Greenfield or Minefield? Creating Management Culture to Enable (Not Thwart) DEI

Thankfully, both the ethical and practical value of DE&I has become more widely recognized. But the extent to which an organization is fundamentally and culturally receptive to DE&I improvement is less often explored and less frequently addressed. This highly interactive session will explore two aspects of management culture that directly impact the organization's ability to realize results from DE&I programing. First is the question of environmental receptivity: Is the organization in the habit of routinely gathering people of different backgrounds, needs, and agendas? Do regular management and team meetings make a concerted effort to equitably assess and value all contributions? Does leadership and senior management model transparent and fair decision-making even for difficult issues or unpopular tradeoffs? Second is the question of behavioral flexibility: Does the culture allow members to intelligently contemplate and adopt novel behaviors of any kind? Is new information met with interest, or resistance? Is decision-making nuanced, or do simple 'either/or' type arguments dominate the discussion? The answers to questions like these provide insight, in the language of human systems, into how “DE&I friendly” the broader organizational culture may be.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the definition of "organizational receptivity" and examples of what the presence or absence of it looks like in the context of DE&I.
• Learn the definition of "behavioral flexibility" and examples of what the presence or absence of it looks like in the context of DE&I.
• Identify key behavioral patterns and concrete artifacts/evidence of cultures that are more/less supportive of DE&I work.
• Contemplate whether culture work would be most useful before, during, or after DE&I intervention in one's own organization.
• Make a concrete plan to influence culture for the better in one's own organization.