Putting DEI into Action
How to champion Diversity, Equity & Inclusion as part of your Values-based Leadership journey
- Originally published on LinkedIn Articles
- Tuesday, March 23, 2021
- Matthew A. Kaness
I had the immense pleasure of co-teaching a class today with Professor Jacqueline (“Jacquie”) Doyle at Darden (UVA) Graduate School of Business, which is my alma mater. The course is “General Managers Taking Action”, a second year elective. This is my second time co-teaching this class with Jacquie, though this time was of course different as it was virtual and not in-person in Charlottesville. We had over 50 students attend.
Given the recent tragedy in Georgia and awareness of AAPI racism that it generated, as well as the on-going BLM protests stemming from last summer’s tragic death of George Floyd, Jacquie and I thought that it would be appropriate to create space at the top of the class to acknowledge the events and facilitate a conversation on the importance of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) in the workplace and, more importantly, how individuals can take actions throughout their career to promote and become a champion for DEI.
Incorporate DEI as a pillar of your Values-based Leadership. It’s easier to act on what you believe. In simplest terms,
- Diversity is about representation. As a business, are you capturing the benefits of diverse views and experiences? Is it a priority to ensure that the needs and desires — of the audience you are trying to reach, the TAM you’re trying to penetrate, the customer segment you’re keen to serve — are fully represented by the individuals around and within your company? Do you leverage diversity competitively to drive firm performance?
- Equity is about shared ownership. I believe this step is least understood and perhaps most important. Incentives drive behaviors, and the best way to create long-term alignment is for most stakeholders, including employees, to participate in the upside of the value creation of the firm. Setting aside discussions of government policy or politics, in a business context, Equity participation can take many forms: stock option plans, preferred investments in private equity rounds, public company stock compensation, angel investments in founders and LP investments in funds. Community leaders can teach financial literacy; Company leaders can promote equity participation; Industry leaders can increase access by reducing barriers to broader capital allocation.
- Inclusion is about culture. The culture you build is aspirational; the culture you have is defined by what you tolerate. How leaders design decision-making processes has a direct impact on whether everyone can maximize their contribution to the greater common goals. Are the strategic decision inputs designed with DEI in mind? Have long-term DEI goals been established and regularly reported against? Which behaviors and results get celebrated and which are condemned?
The Darden students shared their own experiences and asked me really direct questions about mine. Most notably they were interested in “real-world” actions they could take beyond mere conversation. It was an intimate discussion and one that I’ve become very familiar with over the years. I shared with them moments in my own career journey in becoming a DEI Champion as part of my Values-based Leadership commitment.
- Get out of your comfort zone to develop empathy. When I first joined Urban Outfitters, Inc., in early 2007, no one who knew me then would have ever accused me of being a fashionista! But I was all-in on and passionate about the URBN family of brands and the customer-obsessed creative culture that their founder Dick Hayne had harnessed. As a straight, white male at a women’s fashion house, I was in the minority — which is to say that I had to prove myself to many people who didn’t initially see my fit there. I learned so much from my female and LGBTQ bosses, mentors and peers and am grateful for the opportunity to become more empathetic to their perspectives, both similar and different from mine.
- Be the change you want to see in the world. When I joined ModCloth at the start of 2015, one the primary reasons I signed-up was being inspired by co-founder Susan Koger’s aspiration for creating a body-positive fashion brand. As I like to say now, ModCloth was the version of the world I wanted my daughter to grow up in. After I joined, it became a personal mission of mine to pioneer an inclusive-fashion business model and, hopefully, accelerate a movement that would “main-stream” the inclusion of all women in the fashion industry. I’m proud to say that we did just that and it spurred my interest in becoming more active in promoting DEI more broadly.
- Listen to understand, then acknowledge differences. Though my time at Lucky Brand was very brief, one of my proudest moments as a Leader was our participation in Black Out Tuesday on June 2, 2020. In the wake of the tragic death of George Floyd, as the company was battling the depths of forced store lockdowns across the industry, a few key team members reached out to me on a Saturday and asked how we, as a brand, should respond — to our employees, our customers, through social media, industry partners, etc. My first reaction was to call two close friends of mine — both Black men — and ask them how they were experiencing it all. I spent hours listening to them share stories with me about being Black in America, some of which made me feel ashamed for my lack of awareness that this could be happening to friends of mine without my knowing. I immediately asked our team for ideas of what we could do — and one of them suggested participating in Black Out Tuesday, just 2 days later. I called an emergency board meeting and without hesitation the investors supported shutting down our commerce sites and locations, and giving all employees the paid day off. That Monday, we held a Company-wide All-hands meeting to share the news but also to give space for employees to share their stories. It lasted for 2 hours — raw and emotional and, in some ways, a breakthrough — where all our employees felt heard and seen, not for comforming but for adding depth and nuance to our collective understanding.
- Skin in the game. Since leaving Walmart in 2018, I’ve been a very active angel investor, mentor and advisor to founders and startup teams to go along with my corporate board work. If you’re in the fortunate position to invest your personal time, energy, capital, there’s no better way of championing DEI than to back diverse founders and start-ups. With a focus on DTC brands and technology businesses serving the fashion, beauty and life-style industries, I’m proud to have backed many female founders, including Maker Wines, NEWNESS, and Hint, and many others as a Mentor through First Round Capital Fast Track and GSB Start-up Garage.
Digital Commerce / Lifestyle Brand CEO & Entrepreneur; Public Board Director; DTC & Consumer Tech Angel Investor / Advisor; DEI Champion.
