Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey – Using Evidence-Based Decisions to Make Workplaces More Inclusive

Connect with Dr. Jonathan:

• 

Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• The Element of Inclusion
• 30 Book Breakdown
• Element of Inclusion podcast
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 24
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 22

• “Evidence-based practitioners say that when you want to make decisions, it’s useful to look at and collect data from four key sources: relevant research, the organization, the stakeholders, professional expertise.”
• “When companies try and start thinking about inclusion more broadly, . . . they’re thinking about entry-level jobs more than they’re thinking about then entire stack of jobs from leadership to entry-level.”
• “Every organization has a hero story . . . that tells you who makes it—who [the organization] wants you to be. And that very much influences the culture.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology.Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly.And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent,that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, alongside my trusty co-host, Dwight Brown. Hey,Dwight, how are you?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:54

Hey, David, how are you? Good, how you doing?

 

David Turetsky: 0:56

I'm okay. Today,we have a really fun special guest with us. His name is Dr.Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey. And he comes to us from another country. Jonathan, where are you?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 1:08

David?I'm in London. And you know what, I'm just delighted to be here with a couple of expert veteran podcasters and it's just awesome. As a podcaster myself,we'll get into that, but I am absolutely delighted.

 

David Turetsky: 1:23

Awesome. Well,it is our pleasure as well,because we typically get people who it may be their first time they get a lot. They get very nervous about it. And so it really is a pleasure for us to have a veteran, someone who is actually very prolific in the podcasting world. And we'll talk about that in a second. So tell us, who is Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey and how you got to this point in your career?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 1:47

Well,first off, congratulations on pronouncing it right.

 

David Turetsky: 1:51

Practice makes practice!

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 1:52

So for the audience, I'm Dr.Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey.Everyone calls me Dr. Jonathan and I think you can guess why. I am the host of the Element of Inclusion podcast. And every week we inform and educate us in applied research, thought leadership, but I did not dream of doing anything like this at all. And in fact, this all started with an with a story that was not in London, but it was in the US where you guys are. It all started with Obama,in 2009. On a very cold morning,it was the Obama inauguration,the first one, I was absolutely freezing. I have never seen so many people in my life. And also, I've never been as cold in my entire life. Now I was there.A friend of mine, his mother, no his aunt, worked at Georgetown University. And she did Thanksgiving in London. And she said, how, you know, as you come out and check it out, check it out, check out Georgetown, check out the inauguration, and I was as excited as everybody else was right. Outside of the whole political, you know, leanings,which which side of the aisle you're on. It was, it was an inspiring time. And I was literally not even on one side of the aisle. I was on the other side of the pond, right. And I came back from the UK, massively inspired. Now at that time, I was working as a chartered accountant, what you guys would call a CPA. Right? Now, every month, I receive a magazine called accountancy magazine,which is probably the most fascinating magazine if you are interested in accounting!

 

David Turetsky: 3:34

There needs to be a qualification on that.

 

Dwight Brown: 3:35

Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty warped sense of fascinating. We totally get it.We totally get it. We're data geeks, too.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 3:47

So if you like the counting, you would love this magazine. I worked as an accountant. I didn't particularly enjoy this magazine. This month, I decided to open it. And why do you think that was? Because it was talking about, it had a picture of Obama. So that made me interested, I just come back from the US. But it opened it up. And there was an article which said, it does matter if you're black or white. It's kind of a throwback to that Michael Jackson song. Right?

 

David Turetsky: 4:15

Of course. Yeah.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 4:16

And it's talking about the lack of black leaders in the accounting profession in the UK. So I see this. And I'm a little bit confused. Because I used to work for the Walt Disney Company, I used to work for what we would all think of as old media, all the broadcasters or the media owners in the UK, where I'd either worked with them, I had them as clients, so I'd worked for them. And I say that because I also used to be an auditor and I never used to me that many black accountants. And so what I'm thinking, Okay, that's interesting. I called the big four accounting firms. I called my professional body and I said to them, Hey, look, this is what I've heard. This is what I've read, and they treated me like guy was a journalist.

 

David Turetsky: 5:01

Oh boy.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 5:02

It was really weird because they didn't want to engage into the topic. And this set me on a path where I ended up doing a PhD.Like I literally quit my job to investigate this, I was like,what, what's all this about?Initially, I was gonna do a master's like, uh, you know, you said you'd like to geek out on data. I thought, I'm just going to have this as a little sort of like geeky side hobby side hustle thing, just on the side,ended up turning into a PhD,ended up with me now having a business where we do research,training, consulting, ended up with the podcast, ended up bringing me to you, HR Data Labs podcast.

 

David Turetsky: 5:40

There you go.And what we're going to do is we're going to put links to all of those pieces, to your consultancy, to the books, and to your podcast in the show notes. So this, the one thing I did want to ask, before we move on, though is, is talk to us a little bit about the the genesis of the podcast, and, you know,where did you because you had a really cool story about it,where did it come from? And, and how have you gotten to this moment?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 6:05

Sure.So here's the thing, David, when you when you do a PhD, they give you a PhD, if you make a contribution to learning. That's the whole thing, right? So you like you guys, Dwight David,you're making a contribution with your podcast, every week,you're creating a body of work.It is the exact same thing when you do a PhD. So I took that idea. And I thought to myself,look, I've I've got my PhD, I've told you about my background, I didn't have any clients, I didn't have any connections, I didn't have anyone who I thought wanted to hire me. And also at that time, I didn't even have any practical experience. So I thought what I do have is this body of knowledge, which I can share with people, and I come from the private sector. So I can make this really relevant.Instead of being all academic and covered in theory, I can make it land. And I understand the need for a business case and all of that kind of stuff, the need to understand how this is actually work in the real world.And so I started a podcast, just as a way to make a contribution,like you guys, just to share.And so it started like that, I started doing interviews, and you know, this is kind of peering behind the curtain right for for your audience. But sometimes it's difficult to get your guests to tell the complete truth. You know, sometimes they're working for an organization or an institution.And so it gets quite challenging. So I started to, to

 

David Turetsky: 7:37

Are you saying they have an agenda, Dr.have Jonathan?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 7:41

Having an agenda? Hmm. We're all trying to achieve something right. And what I, I always say I'm on a mission to help a million people like you to make your workplace inclusive. And the podcast getting back to a question about the Genesis is a huge part of that, because it's scalable. So it allows me to get my thoughts ideas, and basically help people in a way that I could never do before.

 

David Turetsky: 8:03

And one other point, though, because I think this is really important. You have been described, and I need to get this right as the most prolific writer on evidence based inclusion in the world.Now, we're not going to fact check that because we believe you as you said, you don't have an agenda. So that is though,we're gonna highlight that for our listeners, because it's important, you write a lot. And we're going to as I said, we're going to have the bibliography in our in our show notes, but you will have been called, I don't know by whom, the most prolific writer on evidence-based inclusion.

 

Dwight Brown: 8:37

We don't know where that came from.

 

David Turetsky: 8:44

Just just a throwaway comment. You don't have to answer. It's okay.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 8:50

I love that. I love that. And there is definitely know there's at least one person in the world who refers to me in that way.

 

David Turetsky: 8:58

I'm not gonna ask his name, but I think it begins with Dr. Okay, we're gonna move on. So so let's talk about what's the one thing that no one knows about Dr. Jonathan?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 9:13

There are several things but the one that's probably safe to share in this space. I used to live on a tropical island. I used to live on a tropical island off the coast of Brazil. And yeah, it was a beautiful place. I when I lived there. I didn't even know what day of the week it was until the evening because every night there was a party in a different location. And that location would change depending on the day of the week. So every Sunday was in, in a place called the teatro, the theater. And so we would go there, then on another day, it would be at a different bar and another day we'll be at the second beach.And honestly, I was just living this idle beach bum life. And it's very different to what I do now. Because as you know, and as it's been well reported, and the most prolific writer and evidence based inclusion in the world!

 

David Turetsky: 10:10

that's where you end it all up.

 

Dwight Brown: 10:13

And you live in London after living in a tropical?

 

David Turetsky: 10:17

But somebody might say that he's describing London, right?

 

Dwight Brown: 10:22

Well, that's true.That's true.

 

David Turetsky: 10:23

Being the tropical island. That's right.And in London being a paradise,where you can find a party at anytime, well sort of.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 10:32

I'm loving this, I'm loving it. But to answer your question, Dwight,do you know what happened? I was on the beach, absolutely in love with the beach living this life.And the reason I came back to London, where it was less than tropical was, I had tenants in my place in my house, and there was a flood. And it kind of took the shine off this, this experience when you've got tenants on the phone, and we're talking like an old school Nokia phone, and you can't even can barely hear them. And they just complaining. And then yeah, and honestly, they're talking about all these problems, it really took the shine off, I had to come back to deal with the issues.

 

Dwight Brown: 11:15

Oh no, well,

 

David Turetsky: 11:16

Life takes over.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 11:19

Big time, big time.

 

David Turetsky: 11:21

So one of the fun things we get to do on the HR Data Labs podcast is talk a lot about diversity, equity and inclusion. And I think it's really important that it's always measured. Well, in this case, our topic for today is evidence based inclusion. And your your comment on this was easy to bring back to HR and data. And so we're gonna get into that and pick that apart and really try and understand that.So Dr. Jonathan, let's try and figure this out. Talk to us about how did you get into this work? We heard about the Obama story. But really kind of tell us where does the evidence based come into this when you're talking about inclusion?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 12:09

Yeah,so evidence based inclusion was something that I was doing, but I didn't know I was doing. So before we get into it. Let's start. Let's get some clarity over some terms. Because sure,diversity, equity inclusion, all of these words are thrown around in a way, sometimes you really don't know what people mean,right? So when I say inclusion in the context that we're talking about in organizations,I'm thinking of that as a business strategy, a systematic business strategy to ensure that everyone can share the same advantages and benefits. So what we say is everyone can perform,everyone can belong, everyone can reach their potential. So whenever we're talking about inclusion, we're talking about a variation of that. So remember,I said, I had a PhD, I finished my PhD, I wanted to make a contribution into the workplace.I'd also worked in the private sector, I had worked with organizations. So I had this commercial experience. But I knew that there was a lot of value in academia, a lot of the issues and challenges that we were having, guess what someone spent, several people have spent years decades thinking about it,theorizing it and sometimes actually getting some results and outcomes that you didn't know, why not stand on the shoulders of giants. So I really appreciated those two things.During my PhD, I came across a researcher called Dr. or it's professor now, Rob Brynner. And he talks a lot about evidence based management. And he positions that as something that HR leaders specifically should use to make better decisions in the workplace in order to get better outcomes. Evidence based management is actually born out of medical fields, right?Doctors, in particular nurses,they're using it to make sure because as you know, when you're on the cutting edge of healthcare or any discipline,sometimes there's a bit of art and science. So what they say that evidence based practitioners say that when you want to make decisions, it's useful to look and collect data from four key sources. One is the research, which I've told you about. Two is the organization collecting data from your organization. It is great that I'm here with you literally HR Data labs, right.So this is what you live and breathe.

 

David Turetsky: 14:33

Yep.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 14:33

The third thing is from stakeholders, people who are affected by the decision you want to make by the intervention, the thing you want to influence, you need to engage with them as well to get data in order to make a better decision.And then the fourth one is professional expertise, your professional expertise, but I also like to leverage the expertise of others. One way that your audience will be doing that will be listening to you listening to your guests trying to understand, okay, this is something that we can use. So when we talk about evidence based practice, or when what I apply to evidence based inclusion, it's about making systematic thorough decisions,using data from those four sources, the research, the data,the organization, your stakeholders, and yourself. And for me, other experts as well.

 

Dwight Brown: 15:24

You know, it makes a lot of sense to me, I actually came from from healthcare, and part of part of what I did was implement evidence based practices in the in the practice. And the other component that I did was the measurement of the evidence based practices to make sure that what we implemented, we were continuing to implement.And so it was fascinating to me when I saw this, that you're doing this from the inclusion perspective, because I thought to myself, Wow, that's an interesting leap to make, but I really like it. And I, you know,it starts to get down to the practicality of how do we do this? You know, how to how do we do it? How do we measure it?And, you know, why do we do it?So, it's, you know, it's very fascinating to me from that perspective.

 

David Turetsky: 16:18

Absolutely.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 16:18

No,thank you, Dwight, and I think That's why you get guilted into things it's really important because,frankly, I'm in this space. And right. Sometimes they use guilt.Sometimes they use shame. And some of the narratives there's,like I say, there's a there's a rhetoric problem or rhetorical problem in this space. So and you know, this from ancient Greeks, they said, in order to often these things in the moment, Have you have you ever have a compelling argument, you need three things. You need ethos, pathos, logos, right,which is the credibility of the person, an emotional element,and there's logic. I find that in the diversity, inclusion,equity space, there's not there's not always the logic,and also the credibility of the person sometimes is in question,but they leaned very heavily on the emotional appeal.been to a, let's say, a panel event? Or you've been to a keynote? And you if someone said to you, Hey, what happened? What did you learn? It's almost like you have to say that you had to be there that you can't take right was said, because you need it to be sort of emotionally exposed. But this is a huge issue in that space.

 

David Turetsky: 17:29

Right.

 

Dwight Brown: 17:29

Right.

 

Announcer: 17:31

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show.

 

David Turetsky: 17:43

Now that you've talking about how you got into it, and what influenced you,talk to us a little more about the research that you've been doing in the topic, and how does it influence what you're talking about right now, which is being able to come up with a cogent argument? What did the research teach you? And what do you think other people seem to miss about the problem?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 18:05

So one of the things that I found and this, this was how I was I was actually doing the evidence based practice evidence based inclusion before I knew it. I came into this the scene after I finished my PhD. And I basically looked at all the research and I was trying to say, look, what are the problems people consistently have, like,consistently? And then I went to look at organizations. And I thought, what problems are you having consistently, I then looked at my own research. So we're talking about conversations I'm having with people, we're also talking about the research I did in my thesis.And I found that it came down to three things. And we call it the three biggest problems, people,potential, performance. So people, organizations struggle to engage the people they want to include. Now, the narratives that you will hear will always be about people who are marginalized, underrepresented,disadvantaged, typically people who are classified as being in a minority, right? You hear that about that all the time. But remember what I said earlier about inclusion, everyone can perform, everyone can belong,everyone can reach their potential. So this means you also need to engage the people who may even reject those terms,but who don't necessarily find themselves disadvantaged, or the people who you often described as being privileged. We need to engage both of them. But which ones are most relevant in your organization, in the context that you're speaking about?Organizations weren't doing that consistently well. The second thing is potential organizations were struggling to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can reach their potential because you can change the rules, right? We already have anti discrimination laws.You're not allowed to treat people in this way. But it's not just compliance with the rules that creates an inclusive workplace. You need a culture and norms values behaviors that encourage this. And this is challenging over time, you hear people say was it culture eats strategy for breakfast, you've heard all of these things.Actually creating a culture is massively difficult,particularly in this space where you've got organizations that are growing rapidly, it changes.And there's actually once again,drawing on the research, there's something called acculturation,which says, let's pick the US,let's pick me and the US, right.The idea is the US is a nation is a cultural group, you could argue, if I enter into the US,I'm from outside, my very presence means that I change as an individual, but the entire culture of the organization or the cultural group changes because of contact that's been had. So this is called acculturation. So when we think about this with organizations,when you're saying you want new people to come in, every person who comes into the organization has an indirect or even a direct influence on the culture. This is why it's very difficult to coherently and consistently say,we're creating a culture unless you've got some really clear norms values that are repeated over and over again. So that's two things. And then the final thing is performance. The so called business case for diversity, I am sure members of your audience have been told that the business case for diversity has been established.I'm very unpopular, because I bring this up, which comes from the research, which actually shows that the business case for diversity has not been established in the way that you've been led to believe. So we've all been there people have, they've got the look,here's the research, it shows that we've got more innovation,we've got more profits, you know, people talk about the McKinsey Report. Look, literally we've got a increasing. So okay,great. What everyone ignores is the research that shows that actually, under some circumstances, diversity can cause problems, it can cause tension in teams, it depends on the context of what you're doing, but sometimes a lack of communication, all of these issues come up. So it has to be really context specific. So I asked organizations, and I'd like to throw this out to the audience rhetorical question.What is the business case for diversity in your specific organization? Not what the research says not what your leaders say? Why do you think it's relevant? That is a question that I encourage everybody to ask. So people potential performance, these three things show up, I argue,in your organization, you should be spending all of your time trying to address those the things that will put you ahead of everybody.

 

David Turetsky: 22:47

As far as the potential goes, I find that a couple of the things that I've observed is that when companies try and start the process of thinking about inclusion a little bit more broadly, maybe they'll open up to historically black colleges and universities,or maybe they'll open up their recruiting to different types of recruiters who they traditionally haven't talked to in the past, or even open up to different locations or different regions of the world, in order to be able to find better talent, better, more diverse talent. I think one of the problems that they have is that they're thinking about low level entry level jobs, more so than thinking about the entire stack of jobs, from leadership to entry level employees. And so therefore, you have the inverted pyramid of you get a lot of diversity and very low level jobs and not throughout the organization where people can look at the leadership and go,Wow, that's a person just like me, I can get there someday. And there are organizations that are making huge strides in this. I'm not saying there aren't. But I think a lot of times when we talk about having measureable diversity initiatives, sometimes the measurement is yes, we're becoming more diverse. But the problem is they're not focusing on to your potential part. I think this is part of your potential part. They're not focusing on where are we putting these folks? Instead of thinking about, you know, just taking the entire veil off of all jobs, and making the entire company more diverse?

 

Dwight Brown: 24:21

We're hitting a very specific component with it,as opposed to looking at it from the whole.

 

David Turetsky: 24:27

Yeah, exactly.Yeah.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 24:28

I love that you brought that up,because your what you've highlighted is how so many organizations focus on recruitment. Right? And in particular, graduate recruitment, and you're right in terms of changing the culture of the organization, maybe it will work if that carries on in 10 20years, right. Right. But what about now, so they need to turn their attention to the retention part of that, but also the promotion. When you come into the organization? What are the chances of you being able to make it to the top if that is indeed the culture of the organization, that people come through and make it through the top. As you know, there are organizations where it's up or out, right? If you're not coming up, if you're not, if you don't fit the profile of whatever that is influenced by culture, you need to leave. And so it's a huge challenge that I told you,I worked as an I was an accountant. See, do you see how I hesitated there? Because actually I still am an accounting, you still think twice when you say was.

 

Dwight Brown: 25:29

You're a recovering accountant?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 25:32

Yeah,we're recovering accountant.

 

David Turetsky: 25:34

Yeah, just like we're recovering consultants and recovering HR folks. And I think that that's, that causes so much consternation, because it's the well, what do you want us to do?Well, the answer is, I want you to become more complete when we talk about the way in which your organization looks and feels.And all you have to do is go to an about us page on the web and look at who your leaders are.Look at who you say you are. I'm not talking about the pictures where you get five people all diverse, you know, races and ethnicities, and genders all hugging, you know, around the watercooler. I'm not talking about that crap. I'm talking about who is it you say you are by looking at the leadership of your organization, and the people who are going to try and join your company. And they look up at that and they go, they don't look like me. I'm not going to be successful there. I want to I want a place where I feel like I do belong, where they will value me. And if I'm not represented up there, how the hell am I going to get there? It's too hard just to keep the wheels on the bus to try and think I'm going to be able to drive the bus up there.It's not possible. Sorry, for the NLG I'm terrible. No, no,

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 26:45

I think this is great. And to take that a step further. Every organization has a hero story,right? Sure. You know, when you're working in a department,and maybe it's about someone who drinks a lot that like in the UK, there's a story about someone who drinks or went out for clients, and they was

 

David Turetsky: 27:05

Is that a hero?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 27:10

They're out there, or they work really long hours, they this person works really long hours, or they all look in a certain certain way, these people went to a particular school, they all behave in a particular way. So to your point, you're right,even if you, you're told, okay,I don't see anyone who looks like me, the hero narratives and there is always one that tells you who makes it that tells you who they want you to be. And that very much influences the culture. So one of the things I like to say to organizations is pay attention to who that is.And also look for look for new heroes, people who are outstanding, incredible, amazing in the ways that you all think and are looking for, but perhaps don't follow the characterized archetype. Hero's Journey,choose another one. And that's a great way of presenting an alternative about other people who can make it to the top, but also meet the values and standards, that actually mean excellence in your organization.I think that's a great way to go about it.

 

David Turetsky: 28:21

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well,you're in luck, we have a special offer for listeners of the HR data labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast, or whatever is on your mind. Go to Salary.com/HRDL consulting to schedule your FREE30 minute call today.So Dr. Jonathan, let's get to the third question, which is really very important, which is how do people actually make practical use out of the things they learn from the evidence based diversity? And the things that they hear and the research that they do? And, and all of that stuff? How do they actually make progress?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 29:08

Sure.So what I've got a couple of tips, there's one, which is it's kind of obvious, but not enough people do it. So it's very easy to fall and believe anything that someone says when they they begin a sentence saying research says, right, if I say research says you're going to believe anything I say, even if I don't tell you what the research is,unfortunately, that happens too much. I want to encourage you,and I encourage everyone to look for the research themselves, but don't spend forever on it. You should look for something called a meta study. So instead of instead of relying on one piece of research, why not rely on hundreds of pieces of research?So if we pick the topic that we wanted, let's say performance management in senior Leadership actually, let's not say senior leadership because I'm sure everyone says that right? But performance management in underperforming talents, right at entry level. Let's say there's that's the thing we're really interested in, instead of picking out one research paper and oh, look, this research says it's great. Find a meta study, a meta study is a study of studies. So it's an it's an academic who has looked at 100s or thousands maybe like 40 50100 other people who have all looked at the same phenomena.And what they do is tell you what the research says, not one person says, what the general research says what that community says. The reason this is useful, and by the way, look on Google Scholar for this,you're going to Yes, really straightforward. No one does this, you're going to get a really clear sense of clear frameworks, great principles,great ideas. And so you really useful starting point for any initiatives that you want to do yourself. And once again, the clear justification is, look,this is what the body of research says, let's try this.Does this how, how can we use this in all and also does it fit? And then you're looking at the data from your own organization, as we said, the stakeholders so you actually engage with the people, you want to actually change their change their outcomes, and then you look at your own thing. So that the number one thing I would say is, learn from other people,meta studies are a great way to go. The other thing I want to suggest is something is a framework called peacock. I call it peacock because I don't know how else to pronounce it. But it's a good start. It's a good start, you know, to me I know, I know, right? It's PICOC. Okay,so you can see why I call it peacock. And yeah,

 

David Turetsky: 31:57

so yeah. You want to take that in any other direction,

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 32:01

I know let's. But this allows us to be really specific about what we're trying to do. So let's,the example I like to use is,let's say we, you've got one person who says, We want more diversity in senior leadership.And why would we want that?David, the point you made earlier was, you know, you look at the top of your organization,there's not enough diversity.Okay. That's a real generic statement. I don't know what to do with that. And Dwight, what you said about measuring it? How do we know when we've won? How do we know when we've made progress? So peacock allows us to focus on it. So the P stands for population, the I stands for intervention, the C stands for comparison, the O stands for an outcome, and the C stands for context. So let's, let's put this together, because these are just random words, I've just thrown out there, right. So instead of saying we want, we got to make it relevant,everyone. Instead of saying we want more diversity, what if we said we want more Asian women at grade one. And we want that to increase by 5%, compared to 18months ago, right? So the reason that's tighter and more useful.The P is for the population. In this case, we're saying Asian women, okay? At a particular grade, the I is for intervention, we want them to increase, we want it to increase from what it is by x percent 5%10%, whatever we think is appropriate. The C is for a comparison, Dwight, you talked about measurement that always involves a comparison, I like using 18 months, because I find it to be an inconvenient period of time. It's longer than a financial year. So you need to be strategic, but you also need to be tactical. So 18 months is useful. And because in this is the beginning of our journey, we don't know what good looks like it might not be appropriate to compare ourselves to other organizations. We don't know. So let's compare ourselves to the past 18 months. And what's the outcome we're looking for? We're looking for this increase, right in this, let's say is 10%. why would, where did we get that from? Well, what if we looked at a meta study? And it showed us that these are typical results of organizations that were doing well, and maybe it's a conservative estimate. This helps us to, to feel confident about what we're saying, instead of picking random numbers that maybe are unattractive, or maybe even too challenging? Right. The last one is the context. That's the last C, all of what I've said sounds really intimidating.I like pilot studies. I like it when you just try something small. See if it works, learn from that before you scale it.So instead of us saying we're going to roll this across across the whole organization, and you know, make a song and dance of it and we're not sure if it's going to work. What if you try it You trialed that in the UK accounting team. What if you tried it in the you know, the HR team, the marketing team in this in this region. So you pull all of that together peacock, PICOC,I find it to be a really neat way to be specific, relevant.And people will tend not to argue with you, when you come that well prepared. And it gives you it gives you some confidence, and it allows you to build confidence in this space,because this is a huge challenge that people have, they don't like talking about diversity don't like talking about inclusion, I don't know where to start, I don't know what to do.These types of things are really useful.

 

Dwight Brown: 35:38

I like what you what you just talked about. And actually the, the piece that you you just discussed with the context really gets to the comment that I have. And that is, too often it seems like all we do is measure outcomes. We don't measure the processes and what you talked about, at the very end, there really gets to that measuring the process piece, you scale it down. Let's look at this on a smaller scale,let's have the ability to figure out what are the important pieces of the process that we need to hit. And then look at the outcome measures that go with it. Because if we're not doing the process, we're not going to have the outcome measures that we need. And I feel like oftentimes organizations forget that component and the diversity,equity and inclusion space. It's all about what are the outcomes?Or what is our upper level leadership look like? What's the makeup? Well, how did we get there? You know, are we doing the right things, because if we're not doing the right things, the outcomes just aren't going to aren't going to fall out where we need them to.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 36:44

I really agree with that.

 

David Turetsky: 36:45

The one comment I wanted to make Dr. Jonathan is then a lot of these conversations are happening at board level. They're not happening with middle management. They're happening at senior leadership, but the executive committee or with the board, where they have to face the public. They are the basically the last line of defense for what do we look like? And how do we look? And why are we the way we are?Because the shareholders or the owners will tell us loud and clear that the way that we're talking about these programs,the way that we're talking about our makeup, doesn't match the outcomes. And therefore, they'll hold our feet to the fire. And unless we have the measurement,and the context, and all the things you talked about, unless they're completely nailed down,and those goals are set at appropriate levels. And then given the authority to actually happen, this isn't happening, it won't happen. And you can say anything you want to to shareholders and owners and the world. But unless you have the leadership behind it, it's not going to happen. And so do me a favor, just give me a couple brief few, if you don't mind,words on on where you see boards or leadership, taking that context and that the peacock and being able to live with live with it or utilize it to be able to set appropriate expectations.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 38:19

I think of the peacock approach has been very operational, in,in actually getting it done,what I tend to find is the senior leadership, they get bought into it, in principle,some some of them don't always believe, because let's say you're a consumer facing organization, for the reasons you just described, you're going to be under a lot of pressure to change. And hey, we you know, I support you, I buy your products. I don't see people like me leading this organization. And if, you know,if social media is a huge part of my engagement and distribution, it's an issue. So they're under incredible pressure, but they have to actually deliver it. So I think the challenge is the leaders are normally bought in, they tend to be in principle bought in, it's about the people who actually need to do the work. They they're not able to do it in a way that is coherent. And by the way, it's as you said, it's easy to make a presentation to, you know, the board your shareholders and say, Look, this is what we're planning on doing.But the actual operationalizing of it. When you come down to it.Most people, they rely on what we call flags, food and fun,right? So it's Black History Month, or it's a celebration month. And so you know, we're all getting and this is the thing we're going to be celebrating and you talked about websites earlier, lots of smiling people doing things that actually don't drive the business forward that you would remember we talked about the heroes. It's the complete opposite of what the hero is doing in that organization. So I think that's a huge problem. And I think basic I think they should just raise their standards by using peacock evidence based inclusion,because it just makes you more coherent than everyone else.

 

David Turetsky: 40:07

Why are you saying social media doesn't accurately represent what's happening within companies at this moment? Dr. Jonathan, I think that that's something we definitely disagree on. I think I believe social media, nothing on the internet is false. So I don't understand. I'm gonna be very facetious right now, very facetious. For those of you who don't know me.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 40:29

It's true, though. It is, oh, my god,like what you see on a company websites, a lot of the time they're speaking to the wrong audience. A lot of people who work in that organization don't recognize the organization that's being represented in these pictures.

 

David Turetsky: 40:45

Absolutely.Stock footage.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 40:48

And with the AI now? oh, my gosh,no,

 

David Turetsky: 40:51

That's a topic for another podcast. Yeah. The next one, Dr. Jonathan, that's our next one.Let me wrap it up by saying this has been one of the most thoroughly enjoyable conversations we've had on this topic. And I really appreciate it. And I love the fact that you're the most prolific writer on this topic, but you're also probably one of the most prolific podcasters as well. So right, listen, all I can do is say thank you very much. You're you're awesome. I'd love to have you back on. We'd love to have you back on sorry, Dwight. And is there anything you want to say before we close off today?

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 41:33

No,it's been an absolute pleasure.I would encourage everybody to,to just try to be a little bit more thorough about the work they're doing. As I say, I'm on a mission to help a million people to make their workplace inclusive. So, you know, I am prolific as David has consistently reminded you. So I've got my own podcast. I write on LinkedIn every day. There's a lot of stuff that's out there that I would like to encourage people to experiment with themselves. I do a lot of book reviews breakdowns. Check all of this stuff out.

 

David Turetsky: 42:06

Dr. Jonathan, it has been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

 

Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey: 42:10

Thank you The pleasures been mine.Thank you, David. Thank you,Dwight.

 

Dwight Brown: 42:13

Thank you for being with us. We appreciate it.

 

David Turetsky: 42:15

Yes. And thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe.

 

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