Today we are thrilled to bring you Duncan Hewett, author of the book ‘Accelerating Women’ and the mastermind behind the transformative program Taara, aimed at supporting women re-entering the workforce in India.
This episode is packed with many thought-provoking discussions. It uncovers the significance of having substantial representation in leadership and the impact feedback has on enhancing diversity. Duncan also opens up about creating safe spaces and why understanding minority experiences matters.
He later dives into the power of data in managing diversity and inclusion initiatives, while also covering the influence of profiling women leaders, and how it can provide valuable role models.
In a world where diversity is often seen as a checkbox to tick off, this episode is a refreshing reminder of the genuine value and importance of diversity and inclusion. It encourages listeners to rethink their assumptions, listen to minority experiences, and take concrete steps towards creating a more inclusive professional world.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
Go to https://www.thecultureministry.com/ to learn more
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
A Dog Called Diversity is proud to be featured on Feedspot's 20 Best Diversity And Inclusion Podcasts
Thanks for listening. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Today we are thrilled to bring you Duncan Hewett, author of the book ‘Accelerating Women’ and the mastermind behind the transformative program Taara, aimed at supporting women re-entering the workforce in India.
This episode is packed with many thought-provoking discussions. It uncovers the significance of having substantial representation in leadership and the impact feedback has on enhancing diversity. Duncan also opens up about creating safe spaces and why understanding minority experiences matters.
He later dives into the power of data in managing diversity and inclusion initiatives, while also covering the influence of profiling women leaders, and how it can provide valuable role models.
In a world where diversity is often seen as a checkbox to tick off, this episode is a refreshing reminder of the genuine value and importance of diversity and inclusion. It encourages listeners to rethink their assumptions, listen to minority experiences, and take concrete steps towards creating a more inclusive professional world.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
Go to https://www.thecultureministry.com/ to learn more
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
A Dog Called Diversity is proud to be featured on Feedspot's 20 Best Diversity And Inclusion Podcasts
Thanks for listening. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Welcome to a dog call diversity. This week I have someone on the podcast that I often talk about. A particular kind of person needs to be working and supporting diversity and inclusion work, and for me that is white men that I always think we need more men and more white men leading the charge in this work and through, I think through an introduction, I found Duncan Hewitt. So welcome to the podcast, duncan.
Speaker 2:Delighted to be here, lisa.
Speaker 1:Even with that intro.
Speaker 2:Even with that intro, because you're actually right.
Speaker 1:Well, my theory is is that in organisations, we go and find people who have an interest in diversity and inclusion, which is often women, or we find people who have lived experience, whether they have a disability or they're part of the LGBTIQ plus community or they're underrepresented in some way, and we go okay, you can work in this space, but we often don't give them the power, like the positional power. We often don't give them the resources. They are often not in positions where they can influence more senior people and I've often thought we need men doing this work because they are often in the power position.
Speaker 2:So, hopefully, it's a good one and unfortunately you're right, the large proportion of particularly senior executives in organisations are white, anglo-saxon, male, and so not having them on board or not having them as part of it is always going to make it more difficult. And you need them as part of the program, you need them as allies, you need them for the positional power they have, yep To actually genuinely move forward. You can make progress, but in a lot of organisations you just need more, I guess, support and muscle to get it to move forward faster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess the other reason I invited you on the podcast is you've written a book called the Key to Growth and Innovation Accelerating Women, which I am all about. But again, it's unusual to have a man write a book about how to support and accelerate women in organisations. So we are going to talk about that because I'm super interested. But I wanted to start with you know, could you tell us a bit about your career and where you grew up and how you came to this work?
Speaker 2:So my last role was leading VMware, which is an American software company, for Asia Pacific and Japan. So you know two billion turnover in the region, three and a half thousand people across 30 countries. So I had a fair size team and I had the pleasure of hiring 100 extra people every quarter for the last five years.
Speaker 2:So you know huge growth and all the challenges of trying to find good people consistently along the way. But it also created, I guess, a set of experiences, and I was lucky. I worked for a CEO called Pat Gelsinger who now leads Intel globally. Particularly brilliant leader who provided some interesting opportunities and feedback along the way. One of them he told me about nine months into the role.
Speaker 2:He said Sir Duncan, I'm not getting enough complaints about you. I looked at him and went what Come again, do you want to explain? He said well, I don't think you're trying hard enough and I don't think you're taking enough risk. And I've got you. I know you've got lots of talents and skills, but I need you to take more risk and I need you to step out and try things and if they go wrong then fix it. But it was sort of it's like took the covers off of. It was like chains taken away in southern East. You can try things and it was a 25 year old company, so it comes out of Silicon Valley, and it really did provide huge opportunities to change. I have a long background 35 years in IT, last 30 years in leading people, so yeah, lots of experience.
Speaker 1:So you've got I mean, that is amazing feedback for someone to give you to say you're not taking enough risks. Come on, shake it up a bit. I've usually had the opposite feedback. It's like oh, we're not ready for that yet. Oh, lisa, you're being too bold. So incredible to be working with a leader like that.
Speaker 2:And actually one of the things that came out of that is about I don't know a period of time later I went to him and said you know, we've got this idea and the idea is we could help women return to work and we want to make an investment and we want to do it in India Because there's a huge challenge. I told him a story. I've been running a women in IT session, 250 in Indian women all asking questions while you're on stage for 90 minutes, and then on the way home in the plane, it was bothering me that we didn't. We clearly didn't have something right, and so I wrote, written this idea on the plane at 2 30 in the morning and sent it to four of the women in my leadership team, and they all came back and said actually it's not bad. So I went to him and said I want to invest and provide free education and help women return to the workforce. And we didn't even get to the page that said this is how much money I'm going to invest. You just said go, and you know there's millions of dollars of education that we would normally charge for, though I was just going to give away. And so that's what we did you know I put in a full-time program leader.
Speaker 2:We established this program called TARA, which is Hindi for Reaching to the Stars, and our sole purpose was to try and help women back into the workforce, because it turns out, in India, 50% leave the workforce between years three and eight and don't come back. It's the largest talent pool that just isn't being leveraged. And so that was our mission and I applied my management time. So monthly reviews. I know how to run businesses. I applied all those things. I got communication leaders, I got HR, I got marketing, I got comms involved. So I got all the different skills we needed, and we've run that program now for over five years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible, right. So, firstly, that you didn't get pushed on. Well, how much is it going to cost? Oh, do we have the budget? You know all of that and I know you had a cute story about that with the CEO, do you? Want to talk about that.
Speaker 2:So the funny thing is. So I went back to about four months into the program and said we've got 1,700 women who've signed up. He goes huh, I didn't think it would work. So, pat, you supported me. He said I supported you because it was a good idea and I thought you should go and try it. And he thought I'm all about taking risks to move forward. Now I've stayed in contact with Pat over the years and I kept going back to him. We now have 28,000 women in the program. We've had over 6,000 women graduate and end up back in the IT workforce of India and it's received over 114 million views for this program in India and we've briefed Modi. We've got several state governments involved supporting it and we've exported the same program into Japan, actually to try and help diversity in Japan.
Speaker 1:It's a long time coming.
Speaker 2:It's a slow process, but it all started with just an idea.
Speaker 1:And I'm all about taking a risk. Yeah, and you were trying to solve a problem, I'm assuming, in your business, because you're out there. You've got to fill those 100 spots every month.
Speaker 2:Actually that was one of the interesting and came up lots of times. The program is designed to help any woman who is currently not employed, who is an Indian citizen who'd been out of the workforce six months. They've landed in over 1,300 different companies. We only hired 40 out of that 6,000. So we stayed on mission and there was lots of times along the way, like any program, where someone said oh, why don't we become a headhunter and we try and place women? We actually stayed focused around can we make a difference? And it turns out it wasn't actually education, it was confidence, and we ended up creating mentoring groups. We had graduates come back and talk to women. Women ask millions of questions and they got to talk and see people like themselves. And so there's a book of the stories of the women, of Tara, and you just need a box of tissues because by story three you're crying because it just changed their lives. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that you were doing something, not just to solve a problem for your organization, but you're solving a problem for the industry and for the community. So confidence in women is a challenge in any culture Along. The structures that women grow up in and the structures in organizations don't help often build confidence. What else did you discover that was going on in India? Was there anything that was particular for India that you know, whether it was the way maternity leave works or the family structure? Was there other things?
Speaker 2:There's a cultural pressure in India around once you're married or once you have children or once parents get old, that the women drops out of the workforce. There's absolutely a cultural pressure and the funny thing is there's also a huge availability of hired help to be able to manage at work, and that's not true for every country. Actually, that across Asia it does help organizations retain more women in the workforce because they have more help available at home, and that's it's a huge difference having someone living with you who can actually help support because you can't do everything. It's just not no, no, but the issues of confidence. I mean I would always recommend to any organization to be involved in sort of that community effort because you learn so much and I got to talk to CEOs, I got to talk to government ministers all over the world about it, around our experience, and the issue around confidence taught us so much. It had business benefits as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's one of the hard numbers for you when you're trying to hire people. So you know every organization is pressured trying to find the right candidates. The number of people who applied for a role just in Asia Pacific over four years went from 80,000 a year to 380,000 a year. The number of and we were managing looking at the funnel and you know we were getting as high as 45% of our applicants for women. So you're changing the. You know the talent pool that you're trying to hire from and part of that was just a lot over a long period of time we changed. You know the position of who we were and what we did.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Wasn't planned, by the way. We started with this and then, oh, that's a nice outcome. So it was absolutely a business benefit about being involved and it's just. I mean, it's probably one of the things I'm much proud of in my career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've noticed, when people start out working in diversity and inclusion within organizations, often your maybe not as much now, but before COVID and before George Floyd was killed organizations who might not be as good at this work are often relying on the business case of why we should have diversity in our businesses and why we should create environments where people feel like they belong. You know, when I speak to you, you are very clear on the business case and you can, you, can you know, tell me all the stats. How, how have you seen that come alive at VMware? So like the actual reality. What changes did you see happen by having more women in your business?
Speaker 2:Um is actually it's numerous and there's just a few things. One of them, and one that was really significant for me On my first day, I walked around um. I joined in Sydney before I moved to Singapore and I walked around into Pam's office who was the VP of marketing. He said if you've got an organization chart, this is day one. So, she gives me a PowerPoint and it's got all the faces on the chart. First thing, I can highly recommend organization chart that have people's faces not just named.
Speaker 2:Yes, Because the first thing, looking down at it, I went. Pam, you're the only woman in the leadership team out of 22. She goes, I know. I'm going to change that and, interestingly, that story of that meeting. I got it told back to me about that statement I made for the next couple of years and I ended up within probably two years I had eight or nine women in the leadership team and then it stayed there pretty consistently once we got to that level.
Speaker 2:But you do need critical mass. One in a meeting room is an awful feeling to be a minority. You know one in 22,. You're down at 5%. It's terrible. I mean that's what a minority feels like and it's funny. I got nominated for a ward on mentoring and I'm at this awards night and it's for the future of women and I'm the only man nominated in 54 nominees and there are 53 women.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:It was the most awful three hours I've ever spent, because in that three hours I'm sitting there going. Don't pick me, you just wanna hide, cause you just feel completely out of place for the whole time and it was like it was ah, now I get it. Now I get what it feels like to be a minority, and it just so. What changed is, once you got enough critical mass like how we engaged, how we collaborated, the testosterone beating in the room. Actually that wasn't acceptable, and so the whole tone change, which means collaboration change. Once you're collaborating differently, then actually you move faster, and so this is why I'm absolutely sold. It made an enormous difference and sustained us through 20 points of growth, cause that collaboration it's all about people. It's about how people work together. Well, it's not rocket science. How people work together is what changes your ability to leverage the assets you have as a business.
Speaker 1:How do you go from I mean setting up a life changing program in India, running a pretty big business across Asia Pacific and Japan, to writing a book about it? How did you go from that? Cause not everyone does that right.
Speaker 2:No, and probably if I'd known what I would get myself in for, I wouldn't have done it either. I had an extremely talented communications leader. Kamangi said to me one day. She said, with all these things you're doing cause we were doing women in technology round tables, I was sponsoring events, I was speaking, we had the Tara program, we were changing the gender diversity of the whole of Asia Pacific you should write a book with all those learnings and what are the things you're doing and why you're doing them you should put in a book. So that sat in the back of my mind and it was like no, and then Hamangi would ask me how I was going.
Speaker 2:But having someone there, like both amuse and they you know how you going Sort of puts a little bit of pressure on. I never realized how much work it was going to be, but the reason sort of what it came down to is I could see across the marketplace there were lots of managers and leaders who actually had the intent to improve diversity, like the intent there. They just don't know how. So what do I focus on first, or what are the things that work? So I started collating those things together and we went and pitched it to Penguin and, as you started the interview, there's not many white Anglo-Saxon. You know executives who write on diversity.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And so you know we actually got a contract, you know, with Penguin and edits and too many hours to think of later. But it was designed as a guide to make it really easy to read lots of stories to try and help people on the how.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you have a particular kind of person in your mind that you were speaking to in the book?
Speaker 2:The majority actually. So, because what I found was I didn't have to convince the women around we needed diversity. What they did need to be is confident and they needed to be able to, you know, work with someone they trust and be able to provide feedback, because I mean feedback is how you improve. So if you don't have trust, you don't get feedback. If you don't get feedback, you don't improve. So that piece, I mean, you have to earn that. You have to earn that trust, yeah, but the majority you actually need the majority on board to consistently move. The really sad fact, at least in the IT industry and it's slower in others and it's a little bit faster is, in general, diversity is only moving forward at 0.6% per year. And so you get the United Nations report recently and they said you know the past agenda equality is 136 years. That's really depressing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's got to be able to move faster, and I can honestly tell you the best practice. I mean I had two managing directors, teams of 600 to 1,000 people moved 6.5% 10 times that rate in a year. So if you've got the right, combination that's significant yeah it's huge. So the difference between average and best practice is 10 times yeah, and at 6.5% you can move from 25% to 50% In four or five years. I mean, we're talking in, you know, a generation of an organisation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. There's not many organisations getting those results at all, no, but you know we were consistently moving on 3,500 people across 30 countries at 2.2% per year. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So I mean that's three to four times the industry average and consistently doing it every year. Yeah, but it does take a combination thing. There's no one thing.
Speaker 1:No, I want to talk about some of those things and you mentioned just before about. You know you need feedback to know how you're going. You don't get feedback unless you're trusted, and I can remember working for a particular leader who employed me and at the very start he said Lisa, you know I give you permission to challenge me when I'm not doing the right thing, or you know I'd like to have more diversity in my team, so I'd like you to challenge me on that. So that was one way he did it, like he gave me permission.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you took it too, Lisa.
Speaker 1:Well, I so did. I so took it. Not everyone would have taken it because he was a very dominant leader. So, yeah, not everyone would have taken it. I really took it and we had a few discussions. But in your book you talk about building trust. You talk about creating safe spaces. I wondered if you would talk a little bit about that and maybe some of the successes you've had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean, first off, lisa, one of the things I'm really happy around the work you're doing is you're training that generation of diversity leaders to be confident, to speak out, because it's critical. You need diversity leaders that actually have a voice and then know how to get stuck. Done One of them and actually it's one of the mistakes I made, because you learn from mistakes so I came in one morning and I was early and one of my VPs, who I'd hired probably four months earlier, was sitting there and I came in and said you know, good morning, how are you? And the answer back I got was fine. I kept walking. Now, that's, you know. First warning sign. Fine is not a good answer.
Speaker 1:It's not fine.
Speaker 2:I look back and there were tears running down her face. So she said, fine, but she clearly was not. And so first off, I took her into a room where no one could see us, so she had some privacy and, you know, box of tissues, and just waited because she just needed some time to compose herself. And then there's some things you wanted to say. But as soon as she wanted to start to say it, she, you know she'd get upset.
Speaker 2:And it turns out I'd hired her to change this part of the organization that desperately needed changing and she didn't feel it was going fast enough and she was letting me down. So I'd actually created this unbelievable pressure, as you know, cheering her on without realizing I'd. Actually she didn't want to let me down and so I was the problem. So that piece around like having a trusted space, and once that came out, you know it sort of cleared the air. And then we talked honestly around what was working, where are the things to keep working on. You know, when she was feeling down that it wasn't moving fast enough, you know she was way exceeding my expectations.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But she felt the weight of the world on her and it was sort of it was that it was a huge learning experience for me around. I hadn't done enough check-ins, I hadn't you know the answer of fine. I could have kept walking, but it was just that sort of hang on a moment. Fine is one of those words that means you're not, and so you know being able to be in a, have a connection, that it is trusted and you do find out what's going on massive, and I made so many mistakes and continue to, but having people who are willing to tell me around. So when you did this, this is how I felt. It was like huh, I didn't realize and it was.
Speaker 2:You know, I thought I was a regional leader and you know sort of trying to do the right things, but you know how people react with you. You just need that connection. It is so important and sometimes you just need to shut up and listen and just not. I mean, I'm an engineer, so I've got the worst possible trait. I'm an engineer, I like fixing things, but sometimes you haven't got to fix it, you just got to listen and be a sounding board, and so I've got better over the years, still working progress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I came across the section of your book that said shut up and listen, I was like he has written this you just said before for the majority. Often the majority is men, not always, but and it has reminded me so much of my career, to the point I can remember I was the HR business partner in one role and worked with a very strong male leader and I had been working on a project for a while and it had come to the end of the project where I was going to recommend the different options to solve this particular problem that we had. And I was going to meet with this leader and with our tax accountant, I think, and he was a bit like you described. He was. He's an engineer, very strong leader, likes to solve problems.
Speaker 1:And I just knew that if we went into that meeting we were not going to get the outcome we wanted because he wouldn't listen. Because that's just who he was Lovely man, I liked working with him, but it was a bit hard work. So I was like, how am I going to get him to listen? And we the week before we went to a union dinner and on the way back to the office actually was a lunch and on the way back to the office I had him alone in the back of a taxi. You know, I said to him we're going to have this meeting about this problem. I'm going to propose some solutions. Some of them you're going to like. Some of them you're not going to like because it's going to cost the company money. But what I'd love you to do is to listen first.
Speaker 2:And he went okay.
Speaker 1:And then when we went into that meeting he was amazing. It was great. I had to kind of go. Not, I didn't tell him to shut up, but I was like dude, come on.
Speaker 2:But that's the I mean. This is learning about change. I mean, firstly, genuinely diversity is a strategic change. It's not a project. It doesn't have an end date. You know, we're going to get to 26.4% by the end of the year and then we're going to get to 27.4% next year. It's not that. It's a strategic change in the way you run your business, because you're going to basically bring people on a different journey. They're going to engage differently, they're going to feel differently, they're going to collaborate differently and your organizations go to change. So things like signaling early I want you to listen it's part of how to sell the strategic change and it's exactly the right thing to do. That's why I'm really happy that you're running diversity leaders education, because it makes a difference around. So how am I going to get this through this organization? It's not just put up the options on the day because the natural engineer in us will go well, they are great, but I've got the solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think I know because I'm a senior leader and I've got lots of experience, and that's why they pay me all the money. Yeah, that's natural. That's where humans, that's what happens.
Speaker 2:But setting it up and framing it and even things like here are the people we've talked to before. We've got you here too. We've tested it with.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are things you can do. If you remember it's the strategic change, then there's a reason the organizations going through this change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the other things I loved in your book is that you talk about courage, and you have to have a lot of courage to do this work, because sometimes it means putting yourself out there. Sometimes that means being vulnerable with your peer group and that can feel a bit or a lot uncomfortable. And there was a story in the book that you told where I thought you showed so much courage and the leader involved so much courage, and it was a story about a male leader putting his hand on an arm of a female leader. I wondered if you would tell that story, because I don't think we see many men doing this in our organisations.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm interesting on this one and I'll give some context. This was a successful male leader who'd led three organisations before lead Asia Pacific, so it had been at my level and was working for me as an MD, so early 60s and so typically, you know, you'd assume people have a way of working. And we had an event and this woman had come up to me a few days later and said, look, he touched me on the arm and I'm really uncomfortable. So I actually went and asked a few other women leaders in my team and they all said actually he does it to us too, but because of you know, he's senior, he's been around, you know, we just put up with it. And so I ended up in this conversation with him and we're sitting next to each other and I had this discussion. He was mortified. No one had ever told him.
Speaker 2:So, we're talking early 60s. This is not a fun conversation to have. That says when you do this and it's interesting as we went through that discussion even as he's talking, he touches me on the arm. It was actually part of his style.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I wasn't comfortable either, and so I said you know, you've just done, you've touched me on the arm and you can see the sort of realisation that you know it dawned on him Now. The funny part was then one of his team comes walking up. She's walking up and he stands up to say hello to her and he goes to shake hands. She just bats his hand out of the way and gives him a big hug and he's looking over a shoulder at me, going what?
Speaker 1:do, I do.
Speaker 2:I don't understand.
Speaker 2:And then we had a second discussion around. She gave you permission. It's totally fine. Never had another complaint in the next three years before he then left our organisation, and so my belief is, the problem is the discussion doesn't happen. Now sometimes, you know I've been in other ones where there's no change. You know they either. Well, I believe it's my right to do it. Then their people just got to get it. They should not be in your organisation. But he genuinely changed. I never had another issue and, yeah, it was an uncomfortable discussion, because you're talking to someone who's got similar background experience and you do something that makes people uncomfortable. Now, the first woman who made provided the feedback. I mean, just that's where the real courage was to be honest, to even speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, but I have seen in organisations, if a woman does speak up, the lack of courage for leaders to take that on and to deal with it head on is severely lacking.
Speaker 2:And that's why we don't move forward. I mean, honestly, you end up with one step forward, two steps backward, because the water cooler conversation says I mean, this organisation is not serious about it, so you don't make the progress because you're not addressing the whole environment and it comes back to you know the base principles around diversity is if you have a diverse team and people are able to bring their authentic self to work, then you get more from them. You get their real input and all the difference of opinion and you will have a better outcome. If you have it constrained in a way, they can't bring their authentic self to work. You don't. You've just lost that capacity. All you get is the lowest common denominator from each person. They just give you what they want to show you. You don't get the real person and that's why you know long term, sustainable change. You actually have to address these things. You can't leave them.
Speaker 1:No, I worked in an organisation where there was a leader who clearly there were issues I didn't know what they were, but there was always these sort of rumblings. Eventually he was, I believe, removed, but it took three years and the impact that that had on the women who worked with that leader, versus the impact that you will have had doing what you did, I mean the conversation is completely different. Like we were all saying why is this? Why did it take them so long? Why did they shush it up? Why don't we know the true story? What were the conversations that were happening in your organisation? Did you, did you hear any of those?
Speaker 2:Not all of them, actually, because the thing that happens when you are the leader is you don't, they're not going to tell you, but it's interesting, there are lots of indicators. So I was fairly active around mentoring, particularly across my organisation and down and with women. So I would get feedback in all sorts of different ways, and learning to listen longer helps, because I well, I would someone say it that way and you get that opportunity and you, you know you basically build an environment that's built for feedback, and when it's built for feedback, you don't always like what they tell you.
Speaker 2:No but those rumblings, those rumblings, my experience they're real, but the rumblings says there's something there. I mean, I ended up having to remove one of my highest performing leaders in my team and the rumblings had been there, they'd been there. We couldn't get a handle on them. And then we happened to have a HR leader like you who, on the day she left, gave us the real truth and stuff had been trapped inside the country and not not not told us what was really going on. From there it went to a formal investigation. It took me a year, but at the end of the year we let you know basically, my top performer go.
Speaker 2:Wow Now diversity moves six and a half percent the next year, Like once you took the lid off it and we were serious about it. Suddenly diversity and the results didn't change. They have a great team. So, yes, the leader was a great leader but had some really difficult issues and you just got to do it. If you're after that long term strategic change, you've just got to make the change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is so much that you talk in your book about, about different things you need to do, because I agree, you can't just do one thing and Hope to make progress, so you need I always link it to the journey to creating a safety culture. So I've always worked in very male dominated industrial businesses where you know my I mean my second job in a big company we were Someone would die. I usually say we killed a person on one of our sites around the world every single month, and I worked on the floor with the risk management team and the safety team. Every month they walked down to my office and say we've had a fatality at this side. We've had like Awful, just so, so awful. To now, when I, you know, before I left the corporate world still working for very dangerous industries, yeah, but we're not having fatalities, we're not. We're not talking about people being killed on our sites.
Speaker 1:And so the journey to creating that safety culture Required all these things that required leaders to be on board. We had leaders doing safety walks, we had nudges at the top of each meeting. We talked about safety, we measured Progress, we measured the indicators, the lead and the lag indicators. We we trained people. We had people appointed it. You know, we did a whole lot of things together, and so I often talk about that when we talk about changing culture, which is what we're trying to do with diversity and inclusion.
Speaker 2:Because I've got a funny story for you.
Speaker 1:So we'll please.
Speaker 2:I love a story so we used to run a management system, so I did a gender diversity review for 30 minutes with each managing director every quarter Wow, every quarter. And they only had to come with three charts. Okay and the three charts were pretty simple what have you done to improve hiring, what have you done to improve attrition and what have you done overall in the environment to help it improve?
Speaker 2:Great great, not complex, but we would start the meeting off the HR HR information system with hard data. So what percentage did you hire, year to date, of women? And then promotions and attrition. So it's interesting because you watch some that were really good around Hiring, so they drove the hiring engine hard and you know we were at a target to get a third of the hiring being women, but when you looked at the attrition, their attrition statistics for women were off the charts and so it was like a leaking, leaking bucket. So didn't matter how many hired, you were losing the car. Now the funny part was. So I put this in place and said not hard, we're gonna start with the data. We're then gonna go to your three charts. 30 minutes, very focused business review.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So the the guys that were in defensive mode turned up with 54 PowerPoint charts and, if you know basketball and the concept of running the clock down, yes, that was their goal. Their goal, basically, with all the activities they're working on there run the clock down. And it took a fair amount of discipline to stop them trying to run the clock down because they're telling me all these great Activities, yet the data said they didn't move at all. So you know, you do have to have a management system.
Speaker 2:Yeah so you're past to a safe workplace, highly critical. I mean you want people to come to work and go home to their family. I mean not rocket science, but it's sort of really important. So putting that management system in place, being really disciplined about it, using real data. So we just pulled straight out of HR system we would look at the hiring funnel so we could actually see on the hiring funnel, by the way, and it's in every organization so you can see them apply, get to the interview stage, because that's where the measurement was and then suddenly disappear.
Speaker 2:Yeah and so you know, we, we got wise to you know where are the, where are the changes you need to make. So we ran off the data, kept the charts really simple. What? Just three actions. Tell me the three things you're doing to improve hiring and the three things you're doing to improve attrition. And then the last one is I'd love to know activities that you're doing that you think are best practices.
Speaker 2:And we came up with one what are the teams was profiling women leaders every month on social media, internally, yeah, internally, and externally.
Speaker 2:The women of them where? And so we took that from one MD who would be running it to try and improve the profile of the organization, because women like to see role models, and so that provided role models, and we then spread that to everyone else because it was a great idea and and we didn't come up with it, I mean so I had my HR leader, had my hiring leader, you know, or talent acquisition, all on the call with the MD and their HR Every quarter, and I kept on doing it and I case stayed disciplined on Measuring these things and you could see, you could see those that took it seriously and they could see. I still remember the Australian, new Zealand MD coming in and Like he was smiling from ear to ear Before we even put the data up, and as soon as you put the data up you could see why you're smiling. He'd moved six and a half percent. He knew he'd done all the hard work and it works. He was on. He was on a you know, a rocket ship actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and eventually, all of that stuff, all those systems that you've put in place, become Self-sustaining, and that actually makes it easier if you're a diversity leader and you're trying to Talk to an executive.
Speaker 2:I mean, executives know how to run management systems. That's what you do every day. You're always looking at, you know your costs and your people and you know where's the revenue at. So, putting a management system around it, that is easy and it's it's easy for everyone. Yeah, I mean that's what you do. Yeah, out of.
Speaker 1:All the things you put in place, what are you most proud of? Is there one thing that just sticks in your head? That you go out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so proud of that persistence perseverance, realizing that I was in, I was on a journey. So when we started with, you know Pam as the only woman in the leadership team of the Leadership team, and we quickly got up to eight or nine out of 22 Um and it stayed there. By the way, once we got to a critical math, stayed there um and so, and they still come back. They still come back and ask questions. Now they still stay engaged and when they're about to go through career transitions, they come back and they ask questions. They're after someone who's got the experience that they just want to talk to. So I still do mentoring today Because it's it just provides a lot of pleasure, um watching women grow in the organization and you can see it changing.
Speaker 2:I mean, even in Australia that you know, just change quantits in the reserve bank. Both have got big challenges and big changes to go through and they've just put women into the leadership roles to Manage that change, to be a more collaborative organization, to be a bettering you know customer engagement, um traits that many women bring to the table, that are stronger at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know it's, it's hidden.
Speaker 2:The right direction, just got to go faster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, look, I'm I'm so grateful to see those changes at quantits and reserve bank. But those changes are also typical of when and there's research around this when women often finally get a go at these big roles, it's usually when things have gone to shit. And it's, it's like oh well, we can't get any worse, we'll see if the women can stuff it up worse. And you know I, I hope both organizations do so well with those leaders. Uh, the woman who I can't remember.
Speaker 2:Half-jobs. Oh my god, tough job They've just been they've just gone down in court.
Speaker 1:The union took them on for workers that they sat during covid, um, so massive industrial relations issues. But she's been with the organization a long time and so I feel that's such a good thing that we should promote from within, and and she should be well prepared for that. So, and and not every organization is waiting till they you know Rem really big trouble before they're putting different leaders on.
Speaker 2:I mean Macquarie bank, for example, locally, yeah, um, but uh, it is changing. It's really. It is about the pace of change and, as I said on the way through, we need to. We need more people. They've got the intent, but to really move the need, we need more managers and leaders engage because, yeah, your diversity leaders get it, hr leaders get it. There's a small number of leaders that now get it, but you, just you. You need more people engaged. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Tell me about you know how do you work with people now? So if people want to talk to you, Do you do any paid work or consulting work or that? Tell us about what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Um, so I've actually chosen at this stage of my career To do just giving back. So I've got a number of particularly entrepreneur women who so they're in senior roles, who are looking for someone to help, someone to listen to, someone who's got experience and a safe place they can have a discussion. Um, so I think I now have eight women who who look for that sort of help and sometimes that's I mean I've got some that are on. You know, every month we spend an hour to an hour and a half. Others come in and say I just want two or three sessions, but you know senior women who are just looking for Someone who's come out of being a senior executive that can provide the mentoring and mentoring is different from sponsorship or coaching.
Speaker 2:You know, my goal is to keep listening I'm still in practice and and just try and provide a safe space to help. So that's that's what predominantly what I do these days and a number of other things like this to. I mean I, I'm actually hopeful for the future. I mean I'm actually hopeful for the future. I I genuinely think it's heading the right direction. I mean, lisa, your business didn't even exist.
Speaker 2:It didn't no, now there's a few organizations like you that are out trying to make a difference and trying to accelerate this, and it's it's fantastic, really is.
Speaker 1:Where can people get your book? Um so it is on amazon on the worldwide site.
Speaker 2:So um it's in in Singapore or in sydney, um supposedly in dimmicks as well. If not, contact me via my website's accelerating womenorg and um yeah, ask Well.
Speaker 1:I am very grateful to have a coffee, a copy and very grateful to have the time to speak to you today, duncan, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Ah, it's been fun. Look forward to talking to you.