In light of current events illustrating the need for racial equity, along with the #metoo movement of the recent past, effective diversity strategies are more important than ever. In the “must read” Why Diversity Programs Fail, authors Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev discuss research related to common diversity programs in the workplace and the outcomes they have NOT achieved. Most companies work at applying diversity and inclusion techniques, but they are getting opposite results from what they want.
First, what are the common diversity ideas that Dobbin and Kalev show do not work?
1. Required diversity training
2. Hiring tests and performance ratings
3. Grievance systems
Why are these tactics not working? Compulsory tactics don’t always work because let’s face it, people are people; and they generally resent being forced to do anything. For specific data that may surprise you, read this eye-opening article.
Well, then what does work? Dobbin and Kalev highlight several ideas that succeed in improving diversity: targeted college recruitment, mentoring programs, self-managed teams, and task forces. I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical when I read this. Self-managed teams and task forces? I have been a proponent of teams for a long time and have helped hundreds of organizations implement various kinds of team structures and cultures, from self-managed teams, to task forces, blitz teams, kaizens, and virtual teams. I questioned: is it possible that teams many of us already use can help us address racial and gender bias in our organizations?
• We know that teams—both permanent, self-managed teams and temporary improvement teams—can solve complex organizational problems.
• We know that well planned, self-managed teams can cut operating costs not only through sound problem solving but also by moving decision making to the lowest appropriate level of the organization, driving down the cost of many decisions because the decision does not have to be kicked up the organization and then kicked around the upper levels of the organization only to slow down processes or to languish there.
• Teams also foster innovation; and done right, they can significantly build “teamwork,” team loyalty, and mutual accountability.
How then can teams support our efforts in decreasing racial and gender bias in our organizations? Upon further consideration, the nature of teams almost inherently works to address disunity and stereotypes. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas K Smith define a team as “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable” [italics added]. If you have genuine teams and not work groups labeled as teams (see my articles for more guidance on creating high performance teams), then you purposefully put diverse people together with a common purpose to address a problem or improve a process. Without diversity on the team, team function suffers. Through experiencing success together, the team grows even more successful, and the common purpose helps them align and unite. My experience (and Dobbin and Kalev’s research) shows that working together committed to a common purpose over time helps to erode the age-old stereotypes we may have about others on our team who are quite different from us. Dobbin and Kalev make a compelling case, “at firms that create self-managed work teams, the share of white women, black men and women, and Asian-American Asian women in management rises by 3% to 6% over five years.” Diversity and commitment to a common purpose are key components, and in self-managed teams, the mere function and participation in teams indirectly achieve better results than many more typical inclusion efforts.
Self-managed teams may be permanent (as in work teams) or temporary (as in task forces). Task forces not only work indirectly to reduce bas, but also could directly work to reduce bias and achieve better diversity and inclusion. These teams could specifically work on generating solutions such as developing a strategy for reducing bias across the organization, or creating a mentoring program for managers to mentor people of different race or gender, or developing a plan for cross training people across the organization as a way to move people around and allow for contact with a wider variety of people in the organization. As you put the teams together, you may even include some managers and employees who are skeptical of diversity and inclusion efforts on the teams. Through contact with diverse team members working toward a common purpose, formerly biased employees and managers will become less biased while they create a plan for the organization to address bias. Through their work, they will begin to see themselves as champions of the change they were once against.
This may sound like a formula for disaster, but if well-managed, it actually works. Early in my career, I learned how important it is to use people who are against a particular change to help plan that change. At the time, I was implementing cross functional, self-managed work teams throughout a division of a large, global, private textile organization. At the time, many organizations had departmental self-directed work teams, but cross functional work teams were VERY uncommon, and many managers and employees vehemently opposed moving from their prior work group structures. To kick off the team structure and culture planning, I utilized various teams in the process. In one location, the plant manager told me that he had decided to put several of his most negative people on the panning teams, because if I could get them on board, then the rest of the employees would come on board as well. And it worked. After that, for every initiative of any type, I worked with the client to identify the formal and informal leaders who were against the change in order to involve them in the planning and implementation for the change. By participating on the teams, not only did the stereotypes break down because of contact with diverse people, but the employees began seeing themselves as champions of an initiative that they had been totally against.
Finding creative solutions that can improve diversity in our organizations is vitally important right now. Research and experience show that teams – a tool we already use –- supports improvement, so it might be worth it to “double down” on team efforts.
For more information on how teams can help your organization, contact us at through LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/transformingorganizations/ or at [email protected].
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