Strange Brew: Will Starbucks Lead In Creating a Diverse & Inclusive Culture?
In this special report, Jerry Weinstein, an advisor to Pluto, offers commentary on Starbucks’ racial bias training and the long-term implications of what this means for the company going forward.
Yesterday, millions of Americans had to go elsewhere for their afternoon dose of caffeine.
Starbucks — the self-described “Third Place” — closed 8,000 of its stores (7,000 of its licensed stores stayed open) to offer racial sensitivity training to its 175,000 employees.
What Happened?
This is in response to the April arrest and nearly nine hours detention of Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, two 23-year-old African-American entrepreneurs who were waiting for a client to arrive when Philadelphia store manager Holly Hylton found their presence problematic. Apparently, she was troubled by their desire to use a store bathroom and to occupy space without ordering. Two minutes after confronting them, she elected to call the police. Philly’s finest arrested the duo over the outcry of other “guests” and video of this has been seen over 10 million times.
Initial Response
Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson quickly offered an unqualified apology to the young men, including an undisclosed financial settlement and agreement to pay for their Arizona State University education. Beyond that, he committed to a company-wide training on May 29th — yesterday — to begin the process of creating a more inclusive and diverse culture.
While we’ve yet to see the materials on offer, (we’re told training will include a lesson on the civil rights struggle, a short documentary, and small group discussions) Starbucks has partnered with a constellation of respected activists and leaders including former Attorney General Eric Holder; the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund’s Sherilynn Ifill; Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson; and Demos Executive Director Heather McGee.
Pluto reached out to three diversity and inclusion experts for broader context and recommendations, not merely for Starbucks employees and customers, but for anyone in today’s workforce.
- Susana Restrepo-Martinez, PhD. Founder of CoreWomen
- Caterina Bulgarella, PhD. Consultant in cultural and organizational behavior.
- Julia Taylor-Kennedy, Senior Vice President and Director of Publications at the Center for Talent & Innovation (CTI)
Analysis
“We bring who we are into the workplace.” — Dr. Susana Restrepo-Martinez
Before we explore the particulars of building a more inclusive and diverse workplace culture, Julia Taylor-Kennedy reminds us why the Starbucks incident is not exceptional, and what might be gained from grappling with racial bias:
“Most of us live segregated lives, in our schools, in our houses of worship, and the communities we live in. The workplace is that rare exception. We spend something like one-quarter of our lives at work. We come in with such baggage — but can aspire to create an intentional community which can affect how we live the rest of our lives. It’s an opportunity to be exposed to people of different backgrounds.”
Each of the experts themselves spoke of personal experience. Perhaps this drew them to the work?
Dr. Restrepo-Martinez is from Colombia and shared that she was afraid to speak down South, lest her South American accent be mocked and undermine her authority. Dr. Bugarella once worked at a company explicitly focused on “principled performance.” When a colleague mocked her Italian accent, she confronted her, instead of letting the offense literally silence her. “Whenever we deal with diversity, differences are not important, until we make them matter.
“That is why the way we construe and think about diversity goes beyond unconscious biases with how we think about diversity, how we define inclusion, and how it plays out. We have to start with the fundamentals, respect towards humanity.” Ms. Taylor-Kennedy concurs: “Diversity and representation is actually a lagging indicator of an inclusive culture. The inclusion has to come first.”
Dr. Restrepo-Martinez conducts trainings for her work with a focus on gender and intersectionality. She ran me through a handful of exercises that one can expert during unconscious bias training. One battery was a list of occupations. I was asked to close my eyes and verbally share the mental images I filled in in response to her calling out, “surgeon,” “President,” “Silicon Valley entrepreneur,” “caretaker,” and “teacher.”
In the case of “surgeon” Dr. Restrepo-Martinez noted that more and more girls are seeing a woman when they think of a surgeon, possibly because of Shonda Rhimes’ Grey’s Anatomy. This, she informs me, demonstrates the importance of representation.
Ms. Taylor-Kennedy shares this belief, adding that examples of counter-representation can benefit a workforce, modeling leadership, career advancement, and setting the tone that mission isn’t just rhetoric. While representation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for an inclusive workplace culture, it should be noted that Rosalind (“Roz”) Brewer is Starbucks’ first African-American female COO. (And, that when she gave an interview stressing diversity as the CEO of Sam’s Club in 2015, she was branded racist and anti-white.)
Ms. Taylor-Kennedy asserts that, “one of the best ways to have an inclusive, diverse workforce is to make staff feel comfortable in talking about issues of race at work.”
Last year, with University of Chicago’s NORC facilitating data collection, CTI published “Easing Racial Tensions at Work,” with striking findings:
More than a third of African-American employees believed that it was never acceptable to discuss their experiences of race-based bias in their workplace. The consequences of not being able to bring oneself to work were seismic: These workers were 3x as likely to leave the company within the next year, and 13X (!) more disengaged. Being able to to have conversations on race correlated to retention and positive performance outcomes.
Further, research found that those who have multiple identities (such as a disabled LGBTer, or an African-American man who is also a veteran) are more likely to downplay their identity at work. These folks are then less likely to join a Special Interest Group (or SIG) and/or bring their identity/identities up at work, which can affect their career advancement, leadership, and their retention.
Dr. Bulgarella had some granular thoughts about Starbucks, with far-reaching implications:
“I am struck by the divide between workers delivering the perfect cup of coffee — a product. What about how personnel is dealing with the public? Culturally, they have been building a culture around a perfect cup — but separating that from helping people think about how they relate to one another. And that’s critical.”
Even before diversity — lack of attention to the customer as an individual. A sense of care that goes beyond making the perfect drink. This to me seems to be one of the root causes of the problem. Every Starbucks experience: ““What are you having?”” And then my name is called, nobody smiles at me. They’ve gotten their employees what they need to do to make the perfect drink. Their attention focus narrows just to that — human is less important. If I were Starbucks, I’d focus on that.” What is true of Starbucks is true for most retailers, and for most customer-facing positions.
Dr. Restrepo-Martinez also believes that in addition to workplace training, we as individuals can take personal responsibility for how we process information and interact with others.
“We think fast and slow.” Referencing the work of Nobelist Daniel Kahnemann, Thinking Fast and Slow, she points out that:
“We have stereotypes. We all come with baggage. You were born in a certain city, social class, with parents with a certain bias. Your brain will automatically classify. Most people don’t do the second part of the thought process — thinking slow. The question is what do you do next?”
“Unconscious Bias training is so hard, to not stop stereotyping people. The question is, how do we learn how think fast and also slow? To not to act on statistical discrimination — you have information about a certain group and you generalize for everybody — changing representations is key. “I tell people that once you start on that journey that it’s like taking Neo’s Red Pill (The Matrix). You start seeing the world in a different way.”
Ms. Taylor-Kennedy has some concrete suggestions for how to build a diverse and inclusive workplace culture:
- Start with a very clear mission statement, values around inclusion and diversity.
2. Look for employees to act in more inclusive way by connecting behavior that the C-suite expects, to mission and values publicly so that you are showing that this is what our company values and this is what we expect in terms of behavior — so that you can clarify expectations and what they’re rooted in.
3. Think about who you’re hiring in leadership positions and how you evaluate talent based on evidence and skill — hard pieces of performing — beyond a culture fit which can sometimes cloud your judgment.
4. Create a space for conversations around diversity and inclusion even if it’s just a brown bag lunch, if you’re a small organization. Give someone a piece of their job to focus on D&I even if you can’t afford a full-time staffer. They can act as a coach to their founder or CEO, watching out for problems that come up in the course of business, and lead ongoing conversations.
Additionally, Ms. Taylor-Kennedy suggests that companies add bystander training: “With #MeToo, this training enables a response to sexual misconduct in real time, rather than allowing them to escalate.”
Conclusion
All three experts agree that yesterday’s training is the beginning of a journey and that unconscious bias training should be used for onboarding of all hires. (Sherilynn Ifill has indicated this will be the case for Starbucks).
Consensus is that Starbucks has responded appropriately, owning their issues and aspiring to work on the drivers that have made the retailer unwelcoming to African-Americans. (The same cannot be said for Waffle House.)
While my reaction to the announcements of the company-wide policy changes to open bathrooms to all — and make each location accessible without a beverage purchase — was to see these efforts as mere gimmick, Taylor-Kennedy saw something different:
“It has a positive impact for folks with disabilities, who frequently find it hard to find restrooms. It is also taking decisions out of a store manager’s hands, making it national policy and adding uniformity and accountability.”
While Dr. Burgarella is cautious about the long-term — — “My biggest fear for diversity and inclusion is that it becomes today’s window dressing for an organization just as sustainability/CSR became that 15–20 years ago.” — she is more sanguine about framing immediate takeaways: “Whom did you connect with today and how did you connect with them? That initial reflection can be incredibly helpful and powerful when it comes to calculating intentional mindset to establishing human connection.”
To be more than a fad, then, diversity and inclusion must be used to focus on real change.
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