I have wanted to change my business structure to an LLC for a couple years. Other work and life priorities gave me the excuse to procrastinate. But last year, amid all the pandemic interruptions and delays, I finally got it done. This of course created a series of other changes I needed to make to all sorts of related things. Updating my logo was a priority and a dear friend (who is an amazing editor) gave a me a referral. She told me that she was young, but so talented and that she completely trusts her instincts. I hired her after our first conversation.
 
So, we engaged and she proceeded to ask me questions about my business, my clients and how I work. We talked about my mission, vision and passion for the work I do. She asked me to send her colors and objects I love. She also reviewed some of my writing and did all the things you would expect a professional designer to do. 
 
When she sent me the first logo it was nothing I would have imagined. And she included this note:
 
“This logo represents both you and your company. It communicates that there are various parts that make up an organization and they intersect and work together to form one structure. The arrangement of the shapes has a very “architecture” feel which communicates how your work is foundational and is an essential building block for efficient and effective change. Another interesting aesthetic that this logo achieves is that organizations can be complex and implementing change even more so. The shapes in the logo represent the different moving parts of a company but are placed and represented to show harmony and stillness, which is the effect of your services. I also like the idea of using these unique shapes because it is very human. Too often in corporate logos we see stiff, bland, safe images because it shows “professionalism”, but it is actually cold, dense, and relatively meaningless. This logo has a very human-centered feel and is clean and concise which makes it professional. It shows that creativity and human emotion make up a huge part of a company’s culture and are essential elements of the employees and how they work. My favorite thing about you is that you are not afraid to use creative practices and acknowledge human emotion, while maintaining a high level of professionalism and effectiveness. I think this logo communicates just that.”
 
When I saw the first logo and read her note, I felt emotional. It was clear that in a relatively short time, that the designer had really listened to and heard me. In my experience, this is kind of rare. I showed it to my husband and he said, “Wow. I love it! You can tell her creativity hasn’t been ruined yet by corporate America.” I agreed.
 
Still, I asked her to come up with another option. And then we tried out various changes to both options. After some back and forth I knew that with one small change, her first logo was really perfect. I told her I was making her first design worse not better!

I was so glad I figured this out pretty quickly. And it also reminded me that if you want creativity to truly flourish in your organization, you have to create spaces, free from too much direction and criticism so that it’s safe for the best ideas to emerge. You don’t ever really “manage” creative people. You nurture a climate where they can thrive and then you need to get out of the way.   

Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners 21 years ago to collaborate with leaders, teams and organizations to create more productive, effective, and human people systems and practices. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you! 
 
 

Almost every conversation I have lately with clients includes a discussion on if and how they will get “back to their offices”. Depending upon your life stage, home set up and family, working remotely (mostly from “home”) has been great, good or tolerable. But from recent surveys, it’s clear the majority of employees want to work from home at least part of the time. 
 
According to a Harris Poll survey of 2,063 adults conducted May 14-16, “Forty percent of Americans prefer to work from home full-time, compared with 35% who seek a home-office hybrid and 25% who want to go back to the office full-time” 
 
In contrast, “68% of executives say a typical employee should be in the office at least three days a week to maintain a distinct company culture”, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey late last year.
 
Ultimately, because their success relies on it, I am confident that most organizations will figure out a balance that works best for their employees considering their industry, strategy, and customers. I am less confident that they will redesign important talent management processes and practices to optimize for the new hybrid office models they will be adopting (and surely adapting over time). 
 
For example, consider performance management. With greater adoption of matrix management models and the growing reliance on deeper collaboration, how effective employees are working with their stakeholders has become ever more important. And even though I have been recommending that clients add stakeholder feedback as a standard part of their performance management process for years, few have adopted this practice. With teams still working remotely at least part of the time, how they communicate with each other, their responsiveness, and how they plan and organize their work, has become a much bigger differentiator of performance.
 
During the last 18 months I have facilitated quite a few leader and team launches and integrations. I have always loved this work. When the pandemic started I wasn’t sure how I would manage the facilitation virtually. It felt rocky the first few times, but clients have been very positive in our post-meeting reviews. One thing I have noticed, and at first, I thought it was just luck, is that engagement in these sessions matches or exceeds many prior team facilitations I have done (and I have facilitated a lot of team meetings). 
 
This surprised me a bit until I thought about how I was feeling and what I was doing to manage my own anxiety with virtual facilitation. It’s clear that we lose some perspective with virtual platforms, like somatic cues and the natural energy from sharing a physical space. Due to this, I have been taking more time to experiment with the meeting design and structure to make sure everyone feels included in the sessions and safe to contribute their best. For example, I am being even more rigorous with pre-session expectations and assignments and creating collective ground rules during the sessions. 
 
With my experience growing, I realize how important it is to help leaders and teams adapt their ways of working for their virtual workplaces. Processes like talent acquisition, onboarding, goal setting, and performance management will need to be updated for the hybrid workplaces in which many of us will continue to work. Our success virtually depends upon how well we rethink, shift and sharpen our approach to meet the reality of our more varied workspaces.
 
Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners 21 years ago to collaborate with leaders, teams and organizations to create more productive, effective, and human people systems and practices. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you! 
  

My husband is a martial arts teacher. He teaches Hapkido, a very challenging Korean Martial art. He has a father and daughter who faithfully attend his Saturday morning class. For a couple months the daughter kept asking her father for an official Hapkido uniform. Due to her size, she is just 10 and petite, it would need to be ordered and due to COVID and shipping, etc. it would take my husband many attempts to get a response from the official organization. Last week she wore her new uniform to class. The response from her classmates was unanimous: she looked great! My husband said that the joy she exuded during the class was priceless.
 
This story is about belonging. Where ever we humans go, we seek a felt sense that we belong, we are a member of the tribe. I am sure at some point in our long evolution, it was strongly linked to survival and safety. Belonging, and the cooperation of a tribe meant back up if trouble arose and that we were more likely to live to see another day. The roots of belonging are deep and when we forget that in organizations, it creates all sorts of problems, and sometimes contributes to deadly consequences.
 
Yet we forget it all the time. We forget that we need to be intentional about building systems and organizational rituals that make it easier and more likely that people we invite in, feel as if they really belong.
 
Inclusion is so different than belonging. It’s also important but I am more and more skeptical of inclusion because it means that someone else creates, or has the power to include us, or not. I am completely up for creating inclusive systems and structures. But I am not okay with it being up to someone else to include me, because by my very presence, I already belong. Whether I feel that or not, is more complicated because it’s largely based upon my own life experiences and needs.
 
My observations are that inclusion puts the power to invite in someone else’s hands. Belonging is something that we all have the power to nurture and create together.  However, belonging requires that I feel safe to express what I need and that my manager, team and organization create space and the safety for this to happen. When done right, it’s messy and can be uncomfortable and I expect it to be so. Because sometimes to create a space where others feel like they belong, I have to give up or adjust some practice, ritual or language that I enjoy and that makes me feel like I belong. 
 
Markers that evoke a sense of belonging in each of us are grounded in culture, family, traditions, rituals, and even our biology. I am thinking of the recent research that found stress and anxiety experienced by a mother during pregnancy is associated with short- and longer-term consequences for the health of her child (see the links at the bottom of this article for more information). 
 
And if an organization wants to work on creating a greater, more shared sense of belonging, then they have to teach and facilitate practices for compassion and forgiveness. And you have to be equally rigorous about this because people will make mistakes. They will say and do the wrong thing. This is a part of the process and you have to plan for it. The moment someone gets blamed, demoted or fired for trying, and offending someone or making a mistake, then you will create a space where no one will speak up or try because it is too dangerous.
 
From my work with so many teams, I have lots of stories about belonging. If you listen, you probably hear them all the time too. A new member of an all-male (yes, there are still plenty of these) executive team I was working with was invited to their annual retreat. He told me that during the retreat, there was a lot of drinking and that the discussions about women were extremely uncomfortable. As a married man with a young daughter, the client told me he found the interactions offensive and uncomfortable. He pointedly asked, “I am a heterosexual white man and I find it uncomfortable. Can you imagine how someone who didn’t immediately fit in would feel?” Yes, as it turns out, I absolutely can! This is a blatant example but there are many more subtle examples. Most of the time they are not intentionally trying to be offensive. But that is no longer an excuse if it ever really was one. If you want more people to feel a sense of belonging, you have to include them in creating a place where that is possible.
 
This is the only way it happens. And there are no short cuts. 

Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners 21 years ago to collaborate with leaders, teams and organizations to create more productive, effective, and human people systems and practices. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you! 
 
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/09/418491/maternal-stress-during-pregnancy-linked-infant-illness
 
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25174703/
 

​Recently a client asked me how to spark more innovation on his teams and projects. I understand why businesses so often say that they want to be more innovative – it is a highly prized set of skills and has the ability to elevate an average product to a great one. A lot of folks subscribe to the idea that to be innovative, you have to be born with a certain personality, under a bright star, or be super smart. Though certain personality types have been shown to demonstrate more creativity, I don’t subscribe to the trait or “gifted” theory of innovation.
 
Everyone can be more innovative if they work in a climate where ideas can flourish, be expressed and listened to, and people aren’t afraid to make mistakes. 
 
The kiss of death for innovation is a climate grounded in control. But a climate without any supportive structure can also be problematic for innovation.
 
A couple years ago a leader I know well was frustrated that her employees didn’t seem to know how to innovate. I asked her if they didn’t know or they were afraid. She pushed back and told me how she had set up a strong team of smart people and told them they had “free rein” to design the project. She promised that she would not interfere and really wanted them to come up with the best, most innovative ideas and solutions. The team struggled, missed the deadline and asked for help.
 
In talking with the team members, it became clear that they had not taken the time to set up many team processes or structure. They just started working on the project. Their organization had team resources, but they thought too much corporate oversight would squash their creativity. When I met with them it was clear that they hadn’t established the processes or agreements on team behaviors they all needed to feel safe and like they truly belonged. 
 
What I would say is that all teams need the right structure and clear boundaries from management for them to flourish. The team structure must be self-determined by the team members. They need to take the time to identify the norms and processes that will support everyone feeling safe and supported to bring their best. There are almost always going to be expectations for some sort of outcome from a team. I find teams are comfortable with boundaries from management if they are clearly communicated before the team starts working. If possible, the expectations and boundaries shouldn’t change or be moving targets. That is a set-up and will most likely limit the team’s effectiveness. 
 
You don’t need a magic wand to create more innovation in your company. With the right structure and climate, every organization can be more innovative.  

Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners 21 years ago to collaborate with leaders, teams and organizations to create more productive, effective, and human people systems and practices. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you! 

​This is a follow up on my last two blog posts on humble leadership.

I wasn’t a naturally humble leader when I started my career in operations. I was on the more charismatic end of leadership profiles. But I was raised with a deep sense of right and wrong and eventually I realized that some of my tendencies were doing harm to the people with whom I worked and were ineffective. This really bothered me and I decided I needed to intentionally work to shift it. It's taken years, but the effort was worth it. 

I believe that if we keep growing the good, it raises the consciousness in our systems, workplaces and families. 
 
Louise Penny is a (brilliant) Canadian author who has written a great series of mysteries. One of the main characters is Inspector Gamache, head of the homicide department of the Surete du Quebec.  Gamache is a humble servant leader if there ever was one. Among his many gifts, Gamache is a person who knows how to in develop people and bring out the best in them. He believes they can grow and get better, even when they have made big mistakes. One of his first teachings for those he leads and mentors is introducing the four statements (Louise Penny, Still Life).
 
“There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them? She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin. They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean. Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. 

I don’t know. 
I need help. 
I’m sorry. 
I was wrong.”
 
These four statements are important for all of us to know, and this is especially true for those who lead others. More than ever, with information and technology exploding around us, leaders, along with all humans, often don’t know, need help, make mistakes and are wrong. It’s always been true, but with the prevalence and speed of information, including lots of disinformation, flowing from social media (aka, "social advertising"), has even greater urgency today. 
 
We have forgotten that amidst all the data, analytics, and algorithms, that if we don’t make our systems more human, humans won’t want to work in them, let alone be able to thrive in them. Knowing how and when to say these four statements, and mean them, is a good place to start.
 
Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners (almost) 21 years ago to help companies advance their leadership and people systems and create healthier, more vibrant workplaces. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you! 

This is a follow up on my last blog post regarding humble leaders (We Need More Humble Leaders, 10.29.20). We have had so many examples of charismatic, "out front", and yes, usually narcissistic leaders, running big companies that we seem to have forgotten, from a research standpoint (i.e., cre​ating long term value), they aren’t actually very good for business. So, when I see the depiction of a humble leader in a new (fantastic) TV show, pardon me if I get a little excited.
 
I have spent my career working in organizations to help make their systems and people more effective, productive and healthy. Of course, this involves working with leaders and teams over time to help them envision and execute on the impact they want to make. So, when I started watching the newish series, Ted Lasso, on Apple TV, I was so delighted. 
 
I am not going to give you the plot, except to say that Ted is hired to coach an English football team by the ex-wife of the prior owner, to ensure that the team fails. Ted is a coach from the United States and coaches American Football but knows literally nothing about soccer.
 
Ted Lasso’s management style summarizes many of my beliefs about leading others:

• People need you to be consistently positive. This doesn’t mean you don’t get frustrated and share this. But the consistent theme is a positive, future focused outlook. We are living in a time of exceptional shame, blame and judgement. Social media is a major contributor to this, but so are when we accept it or “like” it. The problem is that it is ineffective for leaders because it’s demotivating to the human spirit. Period. 
• Working with really skillful, smart people means that you don’t need to know as much as they do, but you need to know how to inspire and motivate them. You need to understand what they care about and what matters to them. You need to care about them and know how to communicate this in word and deed. 
• Yes, you do need to be interested in learning about and becoming more knowledgeable. But this is usually secondary to being able to bring out the best contribution from others. 
• You need to be able to share and show your vulnerability. You don’t need to the smartest person in the room. You need to be the best at leveraging that from others.
• You are clear on your deepest held values, and you live them. Amongst them you are kind to others. You have good emotional intelligence: demonstrate strong self-awareness and empathy for others and you know how to self-regulate. 
• You know you can’t do everything by yourself. You depend upon and include others, you create trust.
• And finally, you know that expanding your range, learning new skills or ways of being and communicating is uncomfortable and, at least, equally rewarding. 

 
"Takin’ on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse. If you’re comfortable while you’re doin’ it, you’re probably doin’ it wrong." — Ted Lasso
 
Yes, it’s only a TV show, it’s not real life. But TV often serves as a mirror to what is happening and being celebrated in our society.  I am hoping that this will be a real trend in 2021: we revere healthy, humble, successful and caring leaders who role model goodness in corporate life. Believe!
 
Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners (almost) 21 years ago to help companies advance their leadership and people systems and create healthier workplaces. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you! 
   

Since the 1980’s we’ve seen the rise of the charismatic leader. Charismatic leaders are often charming, delightful, fun and can be very exciting to work with, usually for a short time. They can also be self-serving, exhausting to report to, and depending upon the business context, can be very destructive. 
 
Charismatic leaders have a personal magic, which can arouse a special type of loyalty or enthusiasm. They are likely to have enviable stage presence and can be very attractive to others. They are also very self-preoccupied and tend toward narcissism. 
 
From psychologytoday.com, narcissism is characterized by “a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that one is unique and deserving of special treatment.” So, it is no surprise that charisma and narcissism are positively correlated.
 
Sound like anyone you know? Okay, hint, think big white house.
 
Truthfully, if we have been in the workforce in the past 30 years, most of us have reported to a charismatic (and narcissistic) leader, at one time or other, especially if we work for a publicly traded company. Whatever your experience, it turns out that over time, charismatic leaders are not the most effective. 
 
Not surprisingly, humble leaders fare much better from a performance standpoint. 
 
The Oxford Dictionary definition of humble is, “having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's own importance.”
 
Recent research on organizational performance, including financial performance of companies headed by leaders whose traits classified as “humble”, are more effective and successful. They leave companies better off than they found them and often do so pretty quietly, with little fanfare or public knowledge.
 
“Humble leaders prioritize the organization’s success ahead of their own. In a Journal of Management study of 105 computer software and hardware firms, humble CEOs were found to have reduced pay disparity between themselves and their staff. They dispersed their power. They hired more diverse management teams, and they give staff the ability to lead and innovate. Humble leaders have less employee turnover, higher employee satisfaction, and they improve the company’s overall performance.” (The Washington Post, Ashley Merryman, 12.8.2016, see link below).
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/12/08/leaders-are-more-powerful-when-theyre-humble-new-research-shows/
 
For years I have used personality inventories along with multi-rater (360-degree) instruments as a fairly standard part of the leadership development work I do. As many leaders need to expand their self-awareness, better knowledge of their personality can be extremely helpful in understanding their own and other’s experience with their leadership.
 
More and more I am using the Hogan Personality Inventory because of the rigorous research used in developing it. Recently I attended a session they offered on The Rise of the Humble Leader. It was a great session, very illuminating. It led to this post and it made me start to think about the best way to manage charismatic leaders (especially C-level).
 
The fastest way to change it would be to create more equitable pay structures (executives didn’t always get paid the way they do now). But this won’t happen soon. From my practical experience, if charismatic leaders want to improve their organizational performance, they should surround themselves with humble leaders, who are not afraid to challenge them. Then they need to listen to them. It will feel exhausting, but I am pretty confident it will have a worthwhile ROI.
 
In the meantime, let’s start looking for and promoting more humble leaders!
 
Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners 20 years ago to help companies advance their leadership and people systems. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you! 
   

March 15, 1933-September 18, 2020

I don’t do this often (ever), but I don’t have anywhere else to put this sadness so I am going to do a short post. One of my few heroes, and one our nation's truest leaders, passed away today and I am devastated. I wanted to send the notification I received on my watch back. I don’t want it to be true. I am not ready for RBG to leave this earth. Especially right now as we needed her more than ever.
 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg lived a life of integrity and fought her whole life to make sure that women had equal rights. Every time I saw her speak, or I read an article about her, I always felt that she is so full of goodness and we are so lucky that she is here with us, for a while, on this earth. She paved the way for so many women who came after and was still paving the way in myriad ways for all of us, whether we knew it or not.
 
In a time when so many in government (of both parties) are disconnected from their goodness, corrupt, staying long past their efficacy, or narcissists, RBG had her eye constantly on the prize – how to create a more just and equitable place for us all. She was one of our nation’s best moral compasses. She fought so hard for women and in doing so, she fought hard for all of us. She knew in her core that when we create equality for women, we improve the outcomes for the whole family, and the whole world. She never seemed to forget the importance of the work she was doing and fought hard, through multiple difficult cancer diagnosis, to continue doing it.
 
Today we lost a bright light. And from her generation of citizens who understood the true meaning of service, I worry that we are losing a lot of light these days. I think this means we all need to try harder and work longer and believe we can keep making things better. 
 
May her memory be a blessing. 

All human beings are vulnerable. From our magnificent brains that serve as operating systems housed in a relatively fragile container, to the all too porous layers of fat and skin that protect our insides, we are a pretty “open system”. We don’t have scales, poisonous venom or huge fangs or claws. In this time of COVID, we are all more aware that to be human is to be vulnerable.
 
We can practically engage in mitigating risk by physically distancing, wearing a mask and washing our hands frequently. Our physical vulnerability is something we can protect with some certainty. In this post, it is the vulnerability of the state of awareness of not being certain, or sure, in which I am more interested.
 
I am talking about the expanding “not knowing” of our current time. The fact that as our work becomes more knowledge based, and artificial intelligence, access to data and information explodes, even those of us who are gifted with strong intelligence, excellent education, experience and good judgement, are starting to realize there is more and more we simply don’t know. And that is a big problem for most highly competent, accomplished people. 
 
The thing is, we really like knowing. More importantly, the feeling of knowing[1], lights up our brain’s reward system. The feeling of knowing, in and of itself, can be highly attractive and for many of us, highly addictive.
 
And the feeling of not knowing can be uncomfortable. Not knowing can make us doubt ourselves and our work. For leaders this can paralyze our ability to make decisions. Yet, more and more, the best most of us can do is make the wisest decision, given what our teams and we know at a moment in time, and prepare to rapidly course-correct. Here we run into another roadblock of our attachment to “feeling certain”.
 
Our strong attraction to “being right” often makes it much more difficult to quickly adapt or change course. It also makes it hard for us to apologize, to admit we got it wrong and quickly move to solutions. If feeling right is highly addictive, feeling wrong is something to avoid at all costs. Therein lies the difficulty and the opportunity.
 
With more complex, adaptive challenges before us and less clear “right” answers at every turn, we must learn to become more comfortable with not knowing, to admitting we aren’t sure, and making the best (multidisciplinary and highly collaborative) decisions we can. And in order to make this an organizational habit, we need to get more skillful at managing the discomfort and inherent vulnerability with the feeling of not knowing. 
 
This means that organizations must make it okay to experiment more often and reward and promote people who demonstrate comfort with ambiguity and adaptive learning. Leaders need to reward those who demonstrate they can persevere through uncertainty and make solid decisions anyway. This includes rewarding those who demonstrate they can put their ego on hold, and take quick action when the data shows that a correction or different approach is needed.
 
For leaders of all types, feeling more comfortable with not being certain is a valuable skill to improve. For executives, it is a requirement for the longevity and success of their business.
 
Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners 20 years ago to help companies advance their leadership and people systems. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you! 


[1] For an excellent explanation of this I highly recommend On Being Certain, Believing You are Right Even When You’re Not, by Robert Burton, M.D.

A number of clients have reached out and asked me if I do diversity and inclusion or unconscious bias work. This is not where I focus my current work. However, all my work is about enabling planned, structured change within organizations, teams and their leadership. And change is certainly needed right now.. 
 
I hear a lot of people using the terms, “systematic”, “structural” and “institutional” applied to racism. Though all these terms are accurate, I don’t think that most people, outside of academics or organization development folks really understand what they mean for workplaces. I won’t go into a definition of each of these for this post, but I will say that what is important about all of them is that, regardless of “intent”, they mean that systematic or institutional racism is:

• Hardwired into the practices, processes, culture and the way of being for organizations
• So longstanding and familiar that people no longer question the way it is (we are in a collective trance about it)
• More beneficial for some than others and therefore contributes to inequality of employment, opportunity, development and promotion. And ultimately limit, over the long term, organizations' ability to innovate, grow and perform.
• Difficult (understatement) to change. You really have to commit. 

Like many people I am updating my learning and reading the books that I should have read when they came out. I am in the middle of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist and, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, is up next. Still, this work is not new to me. In the past, I have created and co-facilitated several diversity and inclusion programs for my employers. I have been privileged to work with experts in the field who have dedicated their lives to creating more equitable workplaces. I have helped clients structure more equitable benefits, performance management and development systems. And still, it feels like a drop of water in an ocean of need. 
 
Welcome to the work of transforming deeply embedded organizational systems. These are highly complex, adaptive challenges and we are still treating them like technical, closed system, challenges (see the work of Drs. Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky).
 
So, where to start?

• Please don’t start with training! Start with setting an objective and key result you want, communicate it to your employees, and then act to achieve it. Make a commitment to changing one of your corporate practices that will help you achieve one of your diversity and equity goals (which you should be measuring as rigorously as your financials). For example, if you want more diversity in your leadership ranks, post promotional opportunities. One of the challenges organizations have is that they don’t have a good pipeline of diverse candidates coming up through their organization. The way to start to fix this is to promote people who may need some development, and create a plan to help them get the development they need. You can move next to upgrading your recruiting goals and practices and how you choose your high potentials to develop.
• Create an organization and spaces that are truly welcoming. This involves scrutinizing your talent management practices, benefits, compensation practices, signage, stated values, pictures and art that surround your spaces (or your digital meeting rooms). You have to be really intentional about this and infuse a new level of inquiry and awareness into all that you do. You have to rethink and update organizational habits and practices. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just start.
• Offer opportunities for real education. Notice I am not saying “training”.  I do not think most of us (me and other white people, POC, Americans) remotely understand the historical (and present day) denial of economic opportunity to POC. I was listening to a program on NPR’s Planet Money on innovation and patents. Lisa D. Cook, PhD, started researching the history of patents and race and she discusses it with the host Karen Duffin. Here’s the link:

 
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/876097416
 
Aside from the fact that Dr. Lisa Cook is an economic rock star, the findings of her research are so important. And it is just one more example of how economic opportunities have been denied to American citizens of color.  An outcome of which has surely been the profound loss for the person seeking the patent but also of innovation and wealth for our nation. When any citizen is denied the opportunity to build something great, creative or innovative in our country, we all lose. 
 
I do not think we know how badly our institutionalized racists policies have repeatedly shot us in our own foot! 
 
Dr. Kendi writes that he used to think that racism was about fear and ignorance but now he realizes, "The history of racist ideas is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest." If we want to fix this, we have to change the infrastructure of racism - our policies and practices. Which makes me uncomfortable with bias or D & I training. It just seems so beside the point when what we need to do is dismantle economic structures that have denied opportunity to a large section of our fellow citizens. 
 
So much work to do and so much opportunity to do it right this time. 
 
Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners 20 years ago to help companies advance their leadership and people systems. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you!