting that you share this in one of these ways any time in the next three months, for example. So you've just created a clear goal as an outcome, a clear expectation, but you give them a lot of autonomy over how they get there. And you've never said it's mandatory for the end user to go through it, but you've said to the manager it's important. We're trying to get this target. So there's sort of ways you can play with it where you're maximizing certainty and maximizing autonomy. It doesn't feel mandatory to the end user. And at a team level they feel like they're making a choice and they're engaging in the content in different ways. So some interesting things to play with there.
The first challenge that I mentioned I think is the mandate challenge and kind of getting that right. And it sounds like the agencies are paying attention to this issue and not just kind of rolling out one exact way. There's another kind of bigger challenge I think, and I mentioned it earlier, is not going with your gut instincts, but really following the science. And I think it's a really, really big issue.
And I want to point to two pieces that we published that I think are really important foundational insights. And these insights are actually really helpful for making whatever experience you're doing more compelling. These insights are helpful for kind of understanding the why of DEIA beyond the kind of following the order. And these were done in the private sector, but they're still very, very relevant. And if you haven't dug into these two pieces, I really encourage you to read these, share these with your leaders. Really understand them.
The first one basically explains why diverse teams are smarter. And putting aside the social reasons and other reasons, the public sector will literally make better decisions if the teams are diverse. There's an intelligence of teams. The IQ of that team goes up when those teams are diverse and inclusive.
So the foundational reason, I think this is a reason everyone can get behind. Even if you're not necessarily supportive of the DEI, if you can see that actually you're going to all make better decisions, you're going to have fewer errors, you're going to have fewer mistakes, it's a really powerful story.
The second one is really quirky. And the paper on the write here, diverse teams feel as comfortable. That's why they perform better. It's this really quirky thing that – And I don't want to spend too much time on this. But essentially, when you go out for a drink with friends, you go out with people who are similar to you because it feels good to be with people who think like you. And homogeneous teams feel comfortable, but teams with people who really think differently actually feel uncomfortable to people. They experience a sense of heightened anxiety and concern because they're literally having to work hard to explain themselves and understand other people. And it turns out that that extra work is central to whether that diverse team is smart. If people don't have some level of discomfort and actually work harder to explain themselves and understand each other, you don't actually get the benefits of diversity.
So it's almost like saying we need you to be fit, but if you're exercising but not breaking a sweat, you're not really doing much even a little bit, right? Even if you're walking. Like you're going to have to have a little discomfort to get the benefits of exercising. And in a similar way, you're going to have to expect there’s some discomfort. That's actually where the benefits of DEI comes from.
From my perspective, it's such an important thing to educate widely. Like if you're sweating, the exercise is working, right? If you feel like you're working harder to understand each other and make decisions, then DEI is probably working. And I think that's important, because otherwise people, again, vote with their gut and kind of, “It doesn't feel right. I’m going to go back to homogeneous.”
[00:33:25] JS: Well, I think that's great to say because speaks to what Javier was just saying about the fact that now we've been working across different agencies. And it feels to me, I mean I’m guessing, that that has not always been the case. And to think the fact that you're going to be doing that a different way of working together about a topic that's difficult to talk about. I mean, I would think that this is sort of a prime example of what it's going to be like to have diverse teams that are not necessarily going to be comfortable but can be incredibly effective. That's what I heard from what you were saying.
[00:33:53] JI: I think that's absolutely correct. And I am excited that there is that conversation, because I think people are so passionate about this that they don't mind reaching out, sending an email, looking who's on this panel, or talking about different best practices or promising practices.
And David, I want to go back to what you said about the word why. And it's not surprising that it's in both of these publications, because I think that's really where we need to start. Make it personal for people. So when we say diversity is important and it makes people better. Great. Why? Show me why, right?
And at the National Science Foundation, we should be able to do that. And in other agencies we should be able to do that. Make sure that the training that we provide, which is why we're trying to establish a DEIA curriculum so that we get a cafeteria-wide type of selection. It's not just, “All right, you're going to do unconscious bias once a year every year and it's mandatory, and check the box and move on.” But I think making people understand why it's important and why it works is really step one to changing that culture if change is needed.
[00:34:52] DR: Yeah. No. It's really important. And people tend to anchor either on the social reason or the kind of outcome studies of kind of, “Oh, we know if the team's diverse, they spend less buying assets,” for example. That's true. There's a lot of outcome studies, but there's been very little work on the actual mechanisms of how and why that team goes better, or how and why is that organization better when they're diverse and inclusive. And it turns out the mechanism is at a team level and it's that those teams actually have higher IQ. You can literally say the IQ of the team goes up when it's more diverse and inclusive. And it does require both. You can't have just one. But the IQ of that team actually goes up, and they make literally smarter decisions for the entire country, potentially for the entire planet. And that's something everyone can kind of get behind.
So yeah, we find explaining that mechanism and kind of going one or two clicks into that is such is a helpful starting point. There're other things in the science that we think are really important. And one of the big traps that we see in the public sector and everywhere is while all of these things are important, like leadership commitment, investing internally, externally, public statements, CDO, this almost reads like the order. While many of these things are really important, they're just the first step. And this is mostly about getting people to care. But what really needs to happen is people need to build the right habits that become automatic. And then they need to put in systems that actually create the change and keep the change.
And I’ll give an example. If you took a large government agency and said, “Look, we want every single people manager to speak last when an idea is presented.” One simple habit. If every single people manager says, “Look, they're going to speak last and let the rest of the team speak first.” That one habit would change how inclusive people felt across 100,000 people.
It's often a few simple habits that create really big ripples of changes. But if you just try to kind of motivate people but aren't really crisp about the habits to focus on, you don't tend to get the change. And what we see in a lot of solutions is too many habits thrown at people too quickly. So you sort of roll out an initiative and we say, “Look, we think this is what great inclusion looks like. Do these 20 things.” And people just roll their eyes and say, “That's great, but where do I start?”
So we think a lot of the work in DEI is about choosing the fewest possible habits that have the biggest possible impact and then trying to get everyone to have those at the same time so that it becomes a kind of everyone to everyone approach rather than a top-down kind of approach to learning. So these are some of the things that we see around habits. We publish widely on this. And obviously, systems are really important. We're going to have a session in the next month or so on how to assess systems to understand their accidental bias within the systems themselves. So we've developed some assessments to look for bias and fixed mindset and other things in your systems.
But, Javier, anything you want to comment here in terms of the shift from just priorities to habits and systems? Anything jumping out for you?
[00:38:07] JI: I think one thing that's such a simple example when it comes to recruitment, we're talking about data. So let's assume that an applicant gets over the hurdle of providing demographic data at the point of application. But now we have resume reviewer, right? So maybe I’m a resume reviewer and I see Javier Inclan’s resume. And in the past I had a troubled Hispanic subordinate. Well, it's not going to take somebody too long to figure out that Javier Inclan has some type of Hispanic background or ethnic background.
Am I looking at that in the same equitable and inclusive and diverse way as everybody else? Or am I you know looking at that resume just a little bit differently whether subconsciously or not? So having blind resume reviews is something that the federal government should really dive into and make it a common practice across the board. I think that's a system that is something that we could certainly do I don't want to say with ease, but it'll certainly be something that would help regarding that resume review and applicant review process.
[00:39:08] DR: Yeah. It's a great example of what we call also a preventative measure around bias. So when we think about bias itself, there are in the moment strategies. There are what we call if then plans for kind of making habits. And then there are preventative measures that reduce the chance of bias. And those have a parallel with systems. They really are systems.
So preventative measures are really, really important. And taking race, age, gender out of resume reviews is really powerful. It's been shown to make a huge difference. And that kind of system-wide change should see something like a 10% to 15% difference in your recruiting from studies that have been done before.
So yeah, again, it's kind of looking at all the different possible habits and all the different possible systems and taking a really data-driven approach to say, “How do we do a few things really well and give a few things to everyone?” Because, again, we find organizations end up maybe getting the autonomy certainty thing wrong and trying to give people too much autonomy and say, “Hey, do any of these 20 things however you like,” and then you don't really get the change happening. So we think a lot about how you change large systems, and it seems to be giving everyone a small number of things that everyone can do at the same time is the sweet spot.
At the same time, you have to be a little flexible on how people do that. So it doesn't necessarily work to say you've got to start this week speaking live set a meetings. But what does work is to say, “Hey, all your colleagues this week are going to practice allowing more voices in meetings. And here are two or three ways you could try that.” Speaking last is one. Asking everyone to comment in the chat so that everyone speaks in the chat is another one, or letting someone else facilitate the meeting. So pick one of those three and you decide how you want to do it.
So again, it's that thing about lots of people focusing on a similar habit and a similar domain, but also having a feeling of autonomy in there at the end. Maybe we're getting a little deep into kind of change strategy, but we see a lot of mistakes in the certainty autonomy dynamic and kind of over-rotating too far one way or the other.
Janet, any comments on the priorities habits systems?
[00:41:18] JS: None, except to say that, once again, you're looking at one of the biggest systems that there is. And when we talk about equity being a systemic issue, changing the system is really the only way to change the systemic inequity. So I’m excited to see that this is being elevated to that level.
A study that came out of a researcher that I listened to a lot, Jennifer Richardson et al, they did a paper a few years ago and they talked about the fact that we talk about the browning of America. But really what's happening is the Beijing of America, in that it's not black and white so much as it is. It is multi-racial.
And to Javier's point, he was saying earlier, some of the challenge of data collection is going to be people deciding what they are. You cannot have every single potential category that there is. But I read an estimate just the other day, this is something about like only some huge number of people now consider themselves multiracial. And so it's going to be interesting. And that's where I think we're going to have to come up with standards at the end of the day. I think human capital standards are going to be critical. And we've always relied on sort of the census categories. But we've got to come up with something else, because this category is not necessarily valid. They weren't necessarily done through DEIA lens to begin with. And so I think we are going to – That's one of the things we're going to have to look at, one of the systems we have to look at. What do we call people? How do people identify? How can we collect it?
Because also to Javier’s point, if you just leave it wide open, you have no way to create discrete data that you can do anything with. I mean, if you just have open fields, you can't do anything. Big data needs some targets. It needs points. It needs things that they can all you know work together. Discrete data, we have to have that. So that's going to be one of the questions I think we have to answer. And Javier, feel free to jump in on that if I didn't get that right.
[00:43:07] JI: No. You got that 1000% right. I agree wholeheartedly.
[00:43:11] DR: From your perspective, Javier, like the chief diversity officer role, which is part of the order that organizations develop on, should that be more politically-focused or more career people? Where do you see that role living and fitting? And how do we get that right across the public sector, the CDO role?
[00:43:30] JI: Yeah, and this is where I have to put the disclaimer. This is WAJ, the world according to Javier, right? So this is my personal opinion. Because of what I mentioned before about having DEIA ingrained in the culture and the fabric of the agency, I believe the best way to do that is through a career appointment. I believe the head of an agency has the opportunity and the right to select a CDO that he or she believes is going to operate that function correctly. And it transcends terms, right? So we don't have to worry about somebody having a four-year agenda or an eight-year agenda. We have somebody that is going to be in a career position just like any others. Most if, not all, Chicos are career appointees. And I believe this should fall in that same category.
[00:44:14] DR: Yeah. No. That's great. Thanks. Look, I’ll close off with one final question. I think it's such an important one, which is the concrete research-based ways for embedding things into the culture. I mean, well before we were working in DE&I, DEIA, we were thinking about culture change and how to get change across large scales before we started working in this space. And our work on, really, culture change goes back 21 years actually, 23 years. The mistakes that we see making are generally focusing too much on the P-stage on trying to motivate people and not being really deliberate about the habit stage and often just kind of underestimating the difficulty of learning something. People think like they sort of – They're trying to get people maybe to learn a new language almost, and they're treating it as if it's learning to ride a bike, that you'll get it in five days. So they're often underestimating the difficulty of these issues.
Now going from really not that good at DEIA to actually being really good at it, we don't think it's necessarily a 10-year journey or a five-year journey, but we think that you could really meaningfully change a company or organization in one to two years. But it's about not trying to do it all at once, but saying, “Look, let's build these habits across the organization. Then let's build these habits across the organization. Then let's build these.”
And I’ll tell you our current hypothesis on this. We think the place to start ideally is fostering a growth mindset across everyone, because when you get people to literally be more open to ideas, then they're more open to other humans and they're more open to seeing other perspectives. So we think the place to start is really developing this growth mindset. We think a really important next place is getting people really proactive about mitigating bias, but in particular, in the systems. Not by just trying to raise awareness of bias. In the systems and then also in building the habits into their teams, those are the two places to focus.
That said, we also see great success focusing on inclusion seconds. And many of our big change projects start with growth mindset then go to inclusion. So we found those two somewhat interchangeable. But when I say most people actively mitigating bias, we find when you do this right, you get about 75% to 85% of people every week calling out a bias and making a different decision. So we've seen that from data or over 10,000 people.
With inclusion, we've seen you can get more like 85% to 95% of people being much more thoughtful and intentional about actively including folks. And we have a mantra there, if you're not actively including, you’re accidentally excluding. And then the fourth one there is people speaking up productively when they see these things not happening? And we've got some new work on how to be an ally, which is really powerful. We also have a solution called Voice that gives people the skills for encouraging, speaking up cultures. But we think this is roughly the order with two and three being somewhat interchangeable, and that this roughly can take two years. And if you focus on the whole organization learning these skills at roughly the same time, rather than sort of the top team going deep, we think that's the right approach overall.
I’ll finish with some quick data that we've pulled out on this on three of them, and this is directly from the public sector. I’ll just let you read those. That percentage, like 87%, we call that the behavior change percentage. It's the percentage of people that say they've done something actively in the last week as well. So what we've found is that we're able to make real impact in the week-to-week habits in the public sector.
Janet, Javier, any closing comments as we bring that together? We should wrap up and let people get to the next thing. What are your closing insights on the order and what's possible here?
[00:48:01] JI: Yeah.
[00:48:02] JS: I’ll let Javier do that. You do it first.
[00:48:04] JI: Thanks, Janet. I would just say that we all need to keep an open mind to be patient to understand that I believe all federal agencies and our leadership are looking at this in a very positive light, but it's going to take some time. There are some dates that are required within the order. But I think the most important thing to realize is the extent to which the order says this is an ongoing process. Almost like saying this is a journey and not a destination. There's always room for improvement. There's always room to make changes and updates based on where you are at a given time. And I think that's what we really need to focus on and make sure that we're making progressive steps and documenting those steps and sharing them so that we can learn from each other.
[00:48:44] DR: Yeah, that's great. Janet, for you? What’s your big takeaway?
[00:48:46] JS: I’m just going to say, once again, systemic change requires systemic effort. So I’m excited that we are now seeing this at a systemic level.
[00:48:54] DR: Yeah. Let's think about it as a system. My insight for this session is just really making sure that the federal agencies are getting the why. Like really starting with the why. And secondly, getting the certainty autonomy ratios right. Like let's make sure that we're planning things that are compelling, but also follow the science around certainty and autonomy. There is quite a bit of data in that realm now. So those are the things that are jumping out for me. We'll probably write more about that.
Javier, thank you so much for being here and for everything that you're doing. I think we're going to come to you guys for some funding on some DEI research that we should do together. We'll come back to you guys. But thanks for everything you're doing at the National Science Foundation. Janet, thanks for everything you're doing with us, and educating, and inspiring audiences and companies everywhere.
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[00:49:43] SQ: Your Brain at Work is produced by the NeuroLeadership Institute. You can help us make organizations more human by rating, reviewing and subscribing wherever you listen to your podcast. Our producers are Matt Holidack, Daniel Kirschenblatt, Ted Bower, Shadé Olasimbo, and me, Shelby Wilburn. Original music is by Grant Zubritzki. And logo design is by Catch Wear. We'll see you here next time.
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