 Hi everyone, I'm Melissa Druckweis here, co-founder of Diverse by Thinking Initiative focused around raising the level of action to meet the level of conversation around diversity and inclusion. Chief Customer Experience Officer here at Adaptation, a startup in New Hampshire focused around user experience and enabling great user experience for our customers through technology. So I'm here to talk to you today about why Diverse Team is crucial to startup success and I want to just lead off by saying we could slash the startup right out of this title and I promise you, you would still have some relevant information to walk through today. So I definitely challenge you to stay focused around the key facts and steps in the process and not really focus around the startup board here. I put this here because it is relevant and a lot of the statistics I'll share with you today are focused around that of startups, as well as my own experience from Diverse by Thinking working with startup leaders and business leaders in general, as well as working at startups. So all those things come together to really provide you the context that I'm coming from, but so relevant across whatever business context you are experiencing today. So let's get started. You know I love this quote, because I think that one of the things we think about diversity is the differences across people that's obvious right like different diversity you get it. What I think is amazing about this is how those differences come together so together is the key word here. It's really around everyone bringing their unique perspectives to the table together and really I want to leave this here for a minute and let you ingrain this because it's so important for us to think about how we think differently and how we invite diversity of thought and we talk about that a lot here at Diverse by Thinking, obviously based on our brand it's super important to us. And we take it really seriously. And it does mean sometimes difficult conversations. And that's really the tough part about, you know, leading a diverse team and creating a diverse team is it's not as comfortable because we always are drawn to people that look and are comfortable with us because we're human and that's human nature. So I invite you to be open and have an open mind around being uncomfortable and really that's what today is all about. So your first step in this journey is defining diversity in your context, you know I talked about taking startup out of the nomenclature if that's not your context, I say the same about the different dimensions of diversity. So diversity has many dimensions as we like to call them here at Diverse by Thinking, and you know probably the most de facto ones that are always talked about in fact some of the metrics today even around startups are also against these de facto dimensions of diversity, age and gender. Why, because they're easy for us to see and measure. That's really the reasons. They are the prevalent ones and for sure they're important as a woman in the technology industry I find the gender ratio alarming and so it is very important for us to focus on those things. But make sure you understand what's important to you specifically because maybe you're an all female team, or maybe you have quite a gender balance and gender isn't the diversity that you're focused on. So you really have to know what your starting point is and then you need to define that you know what are your goals, I've seen some great goals over the years like, we're going to be gender diverse, you know 5050 by 2025. And it's amazing, I support that goal. But is that the right thing for all businesses, it really depends on your outcome and like where you want to get to. So be clear on that and write it down. I can't stress it enough. Just have a conversation and leave the room write it down just like your mission statement it's really important this is critical to your business, and you need to build a roadmap around it so step one is understanding what are you trying to get to, you know what's your destination. So you can work your way back from that. So define it in your context. And once you have it defined, you got to start right away, you don't want to recruit diversity debt for those technologists here today. It's very similar to what we know and don't love as technical debt right and I've experienced it to I've had my hand in creating some and really technical debt is the shortcuts we take to get to an outcome or a deliverable date or a customer commitment. And maybe we're not so proud of it right they are shortcuts after all, but we had to do it there was good reasons business and justifiable reasons for doing so. We often say we'll go back and adjust it over time and we'll invest in, you know, the heap of technical debt that we're under but we don't, we build on top of it, and there's no difference really here in diversity debt, you'll just build on top of it. And so that's why I'm always like just don't accrue it, like if you can if you can avoid it, definitely avoid it right like know that it's a thing, call it by name there's a thing called diversity debt and start right away so that you don't accrue the diversity debt, because that makes it a lot harder. It's not impossible though so if you're, if you're part of a small team in a corporate context. I'm not trying to discourage you it's possible to, to prioritize and get out of diversity debt, but you need to be really intentional about it and I think that's, it does get harder, it's not impossible but it's definitely harder so you know best to not accrue it and start right away. So where do you start you definitely start at the top right, it's probably no surprise that your leadership team, regardless of the size of your organization is the face of your organization to the rest of the world, that's to your customers. So they attract who is attracted to you. And that's because they are the voice and the brand and thought leadership that's out there talking at conferences, much like this one. And they represent who you are as a company. So they represent that to your customers so if your customers can't relate to them, then they won't see themselves working with you. So they immediately take themselves out of a target addressable market for you. That's not awesome for your business right that's obvious there's business loss there because those people are just deselect themselves as your customers. Similarly with people that are out there seeking jobs. They also look to your leadership team two thirds of job seekers today look at diversity is like a top reason to go to a company or not go to a company. So definitely matters when you're attracting talent to have a diverse leadership team. And also affects your bottom line I mean this is something it affects obviously the direction of your company, especially with startup founders right like what what is the roadmap. How are you going to prioritize how do you get to product market fit. All of those things are affected by your leadership team so the more diverse the better decisions are going to make create the more representative of diversity of thought they'll be, but I might surprise you that companies that have more diverse leadership teams and founding teams are better evaluated like they have a bet they're worth more to say simpler 65% better evaluations for teams that have ethnic ethnic diverse founders. And I think it's about 63% for for gender diverse founding teams. So your leadership team matters also in the bottom line. So it's really important to start at the top and look at that and also challenge where you're recruiting leadership, and could there be someone just right under your nose that you could create a pathway to elevate them in order to get that diverse leadership team. So you've defined it. You know you need to start right away and you know you need to start at the top, and you should start with hiring and but don't stop there and also evaluate your recruiting process you know things like your job descriptions I have a gender decoder here there's other decoders this happens to be one that we've used and it's also free. We've seen great results with it. There's also some that are that look for biases around race and other and other aspects of diversity. So definitely check those out and look at how you could use those against your job descriptions your website, lots of stories I could tell around people that have done this and the surprising results including us. And don't stop there right so make sure that you're building a more holistic process around recruiting in general where you're inviting a more diverse group. That's part of screening your job descriptions, and then ensuring that when they get to later stages that they get it, they get to later stages. So what we've seen, and what data has shown us is that if you use there's a thing called the Rooney rule if you're familiar with that but essentially says like once you get to the second and third stage of hiring, your, your pool is is more, you know, diverse like again depending on your definition of diversity like all the 5050 pool. And what we've seen historically and what what studies show is that the candidate that's the right candidate is, is that that represents that element of diversity so be intentional with it. You get to start with it but then don't stop there right because now you've invited them into your team. So you need this is where inclusion comes in and I've come to say quite frequently lately. There is no diversity without inclusion. So what does that mean it means inviting people to your organization to your team, whatever your context is, but not helping them feel that they belong doesn't create an inclusive environment and they inevitably will leave. So you haven't really satisfied your goals. It's sort of vanity metrics at the front that you were able to recruit, and maybe did the work up front, but how did you make sure that you invited diversity of discussion and that they were able to bring their authentic selves to work, because bringing their authentic authentic selves to work is bringing their best selves to work. You're getting the best value from them. So what we see is you know be curious and by challenge and amazing things happen innovation comes from challenging each other and diversity of thought. It doesn't come from complacency and, and everyone being comfortable around the table and nodding right it doesn't come from group think. So, it might surprise you as well that companies that are inclusive are 1.7 times more innovative. So they're actually considered the most innovative companies. So hopefully it doesn't surprise you now that I told you like inviting challenge and creating the diversity of thought leads to innovation. I mean that's where innovation is born. It's when different things come together and maybe unexpected ways. So just just know that part of that again it's it's the right thing to do so that you keep people within your organization but as well as they feel like they belong, but it's also good for your business. So you know I mentioned the beginning when you define diversity know where you're coming from also know where you're going and what progress you're making or not making. And so you need to get real about that again write it down. You need to track this this is a business plan. This is an outcome you're trying to reach you've set a goal and a definition, you're building a roadmap through hiring and your recruiting process and screening things as well as building inclusive processes around creating a culture of belonging. So measure things measure these things because that's the only way you're going to know if it's working or not working. You know what was the last five hires you had where they all female where they all mail. What were the last five promotions within your organization. What did they look like according to your definition of diversity and dimensions of diversity in general. And what were the last five people that left. And why do you think that was is there something that you didn't do on that inclusion side to invite them to feel like they belong there. So where is the work needed is the work needed in the front end is it work needed, you know, to keep them, you need to measure to understand where you need to improve. So I'm going to recap real quick. You need to define diversity for you avoid that by starting today start at the top. You know, invite the challenge and create the, you know, inclusion and discussion of, you know, different perspectives, measure so that you know where you were in the progress you're making and this is a continuous process constant change. It'll strengthen your company in the long run but diversity is not a promotional thing it's not a fad, and it requires work. If you want to check out more and see what we're doing with diversified thinking we'd love to talk to you. So if you have a snapshot of that, talk to us about challenges you're having in this area. And, you know, specifically around inclusion we're really interested in what people are doing and what they're not doing and where they're where they need help. So really happy to be here and look forward to hearing from some of you to talk more about this in the future.