Welcome to 2024!
In this episode Lisa welcomes you to 2024 and shares:
Here's the link for the books Lisa discussed:
Enrol in 6 Weeks to Get Started in Diversity & Inclusion
Grab a copy of the 2023 Diversity & Inclusion Salary and Market Survey here
Interested in sponsoring the 2024 Diversity & Inclusion Salary and Market Survey?
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 2024!
In this episode Lisa welcomes you to 2024 and shares:
Here's the link for the books Lisa discussed:
Enrol in 6 Weeks to Get Started in Diversity & Inclusion
Grab a copy of the 2023 Diversity & Inclusion Salary and Market Survey here
Interested in sponsoring the 2024 Diversity & Inclusion Salary and Market Survey?
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 called diversity and welcome to 2024. How exciting. I'm actually feeling really positive and optimistic about 2024, which is in contrast to 2023. For me, 2023 was a great year, but I ended the year absolutely exhausted and I don't want to do that again. So I thought I would pop into your ears today, firstly to welcome you to 2024. I hope you're having as much optimism about the year as I have, and I just thought I might talk to you about a few things. So, firstly, I wanted to talk about some of the books that I read over the holidays and, in particular, I want to talk about three of them because they all just stuck with me, so I thought I would share those. Then I thought about maybe I'll talk a bit about my business and what's coming up in the culture ministry, and also what's coming up on this podcast. So you may or may not realize, but I do try to record episodes well in advance, so I've got a good library ready to go for this year. So I'll talk just briefly about the next three episodes that are coming up. It's actually three women who are all very different, but all quite incredible in their own rights. We'll talk a bit about that. And then I thought I might finish with talking about how I'm looking for some sponsors. So I'm looking for a sponsor for a dog called diversity and also a new sponsor for my diversity and inclusion salary and market survey. So we'll talk a little bit about that as well at the end, so that you know if you're working for a company or if you own a company that's looking for some great marketing opportunities. I have those for you. Now I will say today I'm trying out some new technology to record the podcast, so we'll see how that goes. I'm hoping it's nice and clear and crisp for you, the listener, and I've also got various files I'm going to be looking at on my computer so that I can hopefully talk to you in a sensible, sensible way.
Speaker 1:So let's start out. I thought I would share my word for the year. I know lots of people don't like this stuff, but I actually find having a word for the year is super helpful. So in 2023, do you know what? I can't remember what my word was, but it was something around being a bit controversial, being kind of pushing the agenda, trying to be a bit not critical, but when you work in diversity and inclusion, I think you really need to be pushing all the time. So my word was something around that. It's really a shame I can't remember what it was, but for 2024, my word is focus. And the reason my word is focus is because I do like working on lots and lots of different things. You might have noticed that and when I do that, it means I get really, really busy and really, really exhausted. So, as I said at the start, I don't want to get to the end of 2024 and be feeling that way. I want to focus on a few things and do those really well. And that's the advice I give my clients in their organizations that when you're doing diversity and inclusion work, you need to focus on a few things, because if you spread your energy too far and too thin, you often don't achieve anything. So that's my word for the year it's focus.
Speaker 1:So next, I thought I might tell you about three of the books I read over the holiday break, and I did read more than three books, but there were three books that just really stood out for me. So I read those nonfiction books, and I don't know about you, but I find it hard to read nonfiction books. I find it hard to get lost in them and to delve deep into them. So I really made an effort over the Christmas New Year period to read at least a couple of nonfiction books. The first one is called 10X is Better Than 2X, and I will pop into the show notes the full title of that book and the authors so that if you want to go and have a look at that book too, you can.
Speaker 1:But I thought I would just talk about a couple of the points that really resonated. Firstly, what do I mean by 10X? What do I mean by 2X? So for me, 2x means that you're just getting incrementally better every day. So that could be in your personal life, it could be in your career. It's sort of a linear way to think about things. So every day we're just going to take that little step and get better, and 10X is really about taking a big step in improving something, creating enormous growth, if that makes sense, yeah. So if we think about, 2x has been quite linear little steps every day and 10X is nonlinear. It's this enormous jump or this enormous growth.
Speaker 1:And that concept really resonated for me because 2023 was a great year in my business. I certainly did grow, but not exponentially. It was very steady as she goes and I've realized that if I want to be successful in my business, I have to grow at a much higher rate. Basically Because if I don't do that it's not worth doing. I may as well just go back to the corporate job, because you know it's easier to get paid in a corporate job. Your money turns up every month in your account, whereas running a business there is that uncertainty about when you're gonna get paid sometimes.
Speaker 1:So for 2024, I really made this decision about okay, I really need to step my business up, I need to go for some massive growth. So there's some concepts in that book about well, how do you do that? How do you make that big leap, that 10x jump, and a couple of ways that the authors talk about that is, you've gotta let go of 80% of the things that are not core to you making that big growth jump. So admin work, reconciling my zero account, organizing my calendar, a whole lot of things like that and they talk about, you know, hire people to do those things that are not the core of your business. So look out 2024, who will I be hiring to help me make this 10x jump? And so that was kind of one of the big concepts that I took, and of course, there's a lot more detail in the book around that, but that was the main one.
Speaker 1:The second thing I really took away was this notion of the gap versus the gain. So in 2023, I spent a lot of time feeling really despondent because I wasn't achieving the things I wanted to achieve. And I have big goals and many of them were going to be unreachable just because I didn't have enough time and it was only me. But I spent a lot of time feeling, yeah, despondent because I wasn't reaching those goals yet. And it was great to have those goals. You need them out there in the future so that you get motivated towards them.
Speaker 1:But at times it wasn't helpful to compare myself to those goals. So that's the gap the gap between where you are now and where you wanna be in the future. The gain is about measuring how far you've come. So by looking back and looking at all the things you've achieved and measuring your progress against those things. So when I look back at 2023 and look at all the things I've learned, all the amazing clients I've been able to work with, the progress I've been able to make. That makes me feel really great.
Speaker 1:So in 2024, I really wanna be thinking about okay, what have I gained? What have I learned? How have I moved forward? So I love that concept of the gap in the game. So we still need those big goals out in the future. But sometimes if we compare ourselves to those goals, yeah, it can make us feel like we haven't achieved anything, whereas if we look back and measure our progress, that can make us feel really great. I talk about this a lot when I'm working with diversity and inclusion leaders or human resource leaders, that when we're doing this work inside organizations, it can be really easy to look at what we haven't achieved yet. But if we set ourselves up well, if we know what we're going to measure, if we know where we're heading, and then take regular intervals to look back and say, well, actually we have made progress. We did implement that thing over there and we've got some good feedback. So far. We haven't seen it in our results yet, in our DNI results, but we've started to do some things so we can feel good about that. So the gap in the game something I'm definitely taking into 2024 from the 10X is better than 2X book.
Speaker 1:The other thing I'm taking away and I really love this and they talk about in the book the performance model of time, and I hadn't really heard of this model before. I've had bits and pieces about it, but this is about thinking about time in different blocks, so, and thinking about quality, not quantity of work, thinking about stacking similar activities together on the same day. So for me, I try to schedule all my podcast recordings on one day. Or if I'm doing coaching, I will try and schedule all my coaching on one day. But then, under this performance model of time, they talk about three different types of days. So the first one is focus days, so they're the days for getting stuff done. It could be working on the highest paying activities or the most important activities, the things that will get you results. Then there's buffer days, so they're days that you spend meeting your team, getting organised, doing admin, maybe meeting other people you're going to be working with, preparing notes, preparing resources, and the final day is something called free days or rejuvenation days. So this is about recovery, exploring, learning, doing new things, reading, maybe studying, getting out into the world, maybe testing new things. So in 2024, I've decided to organise my calendar that way, so into some free days for rejuvenation, focus days for performing and buffer days to get organised and prepare. So I really like that concept. Might have to let you know how I go with it, because in the past, if a client's come along and needed work on one of those days that I've put aside, I've said yes. So 2024 is going to be about focus and making sure that I put some boundaries in place.
Speaker 1:So that was the first book. I will pop it in the show notes if you'd like to read more. There is a lot more in the book, but there's some of the key points I talk away. The second book that I read is by an incredible author called Julia Bard, and back in 2020, she released a book called Phosphorescence and the whole book was around this notion of awe, so A-W-E. So when things are dark in the world and certainly in 2020, I'm sure we all felt that the world was very dark. We all had times when we didn't know what was happening and what was going on, and so she wrote this incredible book, partly out of her own cancer diagnosis, but also to really understand how humans experience this notion of awe, these beautiful things in our world, the blue of the sky or a beautiful tree, and I really enjoyed that book back in 2020 and I actually implemented some of the things in the book around. Well, my favorite thing that I implemented was forest bathing, and this is about being in nature, having greenery around you, and so I tortured my family every Sunday when we lived in Singapore and made us go out for walks in the forest, and it was a really nice thing to do, and so I'll put this book in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1:But I really wanted to talk about Julia Bard's new book, which is called Bright Shining how Grace Changes Everything. So, again, julia goes and researches this notion of grace, this giving grace, being kind, and she goes and looks at nurses and how kind and how they care with grace in the world. She researches people who give blood, and I guess they were the two things that stood out for me, but her writing is so stunning and I don't want to talk too much more about it. I hope you enjoy this book. It's in the show notes. I read it on Kindle, but both her books Phosphorescence and Bright Shining are in a beautiful, beautiful hardcover. I think it's worth going and buying the hardcovers, and that's something I'll be doing with Bright Shining because it's such a stunning book. So that was the second book, also nonfiction, but because her writing is so stunning it's I do get lost in her words. So I really enjoyed that book.
Speaker 1:Now the third book I wanted to talk about is a fiction book and it's called the In-Between and it's by Christos Tislakis I'm hoping I said that correctly. He is the author. He's an Australian author of Greek descent. He wrote a book called the Slap, which is essentially about Australian families, I guess, and it starts with an adult slapping a child and goes from there. It has been made into an Australian television series and he is such a clever writer who observes culture and observes human behavior and relationships. So what's the in-between about? Firstly, I love the title because I felt like when I was reading it I was in between 2023 and 2024. So that was one meaning I took away, but throughout the book you can apply that meaning of being in-between something at various stages through the book.
Speaker 1:It, for me, was basically about love and relationships. The two characters, the two main characters, are gay men in their 50s and they have both come out of tumultuous, life-changing love affairs, essentially, and then meet each other. I think it was through a dating app. They're in Melbourne, it's set in Melbourne and it's. You know, at the start I thought is this going to be sort of about a gay relationship? Which of course it is, but it's essentially about love and about how these tumultuous relationships, these affairs, change them and how they found each other. And, yeah, I really enjoyed it. It does have some graphic sex scenes, so if you're not up for gay sex scenes, maybe you could just go through those pages. But ultimately it's not about that. It's about the love and respect and caring that they have and then some of the relationships around them. Beautiful book I loved it. It was one of those books that I felt like it finished abruptly and then it stayed with me for days. Yeah, so recommendation that you might love to read.
Speaker 1:So next I thought a bit I might talk about what's coming up at the culture ministry. So I am continuing my course six weeks to get started in diversity and inclusion. It's kind of a combination online live taught course. It goes over it actually ends up going over seven weeks with six live webinars where we talk about various parts of diversity and inclusion work. Where I take you from you know.
Speaker 1:How do you work out where to focus? How do you work out what your strategy should be, because you could focus on so many things. But how do you work out if you're in a D and I role where you should focus? And so we have a process that we work through to work out your strategy and then, through the weeks, we work out okay. So if you've got your strategy, how do you work with different stakeholders to get that strategy approved? How do you work out how to get some budget so that you can actually implement it? How do you put together a communication plan so that people know what you're working on, what measures should you put in place and how do you review the performance of the work that you're doing? And then, finally, how do you look after yourself?
Speaker 1:And the work is. It's hard, it's emotional. It's emotional because most people who work in diversity and inclusion have some experience with being ostracised, discriminated, not having the same opportunities as other people, not feeling included, not feeling like they belong. So when you can't get the work to happen, when you can't convince someone, yeah, you feel really emotional. That's really tough. So we talk about that on the course as well.
Speaker 1:So there's six live webinars, two group coaching calls where we talk about specific issues that you might be experiencing in your workplace and how can we solve those problems together, and I have three guest speakers. So I have an amazing network of diversity and inclusion leaders who will often come and talk about their experience. I also have leaders who are not necessarily in a D&I function, but they are leading a business, and they will talk about things like you know, how do you get leaders on board? How do you get the CEO on board? How do you get time in their diary? How do you get time in those toolbox meetings to talk about this work? And then the online part of the program is I have a lot of different worksheets and resources that we work through each week, which is super helpful. So that's my course. My next one is in at the start of March and enrolments are now open, and I will put the link in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1:So the other thing I'm working on this year is for me, one of the key components of building an inclusive culture is having the leaders of an organization really understand what that looks like and for them. What does it mean to them and what behaviors do they need to display in the organization to develop an inclusive culture? So I have developed a program for executive teams and leadership teams where they go through a program together over eight to 10 months and it includes a 360 so they can get feedback on where they're at now with their inclusive leadership capability. And then we talk about okay, where do you wanna go? And we do coaching throughout the program. I also have content sessions where we come together as an executive team or a leadership group to learn together, to look at what some of those behaviors are and how do you actually do them Like practically when you turn up at work, like what should you be doing? This is not an airy fairy thing. It's like what are the actual ways that you need to behave to develop that culture? So we talk about those things over some content sessions. The leaders go away and they practice and they try some things. And then we come back together and we talk about well, how did that go? What worked, what did you learn, what are you willing to share? And so we're bringing in social learning and we're learning as a team. So at the end of that, not only will we have some leaders with some better tools in their kit to be inclusive, but hopefully we'll be a better leadership team as well. So that's my inclusive leadership program. I will put some information in the show notes about that as well. And then, of course, we have a dog called Divacity and we are up to.
Speaker 1:I think this is episode 115. So I thought I would tell you about the next three guests that are coming up, so next week and the following two weeks. So the first guest is let me find my notes. Oh, my goodness. The first guest for 2024 is Trisha Montalvo-Tim, and she is such a life wire, so passionate. She's a former general counsel, she's a board member and she's recently written her own book called Embrace the Power of you. So Trisha comes on and really shares her journey, including that struggle to balance motherhood, a very demanding career, wanting to be her authentic self in a corporate environment, but being a woman of color, finding that very challenging, finding it hard to show up as herself and who she wanted to be, and so she really talks about that process and now helps other women of color in their careers. So a fantastic episode to start 2024.
Speaker 1:The second episode so it'll be episode 117, is with a bit of a pocket power. Debbie Levitt she is, I don't. It's interesting. She calls herself a chief experience officer and her experience and passion is customer and user experience. So she works with organizations to understand, to research the experience of the customers of different organizations. How does that relate to diversity and inclusion, you may be asking? Well, part of her role when she works with organizations is really to challenge their thinking about how they're looking at their customers and are they actually thinking about the diverse experience of them? And so and you know, she challenges them on those things. So we had an amazing, a pretty engaging discussion. She talks about this outdated practice of marketing predominantly to white men, the harm of companies doing that. You know, if you're only gonna market to a very narrow group, firstly you're restricting your revenue to start with, but there's lots of other issues for that as well. So loved talking to Debbie and I'm sure you'll love that episode in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:And then in episode 118, I speak to Melissa Histon and she is someone I have been wanting to speak to for a very long time. Melissa started her work in marketing and she experienced breast cancer and, as what happens with many people who have serious health scares. It makes you think about where you want to be and what you want to do. She then started her own photography business and worked on a project in Nepal that really looked at the reality of women and children trafficking in that part of the world. She came back to Australia and started her own nonprofit business called Got your Back Sister, and that's really about supporting domestic violence survivors, in particular, women and children. She's absolutely amazing, engaging, and it was so great to have someone on the podcast who's really making a huge difference in the world. I hope you look forward to that one as well.
Speaker 1:I have lots more episodes coming up too. I'm actually looking for some guests in particular who are, I guess, leaders and leaders who are really passionate about inclusive leadership, and I'd like to talk to leaders who have built an inclusive leadership style and would be willing to come and talk about it. So this is a bit of a guest shout out. Traditionally, I have diversity and inclusion leaders. I have people who are a bit different in the world, who are underrepresented in the world, and I want to add another group, so a group of leaders who are trying to create inclusive cultures. So if you know anyone or if you are one of those leaders yourself, I would love to hear from you and maybe you can come as a guest on A Dog Called Diversity.
Speaker 1:Now, finally, I wanted to finish by talking about sponsorship. So I have two products. I guess that I am looking for a sponsor. So the first is A Dog Called Diversity. So podcasts are an incredible way to market your business and to show that your business and organisation cares about diversity and inclusion, and so if you're looking for a unique way to market your business, a Dog Called Diversity could be it. I have a podcast sponsor pack which I can send you. There will be a link in the show notes and there's a whole different variety of ways you could sponsor the podcast. It could be by just sponsoring one episode. It could be coming on as a guest yourself. It could be sponsoring a series of episodes. So a whole range of options. If that sounds like you have a look at the sponsorship pack or get in touch. I would love to chat with you.
Speaker 1:The second sponsorship opportunity is for my Diversity and Inclusion salary and market survey. So I started this survey two years ago. It's really something to support people who are working in diversity and inclusion. People can get a copy for free. I started it because at the time, there was little to no information on salaries of people working in diversity and inclusion. That hasn't progressed much since then and in the Asia Pacific region, my understanding is, my survey is one of the only resources that you can access on that information. It's not just about salaries, though. We also look at what's happening in the market For the people who are working in this space. What are the challenges Like? What are they experiencing and part of that is so people don't feel alone but also for organisations to understand where they need to be investing more. So a really unique marketing opportunity. For the past couple of years, I've had an amazing recruitment and labour hire firm sponsoring, which has been amazing. It is an expensive well, not expensive but it does require some investment to produce the report from the survey software that I use through to the marketing.
Speaker 1:So download the sponsorship pack from the show notes and I'd love to hear from you if you think your organisation would be interested. So that's all I was going to talk about today. I just really wanted to come in and say welcome to 2024. I really appreciate your loyalty in listening to a dog called diversity. I hope you find it informative and useful. If you have any feedback, send me an email at Lisamulligan at thecultureministrycom. Love to hear from you. Love to hear from you if you are an inclusive leader who'd like to come on the podcast, or if you'd be interested in sponsoring either the podcast or my salary survey. And just any feedback would be fantastic as well. Look forward to next week for the first episode of the first guest episode of 2024, with which is sorry, it's episode 116 and it's with Trisha Montalvo, tim. Until then, have a great week.