B-Side: Diversity: Try Harder

00:00:01:05 - 00:00:13:04

Patrick Campbell

One comment you made that I really liked was saying, Oh, it's a pipeline issue. Yeah, it's just ridiculous, right? That being said, like in smaller companies, is it just try harder. Is that what it is?

00:00:13:08 - 00:00:14:12

Patty McCord

Try harder. Yeah.

00:00:14:23 - 00:00:34:21

Patrick Campbell

For profit. Well, recur. It's Protect the Hustle, A show about those who are in the trenches actually doing the work. I'm Patrick Campbell. And on today's show, we start the ball rolling and trying harder by tackling diversity.

00:00:36:22 - 00:00:56:00

Patrick Campbell

This week we're talking about diversity. And this is the type of episode where everyone's going to have a really strong opinion because this topic sits at the crossroads of both being uncomfortable and also being really, really important. And as Patty alluded to when she kicked my butt. It's also really, really hard. And for better or for worse, this topic is also pretty sensitive.

00:00:56:03 - 00:01:20:10

Patrick Campbell

In fact, 11 people, most of them CEOs, turned down being interviewed for this episode. And several people said that myself is a white male, just really shouldn't talk about this topic. And while I completely agree that I shouldn't be the authority figure on gender balance and diversity as a whole, as a CEO of a company, I'm one of the leaders, if not the leader, who needs to make sure we set up our team in the best environment to succeed.

00:01:20:22 - 00:01:47:06

Patrick Campbell

So from a pragmatic perspective, helming a company that will soon be 100 plus people, I don't really have a choice in tackling this topic. It's uncomfortable, but necessary. Our goal today is to get a framework for diversity within our organizations by exploring why diversity is important, how we're just really just bad at creating diverse teams. And finally, what we can pragmatically due to create diverse teams while also moving the growth ball forward.

00:01:47:22 - 00:02:16:21

Patrick Campbell

So let's jump in. We need to answer why is diversity important? I know there are some offends and even challenging needing to answer that question, but when I asked people, there just was a lot of struggle in the why. And to me, this is emblematic of a larger issue where we focus so much on the number and the proportion of people at our companies that we've lost sight of why this is even important.

00:02:17:07 - 00:02:27:19

Patrick Campbell

And it's incredibly hard to make something happen without knowing the why. To dive deeper, here's what David Cancel. The founder and CEO Drift had to say about why diversity is so important to him and his team.

00:02:29:05 - 00:02:55:02

David Cancel

I think diversity is important because it's reality. It's the world that we live in, right? And so I have the experience of growing up in the most diverse environment ever, which is New York City in Queens, the new Ellis Island of America. And so I grew up in this radically diverse environment, and I saw the benefits of having that diversity of thought and diversity of economics and how it made us better and wants more and pushed harder.

00:02:55:02 - 00:03:10:21

David Cancel

And so I kind of grew up in that. I think I took it for granted and then I got into tech. I think it was ten years in tech before I had met another Hispanic. Right. Hard to believe today things are a little bit more diverse now, but it took ten years. My person, my co-founder now is.

00:03:14:03 - 00:03:36:12

Patrick Campbell

In all of our conversations, we always saw some sort of semblance of this point needing to reflect the reality of the world around us. Homogenize teams just aren't reality with the world. But it goes so much beyond ethnicity, gender and race. Sarah Hodges, the former head of People Ops over at Pluralsight and now partner and pillar VC here in Boston, expands on this point beautifully.

00:03:37:23 - 00:03:56:18

David Cancel

I think first we have to back up to think about what is diversity. And most people, when they talk about diversity, talk about race and ethnicity and gender. I think it's really important we're building companies that we expand that to include sexual orientation, people with disabilities, socioeconomic status. There are a lot of forms of diversity that can be really beneficial to our companies.

00:03:56:19 - 00:04:13:15

David Cancel

If everybody around the table looks the same and thinks the same, you're probably going to think about challenges in the same way and solving problems in the same way. You're probably going to look at opportunities from the same perspective, which means you're going to miss a lot. You're going to miss things that somebody who isn't looking at the world through the same ones that you are is going to look at.

00:04:13:23 - 00:04:34:03

David Cancel

It's also, you know, we can easily just kind of reinforce our own beliefs when we don't have anyone else challenging us who thinks in a different way than we do. And so I think that's really dangerous for a tech company because, you know, the more you're in the weeds building your company, the more likely you are to view the world through a very small, narrow lens.

00:04:34:03 - 00:04:44:18

David Cancel

You need people who really are coming at things with really different points of view, different backgrounds that they're bringing to the table to help us think about, you know, where the real opportunity is in our businesses.

00:04:47:09 - 00:05:14:23

Patrick Campbell

That opportunity Sarah mentions turns out to actually be pretty concrete and proven to be successful. Here's Rand Fishkin, the founder of Mas and Spark, Toro's Take. Expanding on this concept further, while also presenting the ethical reason diversity is so important. Pay careful attention to the research, she points out on both points. I think there's two big reasons. One is a moral and ethical reason, which is essentially toward the cause of justice.

00:05:14:23 - 00:05:44:10

Patrick Campbell

We know that historically, for a long period of time, many people were disadvantaged because of who they were or how they were. Right. And that can mean lots of things, right? It can mean their religion, their ethnic background, it could mean their ability or disability, it can mean their sexual preferences are all kinds of diversity, right? We know that there are lots of people who have missed out on what straight, white, cis American men like you and I have generally received in the past.

00:05:44:12 - 00:06:07:12

Patrick Campbell

That sucks. And so the cause of justice demands that we work towards a more inclusive society, and that can certainly start with our own companies. That's on the moral, ethical side. I think there's also on the pragmatic business performance side, we can see that diversity in all its aspects is correlated very strongly with company performance, especially in leadership team levels.

00:06:07:13 - 00:06:27:02

Patrick Campbell

Right. So if you get a leadership team that is comprised of four guys like you and I, that's true of private company boards. That's true of investor groups. That's true of people in a total experimental test situation where they come in and team of college students run a sample exam for that right where they all work together on a problem.

00:06:27:10 - 00:06:48:13

Patrick Campbell

So we know that problem solving company performance tend to improve with these things. And so far, researchers haven't been able to identify that this is purely correlation and not causal. So right now, our theory is that this is actually a causal factor in performance. So you've got your ethical side of justice and you have your better performance side.

00:06:49:00 - 00:07:12:11

Patrick Campbell

What's not to love? Go for diversity, right? Why would you not work Artifacts? Diversity of thought brings diversity of opinion with brings diversity of perspective in solving a problem with the federated issues that we intensely face every single day. It seems intuitive that we need diversity of thought to go well beyond a homogenized approach to properly answer our toughest questions.

00:07:12:22 - 00:07:42:19

Patrick Campbell

This is why there's a lot of data to back up Rand's point. In a study completed by McKinsey, they found that those companies who were in the upper quartile when it came to gender and ethnic diversity saw 15 to 35% higher likelihood of financial performance above the industry median when it compared to those in the bottom quartile. So diversity has a lot of benefits because it pushes us out of our comfort zone to a plane of workplace dynamics and provides the right friction to challenge the status quo and the normal approach to doing things.

00:07:43:04 - 00:08:06:17

Patrick Campbell

I think what gets lost in this whole discussion about diversity, though, is that this isn't a numbers game. It's a pursuit of not having a homogenous group of people approach extreme, difficult problems. Too many of us in this endeavor get too excited about trying to check a box and reduce human beings to a number that hopefully gets us to a proportionality that society says is appropriate in terms of the makeup of our teams.

00:08:07:04 - 00:08:36:20

Patrick Campbell

In reality, we could have a 5050 gender balanced team with ideal proportions of ethnic backgrounds and still have a homogenous team when it came to thought and execution. Of course, that's not likely. But the subtle point here is that gender, age, socioeconomic background, ethnicity are all proxies for the goal of diversity, which is diversity of perspective and approach.

00:08:39:02 - 00:09:03:07

Patrick Campbell

None of this feels terribly hard to disagree with, but the fact remains we're still pretty bad at creating diverse teams. For most of us, if we were left our own devices, we probably wouldn't create diverse teams naturally, because it's just not comfortable. And I'm not just speaking as a white male. No matter our background, comfort comes in, including those who look like us and think the same way and ultimately approach problems with the exact same perspective.

00:09:03:18 - 00:09:20:22

Patrick Campbell

Julia Austin, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and former VP of Engineering at Akamai and VMware, sums this up nicely and gives some great advice around, as she puts it, holding the diversity line in the wake of short term growth goals.

00:09:20:22 - 00:09:45:01

David Cancel

I think we're afraid. There's something about feeling close and comfortable. I think this is why in the whole, nothing personal talk roadshow of like, why do white guys want to invest in other white guys? It's comfortable and being uncomfortable as human beings don't like that. Right. So if I'm around other people that are like me, I'm going to get stuff done because they get me and now you're going to talk to someone isn't get me.

00:09:45:01 - 00:10:00:00

David Cancel

And that makes me uncomfortable. And I think the other part is it's really effing hard. You know, running my business is hard enough or raising capital is hard enough. Now, you want me to do this to society's external pressure of I'm just going to get shit done, and these are the people in front of me. So therefore I'm just going to do that.

00:10:00:07 - 00:10:17:18

David Cancel

One of the things I've talked about in the past that you wrote about this is how far we are willing to go to try. And I think we don't go hard enough. The example I'll give is when I was hired by VMware, Diane Green was very clear. We are not getting the talent we need in the Bay Area because they were competing with other big companies.

00:10:17:18 - 00:10:37:17

David Cancel

We had come out of the bubble burst, Google and Yahoo and everybody was hiring like crazy in the valley, go forth to Cambridge on the east Coast, go sit really close to MIT and figure it out. And that was pretty much my job. And one of the things that Diane did and in turn Steve Harrod, who's a CTO, is my boss, was they set the bar really fricking high.

00:10:37:19 - 00:11:05:19

David Cancel

So they basically to me, you've got to get people who are senior engineer working towards principle engineer, which is considered a pretty esteemed rule company and we are not letting you hire anyone under that level until you have at least six of them in your team. Basically, I was bringing in phenomenal sort of mid-level, in my experience, senior people, not just academics, truly outstanding individuals, and they just kept saying no with these things.

00:11:05:20 - 00:11:26:16

David Cancel

They're so good, these candidates are so good and they're saying no, because when you get those first six, not only will they be more prepared to have those more junior people under them, but they will be a magnet, more senior people coming in. It was hard like the first six months of us just constantly getting rejected on great candidates because we're partnered very closely with our Palo Alto cohort on getting good people in.

00:11:27:05 - 00:11:52:15

David Cancel

But man, did it pay off. We had just such a hilarious killer group in Cambridge, and then we replicated that worldwide to use it as an example, because we should be doing that. And it's hard. Going back to the question of why is it hard is holding the line and saying we are not hiring another person that looks like us or that has the same background, educational background as us or has seen whatever preferences is us, whatever it is that we're doing differently.

00:11:52:15 - 00:12:10:05

David Cancel

Because again, diversity is many things. We are not, period, even if it means the company has to slow down, even if it means we're going to be late on delivering things, even if it pisses off our investors, whatever it is being willing to do that, that's number one. Setting a line and saying that is it. That is what we're doing.

00:12:10:05 - 00:12:16:03

David Cancel

Even if it means it's going to be harder, we're going to do that.

00:12:16:03 - 00:12:43:16

Patrick Campbell

Most of us probably look at the prospect of slowing down in exchange for more diversity long term amongst our teams as something that's just non-negotiable. Even though as your team becomes less diverse, it just gets harder and harder to create a diverse team. The problem is, is that short term thinking is typically not the right idea. And as David Cancel points out, it actually makes this much, much more complicated because in some ways this is a multi-generational problem.

00:12:44:02 - 00:12:51:03

Patrick Campbell

Pay close attention to what he has to say along the quality bar as well.

00:12:51:03 - 00:13:16:00

David Cancel

It's less about diversity. There's a program and a good set of metrics and it's more about how do we focus on quality, how do we make sure that we're giving people equal opportunities and treating people equally? Because being on the flip side, being someone on the other side who would have been a number in someone's diversity program, no one wants to come in thinking that, you know, I wouldn't want to be somewhere thinking I got this job because we needed a diversity program, right?

00:13:16:02 - 00:13:34:19

David Cancel

I want to come in because I felt like that I would add something to the team. And so I think that's the difference. And I think one thing that I don't love about most diversity programs that I see is that they're so short term oriented, where I think the real answer to most of these questions, the top answer that no one ever wants to give is that it's a multi-generational answer, right?

00:13:34:19 - 00:13:55:04

David Cancel

So like, if you look at something as simple as gender equality and computer science or STEM, everyone wants an overnight answer. And the truth is they can't be like if you look at STEM graduates who are females, last thing I saw was like 13%. So the idea that your company is going to be 50% by some program is like mathematically impossible.

00:13:55:04 - 00:14:15:15

David Cancel

If you were able to do it, which no one really has that scale, then that means that by definition, some other companies have to be at 2% single digits. Right. And I don't think that's real diversity. It could be like, we'll feel good about ourselves because we're at 50%. But now all these other companies have to be 2%.

00:14:16:13 - 00:14:30:09

David Cancel

I know you have numbers, but there are numbers at the bottom of this. And I think the real answer is what a lot of people are doing and we're trying to help out on, which is like how do we help people in high school? How do we help people in elementary school? How do we actually change it from that side and make it attractive?

00:14:30:18 - 00:14:34:07

David Cancel

But that's not a satisfying answer. Whenever we want to results like.

00:14:37:17 - 00:15:00:00

Patrick Campbell

Again, this feels like one of those objectively right and great in theory principles. But to quote Julia, it's really effing hard. You're trying to build the plane while you're moving through the air and this almost feels like an add on feature versus something that's core, especially when you have thousands of applicants that look just like you and your team pouring into your inbox who can theoretically do the work.

00:15:00:13 - 00:15:16:07

Patrick Campbell

To make matters worse, even the job postings we're putting out there tend to be problematic. Here's Julia explaining a bit more about how we make it even tougher on us to properly attack the diversity problem and pay close attention to what she says about ninjas.

00:15:16:07 - 00:15:36:01

David Cancel

A job description. With too many requirements, women will not apply for backed by data that can see ten requirements in a job description and only feel that they know two of those ten things and will apply anyway. Women, If they don't check all ten boxes, they won't apply. So the name of the game is How are you getting them to apply?

00:15:36:02 - 00:15:54:09

David Cancel

The pool exists, they're just not applying to work at your company. Does a job description read in a way that you are attracting the right people to apply for the job? So you take out words like ninja and expert and like there's certain things where it's like men just genetically are wired to say, Yeah, I'm a ninja. Totally.

00:15:54:09 - 00:16:02:23

David Cancel

Women like and no way. But I wouldn't call myself a ninja. Like, you know, think about that. Like, that's sort of the difference between the two. Just purely on JavaScript, you allow.

00:16:06:04 - 00:16:28:10

Patrick Campbell

Bias is a part of our lives. Sometimes bias is good, a lot of times bias is bad. But what I find troubling about the mix of David's contexts are needing to keep the bar high and not making people feel like a number. And then Julia's point of making sure you're removing bias as much as possible from your job descriptions is that I don't think we realize how biased our front line recruiting really is.

00:16:29:00 - 00:17:01:00

Patrick Campbell

To go a bit deeper here, we did what we've been known to do from time to time here at Provo. Well, we went out and collected some data for this experiment. We wanted to test application bias amongst companies. So we designed an experiment where we set up resumes and profiles for individuals with essentially the same qualifications. We then duplicated these profiles and changed only certain characteristics such as age, race, gender, political affiliation, and even religious preferences.

00:17:01:10 - 00:17:23:06

Patrick Campbell

We then took all of these profiles and applied to a few thousand jobs in both technical and non-tech Nicole applications and waited to see who got called back to walk through the data. I sat down with Prof. Wells, head of People office Megan Klein. We collected all this data. When you when you think the data shows us in terms of bias, who do you think I called back the most?

00:17:23:17 - 00:17:35:03

Meghan Colón

So you would assume that the white men are getting called back the most. But there's been so much conversation around women and tech in diversity specifically that those applications probably are getting the most attention and the most callbacks.

00:17:35:03 - 00:17:51:06

Patrick Campbell

You can see. If you're right. Sure, let's do it. So let's jump into the actual data here. And I think what you're going to find is that you're a little bit on the nose in terms of what's happening. The market. So just to give you some context here, what we're looking at, you're looking at the relative response rate versus the control.

00:17:51:06 - 00:18:11:05

Patrick Campbell

So essentially a white guy with, you know, that's the control saying qualifications are very close qualifications to all of these other profiles. And we're seeing like what was the increase or decrease in the rate of response to those profiles. And what you'll notice is that women in technical roles are basically getting 20% more higher response than than white did.

00:18:12:05 - 00:18:37:14

Patrick Campbell

Nonwhite individuals are getting about a 10% just under a 10%, a 9%. And then here's what was really, really interesting in technical roles. If you were Christian and we put that in the application under like the extracurricular activity kind of stuff, if you're a Christian or you're a Republican, 20% less response rate. Wow, That's really interesting. And do we do anything right now for blind resume reviews or like any scoring or anything like that?

00:18:37:14 - 00:18:38:01

Patrick Campbell

We don't.

00:18:38:01 - 00:18:38:18

Meghan Colón

Unfortunately.

00:18:38:20 - 00:18:40:01

Patrick Campbell

Is it just because of volume.

00:18:40:01 - 00:18:52:05

Meghan Colón

Or it is volume? It's capacity. It's just in not having a system set up for it to the point that it's just kind of my eyes and hoping that I'm going in with as unbiased of a view as possible?

00:18:52:07 - 00:19:17:04

Patrick Campbell

Totally. And what was really kind of interesting too, is when we look at the non-technical roles here, this changed a lot, actually. So women, we're still seeing about a 9% higher response rate than than white guys. And in non-technical roles, nonwhite individuals, we're seeing a tend to kind of it was 11% less of a response rate than white dudes which is kind of interesting right, Because most diversity initiatives are all across the board.

00:19:17:04 - 00:19:38:09

Patrick Campbell

Right. And so do you think that this bias, it would be relevant to both technical and non-technical roles? And then even here, the Christian and Republican bias Christians had basically a 0% change was technically about 2% lower response rate, but that's within, you know, margin here. And the Republicans had about a 9% lower response rate. And so it's kind of interesting.

00:19:38:12 - 00:19:55:02

Patrick Campbell

Do you think even this positive bias is a good thing? I mean, it's one of those things where we we kind of do this where we most of our outreach is to to non white guys because simply we just get a ton of white guys who apply here, right? Like, do you do you think this is like a good thing, like some of these splits?

00:19:55:22 - 00:19:59:20

Meghan Colón

Not in the end. And to be completely honest, I my concern is you're going to.

00:19:59:20 - 00:20:00:07

David Cancel

Go.

00:20:00:18 - 00:20:17:05

Meghan Colón

Too far in one direction and you're going to pass on a really qualified, maybe the best fit for that role be purely because they're a white guy. Do we need more diversity? Yes, we're doing that in the outreach. I am very hesitant to reject someone purely based on their being a white guy because that also feels unfair and discriminatory.

00:20:17:06 - 00:20:36:04

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, I shouldn't because I mean, that's illegal as well. But yeah, but it's I think it's interesting. It's one of those things where I'm not sure all of the implications of this data, but it's kind of fascinating how, you know, there is that that difference with people and this is noticeable, right. I think on the non-technical roles a little bit less noticeable.

00:20:36:04 - 00:20:54:00

Patrick Campbell

And so there could be a lot of lurking variables here, but especially on the technical side, there's, there's some pretty clear, like we'll say positive and negative bias when you look at both women and nonwhite individuals and then some other ones like Christian or Republicans, which is which is kind of fascinating to me at least if you were interested in this data at all.

00:20:54:00 - 00:21:10:18

Patrick Campbell

It's still in a bit of a preliminary phase. We're still culling through it and trying to put together the full research report. But if you'd like it, go to protect the hustle dot com and sign up and we'll make sure to send this data over to you in the fall report when it's ready, probably in a couple of weeks.

00:21:10:18 - 00:21:29:06

Patrick Campbell

Getting folks in the door is obviously one thing, but a concept that kept coming up in our research is that a homogenize team tends to attract more of the same. Yet our cultures have a lot of power when it comes to keeping in attracting different types of folks. Listen to what Julie Austin has to say here.

00:21:29:06 - 00:21:53:08

David Cancel

It's one thing to build a pipeline and hire, but then it's setting up an environment where that works. It's hard, but companies fall down and don't do so. What are you doing to set up an environment to ensure whether it's how we do set up interview panels or whether it's how we do offsite events or what our policies are on dinners after work, whatever it is that we're being very, very thoughtful and building that to our culture.

00:21:53:08 - 00:22:04:12

David Cancel

That's why sometimes these companies hire people and they don't stay or why my recent graduate is struggling to get someone to say yes. So how much are we investing on making sure we're a welcoming, inclusive organization.

00:22:07:19 - 00:22:26:11

Patrick Campbell

To be transparent? This is where I start to have a lot of trouble on this journey. I completely agree that you should have a welcoming, inclusive culture. But if we asked ten people what that meant, we probably would end up getting close to ten different answers. Most of us could probably agree that a culture where racial and gender slurs aren't tolerated is definitely welcome and inclusive.

00:22:26:11 - 00:23:05:03

Patrick Campbell

But what about having Beer Fridays or going to laser tag? Are those Brony non-inclusive activities, or is it offensive to suggest that women wouldn't enjoy those events? Sounds like it's time to go back to the data pool with another study, and this time I'm looping in. Prof. Wells Owen lead strategist Lillian Mitchell for this study. We wanted to answer the question do different demographics lead to different preferences when it comes to a job we put together a research study that asked a balanced group of folks the myriad of questions around their job preferences, like what type of perks they care about work environment, and even what type of activities they prefer.

00:23:05:03 - 00:23:19:11

Patrick Campbell

We use the research methods we've cultivated over the past number of years to price intelligently and profit well, which then gave us the answer to just how different are we at an aggregate level when it comes to the environment We want to work?

00:23:19:11 - 00:23:34:21

Patty McCord

Yeah, I'm super excited about this. This all actually came from when I was talking to Meg about how, quote, recruit more women. It's been a big initiative for us ever since, well, forever, but also since last year. She was telling me, I wish I just had some quick wins about do women check Instagram more? Do they look at Facebook?

00:23:35:03 - 00:23:48:16

Patty McCord

Do they care more about company outings? What do they care about? What can I use in order to reach out to these women, not only recruit but retain them? And that's when we realize, hey, we actually have some really vetted methodology that we've been using for years now that could actually help us find this out.

00:23:48:20 - 00:24:03:22

Patrick Campbell

So out we do this for a living. We cut this data by gender, we cut it by age, we cut it in a lot of different ways. Just as a reminder, basically what we're trying to figure out is preferences. Are there differences in men and women in different age groups, folks who have been the victim of sexual harassment or not?

00:24:03:22 - 00:24:12:01

Patrick Campbell

Like what are the differences in preferences for a job? And maybe if we start talking about gender, like what is the difference between men and women when it comes to preferences for a job?

00:24:12:01 - 00:24:27:04

Patty McCord

It turns out, Patrick, we are all just human beings. The analysts I work with, then we're actually kind of dismayed because we're looking at all the different cuts of all the preferences, and it was pretty much the same for men and women. Everyone wants the same thing. There are some very minor nuances here and.

00:24:27:04 - 00:24:50:17

Patrick Campbell

There and to expand on that a little bit. So the first aspect we looked at were like high level job aspects. So comparing salary, compensation, the opportunity for growth work that challenges you and then even the immediate team, you'll be joining and looking at this data right here. Basically men and women are almost perfectly aligned, even when we go down deeper on these cuts, as you mentioned, then we looked at the high level company aspects.

00:24:50:17 - 00:25:06:22

Patrick Campbell

So the company stability, the perks and benefits, the quality of the leadership team, the culture, the alignment and diversity. And again, everyone preferred almost exactly the same things. There's just some really minor variations, but we also broke this down by age, and that's where we started to notice bigger differences.

00:25:07:04 - 00:25:14:15

Patty McCord

As people get older, they care more about perks and benefits, those creature comforts maybe. And then younger folks cared more about the quality of the leadership team.

00:25:14:22 - 00:25:36:06

Patrick Campbell

Which seems kind of counterintuitive, right? Because you would think that I think perks and benefits, the benefits part is probably what really drew the older folks because things like 41k and all those kind of fun things are really important. We think the quality of a leadership team, you know, younger folks wouldn't care about as much because they don't they haven't been burned by a bad leadership team at that point.

00:25:36:12 - 00:25:50:12

Patty McCord

We were also looking at younger people care more about opportunity for growth. The two of them are kind of linked together. They're looking to see, Hey, will my CEO or my CPO or are they really going to try and help me develop, whereas perhaps some people are more established in their careers. It's just not as big of a thing.

00:25:50:12 - 00:25:55:23

Patty McCord

And also maybe older people are a little bit more confident and so they don't feel as much of a need to rely on leadership.

00:25:56:04 - 00:26:04:21

Patrick Campbell

That makes sense. And what do we take away from this? Like, what's the what's the big takeaway for for our people, our team, for our culture or our environment? All of the above.

00:26:05:07 - 00:26:33:15

Patty McCord

Yeah. So Meg and I talked about this and the fact that opportunity for growth and quality of the leadership team was really, really important for folks. That's actually something that she uses when she's recruiting, both in terms of her messaging during phone calls and her outbound efforts. So that was really, really huge. There's one other thing that we found and that's really helped Meg out was we found the gender was exactly the same, but about 60% of people are not actively looking for jobs, but they're open to opportunities that may come their way.

00:26:33:22 - 00:26:42:12

Patty McCord

And so that's really helped her see, okay, it doesn't matter what people statuses on LinkedIn, if they're looking or not looking, she'll reach out to them anyway. They look like good prospects.

00:26:42:12 - 00:27:05:10

Patrick Campbell

Appreciate you sharing this with us today. I know this is something that you've been really passionate about and Lillian and Ben have been working on this for four months at this particular point. But if you want to get this data, we're finally going to share it publicly. You got to protect the hustle dot com and sign up. And in the next few weeks, when we're finally done putting together, all of the research will make sure we get it into your hands so that you can take advantage of the data as well.

00:27:06:09 - 00:27:29:18

Patrick Campbell

My big issue is that in creating that culture, that is welcome. It hinges oftentimes on the words we use and the activities we encourage, which certainly have power in the discussion around what's appropriate or not should definitely be had. But if there's anything this data tells us, it's that people want to be treated well. They want to work on dope fulfilling stuff, and they want to be taken care of from the perspective of benefits, salary and the like.

00:27:30:10 - 00:27:48:21

Patrick Campbell

To me, this doesn't absolve the need for resolving conflict, but psychological safety, fulfillment and happiness at work isn't going to be fixed by a set of policies. It will require creating an environment where the discussion can be had and people are treated not as an identity but as individuals.

00:27:52:06 - 00:28:10:04

Patrick Campbell

So where does all of this leave us in terms of learning? What's our framework for making sure we cherish and defend diversity within our organizations? Well, from all of our learnings and the conversations we had, there seem to be three big elements. First, we need to make sure that we commit to holding the line when it comes to their veracity on our teams.

00:28:10:16 - 00:28:34:01

Patrick Campbell

Second, we need to get out of our comfort zone when it comes to recruiting and control for the biases that we may have. And then finally, we need to create a psychologically safe environment that hinges on equality for all. Holding the line seems pretty easy, but it's likely the easiest to not do because you're building a business which has a lot of growth pressure and in some cases we're already above average a profit.

00:28:34:01 - 00:28:57:15

Patrick Campbell

Well, for instance, we're 25% women, 31% nonwhite, and 40% over the age of 30. From a lot of studies, that means that we're above average. So we could very well just say, all right, great, we're good on this diversity thing. But those numbers clearly don't really feel like a win. Focusing on proportionality also doesn't feel great because on one hand, we don't want to tokenize the people that we're hiring and recruiting.

00:28:58:01 - 00:29:15:09

Patrick Campbell

But on the other hand, we want to make sure we're creating a diverse team. I've reconciled these thoughts by working with our leadership and people, ops teams and making the commitment that this is important and we need to track and bake diversity directly into our recruiting and hiring processes. There are some more tactics along this line. I'll get to you in a bit.

00:29:15:18 - 00:29:46:08

Patrick Campbell

This commitment also required us to start to think about how we test for diversity on our team and in the recruiting process. We don't quite have an answer yet, but it's something that we're working on actively and I'll share once we figure it out. Ultimately, though, like most things that you're trying to change in your organization, some element of tracking and the rigor to commit to change is what will help us hold the line more tactically to address our comfort zone and bias in the recruiting process.

00:29:46:15 - 00:30:04:05

Patrick Campbell

We made some pretty big changes, and I want to loop in Meg, who leads up our people ops team, mainly because she's the one who's been leading the charge here. A lot of research, a lot of information, a couple of interesting data studies that we did. What are we going to do? What are we going to do from the bias and also the pipeline perspective?

00:30:04:08 - 00:30:25:22

Meghan Colón

There's a lot of things that we can change and implement to make this better, make sure that we're keeping diversity top of mind. The first thing is what we can't do. A blind resumé read right now just based on volume and capacity of the team. We will implement a scoring system. We will only look at their experience level, their years of experience, what level they're at, how long they've been in that role, what companies they've worked at.

00:30:25:23 - 00:30:31:13

Patrick Campbell

That scoring system should take care of a lot of the bias anyways exam from names because it's just like if they hit that threshold.

00:30:31:14 - 00:30:32:10

Meghan Colón

They automatically get to a.

00:30:32:10 - 00:30:34:16

Patrick Campbell

Call. And that's really the goal is just to get them on the phone.

00:30:34:17 - 00:30:55:04

Meghan Colón

Exactly. And we can test out whether or not they're fit from there. So that's step one. Step two is we already been using text to help reduce bias in our job descriptions. But in addition to that, we're going to lessen the requirements, remove a good amount of them to just reduce that barrier to entry. Let's reduce that so that women are more likely to check all of those boxes and apply.

00:30:55:04 - 00:31:00:02

Meghan Colón

We're just that barrier to entry and then we can hop on the phone with them and again suss out whether or not they're actually a good fit.

00:31:00:05 - 00:31:18:05

Patrick Campbell

And the important piece here, too, and this is what we heard from Julia, exactly your point. But the important thing is that we're not lowering the bar for getting a job. Yes. We're just lowering the bar to get on the phone, basically thinking of it almost like a sales channel where we want to make sure we can pull in anyone and everyone who is a really good fit.

00:31:18:05 - 00:31:21:14

Patrick Campbell

And we don't want that bias to affect them from getting on the phone, essentially.

00:31:21:15 - 00:31:41:02

Meghan Colón

Exactly. Let's get into that first step and then we can figure out from there. And finally finding the different pockets, places that we aren't where we can find these people, whether it's women in tech, specific groups, different schools that we haven't historically recruited from or haven't had partnerships with, and try to find some diverse candidates in areas that we haven't looked before.

00:31:41:02 - 00:31:53:10

Patrick Campbell

We underestimate just how powerful Meg's last point is around where we recruit from. Sarah Hodges Put some good context on this and pay close attention to how she positioned this. Almost like a marketing company.

00:31:54:21 - 00:32:17:21

David Cancel

Most companies don't think about including really diverse people in the sourcing process. In the hiring process, they look at the same channels for candidates, they look at the same schools. They look for people with skills that are very typical, and they don't think beyond that, too. What are some interesting qualities that could help us get this job done in a different way and then go out and recruit for those qualities in different places?

00:32:17:22 - 00:32:42:05

David Cancel

And they typically go to the same top ten schools to find new grads, big tech companies. These days, they're actually really amazing candidates in schools that are not on most of the top recruiting lists for most big companies today. There's a program here locally in Boston called Hack Diversity, which really goes out and finds students who are in colleges that aren't getting hit up by all the big company recruiters and helps you to bring them into the tech pipeline.

00:32:42:06 - 00:32:49:02

David Cancel

I think that's what we've got to do more of as companies go out and look for candidates in places that aren't necessarily naturally the places we the first.

00:32:51:23 - 00:33:21:00

Patrick Campbell

Last up is environment. And this is probably the toughest because it has the most ambiguity. We're pretty committed to the framework that Patty McCord, Netflix's chief talent officer, laid out in the last episode of Protect the Hustle. And particularly, we're committed to the point that you made about how you control your culture and your environment, and that modeling the culture that you seek is directly baked into every moment you reinforce amongst your team that control of your environment is in your hands.

00:33:21:00 - 00:33:41:00

Patrick Campbell

But what I struggle with, and I think I'll just continue to struggle with, is this whole concept that we're all so different and it's going to be hard and tough to understand what or who I should listen to when it comes to creating the right environment. What I found comforting, though and useful is that it's not about agreeableness, which I think most of us get too caught up in.

00:33:41:08 - 00:34:10:15

Patrick Campbell

It's actually about the very opposite. As we've learned through our interviews and research, we must rage against the dying of debate. We must encourage an environment where friction is protected and cherished because it creates momentum and breeds the best result. The secret comes down to protecting psychological safety and equality in an environment that is uncomfortable because the deeper we research into diversity, the more we're going to discover just how different we all are on any given access.

00:34:11:00 - 00:34:35:15

Patrick Campbell

And we mustn't deny that those differences exist. We need to reject that. Those differences are a liability because they're an asset. Our companies must follow a doctrine of writing policies and encouraging behaviors that support human flourishing, an environment that trusts the judgment of the hive, encouraging the pillars of debate and curiosity and diversity is a central core of this.

00:34:35:15 - 00:35:09:12

Patrick Campbell

But to put it simply, we must engineer tides that raise all boats so Protect The Hustle is produced by Dan Callahan and Ben Hillman, with help from Melissa Chan and Robert Burns, written and produced by Patrick Campbell. This week's episode is brought to you by Women in Tech Effort, a podcast for every listener to walk away feeling. If she can do it, so can I.

00:35:09:14 - 00:35:54:16

Patrick Campbell

Women in Tech Find Special thanks to David Cancel Rand Fishkin, Julia Austin, Sarah Hodges and Patty McCord, who were interviewed for this episode. We are giving away 25 copies of Patty McCord's book, A powerful to those individuals who enjoyed the episode and go to iTunes to give us a nice five star review and a nice, healthy comment. And if they screenshot that review and send it to Patrick at Profile, welcome, we will take care of you and send you Patty's book.