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How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
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Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
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Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
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Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?
The Case Against Full Transparency
Should I Feel Guilty for Failing?
Always Take Money off the Table

The Deal With Team Diversity: Building a Diverse Team

The Startups Team

The Deal With Team Diversity: Building a Diverse Team

Unless you spent July of 2017 living in an underground bomb shelter with no Internet, you probably heard something about a certain Google memo, in which a Google engineer attempted to argue that the company was putting too much emphasis on diversity.

The memo quickly went viral, first within Google, then around the tech-sphere, and finally across the country. But somehow, amidst the storm of tweets, posts, and think-pieces on the subject, the most important points got lost: why team diversity matters in the first place, and what startups and other companies can do to make sure they’re building the strongest, most diverse, most kickass team they can.

So, we decided to devote a session of Startups Live to talking about exactly that. Joining us for this session was Diane Flynn, co-founder and CEO of ReBoot Accel, a career accelerator for women. Needless to say, Diane is a huge advocate for building diverse teams, and she had some awesome perspective on how to build diversity into your company’s DNA from day one.

The Deal With Team Diversity: Building a Diverse Team

WHY DIVERSIFY?

If you take nothing else away from this article, take away this: team diversity is about much more than checking a box or minding the p’s and q’s of “political correctness.” Making diversity a priority on your team isn’t just the “right thing” (which, by the way, it totally is) – it’s the right thing for your business.

Research abounds showing that upping your team’s diversity brings a whole raft of benefits, from greater innovation to higher ROI and even longer staying power. With benefits like that, the question isn’t “Why would you want a diverse team” – it’s “why wouldn’t you?”

Let’s go back to Google. Critics of Google’s diversity initiatives argued that, by implementing these programs, Google was sacrificing the quality of their product – and the future of the company. But let’s think about that for a second. We’re talking about the most sophisticated data operation in the world. Do diversity detractors really think that Google would do anything if the data didn’t support it?

Google may be a leading voice for social progress, but at the end of the day they’re still a business, and they wouldn’t do anything they didn’t think was in the best interest of their company. If Google thinks a push for greater diversity is worth the investment, the startup world should probably take note – and follow suit.

DIVERSIFYING DIVERSITY

When we think about team diversity, particularly in startups and in tech, we tend to think along two major axes: race and gender. But while those two categories are definitely key, it’s important to think expansively when you’re evaluating diversity on your team.

“The goal of increasing team diversity is to bring as many different perspectives and  experiences to the table as possible.”

“I like to think of diversity in many ways – gender, sexual orientation, race, age,” says Diane Flynn. “I also like to look at the cognitive diversity that comes from different life experiences, like raising a family, pausing a career and other factors.”

Ultimately, the goal of increasing team diversity is to bring as many different perspectives and experiences to the table as possible. The more areas you can find to add dimension to your team’s experience, the more dimensional your team’s thinking will become.

Would Your team Pass The AIRBAG TEST?

We’ve listed a few of the benefits that come with increasing your team diversity. But it can be equally helpful to look at what can happen when there’s not enough diversity on a team.

Diane brought up one famous example of what can go wrong when you don’t have diverse perspectives at the table.

Years ago, a team of automotive engineers was testing airbag safety in a vehicle that was about to hit the market. But the engineers never tested the airbags for the dimensions of women and children. “Women and children were dying because airbags weren’t designed for their height and weight,” Diane says.

“The more diverse your team and the voices contributing to the decisionmaking at your company, the more likely your team is to spot the airbag problem with your product.”

One possible explanation for the oversight: the teams responsible for building and testing these cars were made up entirely of men. If a woman (or three, or five, or twenty) had been involved in the engineering process to begin with, the error may have been spotted sooner, and hundreds of lives could have been saved.

Another more recent example of the pitfalls of lack of diversity comes from the tech world. Last year, Snapchat came under fire when it introduced a filter that bore a disturbing resemblance to racist depictions of East Asian people. The Snapchat team claimed the filter was an homage to anime characters. But East Asian critics looked at it and saw something different. It’s not hard to imagine that, if someone of Asian descent had been on the team and felt empowered to speak up, they might have raised the issue and the whole fiasco could have been avoided.

Granted, the Snapchat story ends with far less dire consequences. But it was still a no good, very bad day for the Snapchat team. It forced them onto the defensive, and diverted their energies toward damage control and away from the next awesome thing they wanted to build.

Moral of the story: the more diverse your team and the voices contributing to the decisionmaking at your company, the more likely your team is to spot the airbag/racist filter problem with your product – and the stronger your product will become.

DIVERSITY ISN’T A SEASONING – IT’S THE WHOLE RECIPE

Hopefully by now you’re convinced that making team diversity a priority at your company is worth it. So the next question becomes: what steps can you take to ensure that you’re building the most awesome, diverse, and kickass team you can be?

Step one: make sure you’re building diversity into your hiring processes right out of the gate.

“It’s important to include a variety of candidates in your interview pool,” Diane says. “Some companies won’t interview unless the recruiter brings at least 30-50% women to the table, for instance, or people of color.”

“Left to our own devices, we tend to think we ‘click’ best with the people who remind us of ourselves.”

Once you plant that seed in the early round, make sure you carry it through all the way to the final rounds of interviews. “Many companies require that an individual from an underrepresented background be included in final round interviews,” Diane observes.

It’s important to note that ensuring diverse candidates are included in your later rounds of interviews doesn’t mean lowering your standards when it comes to the skills and qualifications you’re looking for. But a funny thing happens when underrepresented candidates make it into those final rounds of interviews, Diane says. “Oftentimes, they prove to be the best candidate.”

Above all, it’s important to be intentional about making diversity a priority in your hiring practices. That’s particularly key – and particularly challenging – in the early stages of a company, when your team is small and you’re making the majority of the hiring decisions yourself. We all want to work with people that we “click” with. But left to our own devices, we tend to think we “click” best with the people who remind us of ourselves.

The solution: be proactive about hiring people who are different than you, and making sure your own unconscious bias isn’t getting baked into the selection process.

CONCLUSION

Diverse hiring practices are key, but diversity initiatives don’t end once a new hire walks in the door. It’s important to pull that focus on diversity through all aspects of your company culture.

“Having shared values like integrity, respect, high levels of service, excellence, and response time are critical to hiring decisions.”

A great place to start: by being open with your team, customers, partners, and potential hires about the fact that you’re pursuing diversity, and why it matters. “An increasing number of companies are self-reporting diversity numbers,” Diane says. “Bringing these into the public light helps the entire company focus on improving metrics in key areas.”

One final thought: as important as diversity is to building a strong, dynamic team, there are a few areas where it’s definitely important to be on the same page. “Having shared values like integrity, respect, high levels of service, excellence, and response time are critical to hiring decisions,” says Diane.

The good news: those qualities come in every shape, size, and color of the rainbow.

GOT IT. WHAT’S NEXT?

Want a real-world example of the consequences of diversity (or lack of it)?
Check out our chat with Michel Feaster about overcoming gender bias in tech.

Looking for more tips on how to build your company culture for success?
Hear Kim Malone Scott talk about Cracking the Culture Code.

Need more guidance on setting your company culture?
Get Dave Kashen’s tips on setting your company culture from day one.

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shaha 340

Good idea

Reply2 years ago

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