Inclusion Revolution: The Essential Guide to Dismantling Racial Inequity in the Workplace by Daisy Auger-Domínguez (Book excerpt)

For far too long, managers have believed that creating a fair, inclusive, and equitable working environment is somehow separate from their core job as a leader. That's what chief diversity officers are for, right? As if a manager's only job is achieving operational goals.

Employees have become more vocal and persistent in challenging leadership on controversial issues -- including immigration, harassment, arbitration clauses, and pay equity -- yet we are all stuck in the gray space between awareness and effective action. There are reasons: a fear of saying the wrong thing, confusion as to what to prioritize first or where and how much to invest, or frustration about the lack of impact of previous efforts. We need to get out of this space.

We all interact in workplaces and have a million opportunities to influence change. You can create change in your organization through small and constant actions that over time affect hearts, minds and systems. Activist and author Angela Davis says we need to "make the radical imaginable" and empower ordinary people to put pressure on the existing state of affairs to create conditions for change. She calls these strategies "reform tactics," though you may think of them as operational practices, such as designing new hiring policies, launching new management training programs, and setting targets for achieving representational diversity. I think of this as affecting the conditions for change, one effort, conversation, or key performance indicator at a time.

Waiting for change to happen means abdicating your responsibility to lead and missing your chance to create conditions for your entire team to succeed. You must act. There is no other choice if you believe that building inclusive, equitable and diverse workplaces is the priority of the decade. Reading anti-racist books doesn't magically turn you into an anti-racist activist, just as reading about inclusive practices doesn't make you an inclusive leader. These are not topics to be tucked away and brought out for periods of curious ex- amination or social pressure. In fact, acting on the lessons, ideas, and awakening that comes from reading a book takes you on the path to course correct years of systematic bias and racism in the workplace. A thoughtful, committed call to action is what's needed. It can feel necessary to act quickly and react defensively to what's being said around you. But more often, a thoughtful response and an action plan to make things right is far more necessary when, for ex- ample, harassment or toxicity is reported. The key ingredients to success are introspection, thoughtful responses, and committing to meaningfully and materially changing what needs to change. What works best is not always what comes first, but what has the most lasting impact.

"This work needs to be done in the true spirit of reparations if we're going to do anything differently," says Freada Kapor Klein. An exploration of reparations -- typically discussed as a way to re- dress the injustices of slavery, Jim Crow, and anti-Black institutional racism -- can also apply more broadly to the workplace by acknowledging that institutional and structural inequities exist and that they limit Black people's professional opportunities in particular. "It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill, and having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not dis- appear," said Ta-Nehisi Coates in his article "The Case for Reparations." "The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us."

On a practical level, what do reparations look like in the workplace? In relation to work, it is not about placing guilt on white people or excusing BIPOC employees not performing their job duties, but about acknowledging that four hundred years of slavery and subsequent racial segregation in our schools, neighborhoods and workplaces have stunted economic and social outcomes for Black communities. So what's a business leader to do?

Shift your mindset to focus on achieving fair outcomes for all your people. What do they need to feel a sense of belonging and connection to you and your organization? Start with these questions:

1. What do your customers want?

The audiences you build for, sell to and speak to around the world are richly diverse, so you can't serve them well if your company doesn't reflect their voices, culture, perspectives and needs. If a high percentage of your customers are Black, doesn't it make sense to have Black leaders be the ones approving marketing plans? Black leaders who understand the demographic and what they value from a personal and professional lens. Companies who are profit- able understand this and create room for diverse ideas to be welcomed and challenged, for creative tensions to exist, and for excellence, innovation, and inspiration to thrive.

In 2014, Apple made a strategic acquisition to engage Black consumers, 71 percent of whom own smartphones. Apple purchased Dr. Dre's Beats Electronics for $3 billion to add a product line favored by a Black audience and featured celebrities like Kendrick Lamar in advertising. Apple recognized the purchasing power of their consumers.

Every company has a customer, and the most successful companies know to put that customer -- no matter who they are, what they believe, where they are from, or what they identify with -- first. Diversity of thought, experience, and background is good for business, but it's also better for the customers who are your business.

2. Who are you leaving out?

The smallest changes can have the biggest impact on the most people. For an LGBTQ event at Twilio, a cloud software company, an organizer taped a sheet of paper on a bathroom door that declared it "all gender" for the day. They never took it down. A candidate who interviewed at Twilio reportedly joined the company because of that sign; it was a literal signal of inclusion, and the candidate felt comfortable coming out as transgender. In response to that feedback, Twilio added gender-neutral bathrooms across the office.

Some diversity advocates use the calendar as a way to make inclusion sustainable in the form of Black, Hispanic and Asian heritage months, Pride month, women's history month and so on. This must be done tastefully and sensitively -- having Taco Tuesday during Hispanic heritage month is one big eye roll. Do something more impactful. Several organizations, such as Barclays UK, have held global Wikipedia edit-a-thons, where teams get together to literally change the narrative of history. Less than 20 percent of Wikipedia biographies are about women, and an estimated 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are men, so these companies set out to fix this by writing and uploading articles about women. Art+Feminism, a national campaign to improve coverage of cis and transgender women and the arts, did the same and teamed up with UC Berkeley's Race+Justice edit-a-thon to fire up their laptops and add or edit articles.

3. What do your managers need to know?

Everyone in corporate America has gone through some type of diversity training. The truth is, it's not working. There is scant research-based evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of generic training and cookie-cutter diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Instead, you need to tailor solutions to the individual needs of the people in your workplace. And you need to provide reinforcing mechanisms -- such as continuous tips and tricks and resources for managers -- to help teams internalize what they've learned within their day-to-day operations, along with clear accountability expectations.

You have to get down to the basics of how people manage, lead, operate and hire in an inclusive way. You need to build a shared understanding of what you're trying to solve and who should do it. Be careful with what you expect to get out of training and research and the impact it will have. Training can introduce very complex topics, new vocabulary and an expectation for immediate expertise, as if a one-day exploration of racism at work is all it takes to turn managers into gold-star inclusive leaders.

Instead, leadership and management development should prioritize giving managers the tools to spot where change can happen: Where are the biggest gaps in your company culture? What direct or indirect experiences at work cause racial trauma? What specifically do you want people to do, think, or feel differently after the training? Start by determining your focus, where your most significant opportunities are, and where you want to make an impact.

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