 Welcome everyone to this session of our agile organizations really inclusive. We are privileged to have Dr. Ashay Saxena and Dennis Spohot from Australia and Dr. Ashay is in India. Pleasure to have you with us today. Without any further delay guys, it's over to you. We look forward to what you have to say. So let me get this started. Hi everyone. Thanks for joining this session. Again, this session, what we're trying to present here, this is an year long research study which Business Agility Institute undertook and that's where myself and Diana we were the lead researchers on this project. So what we were trying to understand here was there are two key constructs here that we will be talking about. The first one being the notion of agility. So not just agile as a software development methodology but more as an organization way in terms of our modern organizations like to be you know the rapid pace of delivering software, the rapid pace at which you interact with customers get their feedback. So we are talking about agility more from an organization perspective. Another important construct here is the notion of inclusivity where there has been so much social commentary around the need to be more diverse. In terms of individuals at an organization, and then our organization is doing enough to be inclusive. So these are the two key constructs of our research agility and inclusivity. So in this research we are trying to see, is there any form of correlation between the two. Do they, do they sit alongside each other, or is there a broader disconnect between these two constructs when we try and bring them together. That's a broad idea of this research, then coming to the agenda of what we want to discuss with all of you today. So again, we will set the stage up in terms of how we did this research and what were the key elements of this particular research. So we will go through the key terms of this particular research. I did speak briefly about agility and inclusivity, but we will go through them in slightly more detail. We do want to spend some time on the key research statistics, so that you're aware about the kind of data we are looking at to draw our inferences from. There's going to be one, two and three and after that we deep dive into our key findings, and then we have a few recommendations that should hopefully help the entire community in, in, in your organizations wherever you're currently working. So let's set the ball rolling, I will be handing this over to Deanna to take us through items one, two and three, and then I get started with the findings and we take it forward from there. Thank you, Ashay. And look, thank you firstly for everyone coming to listen and be curious about our research. So as Ashay was mentioning this, this research was over a year in the making. And it actually is a really interesting story because it started with the founder of the Business Agility Institute, which is basically a research institute. The founder Evan went along to a talk that was given by the gentleman Mark Green who's in that picture there. And Mark was actually talking about the fact that he was having not great experiences at all in agile organizations. Evan was really surprised about that and sort of had a further conversation with Mark and then we ended up setting the research project team up and they called for volunteers and along with Ashay were sort of put our hands up because I personally was really curious about this. And we came up with two hypothesis that are on the screen. So that whole thing about, you know, that the positive intent and mindset and value of agile, you know, I'm a real agile believer that actually we're at risk of further marginalizing staff, employees, customers. And that kind of was quite shocking to me to think that that was possible. But apparently it is unfortunately. And number two that organizations who actually embrace diversity equity inclusion directly into their agile transformations outperform organizations who didn't. And we absolutely found companies that believe that that was the case that D&I actually helped them help be a bit of a competitive advantage for them. So what I'm going to do is just go through and talk about a little bit of definitions because I think we all have lots of definitions when it comes to the word agile. So what we used in this research was more around the term of business agility and this is something that the Institute has set up and it's a bit of a framework that they use. And essentially it's about putting customers at the heart of the center of everything that they do. And it's all about the ways of working, behaviors, capabilities that are need to exist to serve the customer. And this is about applying any framework, whether it be agile, whether it be lean, scrum, safe systems thinking, lots of other things. But the one sort of common premise that I think everyone listening today will understand is around the agile mindset, the concept of collaboration, trust, respect, honesty, open communication, taking pride in your work. And so the Business Agility Institute actually refers to growth mindset a lot. So if you sort of have that in mind. And then secondly, we talked about the definition for diversity, equity, inclusion, when we went out to all the participants and we said that this is this is really the broad application that is used to sort of create and maintain an environment that is welcoming and supporting for all people. So with that in mind, some further definitions, just to put everyone's mind at ease. And really diversity, I think we kind of all know what it means but this is all about the differences that are across all of us and it's our background, it's our experiences, it's our look, it's how our brain works. Excuse me, because I have suffering from a little bit of a hay fever in Melbourne today. But equality is all about giving everyone the same resources and structures to apply to everything. And as you can see from this diagram here, that's all well and good to give everyone the same but that doesn't always help people in the same way. So we often think that we just, that's what we'll do and everyone will be successful. But actually that's not always the case and you can see that there's still people, what we often say is voices missing from the conversations or in this case the little boy who can't actually see the game. So equity is around giving all people equal access to opportunities and fair treatment so that then actually everyone can view the game or be in the meeting. And finally inclusion is welcoming that mix of people to your organization. And it's focused on thinking about all the structural systems that are in place, the processes, the culture, the behaviors, the mindset that you need to embrace and respect all people. And so a key message here is that equity is actually a really key enabler for diversity and inclusion. We found that a lot of people didn't actually understand all of these terms very much and kind of quite surprised by all of it. If I go into now some stats around the research. So really importantly the first thing you can see like this is a bit of a graphical representation of the different dimensions of diversity. We had 425 participants. But our research, we actually had people 49% identified as a man, 47% identified as woman and 1.5% identified as non-binary. We had countries of residence, we had 39% in Australia, 20% in North America, 19% in Asia, 15% in Europe and 4% in Africa. If I go into languages, it's a really fascinating one because 47% of people spoke one language, but 50% of our participants spoke two languages or more. In terms of the industries, we had about 31% in financial services. We had a big majority in tech. We had some smaller groups in consulting government and mining energy and construction. Religion was a really interesting one because we got such a broad. Sort of cross representation. We had actually a large number were atheists, identified as atheists. We had 25% Christian. We also had people who did prefer not to say we had Hindus, Muslims, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh and a few other religions in there. And so as you can see that diversity is just such a sort of a huge group of different aspects. It's not just sort of maybe the obvious things that people often refer to maybe as gender or cultural background. And so now I'm going to hand over to Shai to talk a bit more about the actual findings. Yeah, so with this in the backdrop, the diversity that we had in terms of the participant pool. It was very interesting to hear stories from their end in terms of what they see within their organizations, how they look at these key constructs of agility, diversity, equity and inclusion. So if we can go over to the next slide. The five key pillars of the, of what I call as, as you know, findings which were pretty startling for us. Here is what they were the first one this this actually challenged our beliefs about agile. When we all think of agile we think about inclusivity because the way agile has been written. It speaks a lot about it speaks a lot about team practices people coming together at work, trying to deliver something for the greater good. But if we look at the percentages there was 17% of our participants who witnessed exclusion and inequity inside agile organizations. And not just that we had 26% who believe that agile in itself can create exclusion and inequities. So these are fairly high percentages. I believe we would have liked them to be in single digits. The second key finding we had was more around agile transformations, where we found that nearly 11% of the methods to build product and services, they are consciously designed for inclusion and equity, and we're talking about just 11% here. And not just that we only had 19% of the so called ways of working, which are consciously designed for inclusion and equity. The other key finding we had and again this is something I will spend a lot more time on, where our participants spoke about bias and micro aggression. There were a lot of participants who came forward and shared their personal stories about how they felt excluded while being at work. The last finding we had was more around psychological safety. I mean, if individuals do not feel safe enough this impacts their performance the team dynamics, and this has a bigger impact on the on the solutions that they're working on as well. The last finding we had was more around the need to align the end I to the business strategy, and the positive cases that we heard the stories that we heard where this was being integrated. We had great examples of better products and solutions being developed for the customers and communities. So what I'm going to do is I'll deep dive more on to the third element here, and then I'll try and connect the dots with the other set of findings over here. In the next slide. Here is one quote from one of our participants. And again, as you can see here is someone speaking about a visible disability and being called out. So the, the, the element that stood out in this particular quote was the, the element of marginalization or the token person within an organization that he look here is someone who has a visible disability, and here is a person who represent that for us. So what that means is that brings about an element of sympathy, rather than empathy for the individual. And again, we had other examples as well where I'm sorry, the other example we have is around English being the second language, where we had participants speak about because agile is such a fast pace way of working. I think, because English is my second language probably I need a little more time to think through and articulate my points, when I'm not very clear about about how to process all the information. So those were those were the other set of quotes that we had from participants. Moving on. Now this is again fairly interesting. This is coming from a Muslim participant who spoke about how, how they struggle to practice their religious beliefs inside in a child workplace. Now again, all of you on the call are must be familiar with the agile workspaces, the way it talks about open workplaces, a lot of space for people to collaborate, but does it hinder someone's, someone's, someone's religious practices that is something to ponder upon. And not just that we had other quotes, which came through one of the examples were from working parents, who spoke about, who spoke about a very standard agile practice of say daily standards, which typically happens at the time where they have to drop their kids to school. Now that might, that might be a big clash that they need to resolve. So that that was another example we had. Moving on to the next quote. Again, this is again a candidate being being this again a candidate being very much very much vocal about what agile is. And I'm sure some of us must have experienced this agile by the nature of how to define the time box meetings that it talks about, or the fact that everyone needs to be there with their mind ready to speak their mind. That is something that can be a hindrance for some of the people who are not necessarily extroverts. So here is a quote probably from someone who is not an extrovert needs some time to process all the information, and then make their point obvious. And, and this is where we need to take a step back and probably think for our for the introvert people who are working on agile teams. Are they finding it difficult to put forward their ideas. And again, this does have impact because the moment we talk about these elements of bias and microaggression. This can actually affect someone's promotions, the way someone's personal development opportunities come their way, or their participation in social events as well. Now, this is where we had participants speak about their organizations investing in the diversity training, and, and the way organizations see value in it. But then there were participants who felt that look, this is something which is more an organization agenda around having these trainings but then, am I seeing the value in that, like, am I actually able to practice what is being preached. Well, across the participant group, we saw this perception gap, where when we spoke to leaders of organization, they spoke, their views were aligned to what the corporate position was, which wasn't necessarily the case when we spoke to team members or individuals who are working on on product design and delivery as well. So this begs a very important question here, do leaders walk the talk, especially when it comes to elements of diversity training and and taking it forward within the organization. So here were some of the examples on this note I'll hand it over to Diana to talk about what happens when individuals feel included. And what did the participants have to say, when, when they felt that everything was good in their organization. Thanks a shea. So this slide is, is been really well received around the globe and interestingly, as we interviewed people and got their responses back through surveys that these are really common this thing. So if we take it back to the real basics about when an individual feels included. They, they talk about that really it's all about people, and people are really at the heart of agile. It would talk about collaboration and an empowerment in teams and the fact that when I feel included, I can come to work I can really get involved, you know, I'm part of, I'm part of the team. I'm, I'm allowed I've given the autonomy autonomy sorry to do what I want. It really then nicely links into trust and it's such a basic sort of human thing that if you've got trust. You know you just got confidence you know you can just get go faster and better and more creative in what you do psychological safety. As I mentioned before was a really key topic. So many people talk to us about psychological safety I've got a really great great quote from someone that they said you know you've got to create a safe environment for all staff is critical in in organizations where agile is being adopted, and that all staff must engage in the conversations of how agile ways of working will actually help them with their work. And that's kind of a really key thing because I think if you've got fear in your team and you can actually put your hand up and say that there's a problem going on because we're, we're so busy we just got to hit that sprint milestone. You could end up actually you know redesigning the wrong product for the customer because we're just too busy kind of trying to hit those deadlines and not having the ability to say things. Lastly, the biases micro aggressions and marginalizations is such a such a huge theme that came out because people even talked about. They personally were having biases against them or that they were witnessing it and it wasn't just the typical biases that you might expect because often as there's there's unintentional biases I mean we all have biases I have my biases and she has his biases. You can't you can't get rid of them. There's always going to be barriers about how people interact and understand, but it's about sort of putting a bit of thinking and thought empathy behind it and starting to call out things that just don't, don't fit in the organization. So really importantly the impacts that this has about feeling included for an organization, it you know it really enables an employee to do their best work. The wellness and mental health is so critical, you know when someone's at their best and you know when someone is not not performing. The team team dynamics about just getting that team humming and working well that really leads to innovation leads impacts the culture of your organization. This is so critical for business performance it's often something that can be overlooked. And then lastly, sorry second last is about attracting and retaining people I think this is such a key thing that inclusion is becoming so important in organizations to attract good people. And then lastly the customer and brand and we'll go on to talk a little bit more about that because there's actually been some really interesting findings that we've found around this. So just reflecting on a few more positive stories here in terms of what organizations are doing intentionally where they're involving thinking about inclusion and equity. So this is a really great example of how the agile coach and this was someone that we interviewed who was a coach and I think it was a he that spoke about how they're consciously thinking about the diversity of their group and who's attending the workshops and how do we how do we actually get the best out of people and we want to make sure that, you know, we know, we know that Mr, Mr Joe over there and Mrs Jane over here they might have different ways and so what are we going to do to make sure we get their voice across because we've noticed that they're not always contributing here so this was really, really great to sort of hear this sort of approach being taken and having spoken to other agile coaches. And this is something that they would just, it's just part of what they do as an agile coach. Oh, sorry about that I've just jumped to the wrong slide. And okay, this was a really powerful quote. I actually interviewed this lady and she was in the US and she talked about her company and they had been really proactively sourcing for diverse talent. They also had built a culture of learning. So what this enabled was someone who hadn't didn't actually have a background in in agile, didn't probably fit the typical mold of what the organization had hired in the past. But the organization was actually smart enough to think about what did this person need for success. They put her through training they they mentored her they got a learning all about agile then she actually got promoted into different roles and just the the look of excitement and kind of passion that came from her when she was telling her stories about what you know what the company had done for her and it was kind of feels like why isn't this happening in in in more companies. One example that was also talked about was that you know companies and it was a tech company that they're deliberately creating different types of programs because they know how hard it is to attract diverse talent and in particular trying to get women back into tech one organization was taking anyone who you know had had up to eight years away and they were come bringing them back in and retraining them. And it's things like that that I think organizations really need to be thinking about differently. Then this one starts to I mean similar a little bit to the earlier example but it's actually really calling out the specifics where this team was actually thinking about that they almost deliberately going out there to to find different people and they've found that they've been able to create a really fun group, they've learned a lot from each other, they've they've they've found people it's all about kind of looking for the, the, the learning agility and people not necessarily just hiring in the, in the common image of the manager or the agile coach, and that that has actually led to some really exciting product design practices for them. And if actually by including the people, sorry, with the, with the employees that are actually part of diverse communities, that means that they're able to build products that actually help serve their communities. So this helps mitigate the risk of product failures as the team is involved right from the beginning in terms of building that it's actually quite a smart strategy. And this one goes on this example, sorry, this example really goes on very really sort of simple example that I think is, you know, really resonated well with a lot of audiences. It's typically your payrolls always just got an as a HR person it's got male and female and actually this team was like, hang on a tick we should think about it's not just binary the way that we think about gender we need to think about non gen non binary. And so actually, they were designing a product. And then that was actually something that they were able to go on an on sale and have some really good commercial success there. And so hand over to a Shane now to talk about how D&I flows through your organization. Yes, so all of you so far must have seen a lot of quotes and you know what people had to tell about these about this topic. So now we are trying to bring all of this together in terms of what it means for your organization. How can, how can D&I align with the business strategy and what can be the impact of it. So this is a very simple flow that we have come up with, which can help, which can help you and your organizations as well. As you can see the starting point of this flow is the leadership, like leaders absolutely are critical to this. They need to demonstrate the desired behaviors, especially around empathy to ensure that it percolates all the way through within the organization. They can define and they are walking the talk that will then translate into the right business strategy, where D&I is is aligned. It is an integral part of the business strategy, the purpose of the organization, the values culture and mindset as well. And once that becomes integrated in the business strategy, that will then mean that people are always at the center of how an organization decides to grow, how the organization decides to evolve. And that will obviously mean better opportunities, more investment in people development, and which will obviously result in a better experience for individuals who are working within an organization. Once people are involved and they feel all the more connected with the organization, then obviously bring in the element of systems thinking that we all talk about, that we all talk about pretty much regularly within organizations. And that will mean that we will have better systems, systems that bring in the element of inclusion. And that will obviously then result in better products and services that are being delivered to the customers. And obviously the moment I speak about better products and services for the customer, that means there are business results, which are all the more positive than what organizations are seeing at any given stage. And not just that whenever what we have experienced with this research, whenever there are better business results that invariably allows for more innovation. One of the quotes which Diana was speaking about where a payroll system was being designed, it just happened because the team members were welcoming diversity. They were being all the more inclusive that one of the team members suggested why do we have the gender section as binary why can't we have it as a three way non binary system. And that meant customers love that product, there was good feedback for the team. And, and again that's again a very simplistic example, but that's the way of innovation that we are talking about in terms of how the products and services are being built. So again just to reiterate the starts from the top from the leadership, percolates to business strategy allows for better people opportunities, enables better systems to be designed, which then results in business with them results in better business outcomes and more innovation within an organization. On that note, let's look at some of the recommendations since we have so many of you here on the call, and I'm sure all of you come with different designations different role within organizations. What are the recommendations we have for all of you to begin with the first recommendation we have is more for the agile community and for the organizations. So let me take a step back and think about redesigning the agile ways of working so that de and I is an integral part of it. What this means is this call is for this call is at two level, one is for the community. That means we definitely want the larger bodies to get involved. And as the Institute, we have reached out to the scrum Alliance and the agile Alliance to revisit some of the agile frameworks and see how this can be integrated. So just that this is a call out with the organizations as well, where can organizations look at how the products and services can be redesigned to bring in the element of inclusion. I'll hand it over to Diana to talk about the other recommendations. And look, our research really had such a huge call out in terms of leaders and agile coaches, and about building your knowledge on de and I it's just, it's a topic that's constantly evolving. And leaders and coaches display such a critical role in organizations, your shadow really influences the culture and behaviors in an organization. And so we know that the good leader or coach just knows how to get the best of people that's that's kind of why you're there in the role that you're there for. But that what we found participants speak well of is that the agile coaches and leaders that were able to build inclusive and equitable, equitable teams and the value that that was and some of the traits that they had the empathetic. They, they can walk in the shoes of other people they can, they listen, they have an awareness of what's going on in terms of de and I issues you know you think about the global movements that are going on. The me to movement the black lives matter movement in Australia we had gay rights marriages, marriage equality like this a lot of different movements that are that are happening around the world and those, those conversations are filtering into the workplace so it's no longer to don't talk about that in in work in fact that's that's exactly what we're needing to be talking about work. And for anyone who's millennial who's on the call you know and and I absolutely think millennials are fabulous because you are helping change the conversation at work because unfortunately people like myself of genics. We're so used to not saying and not talking about these things so I think that that's such a powerful combinations that's coming in. But as a leader and a coach that means you need to be able to deal with people from all different generations you can't just say I'm only going to deal with if I'm a gen X I'm only going to deal with gen X is and think that my way is the best way. So that's really critical. And the other thing I think that's really important is that the best leaders and agile coaches are those that think about who is not in the room today, and why are they not in the room or if they're in the room why aren't they, why aren't they talking. And if and if they are talking and they get shut down then what is the role that they're going to play and so that the great the great ones are the ones that are actually role modeling inclusive behaviors they're having the courage and they're being intentional. And they're helping actually build cross functional teams and they're making sure that no one gets left behind. So just switching to the second last slide so really the big call out for everyone is hopefully we've inspired you and sparked your imagination here would really love you to reflect on what's going on. Use your agile mindset use your growth mindset think about stuff as collaboration transparency respect and open communication and what happens in in your workplace have the conversation in your team. Because I think sometimes you'll be surprised that people often would just say everything's fine. But then if you go a little bit deeper and and think about it because every team and every organization context is different but how is it impacting your customers, your employees, your teams your stakeholders, your board, your suppliers, your cultural norms your local laws it's all different. But lastly a bit of a personal call out so what does this mean to you like why did you even come to this session today, you know, you're obviously curious about this topic. So how do you want to show up at work tomorrow and how do you want to be an advocate for inclusion. So thank you so much for listening today. We hope you this presentation is giving you lots of ideas. We would like to now turn it actually over to the audience to find out about how this. How does research apply in your organization. Thanks guys. That was great it was a really interesting exploration of the issues that you've been working hard at researching there. There's currently no questions in the Q&A has anyone got any questions now would be a really good time to to drop them in the Q&A section. But otherwise, while we're waiting for that thanks again guys. There will be an opportunity for people after we've finished here for people to come and talk to you in a hangout room to put their questions to you directly and a slightly more intimate environment. So if people want to join once we've finished here, there's still time for people to ask questions in this space but there will be a chance for these two to answer questions after the session as well. Well we're just giving people a bit longer or go through a few of the other housekeeping points to after the session we would love it for people to rate the session to give us and Dr Ashe and Diana some feedback on how the session went. What did you like? That's what didn't you like if there was anything and just really helpful for everyone. If you can do that and then of course there's plenty of other options for you to explore after the session. We're only just getting started with the conference we've still got lots and lots of great speakers to come. But right now we have a question that's come. How can these concepts be included in an organization and also aligned to some similar framework that exists? Would one of you like to take that one? Yeah, I think I can give my opinion on this again a great question there. So I think I see there are two parts to this question one is around how this can be applied in a given organizational in an organizational setting. And the second is around the frameworks that we're talking about. To answer the second part first, there is the call out is around making frameworks bring in elements of BE and I. So I doubt we currently have frameworks but that bring in this elements. And again I'm talking about the global frameworks here. I'm sure the organizations have their own framework that might include these elements at a global framework level there is a need to bring in these elements. These concepts can be applied at an organizational setting. I would, I would strongly redirect you to the slide which talks about the flow within an organization. So as I was saying, you know, it's very important to have leaders embrace this these ideas, and that can then mean these concepts can percolate through the organizations at a different level. And that is actually very important because unless until you have leaders who are walking the talk what understanding these, these concepts in and out. Then that is when the teams will get more involved, and all the trainings that we have with an organization will make much more sense, because they will then have more lived in examples of what people are going through. There'll be a more two way communication than just one way commentary on what these terms stand for. That is my personal take on it. Diana, do you want to add anything. No, look, I think in a nutshell, though, how this applies to your organization does really come down to what's your business strategy in terms of where if you are you trying to actually serve all customers. If that's the case, then you should be looking at DNA because that's talking about sort of serving a global market. Secondly, I think it's around the values and the behaviors that exhibited. And, you know, what does your organization stand for what are the behaviors that are being exhibited by the executive team. And then how does that sort of start to play out in your culture because it may be that there's ways that then you can say okay. You know, for example, the the let's just call it the behavior or the value of respect. And how is that playing out and is everyone being respected or is it just people in the majority that are being respected or people in leadership roles that are being expected and and then it starts to. That's why I'm saying that courageous leader and agile coach really needs to help push this along because I think also sometimes in organizations things are just done. There's cultural norms. I completely understand that there's companies that have done the same thing that all the time. But I think the thing for them to recognize is that they're missing out on so much. They're missing out on getting the getting the most out of their total people place employee base. They're missing out on ideas. They're probably missing out on productivity. They're missing out on people actually liking being at work. Because I can tell you if you're excluded from your team, you just don't like to be at work and you're not going to you're not going to deliver your best. So I think there's lots of opportunities, but I do think finding that executive that's and leader that's kind of willing to help champion. This is almost a really key point to make it successful in your organization. Hopefully that answered the question. Sorry for my hay fever. We have we have another question that's that's come in. Is there a place where we can read more about this to propose to leaders in the organization? Who wants to take that one? Absolutely there is there is we've got a website. I'm just going to try and share that site now because I had it on the last page. I should have probably put it on the page before and now of course I can't share. Is that working for me? Yeah, so if you can see there, if you go to the business agility Institute, we've got a research paper. There's a short version and a long version and there's loads of information there. You can also if you want to get in contact with either a Shay or myself or you can get in contact with the Institute. But this is we're really keen sort of this is open source report. We want to kind of get this out in the community as much as we can and really spread the word for people. I think at the end of the day when we interviewed a lot of people, they just hadn't thought about the two concepts coming together. And then we recognize that sometimes when you're doing agile transformations that for some reason maybe the HR team and the people team are not on the same train track and they're kind of running parallel. So we just need to bring them together a little bit more. Excellent. Excellent. So yeah, those resources are there on screen for people to to use. Do we have any other questions that seems to be the ones that we currently have all taken care of. Thank you again for speaking to us today. It's been really interesting hearing about the research, some of your surprise findings and having a positive way forward. So thank you for coming talk to us today. Thanks everyone for listening. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Bye.