My Experiences at Grace Hopper 2019
I had the opportunity to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration in October 2019, along with a co-worker, Thusha. I scribbled down many notes and this is my attempt to share and make them readable for all.
The first session I attended was: “Addressing the maturing diversity models”. This session was hosted by Carin Taylor, Chief Diversity Officer at Workday and, Mike McNamara, VP and CIO at Target. I really appreciated that a white man in his 50’s would attend and host a session at GHC. Growth in our diversity models requires everyone to be on board and it was so great to hear him talk about why this matters to him and Target.
Carin further emphasized this by stressing that her black skin is no more or less diverse than Mike’s white skin. She reminded us that we have to be very careful not to make it a competition of who is more or less diverse. Diversity is for all!
They both spoke of how diversity models are evolving. One of the takeaways for me was that same minds can make quick decisions and move very quickly. This feels really good…for a while. However, without diverse opinions, eventually this will fail. There is no one to say “wait a minute…I’m not so sure about this…” or “have you considered…?”.
Mike also spoke of how important it was for Target to be diverse.
“Target is here to serve the American public. Which means, we must also represent the American public”
So, how do we operationalize diversity and move past it being a compliance exercise? Carin spoke about how they do this at Workday. First she spoke of flexibility. Diversity focus changes based on where the office and employees are. For example, maybe where you live gender isn’t underrepresented but certain races are. You can’t prescribe what it should look like across all offices, countries, etc. She also spoke of measuring it through OKR’s, the importance of engaging your workforce, and being intentional with your practices.
For Target, Mike shared that the pillars are education, engagement, experience, and holding people accountable.
“Across the world there are varying levels of education on this subject. Prioritizing diversity is a true competitive advantage right now.”
A few other random thoughts shared during the session:
Retention is key factor. For example, keeping critical mass so no woman joins a team where she is the only one.
Belonging is everything. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be the only one. It’s how you feel in that situation. Do I feel like I belong?
The next session was: “Lessons Learned from 10x Growth” This was hosted by Yulia Witaschek and she spoke to the explosive growth with Google Cloud in 2012. The main topics touched on were hiring, team management, performance management, on-boarding and reporting.
The biggest lessons learned there were:
- promote from within whenever possible
- add management as soon as possible to keep team ratios where managing the team is achievable
- automate as much as you can!
A session I was really excited about was: “The Spectrum of Feedback: The Thematic Divide in Feedback to Women & How to Openly Discuss Bias”
I was curious to hear thoughts on the balance of being open and reflective on feedback you receive and holding people accountable where the feedback could be better. Sadly, I wasn’t overly impressed with the session. It was hosted by women working in US companies and things are a bit different there (read: farther behind it would seem). In my opinion, much of the feedback they spoke of was straight-up sexual harassment where the clear path is report it to HR and move on. They did not speak to the more nuanced feedback (ie. where characterization of a women’s behaviour is different than a man who exhibits the same traits).
I did take away a couple of things. Women get more feedback on their body and looks than men. Specifically though, women get a lot of feedback on their face and facial expressions. There is this notion in business that showing emotion (on your face in this case) is bad or unprofessional. It left me thinking…is there a place for emotion in business? Can you be professional and emotional at the same time?
One of the best days was the Senior Leadership Summit. The Keynote for this event centered around building scaling and high performance teams. It was delivered by Cathy Polinsky, the CTO of Stitch Fix. She was awesome! The four pillars she spoke to were People, Delivery, Technology, and Culture.
People:
- take a thoughtful and data-driven approach to each hiring phase to make it strong
- provide inclusive and value-aligned candidate experience
- focus on culture add instead of culture fit
Delivery:
- hire product centric engineers that make it their priority to always understand what the business is trying to accomplish
- must scale how we deliver over time
- roadmap planning: prioritize big rocks, identify pebbles, sprinkle some pixie dust (let the team decide the pixie dust)
Technology:
- de-couple systems to remove roadblocks
- shorten feedback loop
- blameless post-mortems
Culture:
- need a strong feedback model
- teach that feedback is a gift
- teach what good feedback looks like
The Grace Hopper experience was incredible. It was inspiring, overwhelming, informative, and exhausting. A real roller coaster of emotions, if I’m being honest. Navigating the convention center with 25,000 other women was something else.
I want to thank Magnet Forensics for supporting Thusha and me in attending Grace Hopper. I was encouraged during many sessions knowing that Magnet does a lot of these things well.
In addition to conferencing, Thusha and I also enjoyed some time by the pool, drinking wine, and sharing thoughts of sessions we attended. We also had some fun trying to fit all our swag in our luggage!