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New FTM website!
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If you haven't checked out our new web look,
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Overcoming Bias in the Workplace—a Case Study
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Face The Music was on the design and delivery team for an organization looking at a sensitive issue that had eluded the standard training that was supposed to address it. Here's an overview on how they tackled the subject and how they got into action with changes to address it.
- Situation—A large consulting firm division is losing valuable talent in the form of some of their best women leaving. The leadership team is all white males despite a very rigorous diversity program. The leadership team decides to team up with HR and internal Women's Council to take measures to address this issue.
- Intake—Conversations with leaders, rank & file at various levels, and HR seem to reveal that people feel that there is an authentic effort to be inclusive and fair in hiring, evaluation, and promotion. There are no blatant behaviors that are singled out. Through discussions it is decided to focus on unconscious bias that may be at work in the people and built in to the frame of reference of the system.
- Learning leverage strategy—It is decided to take on an initiative to address the issue that includes individual work by the leadership team that tees up a 2 day conference with about 120 people invited to explore the subject and decide a course of action to change the track they are on. Training on unconscious bias, discussions, brainstorming, experiential pieces that take people out of their usual business environment and their comfort zone to have a new conversation. They want it to look and feel different!
- Design and preparation—Design included presentations on shared terminology and background, role play skits dramatizing different types of unconscious bias, group discussions, songs that illustrate the themes, songwriting about the participants' "bias blues", debrief of experiential activities to get insights into the organizational system as it pertains to the subject, and planning to make decisions on what actions to take going forward.Design and preparation—Design included presentations on shared terminology and background, role play skits dramatizing different types of unconscious bias, group discussions, songs that illustrate the themes, songwriting about the participants' "bias blues", debrief of experiential activities to get insights into the organizational system as it pertains to the subject, and planning to make decisions on what actions to take going forward.
- Listen to me
- Connect with me
- Communicate with me
- Commit with me
- Implementation
- Custom songs on the themes to be addressed open the conference followed by the leadership team sharing results of the pre-work they had each done personally in the area of unconscious bias. Learnings, insights, cost to the business.
- Leadership presentation ends with them performing a song they wrote the day before. Stating and reframing the issues, and letting everyone know that this offsite is going to be different.
- Delivering skits (FTM actors...) with four different workplace scenes scripted to illustrate how unconscious bias plays out in the workplace. Table discussions.
- Face The Music songwriting session—each table collaborating on a song about the issues at hand, their experience, and a vision for the future.
- Performances after dinner that night—12 groups—an excellent collection of songs, styles, choreography, and good lyrics about the topic at hand.
- Debrief the next morning. People made some pretty bold statements in their lyrics the night before, but the debrief began a bit polite and cautious. The debrief was facilitated to create a safe container to directly address the issues using direct quotes from participants that spoke to what was really going on. As people began trusting that it was safe to speak up, they started taking risks, the process got deeper and deeper into what needed to be said.
- The session was wrapped up by identifying the things that would change tomorrow that would make a difference in changing the face of the practice, and initiatives for longer term cultural and systemic change. These included:
- Goals and goal setting processes
- Changes in Behaviors
- Culture-setting
- Unconscious bias check in's
- Decision processes
The process created an initiative that had some traction, and they did change the face of their practice!
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Important Business Lessons Old Blues Taught Us
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Back in 2001 Fast Company published an article titled "The Change Agent Blues". It featured Face The Music as having a fresh outlook on the rethinking of management education. Specialist leader Anna Muoio wrote the piece. As she's worked at the intersection of business innovation and social change, we thought this was in the spirit of this month's newsletter. Got 4 minutes?
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What event, initiative or challenge do you have coming up that Face The Music can add value to?
(845) 687-2100
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