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The Anatomy of Change

What we’ve learned from our own gender bias workshop

Erika Hall Follow

Jun 4, 2018 · 7 min read

For the last couple of years, Mule has been running a workshop called
Cut the Bias to help women in design and technology organizations
overcome gender bias. We started this workshop after identifying a
central @aw in most anti-bias training. Too often, even the organizations
that truly want to reduce bias and be more inclusive treat bias as a
knowledge problem, not a habit problem. (Beliefs are also a habit.) They
run mandatory trainings on the assumption that once everyone knows
about the issue, change will just happen.

We’ve known about gender bias for decades (for certain values of “we”),
so clearly that isn’t it. Changing a complex set of behaviors and beliefs
takes much more than letting everyone know that the behavior is a
problem in some abstract way, especially when there are so many
incentives to keep doing the same thing. I know that getting out for a run
in the morning will improve my whole day, but ask me again when my
alarm goes oK at 6am.

(One of the funny things about organizations is that they will talk about
the diNculty of in@uencing the irrational, intractable habits and beliefs
of their customers or constituencies all day long and never say “Whoa,
look, we are made of those very same sort of humans!” with some
exceptions. )

After talking with women from design teams, engineering teams,

administration, and product, in both individual contributor and
management roles, we’ve learned a few things we want to share. Some
of them might seem obvious, but that doesn’t make them any easier to
change. Knowing a bad behavior is common can actually kill the desire
to work for change, because it’s like hey, everyone is doing it.

Underrepresentation creates so much extra work for

people in the underrepresented group
This might be the most obvious of all, but it is worth repeating because
people in leadership roles aren’t getting it and it’s not changing. The
whole point of addressing bias is so that everyone can just come in and
do their damn jobs without having to do the extra work of proving
themselves in every interaction. Sometimes, solutions that seem like the
right thing to do end up exacerbating the problem.

For example, women on engineering teams trying to recruit more

women end up getting pulled into a disproportionate amount of job
interviews, yet are still expected to be productive engineers or risk
getting labeled as “diversity hires” themselves. This also increases the
chance that men will be interviewed by men, which can reinforce
existing biases.

Even just deciding what to wear every day takes more eKort. If you are
part of an underrepresented group in a monoculture, there is no way to
“blend in,” with the dominant culture, so you have to choose how to
stand out.

When faced with bias, people in underrepresented groups Snd

themselves taking on more work unquestioningly out of a sense of duty,
or just being so accustomed to accommodating asymmetrical
expectations. Supporting individuals who say “no” is the responsibility
of managers

Our workshop is based on the question “How can the people most
aKected do less work, not more?” All leaders with a commitment to
inclusion should be asking this.
Status quo bias is huge in successful organizations
This means a lot of people will agree with change in the abstract, but be
extremely resistant to doing anything other than what has worked in the
past. Leadership and management have to be honest with themselves
about their own resistance to change and make an eKort to reward
diKerent behavior.

People are tired of talking about this topic

I know I am.

There is a lot of fatigue around diversity and bias because the ratio of
talking to results is way oK. You know when we can stop talking about it?
When we Sgure out how to Sx it, which takes making it everyone’s
problem. Allies get cranky when they continue to be named as part of
the problem, but lack eKective tools for change beyond just
acknowledging their privilege and taking responsibility for their own
actions.

So, let’s solve for improving collaboration and inclusivity and really
mean it. That means embracing how much work it takes. This also
means being wary of cheerleading “women!” in general rather than
recognizing and representing the speciSc contributions of women.
Reframe the conversation around inclusivity to a conversation about
core business success and then consciously include more people in it.

Having the space to talk about problems is good, but it

has to be tied to action
An essential outcome of the workshop is the set of individual
commitments and plan for action, and follow-through, that comes out of
it. It’s easy to vent and return to the same set of habits, even if those
habits are harmful. Change is hard, even on those who beneSt from it.

Often the feedback we get includes a request for more speciSc “tips and
tricks”. This happens because the work culture has deSned bias as a
problem between individuals that can be solved with information, rather
than a systemic challenge.

You can have a company full of people who consider

themselves feminists and still have structural bias
Here is a classic: the research and design teams are mostly women and
the engineering team is mostly men. Research and design are highly
visible early in the process, but not so much later on. The men who build
the product based on the work and insights of women get the credit for
product success. None of the men who got the credit intentionally “took”
it from the women.

Or maybe the organization rewards and recognizes individual

contributors more than teams, setting up a competition to get credit for
ideas.

Or maybe the organizations publicly acknowledges and lauds certain

types of work and communicates that type of work is more valuable. And
it turns out women are doing most of the essential “invisible” work.
What an organization tracks and measures is what it values.

Or because the organization is really trying to cultivate new talent and

increase diversity, all of the senior people are men and all of the women
are more junior, which strengthens the association between gender and
expertise.

Just improving and rewarding collaboration across the board without

reference to gender can be helpful. And stop, just stop, giving jerks a
pass.

Wow, a lot of organizations have poorly facilitated

meetings
Yes we all know that meetings are problematic, and yet. Meetings are
often important for exchanging information or making decisions.
Meeting participation can be critical to determining one’s professional
reputation and expertise. We know that it can be hard for women or
quieter individuals to be heard. And meetings also have a reputation for
straight up sucking.

What has been surprising to us is the total Lord of the Flies approach that
even some successful, established companies take. There’s no explicit
agenda. There’s no protocol. No one is responsible for articulating the
successful outcome or making sure it happens. High status people are
free to ignore meetings that need their participation. Or the presence of
high status people turns a work session into a political performance.
Aggressive people dominate the conversation. Meetings turn into zero-
sum, in group/out group competitions.

Simply having some some explicit lightweight groundrules that apply to

everyone regardless of status and someone empowered to enforce them
can yield huge beneSts. Kevin HoKman wrote a book. Get it.

If formal meetings are dysfunctional, that increases the chances that

important conversations take place using informal channels.

Informal processes will support the dominant culture

In fast-growing organizations, scale can outpace process. Without an
explicit commitment to inclusivity that is manifested in norms and
processes, any biases of the founding team or leadership are magniSed.
Without a process, interpersonal issues are treated as personal problems
and there is no explicit standard to refer to when a member of an
underrepresented group is treated unfairly, or bullied, or just plain
ignored. Instead of shrugging and saying “That’s just how we do things
around here” leaders need to ask “Are we creating the conditions in
which everyone can contribute their best work to shared goals?”

And it really doesn’t take much process. Mostly it takes genuine

intention, and of course, follow through.

Social activities are often a really fraught part of

implicit job expectations
Social activities can be really good for teams. Drinking with co-workers
can be fun. Equating manditoryish team activities with after-hours
drinking is bad because it will make everyone who doesn’t want to stay
after hours or drink seem like they are not part of the team even when
drinking beer at 8pm (or at any time really) is not part of the job
description. I know it takes some nuance to negotiate this reality.

This conversation around inclusive social events at work and conferences

has really taken oK, which is great, but look at this horrible page I found.

Sweden has Ska, the afternoon coKee break. It takes place during work
hours, and is traditionally alcohol-free. Maybe try that.

Management needs to do separate, diEerent work

You have to have an honest look at problems to Sx them. Nothing kills
candor like mixing people from diKerent levels in the hierarchy, even in
supposedly @at organizations. Managers tend to either propose top-
down solutions or defend the status quo, and everyone else will refrain
from saying anything potentially career-limiting, especially if they feel
like they had to Sght to get to where they are.

However, management understanding and support are essential for

anything to change. So, establishing internal feedback loops is a part of
the work.

And getting people together from the same level across disciplines is very
good for identifying patterns and potential solutions, and just general
we’re-all-in-this-togetherness.

It’s an incremental process

Every individual interaction is an opportunity to establish a new pattern
within a larger organizational context. The path to a bigger, better future
is paved with the small changes that stick.