Fred Wills is a thought leader on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), organizational development, culture and climate, and its impact on organizational performance, transformation, and change. He’s built a successful career which includes working for Mayo Clinic and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and he’s since channeled this experience into the foundation of Inclusiastic Consulting. He also brings international experience in organizational performance, community development, and capacity-building through his international development and aid efforts in Malawi, Africa. His current client base includes healthcare, tech, financial services, education, and government and non-profit sectors. In this episode, Fred talks about leadership and its relationship with DEI.
[0:00 – 5:56] Introduction
- Welcome, Fred!
- Today’s Topic: Leadership through a DEI lens
[5:57 – 22:10] Why Do So Many Organizations Struggle With DEI and What Characteristics Can They Adopt To Become More Equitable and Inclusive?
- The four foundational attributes that help organizations implement the maturity model
- How to measure these attributes to measure progress
- Why HR might not (or might) be the best people to tackle an organization’s DEI issues
[22:11 – 33:53] How Can Leaders Step Up and Start Leading Inclusively?
- Understanding that leaders set the tone and the accountabilities
- How transparency leads to new processes
- The need to have an structure equitable and inclusive system
[33:54 – 36:45] Final Thoughts & Closing
- Look at how resources are being allocated
- Thanks for listening!
Connect with Fred:
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Resources:
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“Numbers representation—those are outcome things. They’re super important, but they’re not the only thing… If we’re focusing on just the number, solely the number, then we’re missing the point of what we’re trying to do.”
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“You get more traction in this space as a leader, whether you’re a leader by title or a leader by some other definition… by being authentic. So I would say, tell the story but also articulate where you’re trying to get to and give folks space to do that.”
Announcer:
Here’s an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what’s happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here’s your host, David Turetsky.
David Turetsky:
Hello, and welcome to the HR data labs podcast. I’m your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we try and find the most interesting people inside and outside the world of human resources to talk to you about HR data, HR analytics and HR Technology. Today, we have always a fascinating guest by the name of Fred Wills. Hey, Fred, how are you?
Fred Wills:
I’m doing well. David, good to be here.
David Turetsky:
Great to have you. And like always, we have our co-host Dwight Brown from Salary.com. Hey, Dwight.
Dwight Brown:
Hey, David, how you doing?
David Turetsky:
I’m awesome.
Dwight Brown:
Good. Fred, nice to have you here.
Fred Wills:
It’s my pleasure. Happy to have this time and chat it up.
David Turetsky:
Well, Fred, why don’t you give our listeners a little bit about your background and who you are?
Fred Wills:
Yep. Gladly. So Fred Wills as a claim, and you’ve outlined there, thank you, you know, my background, I think starts we’ll go the quick version of this starts in Miami, growing up in South Florida. That’s important, because what you have, there’s happy accidents. So there’s the opportunity to live diversely. And then what would evolve into doing diversity, equity inclusion work, the ability to kind of read cycles and understand small cultural nuances and things of that sort, right. And that would become really important to doing this work as we as it progressed foward. But you know, I got into this work, particularly through Peace Corps through health care, but from a family structure that’s really about service. It’s about giving back. It’s about closing that divide between what folks experiences are how can we create paths for individuals to be more contributing and organizations to walk their talk. So there’s a lot of competencies and skills that are in there. But the end of the day, it’s about helping organizations walk the talk helping leaders lead, and again, I kind of made my space and healthcare, a couple notable places, then move and work really beyond that, in this case, in the consulting space as well.
David Turetsky:
And you and Dwight actually worked together for a time at Mayo Clinic as well.
Fred Wills:
That’s correct. That’s correct.
Dwight Brown:
We did.
David Turetsky:
That’s really cool.
Dwight Brown:
Fred had the yeoman’s job of really bringing the organization to the next level with DE&I and did a spectacular job with it.
David Turetsky:
Outstanding. So, Fred, one fun thing that not many people know about, or hopefully no one knows about you that we’re going to talk about today is what?
Fred Wills:
Yeah, I would say a few. You know, I am a certified whitewater river guide. And I was ready to I did Post Graduate School at the it was a graduation gift. I think I might have had a semester left. It was a gift there. I was prepared not to go back to graduate school. I enjoyed it that much. You know, it’s really it’s really cool in terms of reading water. It’s adventurous. It’ll push you, there’s a lot of challenge that’s in there puts you in your discomfort quickly. So you know, then then there’s some parallels around how quickly can you adapt to change? Because the water moves you, right?
David Turetsky:
It definitely does.
Fred Wills:
Yeah, but it’s exhilarating. And again, very few know that I can also you know, do really cool things like know how to cook crock pots in buried ground and throw coals on top. Customer service and more, all kinds of good stuff beyond just navigating the water.
Dwight Brown:
That’s really cool.
David Turetsky:
That is really cool. So the next time we find ourselves in the middle of a raging torrent of water, we’re gonna think of Fred Wills.
Fred Wills:
There would be worse things and worse people to conjure in that space.
David Turetsky:
And on that note, today’s topic is on leadership, with a lens on diversity, equity and inclusion. And we want to focus specifically on how to lead inclusively to maximize innovation and equity. And it’s a beautiful topic, and it’s part of our series on DE&I that we’re very proud of.
Fred Wills:
Yeah, it’s a topic that’s not only near and dear, it’s it’s not only a topic that has, for obvious reasons, been in the societal cultural norm for right and wrong reasons. But it’s something that’s also been evolving in the workplace around what was long understood as, I think poorly positioned as soft skills, if you will. But what we’re seeing through obviously, the resignation, I’m certainly heard this with the variety of conversations that you’re having, the ability to engage folks to help them feel belonged and to give them opportunity to develop as is as important as ever, folks are leaving organizations, they’re leaving leaders, it doesn’t matter the title, what whoever their respective leader is, they’re leaving for a multitude of reasons, one of which is equitable opportunity. And even to put a finer point on it is they’re leaving known cultures. They’re leaving known circumstances for the unknown, not always leaving for greener grass necessarily, they’re leaving places that are that are well paved. Yeah, that are well paved, right? Correct. There’s, it’s, it’s quite triggering. It’s quite interesting that that’s happening in the space right now. So it’s going to, I think, a good a good evolution as to what we’re seeing right now.
David Turetsky:
So Fred, let’s get to the first question, which is, why does so many organizations actually struggle with diversity, equity and inclusion?
Fred Wills:
I think it’s easy in this work to become very confused, and it become convoluted, and to also have these knee jerk reactions to this work, what you might call just activity as opposed to purposeful action. What’s missing, oftentimes, is this alignment to top strategy. You know, when I have the chance to work with organizations and senior teams, it’s understanding where’s the business going, where, you know, in not just how how conducive is the workspace to equity and inclusion, how is your product design, how your service is delivered, it’s really understanding and taking your similar rigor of approach to building equity inclusion in the organization, you solve it like you do other problems, plain and simple. When you see it as a augmenter, as opposed to distractor organizations struggle, because they fail to align it, they’re, they’re separating their segment to get off somewhere else. And that’s problematic. That’s why you see things that are not sustainable. That’s why you see these fits and starts. We’ve seen it, we’re going to continue to see it, but the ones that do it well find that alignment through the whole vertical from the top of their strategy all the way through to kind of frontline employee.
David Turetsky:
And how do you see those organizations who get it and who do that alignment? What are the common attributes of those companies? What are they doing well, that leads to success versus the others that, you know, they’re struggling with it, they will struggle with or they do struggle? What are the common denominators there?
Fred Wills:
Yeah, completely. Yeah, I think one of which is moving away from perfection. It’s also and with that comes in hand, this embracing of failure. Now, my background, Dwight’s background is in health care without failure failures means sentinel events, it means things you don’t outcomes you don’t want. But it’s understanding how to embrace failure as fail fast. Where do we have space that we can try something different to solve problems in the new solution? That’s probably the most major characteristic that’s there. The other piece that’s there is around inclusive leadership. And you can look at all kinds of literature, all kinds of entities that are there, take many but if you look at thematically to all that to all of them. They embrace this shift in not just mindset, but an approach from a fixed leadership style to a more fluid kind of range, right? How do you embody attributes of inclusive leadership authenticity, openness, curiosity, but also challenging? How do you challenge the status quo that’s there as well, a couple other things that are major attributes for organizations that do well in the space that are more mature, if you will, you have obviously the psychological safety that’s incentivized and rewarded, it’s expected. There’s a second characteristics that’s there that speaks to transparency of what we’re doing and why. And it’s all those similar to change management, right? So you’re speaking to what the change is why we’re doing it, and you’re consistently relating back to your values, that that’s really important that runs through the kind of vertical and horizontal of an organization. So there’s, we’re going to make space, we’re going to make a decision moving this direction, then you speak to that philosophy again, again, and the more consistently, you can do that, what you see is kind of moving up that maturity model. In addition to that, I would say that probably the other major attribute that’s there is expecting and rewarding openness in diverse thinking, the more quickly more readily that’s embraced for idea generation or solution solving, solutions and problem solving. Those are kind of the major attributes and characteristics is the foundation of those kinds of four attributes that are there. That’s what helps folks move, ascend up the kind of the maturity model, if you will, you have to have those in place. Otherwise, you’ve got a shaky, shaky system. There’s more, but those are the base.
David Turetsky:
So let me ask you a stupid question, though, when they begin, and, you know, in taking all those pieces, do they have a problem with figuring out how to understand where they are today? And setting a baseline? And then how do they figure out how they’re measuring where they’re going? And are they successful getting there? So I guess the question is, is there a measurement? And then is there a goal setting based on the measurement of what’s going on today? And I don’t mean, when I talk about measurement, I talk about engagement, I talk about promotional opportunities, I talk about what is the picture of today? And what does better look like? Because people so often tend to think about, and even with those four attributes, your line, your your outlining, people think of these things as getting better as setting quotas. And I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how do we measure progress to see, are we getting more alignment? Are we getting more transparency? Are we getting more leadership? How are we measuring those attributes that you talked about? To be able to say we’re getting better? What where do we go? Where do we start there?
Fred Wills:
You’re completely right, you know. And I love the way you elaborated on what’s meant. And part of the the implicit point of what you’re talking about is that numbers representation, those are outcome things are super important, but they’re not the only thing. And that’s kind of what I’ve kind of coined over time is those are miss-the-point moments, if we’re focusing on just the number solely the number, then we’re missing the point of what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to create this, this this workplace that creates opportunity and gift development for all right, you might have a differential focus at times, that’s really important. To the to the point of your question about assessment in the system, you know, there’s there’s a great, you have to keep in mind that structural inclusion and equity is what maintains behavioral inclusion and equity. So you have to understand the water and the structure which you’re in. So you have to do the assessment, right. And it can be daunting, because there’s a lot, I’ll give you an example, one of the stops that I had was obviously Mayo Clinic that Dwight spoke to, if you look at just the span of work, just to give a really practical example, the span of that work was to look in all elements of the organization. So the things you’d naturally guessed, patient experience, outcome, quality, workforce diversity, these things you might naturally guess that would fit in this space. But you also have things around economic development, you have things around, we’re just how’s the brand resonate with emerging audiences, emerging potential patient basis, it’s really breadth, I won’t I won’t extend too much in it. But you have to assess all those pieces. And then you have to plainly you have to also assessment work is is validating and confirming, but it’s also a really tough look in the mirror. And when we come back to one of those first things around being authentic, you have to look at some of those words. You have to be able it’s assessing, how do we how do people advance here? How do they not advance? When do they leave all of this into the workplace movement metrics that are there. Equal to that, you know, in working with groups right now, it’s starting with board, it’s starting with senior teams about what are you actually incentivizing? That’s a that’s a really key assessment. And so the quicker the more quickly, you can get to openness on that conversation and establish a baseline and then you have to repeat that baseline back out back the idea of philosophy, saying, Here’s what we learned some great things, we learned some pretty concerning things. But speaking pretty truthfully about that we have to continue to speak again and again to that end, because what that is doing is not it’s it’s positively signaling. It’s not virtue signaling, it’s positively signaling to the organization that we’re trying to have growth in this particular space. Whether that is leadership development, advancement, whether that’s in design of a product or service. The way I think about assessment apply assessment is it’s a really tough look in the mirror. It’s an opportunity to look at your warts, grin and bear it a little bit. But it’s it’s formative. And it’s informative, and it’s
David Turetsky:
And I think that what you’ve outlined then instructive. provides people with an opportunity to say, Okay, how do I take this assessment? Where is it? Where do I go, and who does it because HR gets labeled the team that is always the go to on diversity, equity and inclusion, which is probably the worst place you could go. And for all the HR people, I’ve been in HR for 30 years. I love HR, but we get given these assignments that are really unfair to be assigned to us, because we have, we’re trying to keep the lights on. We’re trying to keep the COVID vaccination records. We’re trying to do this, that and the other thing and then you’re asking us to take a critical look at what we do and how we do it, and how the leadership team is doing it? And that’s tough. So sorry, this was a long winded way of asking, Who does that assessment?
Fred Wills:
Yeah, so I can tell you when when, when during my time at Mayo Clinic, we actually built an in house tool to do that, again, that’s very uncommon. We had the resources, we had organization interest, we had organizational energy, there are groups that are that are doing it really well. And plainly, there’s a saturation of folks that are not, what I would tell you is not to recommend a specific place or organization, necessarily, but what you what I would recommend is paying attention to the depth and what they’re measuring. Right? Are they measuring respect? are they measuring distributed authority, transparency, growth, trust, those are kind of dimensions that are really, really valuable when you’re thinking about wanting to understand the current organizational climate and culture. And that climate culture spills out to everything that’s done not just internally, but outside of the walls of said organization. In to, to your question around ownership. You know, one of the lessons I was two things I’ll say there, one is, I worked for VP, many years ago, I worked at high standing pediatric organization. And my VP then said, we need to we need to approach are, at the time as D&I work that he was not as prominent. Yeah, he’s like, we need to approach this work. Like we approach quality, it can’t sit in isolation, it cannot flat out, it needs to be owned. And so what that did in my particular approach, and back to this around organizations that do really well in the space, they can integrate it, but it’s not diluted. And you can point to it and talk about what’s the measurement? What’s the action, it’s not the point where you can’t find it, you know, oftentimes I live I’m a fan of HR, I’m not an HR ist, you know, I, I’ve been proxy to it over the years, just be very plain in terms of ownership, I think there’s also the key thing to keep in mind is that you can make arguments for why it should be in HR, I would actually make more arguments outside of that. What you’re looking for in this role being done well, you’re looking for latitude and empowerment and authority, right to be able to speak to other pieces of the business that are not just the human capital centric things, those are important. And then the other thing that I would tell you I would share is that understanding the centrality of the business is super vital. Right? So whether you are healthcare, which is how do you get the best care possible? And how do you recruit the best talent to give that care, or whether it’s an education tech or FinTech doesn’t really matter, that dei person has to understand the centrality of the business. And they need to have the empowerment to speak to things that that can complement senior leaders. It’s a fusion of skills, right? So a good DEI person will talk about why it’s important, and structure that work as to its relevance. But it’s that kind of partnership with senior leadership to to build execution against the needs.
David Turetsky:
But I think it also, it’s one thing that you were talking about that I really kind of sparked in my mind independence, they have to be able to be independent and have an ability to call bullshit. PG 13 is the ability to call out leaders or HR specific groups, when they’re not pulling their weight when they’re not doing what needs to be done, at least from what the leadership team is talking about. And actually live the values that they’re they’re trying to drive.
Fred Wills:
You’re exactly right. We talked earlier about why organizations struggle, the failure to or the reluctance to not give someone license to say bad things about the organization, but say, Hey, this is a real problem. And to be kind of a conduit of where there are endemic issues where there are these little cultural things that cumulatively add up over time. For instance, they’re problematic, you have to have the authority to do that, again, having had some acknowledgement in this space and whatnot, the bosses, the folks that I’ve worked for, and I would say leaders probably better than bosses, leaders I’ve worked for, they pull you into the right conversations, they step out of the way of conversations that they’re just setting you up for and they pull back and they trust you. Right, and they also provide cover, they also give you a big picture, there’s a there’s a lot of dexterity, but that doesn’t happen in great abundance just to be very plain, it does not happen in great abundance.
Dwight Brown:
One thing that I think of with this is if you look historically, kind of how DE&I is has progressed, where, you know, I remember a time where it was all about looking at the stats and reporting the stats to the government, and it wasn’t necessarily about doing the right thing for the right reason. So and I’m interested in your perspective, do you feel like that has hindered DE&I efforts? When you look at that historical aspect of things and trying to get over? What’s the next step? How do we take this to the next level? How do we get to the point of what you were just talking about? And do you think that that’s why some organizations struggle?
Fred Wills:
Absolutely. I mean, I think it’s there’s a whole legacy lineage of that style of reporting. And it’s equal part good, but there’s this problem at this point is probably a lot of quote unquote, baggage. That’s with it, the real concerning piece that there is the mindset associated with it, which is why I kind of started our conversation appreciate question of, where’s the organization going? And what’s the people talking? What what what could that look like? I’ve always been a DEI, personally, when I advise organizations, how do you want to structure your DEI work? It is actually not through HR, necessarily. It is in partnership and concert into a lot of that stuff. There’s a problematic history of being limited to what was kind of historical EEO, work EEO focus stuff, as opposed to saying, how do we create? How are we how do we create an environment that incentivizes development opportunity that embraces different perspective that embraces positive deviance, at a micro level, that endorses it at a managerial level that says, managers as opposed to holding the line, right, holding the line saying, you actually have to be one of our change folks, we actually need to be agitating and challenging some of that, and then moving up the ladder, you go north or south with that idea through the vertical of the organization.
David Turetsky:
You know, Dwight, when you said that the Q word came to my mind? Quotas. Right? And I lived in a world where, unfortunately, that was the conversation in HR, you know, do are we living our values? No, it wasn’t about living values. It was about are we hiring to our quotas. And that was awful. And I’m glad that those days should be in our rearview mirror.
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David Turetsky:
But I wanted to pivot a bit, Fred, if you don’t mind, to talk about leadership, and to talk about how we can get leaders to step up and actually start leading inclusively, and create another or a different work environment where they’re leading through example, they’re showing the values that we need to be showing for their their ownership, their shareholders, for the world, their consumers, who’s actually buying their services or products. But even more so for the people who rely on them, as you just mentioned, for the examples of how to act differently, how to think differently, or sorry, not differently, inclusively?
Fred Wills:
Yeah, you know, I have the chance to work with a lot of senior teams, and their differing levels of understanding in this space. And at times, you’ll hear feedback that says, Oh, this sounds like just leadership as opposed to diversity, equity inclusion. And I always go, huh. And give it a little pause.
David Turetsky:
Interesting.
Fred Wills:
Kind of, you’re kind of there. You’re kind of missing it. But you’re kind of there. Right? So you draw that out? A little bit more. Right? It’s so how do you how do you get the right how do you get folks there? The plain and simple is senior leaders cast the biggest shadows. That’s just a fact. Right? They set the tone they set the accountabilities, that’s just a fact. Right? So and this work is complex in the sense that it’s an individual path, and it’s a structural path, right. So back to this ability to see yourself there’s what I would recommend and see worked really well is reflection of leadership paths. It’s also got countless examples of some of that stuff, but it’s about having a bit of courageousness and facing the wind, it is speaking, the you get more traction in the space as a leader, whether you’re capital L leader, right by title or leader by some other definition. My definition is you influence people you that makes you a leader, right? You get more by being authentic, even if you’re making a mistake in what you’re saying. There’s a lot so I would say tell the story, but also articulate where you’re trying to get to right and gives folks space to do that. So I would probably start there as well as one point and then kind of that tough look in the mirror, you were kind of hitting it earlier this assessment. And again, if you’re picking, and we’re talking about nature, our group, I would say, let’s look at what is how do we really understand folks ascending in the organization really, really strong looks. And those are, again, I’m going to use this phrase of tough looks in the mirror. That’s what all these are. And if you really want to put a punctuation point on it, ask yourself and your employees will tell you, you start playing, and you actually have the will to do it. The actual have that will? It is this is really tough work. It’ll always be tough work, but it’s transformative. So I would say take inputs that you don’t normally get, it’s easy to get feedback, the usual suspects, I would move to the unusual, the unexpected suspects, if you will.
David Turetsky:
So one of the problems that you talked about really early in our podcast was transparency. And transparency leads to new processes. New processes are hard, they actually take investment, they actually take real money. This is not talking about measurement. This is talking about changing stuff that we do that will impact cost, and will probably require changing how people think about the how they work and how they do things. And I’ll give you an example. If we typically look at five or six Ivy League schools to hire from, and we have established relationships, we may even have endowments with them. We may now want to look at the HBCUs, we may want to look at other areas which produce phenomenal results and produce wonderful human beings that are brilliant, that can give us diverse thought, give us diverse actions give us a better representation of our consumers and of the population as a whole. But it will take a lot of money to do that. It may actually require some technology change too. But we have to change our HRIS we have to change maybe change the way in which we recruit. So the question I would ask you is when the leaders buy in, do we sometimes forget about that price tag that has to go alongside of these actions in order to be able to fully really embrace change?
Fred Wills:
You know, the core of this work is about change, period. And I mean, this work being dei work and the work belong. To your question, you know, part of the argument, you could say is, now is a really great example, look at how fast folks are leaving the organization. It’s a six figure cost, right to bring someone on? That’s kind of the baseline of some of that. So you actually have some of the economics there pretty readily kind of out the gate, I would say that the price tag of transparency is yes, there’s a there’s an actual hard figure that’s there. But I would actually say some of it actually doesn’t have high cost attached to it, meaning that openness to embracing a different way of doing things, getting employee feedback or a thread that that’s there’s a trend, there’s an openness to receiving direction and feedback, taking the advantage of folks previous experiences. And then you speak to that there’s a transparency that’s there. So I think, yes, it’s a both and there’s a financial cost that’s there won’t, you know, split hairs around what the hard costs are? I will tell you, there’s a concerning to this point, right, is somewhere last year, I remember reading a data point that said, you know, 60 plus billion dollars were committed. And between 2020, summer 2020, and through mid year of 2021 $60 billion. It was short of a million dollars actual spent, or $250 million actually spent. Wow, my point, right, the point is you external prejudice can cause this wanting to speak into a space for right or wrong reasons. But when we go back to executive alignment, and we understand the criticality of if I don’t pay attention to this, there’s a need even bigger financial impact to all this stuff, right. Beyond the the cost that might come in with changing, you know, whether it’s ATS system or, you know, some form of trying to eradicate bias that’s in there, right. The cost actually speaks itself pretty well pretty quickly with without needing to be encyclopedic on it. So what happens there is that’s a double standard that gets applied to DEI, often and inappropriately over time, you don’t necessarily see the same double standard applied to I don’t know, we’ll just say innovation and product development, right? You get more latitude. Right. And so, long way of saying transparency, in some cases is a financial costs. But there’s also there there are actions that I think leaders and organizations can take that, that speak to transparency, and some of that starts with saying, Hey, we’re not where we want to be, but we’re committed to growing through this describe in focusing super important, you talked about alignment as well, that’s, that’s really valuable.
David Turetsky:
So one of the first things that I think could help in the world of transparency is the Don’t worry, we have your back. So managers who are leaders, sorry to give that speech, and then live it by saying, Don’t worry, I have your back if something happens, and you need to do something, like to us equity is part of what we do every day, we want to make sure that we’re building equitable compensation programs, and that compensation is equitable as it’s being delivered. And if a manager is doing the right thing and saying I see a disparity here, and I want to fix it, to know that your leader has your back when you go and make the request, because they used to not be automatic. It used to take time to get that money, but every paycheck is another inequitable occurrence. And so to have that leader, be transparent, and just have my back to say, I’m going to fix this. That’s huge.
Dwight Brown:
And I think, along with that having transparency also offers the possibility of crowdsourcing. In other words, if you’re having difficulty, moving the needle, moving the dial on things, outside ideas, can really help along that path. You know, because as a leader, we only see so much of our world, and we look through, we look through a lens, but having somebody else who can say, did you look at this, did you think about it this way, and, and really, making it a we thing, as opposed to a me thing is what I think of with that. But if you don’t have that transparency, then you’re never going to get the outside thought that you need, you’ll get a lot of opinions. But you know, having having the ability to have somebody else who looks at things a different way and and help to move the dial, I think there’s value in that.
Fred Wills:
There’s a strong relationship between transparency and growth. There’s a really strong relationship between those things. Transparency is also defined sometimes by industry, but it’s particularly defined by each organization. So I think we’re coming to some level of definition on that super important. And to the point around crowd sourcing, if you will, you know, I think it’s also particularly important to let folks articulate staff, frontline folks, you know, there was at least outside of management, maybe by some level of definition, and then on your way up, defining what transparency is, as opposed to the other way around. If you’re trying to retain folks, right, it’s super important to actually let them define some of that doesn’t mean everything can be done, but it is important to know, and some of the things you’ll be able to do. And then in terms of the have your back. Wow. If we have another hour, we can talk about that.
David Turetsky:
Well, unfortunately, Fred.
Fred Wills:
Yeah. So but I’ll say I’ll say one thing that speaks really well to the need to have an equitable, inclusive system that is structural. Right, that is structural, but also incentivizes those related behaviors, right, the behavior is the, you know, historically was the manager and let me go look at it, right, the structural is that now there’s a system that looks for anomalies that can do it, you know, in a snap that can do it in a month’s pay period, if you will. So you have to have both and this is a both and kind of proposition So Fred, I think what we’re gonna have to do is have you back for another conversation so we can get that hour in cuz I, while I love, I love talking about this. I love our listeners, and they have time that they put aside for us. I want before we wrap up, I want to ask, is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that, you know, we want to quickly add to the conversation? Or do you want to reserve that for the next the next time we talk? I will say something quite expressly, that is one every leader and then gets defined to someone that has the ability to influence someone else? Strong reflection on treating folks equitably, and inclusively. And that means largely doing something different to have some curiosity attach them. Ask them folks what their sense of belonging is, where they have opportunity to contribute that are being under realized would be another thing I would leave is here. And then really these hard looks. And this is really the leadership action. How are you looking at how you’re allocating resources, amongst your team in a variety of ways. How are you distributing those resources and looking for differential impact? That’d be my immediate recommendations to kind of close our conversation.
David Turetsky:
And by the way, that last piece that you just threw out there, that’s an entire podcast. And we’ve actually had conversations around that with people and talking about opportunities, not just promotional opportunities, but opportunities to work. And the bias that is inside of managers or people who do staffing around what I perceive someone to be able to do versus what can they actually do, and giving them the opportunity to work a number of hours and to work overtime. So that could be a completely separate podcast. But Fred, thank you so much. It’s been awesome talking to you today. And I will welcome you back again, or we will welcome you back. Right, Dwight?
Dwight Brown:
Yes, we will.
David Turetsky:
And so thank you so much. And thank you everybody for listening. And if you know somebody who might find this conversation fascinating the way Dwight and I did please send it their way. If you liked it, please hit subscribe. And we hope we will bring you many more conversations especially with Mr. Wills. Thank you very much. Take care and please stay safe.
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