Yeah, great question. You know, what I always say is that it doesn't matter where you are right now, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being I'm just starting this journey, 10 being I'm already fully proficient, which few people are. It doesn't matter where you are but it matters that you go from 1 to 2, and then from 2 to 3, and from 3 to 4, and that you don't demand perfection of yourself but that you start the journey that's really important.
Typically, the journey should start at the leadership level, I firmly believe that. You've got to create, if you're an organizational leader, you've got to create a leadership team thatÕs diverse, because people, when deciding whether to join an organization, look at the leadership team. They look at what they look like, they look at whether they could find role models, they look at whether they can find people that look like them, that are like them, where they feel like they can be wanted the way they are. So a lot of leaders I see, start deeper in the organization, but it really, really must start at the leadership team level, that'd be first perhaps.
And then what I would do is I would ban, which we've done at Clorox, I would ban the word "good fit" You know, how many times have you heard, "I don't think this person is a good fit to our organization"? That's really a secret speak for "we're looking for people that are like us." So it's really dangerous for interviews. Instead, what I'd encourage people to think about is what can a person add to the organization? What does the person have that we don't have just yet, and how can that be your value? That's a mindset shift that I think is really helpful. And then, once you've laid that groundwork, it's really about looking in the mirror and it's also about training managers because managers throughout an organization can do a lot of damage but also a lot of good. And one thing we did at Clorox, which was incredibly helpful was to put all people at Clorox through the bias training, and we looked at the bias that we all have, that I have, some of it is conscious but a lot of it is unconscious, but the damage that bias does is really quite significant.
