C-suite leaders from Vodafone, Stanley Black & Decker, Paradigm & Facebook talk how to drive cultural change
What does it actually take to make cultural change happen within an organization?
This is the question that Workplace Marketing Director Catherine Flynn got to the bottom of at Flow last month, with the help of a panel of change experts.
To kick off the first panel session of the day, Catherine welcomed Pradheepa Raman, Chief Talent and Innovation Officer at Stanley Black & Decker, Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer at Facebook, Ronald Schellekens, CHRO at Vodafone and Joelle Emerson, CEO of Paradigm, to the stage to discuss the topic of ‘The People Behind The Change.’
The following is a transcript of the panel discussion. Highlights include practical ways that everyone in an organization can be a diversity champion, how to measure inclusion, and how to foster continuous growth and resilience with a growth mindset.
Catherine Flynn: Something that stood out for me about what Dan Coyle said earlier this morning was that strong cultures actually make companies more valuable, they add up to more. We know that no leader today wants to stand still, change is the cornerstone of progress. But change — cultural or otherwise — is hard, right?
“Strong cultures actually make companies more valuable, they add up to more. We know that no leader today wants to stand still, change is the cornerstone of progress.” — Catherine Flynn, Marketing Director, Workplace
So, for our first panel today, we wanted to lift the lid on some strategies that can make change a reality.
We’ve assembled a crack team of experts who have experience delivering tangible change in some of the world’s most successful organizations. Please join me in welcoming Pradheepa Raman, Chief Talent and Innovation Officer at Stanley Black & Decker, Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer at Facebook, Ronald Schellekens, CHRO at Vodafone and Joelle Emerson, the CEO of Paradigm.
Welcome guys! Thank you all again for joining us today, we’re the first panel of the day today so no pressure whatsoever. Let’s start with an easy one: please introduce yourself, your role, and the biggest challenge facing the business you work at today.
Pradheepa Raman: Thank you for having me, I’m really privileged to be amongst the set of change champions we have here today. My name is Pradheepa Raman, I’m the Chief Talent and Innovation Officer at Stanley Black & Decker. I have a dual role — I’m the CHRO for Stanley’s Innovation and Ventures Group that is headquartered in Silicon Valley, and I’m also the Head of Global Talent for the Stanley Black & Decker organization, which is a 58,000-employee organization.
I’ve been with the company for 10 months now, it’s my first job in the industrial sector, I’ve always been in tech throughout my career. I’m also the mother of a 12-year old boy. I’m originally from India, I started off as an engineer — I did some software development early in my career and transitioned to Human Resources many years back.
CF: And the biggest challenge?
PR: To set the context, we are a diversified industrial organization. We are in three businesses — we make tools, many of you know Stanley tools, we are in the industrial business, so we have oil and gas infrastructure, and we are also in commercial security. We’re very focused on growth and performance, we’re committed to corporate social responsibility, and we absolutely want to become one of the most innovative companies in the world.
To set the context more, we are a company that’s going through a lot of acquisition, and there’s organic growth as well. There’s some 100 acquisitions we have done in the past 8 years, so you can imagine all the different cultures coming together and the need for communication and collaboration to move the vision forward. It’s a very old company — it’s 175 years old — so cultural transformation is absolutely a must to stay relevant. While we face all these short-term pressures — with global social, economic and political issues, foreign exchange issues, tariffs — we absolutely believe that we will do our best to mitigate all this.
“Our biggest challenge is how well we go through the cultural transformation to stay relevant in the future.” — Pradheepa Raman, Chief Talent and Innovation Officer, Stanley Black & Decker
Our biggest challenge is how well we go through the cultural transformation to stay relevant in the future. We want to be one of the most innovative technology companies that happens to be making tools and the other industrial content we make. It’s a big ambition, and that’s our biggest challenge.
Maxine Williams: My name is Maxine Williams, and I’m the Chief Diversity Officer at Facebook. I have been at Facebook for about five years and in that time, so much has changed.
So one of the biggest challenges we are facing is how we manage the growth and the scaling, and still keep the two things we have front and centre as things that you don’t just talk about, but you’re able to do with the challenge of growth, and those are diversity and inclusion. So there’s a chicken and an egg thing going on constantly, where we are constantly trying to increase the representation of people who are currently underrepresented, so you’re getting more and more people in your ecosystem, and at the same time you’re constantly trying to build a strong enough inclusive environment, where everyone has a sense of belonging, and has true equal opportunity to perform. And if you think about it — and you’re thinking about people from lots of different dimensions — you still have within that the complexities of minorities within minority populations. We may have got more women in, but do we have enough black women in? Do we have enough Latina women in? Do we enough people who are differently able?
“We want to have enough cognitive diversity on every team. We want to have people who think differently on every single team because that will give us a better opportunity to make better decisions and to build better products.” — Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer, Facebook
You’re managing all of that because the goal is that we want to have enough cognitive diversity on every team. We want to have people who think differently on every single team because that will give us a better opportunity to make better decisions and to build better products. But as you increase the numbers, every day you’re dealing with cultural transformation because there are hundreds of new people, so as you’re building this inclusive culture, you’re also managing the integration of all these new people constantly, while still knowing that we have to keep our eye on increasing representation.
“If you are the only one who is like you on a team, that’s not cool. That’s not a space in which you are set up very well to perform at your best, there is a sense of isolation.” — Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer, Facebook
If you are the only one who is like you on a team, that’s not cool. That’s not a space in which you are set up very well to perform at your best, there is a sense of isolation. Everyone is learning who to turn to to help you, to guide you, which is what some people get naturally by being part of the majority, which is a sense of a community, of people they can turn to. Diane talked earlier about safety — safety comes very easily to some and it’s hard for others, so I would say the big challenge is to manage growth and scaling, and still be able to increase diversity and inclusion for everybody.
Ronald Schellekens: Hi everyone, I’m Ronald Schellekens, I’m the CHRO at Vodafone. We’re the largest mobile operator in the world, next to MobileMe who are also very big in fixed. I think our biggest challenge, like many other companies, is digital transformation. Everybody’s going through the same experience, but for us, it’s how can you digitalize quicker than the smaller companies? The large operators are more of the same, but we are being attacked continuously by the smaller companies who are more nimble, much more digital, and therefore more attractive to customers.
“I think our biggest challenge, like many other companies, is digital transformation.” — Ronald Schellekens, CHRO, Vodafone.
We sit with legacy infrastructure, legacy thinking, and how do you get out of that and become as simple and as digital as possible? The second challenge that I’m confronted with is that our longstanding CEO has now retired this year and we’re now in a leadership transition, which is something we can perhaps talk about because it’s an interesting change from a cultural point of view.
CF: Definitely. And in case anybody in the audience hasn’t noticed, Ronald is currently experiencing what most women usually experience at a tech conference, but in reverse. Thank you Ronald! Joelle, let’s go to you.
Joelle Emerson: Hi, I’m Joelle Emerson, I’m the founder and CEO of Paradigm. We’re a strategy firm, we partner with organizations to help them design more diverse, inclusive companies. We work with startups like Airbnb, Pinterest and Slack, and we also work with Fortune 500 companies like American Express that are trying to think progressively in more data-driven ways about how to build more equitable, more inclusive cultures.
I think one of the challenges we’re facing today is that companies are starting to realize that it’s non-optional to prioritize diversity and inclusion. It used to be that just industry leaders in various sectors were caring about this, and now we see pretty much every company that cares about culture, that cares about its success in the future, has to care about this.
“Companies are starting to realize that it’s non-optional to prioritize diversity and inclusion… Whether you look at the changing dynamics of our country, which are going to necessitate caring about diversity, or whether you think about just trying to attract and keep the best people.” — Joelle Emerson, Founder and CEO, Paradigm
Whether you look at the changing dynamics of our country, which are going to necessitate caring about diversity, or whether you think about just trying to attract and keep the best people. There was a recent study that found that nearly 50% of millennials actively consider an organization’s diversity and inclusion strategy in choosing their next job. So companies can’t afford to stop thinking about this. Companies have to build best in class cultures that prioritize diversity and inclusion if they want to attract and keep the best people.
This is great, but for us it’s a challenge, because we’re hearing from more and more companies that want to understand, how do you take a data-driven approach? How do you infuse evidence-based strategies into your systems and processes? And we’re trying to figure out how to scale our learnings, because we’re still a company of 25 people, we can’t serve hundreds of thousands of companies yet, so we’re trying to figure out in the meantime, how do we scale the things that we’re learning from this on-the-ground work with organizations? We have a massive data set and we’re learning every single day about the things that actually work to move the needle, whether it’s in attracting candidates, hiring people, building a culture that inspires people to do their best work, and so our constant struggle as a company is how do we scale everything we’re learning beyond the clients that we’re able to work with day-to-day?
CF: Ok so you’ve met the people, let’s talk about change. I’d love to start with asking Pradheepa first, what’s the most significant change that you’ve been responsible for delivering in recent years?
PR: Absolutely. So I’ve always gravitated towards older companies, as I said the current one is 175 years old, the one before that was 80 years old. All these companies have sustained relevance because of all the major change initiatives that are happening in the organization. I’ve had my fair share of leading some of these initiatives. The one that I’m very proud of and passionate about is creating this people-first, talent-first culture in the organizations I’ve worked for.
“[Organizations need to create] a mindset shift and programs to ensure that diversity and inclusion is really a driver of business performance and innovation, and not a check box that companies fill out, or a metric that they need to showcase.” — Pradheepa Raman, Chief Talent and Innovation Officer, Stanley Black & Decker
It’s essentially everything, I look at it from three lenses in my Chief Talent Officer role, everything from looking at talent management from a very entrepreneurial standpoint — giving employees the unparalleled experience that they can get, and ensuring that all of our talent touch points stay true to the brand promise we provide the employees. So that’s number one. Number two is really creating a learning culture, I think it’s a company’s responsibility to up-skill our talent and let them learn new skills, and enable them to learn new skills to stay relevant in the fourth industrial revelation. The third one is creating that mindset shift and creating programs to ensure that diversity and inclusion is really a driver of business performance and innovation, and not a check box that companies fill out, or a metric that they need to showcase. People-first is the biggest changing shift I’ve done and one I’m passionate about.
CF: And what have been the challenges in driving those people-first agendas? Let’s talk about Stanley Black & Decker as the current example, in older organizations, has that been a challenge?
PR: The company is quite open and receptive to change, which is the best news. But it is a very old organization. Everything from, what are the leadership competencies? What makes someone successful and promotable? You will see in an older organization that it looks like male characteristics, so you have to change these fundamentals in the organization. So there is a lot more work to do in a older organization. You have to unlearn a lot of things and start fresh, so I think that’s the biggest challenge, you come with a little bit of baggage.
“What makes someone successful and promotable? You will see in an older organization that it looks like male characteristics, so you have to change these fundamentals in the organization.” — Pradheepa Raman, Chief Talent and Innovation Officer, Stanley Black & Decker
CF: Maxine, how about at Facebook?
MW: As I mentioned before, it’s one thing to say that you’re committed to diversity and inclusion, and it’s another thing to do it. The doing is when the rubber hits the road. The biggest change is developing deliberate systems which have a simple focus, even though they may be complex to implement, and the way you can get everyone at the company engaged, participating and doing this so that the execution is there. It’s very unsexy, but so critical.
“The biggest change is developing deliberate systems which have a simple focus, even though they may be complex to implement, and the way you can get everyone at the company engaged, participating and doing this so that the execution is there. It’s very unsexy, but so critical.” — Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer, Facebook
So one thing I’d say we’re proudest of is something we’ve rolled out called the Diversity-Led approach. And hear how simple this is — it’s based on the premise that if you don’t interview underrepresented people, you will not hire any! Somehow people have a sense that inequality, underrepresentation, all of these things kind of just happen, and so if you don’t mind there being a more diverse workforce, that’ll just happen too. I don’t ascribe to that, we don’t ascribe to that, the imbalances you see were deliberately arrived at, and the only way to come back from that is to be just as deliberate with it. So the Diverse-Led approach for us now, if you’re thinking about the recruiting as the ‘find’ piece and then the inclusion as the ‘can you actually leverage diversity in a workforce’ — this is that piece.
What we’ve done is get everyone focused on achieving that “simple thing.” We need to get more qualified candidates to the interview stage, and that means that it’s on us and to do better in our sourcing. We know there are more people who are qualified for these jobs from underrepresented backgrounds that we haven’t previously interviewed, and so by focusing everybody on achieving that thing — you have to build tools and tracking and lots of things in the background to make it happen — what we’ve done is get everyone on board. It’s a forcing function as well, so if you have a system in place that everyone has to participate in, what you’ve done there is you’ve put a forcing function in place to make sure that we’re all marching to the same beat.
“We know there are more people who are qualified for these jobs from underrepresented backgrounds that we haven’t previously interviewed, and so by focusing everybody on achieving that [finding talent]…what we’ve done is get everyone on board.” — Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer, Facebook
We have seen that in the three years since we’ve piloted the Diverse-Led approach — and now we’ve rolled it out everywhere in the company — it has absolutely worked and it has improved our representation in every category that we’ve been tracking. So we know it works, and we know that the combination of a simple idea, but with systems built to support the doing of that, where everyone is expected to participate, is something that works to increase representation. It has also changed people’s understanding, it has changed culture, we’re all marching to the same beat and understanding why we need to do this. That has been a major change in the last five years.
“We know that the combination of a simple idea, but with systems built to support the doing of that, where everyone is expected to participate, is something that works to increase representation. It has also changed people’s understanding, it has changed culture, we’re all marching to the same beat and understanding why we need to do this.” — Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer, Facebook
CF: That’s great. There’s something coming through there about how if you’re not putting the structures in place to hold everyone accountable, then the transformation doesn’t happen or the mind shift doesn’t happen.
JE: And I would add the idea of bringing people along. So what we know in diversity and inclusion work is that if it were one person’s job, it wouldn’t work — especially at a global organization like Facebook. Finding tactics that involve everyone, so that everyone feels like they’re part of the solution, not part of the problem, is going to be transformative to your efforts. I love hearing that’s worked for you, Maxine.
CF: Ronald, you’ve been driving pretty significant change at Vodafone. Can you talk to us about your most significant change in the past?
RS: Perhaps this is not the most significant, but it’s the most practical to Workplace. As I said, one of the big challenges is to digitalize the company, but you come quickly to a realization that while you can work on the interface with the customer to create the digital experience, ultimately you have to think about what you can do for your own employees.
Our previous CEO said HR needed to take the lead in really thinking through the whole employee experience and digitizing as much as possible all the employee touch points. Make them simple, make them fantastic, but also make them digital. And he put that in the responsibility of HR, which is a bit different because most of the employee experiences are not determined by HR. Yes, HR has a role, but it’s finance processes, it’s SEM, it’s IT — there’s a very big cross-functional influence on how your employees experience the company on a day-to-day basis.
“Every function optimizes their own processes and they’re passionate about their own processes, but the problem is that these processes don’t come together in a way that’s fantastic for the employee experience. So we had to really break all the functional processes and rebuild them, but through the lens of the employee, and then start again.” — Ronald Schellekens, CHRO, Vodafone
Within our company, HR has the responsibility to pull together all the cross-functional work to really think through what is great for an employee. How can you create a fantastic Day One for when you start? How do you do the recruitment process digitally? It’s interesting because you had to rethink the responsibility of HR and the responsibilities of the other functions, and it forces cross-functional working. It’s hard because every function optimizes their own processes and they’re passionate about their own processes, but the problem is that these processes don’t come together in a way that’s fantastic for the employee experience. So we had to really break all the functional processes and rebuild them, but through the lens of the employee, and then start again.
I think many times we are very busy with focusing on how we can digitize for the customer, yet still in our own company it’s not a great digital experience, and therefore it lacks some form of credibility with your own employees. So it’s perhaps not the most important, but it’s pretty cool to think through the lens of the employees rather than functional lens optimization.
CF: I love that it puts the employee at the absolute centre of the experience, and it’s not about how many billion dollars Vodafone needs to add, it’s about how you make that experience great from Day One and throughout. Thank you for sharing Ron.
Next, I want to get really tangible on goal setting. Joelle, we hear sometimes things like ‘Culture can’t be measured’ or ‘There are some things you can’t measure,’ so I would love your point of view on, when it comes to these kind of strategic change initiatives, how do you set the right goals and how do you measure success?
JE: It’s interesting — if you imagine any type of business challenge you might have and you imagine your business is facing this challenge, and you decide to do zero research on what’s actually contributing to it and put a bunch of resources towards random stuff that you don’t know if it’s actually relevant to what’s going on, you can imagine that would be ridiculous and you would never do that. Strangely though, when it comes to culture, diversity and inclusion, that’s exactly what a lot of organizations do.
They have this vague goal of wanting to be more inclusive and diverse, but they can’t measure it — in fact you’d be surprised at how many organizations tell me ‘You can measure diversity, but you can’t measure inclusion.’ Then they do a bunch of random stuff that unsurprisingly doesn’t work. So we think you should do the exact opposite.
“Start by measuring. You can measure quantitative data such as representation, hiring rates, promotion rates, attrition and retention, and you can absolutely measure inclusion, too.” — Joelle Emerson, Founder and CEO, Paradigm
Start by measuring. You can measure quantitative data such as representation, hiring rates, promotion rates, attrition and retention, and you can absolutely measure inclusion, too. We’ve been doing that for the past several years. We at Paradigm run what’s called an Inclusion Survey, and we recently partnered with Survey Monkey to actually scale this. What we do is we use scientifically-validated questions that look at the key themes that inform whether people feel included in your company. Things like whether people feel like they belong, whether people feel like they have a voice, whether people feel they have access to resources. And if you ask those types of questions, and then you break down the results demographically — so you’re not just looking at whether people feel included on average, you’re looking at who feels like they belong and who doesn’t — you can start to get really clear on where some of your organizational challenges are.
So take a second to think about people in your organization who have families, think about parents. What is your organization doing to create a place where people with children are empowered to do their best work and feel like they belong?
We were working with an organization recently and we ran an inclusion survey, and one of the strongest themes that emerged is that people with children — from all different demographic backgrounds, all genders, all races and ethnicities, all ages — people with children were a lot less likely to feel like they belonged in that organization than anyone else. And when we took a look at what they were saying in the feedback, it had to do with something very simple. All of this organization’s social activities happened at night, or on weekends, when people with kids were disproportionately less likely to be able to attend. So the organization had a really simple fix, they just started holding more work events during work hours, and this dramatically changed the way that parents felt included in the organization.
“I really encourage organizations to start with data, start by understanding where your barriers exist, and then you can invest resources in a really targeted way to address those barriers.” — Joelle Emerson, Founder and CEO, Paradigm
Without running the survey we would have had no idea that this was a particular challenge, and so I really encourage organizations to start with data, start by understanding where your barriers exist, and then you can invest resources in a really targeted way to address those barriers. And the most important thing is that you can measure impact. You should never be doing something for like a year, and have no idea whether it’s working. With surveys, you can run another one a year out and see if those gaps have closed. If you have any culture strategies or inclusion strategies going right now and you just can’t think of how you know whether they’re working — what’s the data you would look at or what are the questions you would ask — I would suggest that those might be strategies to start to reconsider. How can you develop that base line data point so you can start to measure progress over time?
“You should never be doing something for like a year, and have no idea whether it’s working. With surveys, you can run another one a year out and see if those [organizational] gaps have closed.” — Joelle Emerson, Founder and CEO, Paradigm
CF: We’re big fans of data at Workplace and at Facebook and leveraging it as much as we can, so thank you for that Joelle. Ronald, I would also love your point of view on the question. How did you set goals around the transformation and digital employee experience you were describing?
RS: If you work in a company where you have a lot of technicians, they love data and measuring things. The rhythm of our company is very much that for everything we do, we set very clear goals and a score card so it’s measured. We survey too much I think, to be honest. Sometimes the fascination with the data over the dialogue about what we’re going to do with it is sometimes a little out of balance.
One thing that I’ll share with you is that the rhythm of companies sometimes is very much year-on-year, you set targets for people and incentivize people on a year-on-year basis. We’ve done a piece of work to figure out what the success of people is on a multi-year basis. Because you measure year-on-year, you sometimes don’t see if people are sliding slowly off the performance chart, or if they’re better than we see because we look at it on a year-on-year basis.
“If you look [at employee performance] over a multi-year basis, you really discover that sometimes the people who you thought were stars are not the stars, and sometimes the people you didn’t appreciate were the people who actually sustained good work.” — Ronald Schellekens, CHRO, Vodafone
It’s quite interesting, so for all our CEOs, before you’re appointed we figure out what is the baseline on a balanced scorecard — not only the financials of the company, but also how is the manager index, how is the engagement index, so we can figure out quantitatively what you have done. If you look over a multi-year basis, you really discover that sometimes the people who you thought were stars are not the stars, and sometimes the people you didn’t appreciate were the people who actually sustained good work, but they were not so appreciated because in any given year, or over two years, they didn’t perform. But if you look at it on a long-term basis, it’s much better. I think there is some wisdom in looking at not only a year-on-year basis, but on a multiple year basis, on a balanced scorecard, how are people actually performing? Specifically CEOs and senior leaders in the company. We discovered there is a very different outcome and picture as a consequence of a multi-year measurement.
CF: Great, taking a long-term approach. So from the CEO perspective, I would love to know how you engage other leaders at your company? So your fellow members of the C-suite, how you engage them in these initiatives. We saw some research recently from Deloitte about the concept of the symphonic suite — so no more can leaders in a company afford to work in siloes, the future is going to be about working together to solve problems that maybe didn’t exist in the past.
MW: Well I feel like we are so far into the future if that’s what the future is, because that’s how we solve every problem at Facebook. The openness, the collaboration, the cross-functional engagement, it’s why for us diversity and inclusion is so critical, because we know we need to have as many different perspectives as possible as we’re doing that real-time building together.
“The openness, the collaboration, the cross-functional engagement, it’s why for us diversity and inclusion is so critical, because we know we need to have as many different perspectives as possible as we’re doing that real-time building together.” — Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer, Facebook
So, to get the symphony from where I sit on issues I’m most focused on relating to diversity and inclusion, it comes back to what we’ve been talking about with hard data. One of the benefits of coming from a technology company is that it’s very easy to get people on board by sharing the data first. We are very clear that if we have more diversity, we have a more inclusive environment and we will do better things. And once people understand that, their question is: how?
That’s the upside of being in a very data-driven company, it is not hard to get everybody in the C-suite, everybody in leadership to believe in this. Here’s the harder thing: when you are such a data-driven company, a product-oriented company, your understanding of how you solve problems comes from that. If you want to build a new product, you take 20 engineers, you put them in a room, close the door, give them some resources, and they will come out with a product. People issues are not like that.
“When no one is looking, when you are behind closed doors, when you are in a small team meeting — what you do makes a difference. In every one of those micro moments.” — Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer, Facebook
I think it’s harder for people to understand that very principle I was talking about, that this needs to be all of us. It’s not just that people need to be signed on — yes we can all build a strategy out, we can roll that strategy out, we can make sure everyone is sticking to it. It’s more that when no one is looking, when you are behind closed doors, when you are in a small team meeting — what you do makes a difference. In every one of those micro moments. So understanding that the people issues are created by all of us in a web, and they’re solved by all of us in a web. That is a little bit more of a challenge, I think it’s something that as human beings we all continue to work on in our own lives. We kind of think that the things that affect us are the most important things, but getting all of us as humans to understand the things that affect our fellow humans as well. Are you thinking about what it’s like to be that only one?
Research shows that if you ask people, ‘How do you feel about working with other people who have obvious physical disabilities?’ they say ‘I have no problem, they’re my colleagues.’ But in fact, the research shows that they systematically avoid others who have physical disabilities because it makes them feel uncomfortable. But they’re not even conscious of that. So there are a lot of layers to this: getting people to be conscious, and then getting people to adjust their behaviors so that you truly have an inclusive environment.
CF: Great, thank you for sharing some of the challenges, we definitely wanted to get real with this panel. Pradheepa, talk to us about Jim, your CEO, and how you have engaged him and how he has engaged with some of the agenda you’ve been driving since you’ve joined the company.
PR: Absolutely. So Jim Loree is a very, very engaged CEO. Not only does he believe in initiatives like diversity and inclusion and creating a more inclusive environment, he advocates for them. You will see him not only advocating for the employee resource groups and participating in them, he goes to Workplace and likes posts and amplifies positive behavior. He really fuels the grassroots movement that has happened around diversity and inclusion. He will go out to the external world and call on other Fortune 500 leaders to come and join and do more from a diversity and inclusion perspective.
When you have a leader like that, for us as change agents you can’t just play in the same league. When you have a leader with better absorptive capacity and essentially a stronger foundation, you really have to think exponentially at that point. You have to feed that organization that’s able to take more — speak the language, engage other leaders. It literally demands the ‘be you’ leaders to show measurable improvements, whether it’s through recruitment or promotions, you have to keep up the momentum and growth the initiative exponentially. That’s the challenge we have, the question of how do we keep the momentum going.
CF: Let’s take that theme into our final question, which is about resilience. These are tough change agendas you’ve all been driving, they take a long time and aren’t achieved in a quarter or sometimes even a year, so how do you stay resilient? What are your tips for people in the room today who know they need to do this and that it’s a tough course to stay?
JE: One of the things that I work on a lot as an individual, and that we work on with the leaders that we support, is building a growth mindset. It is fundamentally the belief that our intelligence, our skills and our abilities are malleable, they’re not fixed. It’s a belief that we as individuals and our organizations are fundamentally capable of learning and growth. It makes sense that this is important to us at Paradigm, it’s one of our core values, if we didn’t believe organizations could change I don’t know why we’d be doing what we do!
“People who develop a growth mindset set loftier goals, they take smarter risks, and they’re more resilient when they face setbacks. Because fundamentally, people with a growth mindset are perceiving opportunities and challenges as areas of learning.” — Joelle Emerson, Founder and CEO, Paradigm
But it turns out that people who develop a growth mindset set loftier goals, they take smarter risks, and they’re more resilient when they face setbacks. Because fundamentally, people with a growth mindset are perceiving opportunities and challenges as areas of learning. So when you face a setback, you’re asking yourself, ‘How can I learn from this? What can I do differently?’
One tactic you can take back for yourself or for your teams is a little reflection. Ask yourself, ‘What is something that I wasn’t very good at one year ago that I’m much better at today?’ And then you can ask your team, ‘What was something as a team or as a company that we weren’t very good at one year ago, that we’re much better at today?’ It’s an in-the-moment exercise that can shift your brain into a growth mindset, because you’re reminding yourself about the malleability of your own ability and your team’s abilities. So that’s what I do to stay resilient, that’s what I work with the leaders of our client companies on, and it’s something we all can take back and do today.
RS: I would say having a growth mindset and balance. I think everything in life, if you overdo one strength, you’re always a bit out of sync. So if people are too busy with their hands, what’s something you can do for your heart or physically? Also, the idea of balancing your energies, your competencies, your time, and don’t become a niche person in one thing. I think that can be a dangerous thing — people lose a little bit of resilience if they’re unbalanced.
“If we stop trying [to improve diversity and inclusion], if we rest, we will be very well rested and fail. So I think you only have two choices: keep fighting and be tired and maybe win, or go and rest and fail. So I keep fighting and trying, and in the middle of all of that I think finding the moments that fill your soul with joy really matter.” — Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer, Facebook
MW: I think we don’t have a choice. We can stop trying because we’re tired, because it can be a real uphill battle if you look at some statistics about how hard it will be to get equal representation for women, for example. But if we stop trying, if we rest, we will be very well rested and fail. So I think you only have two choices: keep fighting and be tired and maybe win, or go and rest and fail. So I keep fighting and trying, and in the middle of all of that I think finding the moments that fill your soul with joy really matter. For somebody like myself who is often in the underrepresented category, that sometimes means finding moments where I can be with people who look like me, come from my background, where I don’t have to think about having to carry that extra tax and burden of being the only one. And that then fills me with some strength and soul to take back to the fight.
PR: I get my resilience from my own conviction. Before I take on any project, I make sure that— especially in an organizational change initiative — I absolutely want to make sure it fits in very well with the overall business purpose and strategy of the organization. So conviction is a big piece for me. I would say that technology can actually build resilience because it sort of creates a self-sustaining movement and it doesn’t have to be that top-down hierarchy.
You create leaders with the help of technology, and you crowdsource ideas and inspiration, so use technology wherever you can in change initiatives. And last but not least, you don’t have to be the only one carrying the torch. Get inspiration from your own team, get inspiration from other peers you have influenced well in advance in the project, and also your external network. I think breaking down all these siloes, even organizational siloes, and getting inspired by people around you is critical.
“Technology can actually build resilience because it sort of creates a self-sustaining movement and it doesn’t have to be that top-down hierarchy. You create leaders with the help of technology, and you crowdsource ideas and inspiration, so use technology wherever you can in change initiatives.” — Pradheepa Raman, Chief Talent and Innovation Officer, Stanley Black & Decker
CF: Great, I’m feeling super inspired by what I’ve heard. Maintain a growth mindset, balance is really important, keep fighting but fill your soul, and stay true to your own conviction and leverage technology to help you achieve resilience as opposed to maybe something that compromises you, and lean on others.
Thank you all for sharing what you’ve shared with us today, let’s continue the conversation, and please join me in thanking this panel for sharing their secrets to driving change.
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