It’s Been a Year

It's hard to believe it's been a year since leaving Constellation Brands and starting Bettman Consulting Group. Between the job change, a move to Grasshopper Farm in Michigan, and covid still impacting our lives, it's been quite a year. I am proud to share that the endeavor to start a business has been successful, but the learning curve has been steep. Though I might be good at leadership development and creating inclusive cultures, building a business is something else (which I will save that story for another day). We are grateful to our clients who have chosen us as their partner to travel with on the complex journey of creating inclusive cultures. For we are quite clear that without them, there would be no us.

In the spirit of continuous growth and learning, I'd like to share some thoughts about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that have been validated through my work this year. I find myself repeating these things to our clients, so I thought I would share them with you here.

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives cannot be successful in a vacuum because they are fundamentally culture change initiatives that need to be owned by the entire business…not HR.

All of my clients are companies that have experienced rapid growth in the last 5 years; specifically they've grown from around 500 employees to 1500+, mostly through acquisition. They are finding themselves at a point where the CEO no longer knows everyone's name and leaders are now leading through several degrees of separation.

 This is when culture work is incredibly important and usually started. What makes up a company culture?

• Company Mission and Vision: Why the company exists and what it will accomplish if it’s successful.

• Values: The fundamental beliefs the company depends on to achieve its vision/mission.

• Strategy: How the company will live its values to achieve the vision/mission.

• Behaviors: The visible behaviors that express the values and drive the strategy of the organization

Whether an organization is starting from scratch or refreshing its culture, we believe you might as well make it an inclusive culture. In their recent report, Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters, McKinsey notes that the companies with diverse and inclusive organizations outperform their competitors who are not engaging in these initiatives.

•  Leadership has evolved and leaders are being called to lead differently; no one covered this in business school.

In the United States, the foundation of the leadership development movement was grounded in military experiences. The values of great leaders aligned to the values of great leaders in the military, which also happened to be very masculine values- command presence, take up space, control the room, etc.

Many years later, the conversations around leadership development shifted to more feminine values of servant leadership, collaboration, and the beginnings of inclusion- still foundations of great leadership, but from a different angle. The organizations that followed along became more team-based, matrixed, and collaborative vs. hierarchal and commanding.

Today's leaders are now being challenged to be inclusive, culturally competent, and stakeholder vs. shareholder-focused. This has been coming for a while, but Covid sped it up. To make it even more complex, leaders are no longer leading within their own walls, but they are being asked to respond to and take stands on events outside their walls. Citing a study by Gartner, this article from Forbes shares, “three-quarters of employees expect their employer to take a stance on current societal or cultural issues, even if those issues have nothing to do with their employer.”

This is new for a lot of leaders, very new, and many leadership development programs have not yet been updated to address this "leadership growth spurt."

•  There are no right answers. Creating an inclusive culture is as individual as, well, your culture, your values, and your strategy.

It is our belief that any DEI initiative must be rooted in the company culture and promoted to drive company strategy. Since every company has a different culture and strategy, what works for one may not work for all, especially in the beginning. Yes, there are best practices, but until the executive team of an organization has done the development work to determine why it's important to develop an inclusive culture, those best practices won't work.

It is our belief that before a DEI strategy can be rolled out, the executives must understand its importance through the lens of the company culture and strategy. In other words, they must answer the question, "why bother doing this?"

Though we have an admitted bias that an inclusive culture is the way to go and we want to move faster towards inclusive spaces, we recognize that may not be the case for all companies and that going too fast can do more harm than good. For example, Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A both have a clear anti-LGBTQ stance and they don't hide it. Though we may not agree with that stance, we know where they stand. As consumers and potential employees, we can decide if that's the kind of organization we want to spend our money with or work for.

To us, this is better than an organization that wants the benefits of appearing inclusive by, say, putting up a rainbow flag during PRIDE month, but in fact, does not have an inclusive culture or infrastructure for LGBTQ people. We've seen a number of companies jump into action because they think they should, only to find that their efforts are not successful, or worse, erode their brand.

This is why the first step of any engagement is clarifying the "why bother" for the client and beginning to shift mindsets from the ones that created the issues in the first place before jumping into action.

• The wisdom is in your organization. Employees have the answers to many of leadership's questions- they just have to learn to hear them; many don't realize hearing requires different skills than listening.

When starting any DEI initiative, the number one way to determine how to best proceed is to listen to your employees. They have the answers you are looking for. The trick is to create a space where underrepresented employees can share their wisdom and leaders can hear them- note, we aren't saying listen to them. Hearing people who are different than you is a skill set that needs to be developed, which points to my previous point about leadership development.

Frankly, whether it's DEI, safety, operations, sales, whatever- the brilliance is there. It is through curiosity, listening, and considering different (dare I say diverse) points of view that you can access that brilliance. What gets in the way of truly "hearing" what is being said- bias, privilege, and lack of understanding of differences. All of the things we talk about in our DEI workshops.

Which brings us full circle to what we've uncovered is the best approach to getting starting in any DEI initiative: develop awareness and understanding, create engagement and dialogue, and design a meaningful strategy. Oh, and also, go slow to go fast.

 It's a long story how I got into this work, or anyone on our team got into this - we all have our own journeys, but we stay because it's humbling, meaningful, and making a difference.

 Thanks for reading and we'll see you next quarter!