A Data-Driven Guide to Operationalizing Inclusion

Many of us care about diversity, but how do we push beyond awareness to effect real change?

Hello, I’m Renee, mother of three and a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community. As the youngest daughter of an anti-segregationist Tennessean and a Scottish immigrant, I have spent my life believing in the validity and importance of diversity, access, and representation.

Most organizations want to represent our commitment to inclusion but are caught in legacy processes that perpetuate exclusion. However, if we are going to reach new outcomes, we have to learn how to follow different pathways. Inclusive marketing has been top of mind for us at Salesforce for a long time. In 2019, we launched our Inclusive Marketing Trailhead to equip marketers with the tools they need to reflect and elevate the diverse communities we serve.

Tableau is a Salesforce company and an analytics platform that helps people see and understand data. Over the past 6 months, I’ve been leading our implementation of an inclusive marketing program at Tableau. With my team, I’ve been leaning into Tableau’s greatest strength — data — to embed inclusive values, habits, and processes in our day-to-day work. We also want to create a data-driven model that other marketing organizations can learn from. We’re finding that data can be a valuable resource through which employees at all levels can better understand the obstacles to inclusion and see how every marketer contributes to creating a more diverse, welcoming, and ultimately effective customer experience.

Read on to learn how we are doing it!

Let’s take a quick look at what we’re keeping top of mind.

1. Inclusion from the start.

Frequently, I hear folks defining inclusion as an end result. However, I encourage teams to think about instilling trust and respect in our customers throughout the life of a project — especially a project seeking to combat exclusion! If inclusion is applied from the start, it will ultimately lead to a more inclusive outcome. For example, when considering agencies to support this work, it was essential that their mission and commitment to inclusion and diversity aligned with our aspirations. It’s important to remember that how we do this work is just as important as the work itself.

2. Challenging our assumptions.

We all walk around with our own definitions of “diversity” and “inclusion” in our heads. And the likelihood is, those definitions are more narrow than we realize. “Diversity” isn’t just binaries like Black and white or male and female. There are so many aspects of identity that intersect. But often, we continue to overlook multi-dimensional personhood, which can lead to bias in the workplace. Exclusion also happens when we fail to recognize *intersectionality and remain attached to conventional binaries and definitions.

*Intersectionality considers the whole person as an individual when experiencing multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism and sexism) and how this overlapping reality can’t be separated out. It is particularly prominent in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups. — Salesforce Blog

6 principles from Salesforce’s Inclusive Marketing Trailhead — free and available to all.

I remember my team and I were wrapping up image selections for a campaign, and we felt really confident that we had considered diversity and inclusion. The images were of a white man, a few women of color, a woman wearing a hijab, and a transexual man. But they were all slim, able-bodied models. There was representation, but it was not multi-dimensional. Body and ability diversity had not been top of mind, so we unintentionally left it out. We have to constantly remind ourselves to pause and recognize the ways in which we can perpetuate exclusion — no matter how well-intentioned we may be.

Now, let’s look at how we’ve started building the program!

Taking the pulse of our organization

When starting any project, prioritizing inclusivity is essential. As data people, we’re anchored on data-driven decision-making to set ourselves up for success. So, we started by creating a baseline. The baseline tells you if you’re just spinning your wheels or if you’re actually moving the needle toward change. Most importantly, a baseline will tell you when you need to check what you’re doing and adjust.

To begin the process of finding our baseline, we worked in partnership with Tessi Consulting. As I mentioned earlier, it was vital to find an agency that aligned with our commitment to inclusion, and Tessi was perfect because they are a 100% certified woman and Black-owned business with a wealth of experience and expertise in this area. One of our first goals was to better understand where employees were experiencing barriers to being inclusive in their work. This knowledge would help us understand what tools and resources would be the most effective — and where to prioritize our efforts.

Diagnosing the problems

One of the most valuable roles data can play is in helping us find the signal in the noise and get a sense of where people are on their journey — not where we assume they are. Taking all the data from the surveys and research (in Tableau, of course), I was able to ‘swim in the data,’ looking at different combinations of information to gain insights.

Exploring the data this way helped me understand how folks perceived the value of the effort to become more inclusive in our work. I was able to uncover the different degrees to which employees felt supported and connected to this work — and, more importantly, why they said they felt or thought the way they did. For many of us working on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) generally — and inclusive marketing specifically — can unexpectedly find ourselves in an echo chamber created by *selection bias. More specifically, the people we engage with are often the ones that are interested in this work and seek out opportunities to contribute to our programs.

*Selection bias is a kind of error that occurs when the researcher decides who is going to be studied. It is usually associated with research where the selection of participants isn’t random. — Institute for Work & Health

Through data, we can get out of an echo chamber, find those who may think that inclusive marketing programs are “performative” or that it doesn’t apply to them in their particular role. And finding these signals, subtle as they may sometimes be, gives us a chance to be intentional in shaping and iterating on our strategies for communicating the right messages, updates, and content to our team.

Using this word cloud, I was able to show segmentation across positive, neutral, and negative-themed feedback and make more informed decisions about how we message with our teams.

Not only did this linear look at the responses help me see where our message was landing and how, but I also started to socialize the findings with the larger organization.

Using data to tell great stories

Data-driven storytelling is successful for two reasons: it’s transparent, and it encourages curiosity and critical thinking. Tableau Stories are visualizations that can tell data narratives, provide context, demonstrate how decisions relate to outcomes and more. I invite people into a virtual room where we can engage with the data and see what it’s telling us firsthand. Transparency and curiosity are created because the data is not dependent on one individual’s interpretation of it.

Data-driven storytelling is the foundation for how I speak about what we learn from the teams. It allows me to take our leaders and teammates through a COVID-compliant virtual “gallery walk” through the data. Rather than be prescriptive in the analysis, I am able to let each member of the team digest the data, ask probing questions, and explore what the insights mean for us as individuals and as an organization. It is encouraging to see how many people come through their own analysis to similar conclusions. Through the interactive process, I see some of my colleagues rethink some of their assumptions about the value of and their role in creating more inclusive marketing programs.

By anchoring on the data, we can be very clear that decisions are not being made in a silo. Folks know that when they share feedback, insights, or their lived reality, they are being heard, and we are integrating them into the work. We are talking about practical applications and process shifts, but we are also talking about significant mental shifts. We can only be successful in this effort if all of us feel connected to it, invested in it, a part of it.

Ultimately, we can support our strategic decisions with the feedback we gather and guide stakeholders with persuasive storytelling substantiated by clear facts. What we are prioritizing, how we are messaging internally, what types of supports we are creating. For example, we know that we need to prioritize helping folks understand how this work (inclusive marketing) applies even if they are not in a role that is creating assets. If they are working on research, how are they choosing participants? If they are working on messaging guidelines, how are they thinking about the audience? It’s a way for marketing operations to move forward with quality and consistency.

Looking forward

In our post-COVID lockdown future, I hope we have a shared expectation that each person in the room is responsible for flagging exclusion. Addressing oppressive behavior, stereotypes, and lack of inclusion is not optional. Our measure of success relies on embedding equity, inclusion, and justice into everything we do to create more equitable workplaces and inclusive customer experiences and to contribute to a more just society.

Employees are asking questions, seeking out information, and getting access to resources and tools like never before. One great resource is the Do No Harm Guide published by the Urban Institute and funded by the Tableau Foundation. The guide shares ten tips for using data with sensitivity and care to create a more equitable future. We also have a Racial Equity Data Hub where you can see data stories driven by racial equity — you can even submit your own. At Salesforce, our new Inclusive Marketing Trailhead is empowering everyone with actionable concepts and skills to make better marketing decisions.

A data story from Feeding America. Found on Tableau’s Racial Equity Data Hub.

There is more work to be done. But taking a strategic, data-driven approach can help break it down into manageable steps. We can all move the needle by understanding where we are and creating a roadmap to get where we want to go.

You can start your journey with the six principles of inclusive marketing by taking the Inclusive Marketing Trailhead. Then continue to learn more about inclusion with this Trailmix. And explore how to use data to improve decision-making.

Designers, explore our new Inclusive Design module.

I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of the Tableau team. My deepest gratitude to our sponsor Jackie Yeaney for her willingness to both listen and act, prioritizing the belief in our ability to grow into a stronger, more inclusive team and to the Office of Equality — most especially Alexandra Siegel, Isabel Gonçalves, Stacey Clark Ohara and Alix Hughes — for their trailblazing work and partnership in these efforts.

Many thanks to Margaret Seelie and Madeline Davis, without whom this article wouldn’t have been possible.

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