The Whys, Whats and Hows of Diversity

FountainBlue Survey: The Whys, Whats and Hows of Diversity whenshespeaks.com/diversity

FountainBlue leverages its two decades of experience coaching and managing leaders at all levels to provide strategic Diversity and Inclusion consulting to tech companies across Silicon Valley and beyond. 

FountainBlue created the above matrix on the Whats, the Whys and the Hows of Diversity, and compiled the summary of learnings based on interviews with dozens of HR professionals in the FountainBlue network and beyond in the month of October.

Build credibility, momentum and funding by making a business case and collaborating with business leaders.

• Attaching diversity to a business cause and a business result exponentially increases the likelihood of adoption, funding and momentum.
• Engagement across executives, business units, and geographies also increases the likelihood of short-term and long-term support and success.
• Although the passion behind the diversity cause brings attention, the focus on the business imperatives brings resources and results.

Rise above the do-right, and speak to the do-well.

• Passionate and emotional commitment is essential for success, but that passion must also focus on the business imperatives.

How you think must align with how you speak and how you act.

• Token thoughts and words are noise. Actions without thoughts and words are random acts which can’t bring lasting change. Align how you think with how you speak with how you act.
• Choose a culture that consistently aligns thoughts, words and actions.
• Don’t expect perfection every time, all the time, but do commit to always learning and growing and standing by core values.

It’s always about how you make people feel.

• Make people feel important and valued.
• Ensure that their experiences as staff consistently reflect how important they are to the organization.
• Sincerely invite feedback and input, but only if you intend to follow through.
• Challenge everyone to rise above what they’re doing now, and think to what they can do in the future, how they are grow in position and value within the organization.
• Invite open-minded thinking out of the box.
• Invite, celebrate and reward people to be enthusiastic and engaged, performing far beyond expectations. 

It’s a journey, not a destination.

• Be vulnerable, authentic and sincere in communicating how the team, the company can work together to build a cohesive, empowered, engaged culture, a rewarding user experience, an effective organization and brand.

Please join us in thanking our participating HR leaders for their input on this article. These findings will be integrated into our coaching and diversity consulting practice with more information available at www.whenshespeaks.com/diversity. 

We also welcome your insights and input on diversity best practices you’ve successfully implemented for your company. Meanwhile, our corporate partners will share their best practices in our upcoming programs.

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Who Moved My Cheese

FountainBlue’s October 9 When She Speaks event on the topic of ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’. Please join me in thanking our hosts at Aruba, and our esteemed panelists: 

Who Moved My Cheese – Sona, Win, Kim, Nicole, Partha, Linda

• Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue 
• Panelist Win Chang, Western Region Public Sector State and Local Sales Consulting Director, Oracle
• Panelist Sona Mahavni, Director – SW Engineering, Aruba HPE
• Panelist Nicole Sharratt, VP of User Experience, FICO
• Panelist Kim Willetts, Senior Director, Global Brion Division, ASML
• with opening remarks and panel participation by Partha Narasimhan, CTO, Aruba HPE

Our panelists represented a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives, companies and roles. Because of the many amazing accomplishments they’ve shared and their amazing stories of perseverance and success, I have dubbed them the BTDT (been there, done that) – then Be Humble, Be BOLD panel. They humbly and eloquently shared their wisdom around change with us. 

Take a Long-Term View

• Accept change as a part of life. Embrace the opportunities it unfolds for you, and those around you.
• Plan for a marathon, not a sprint. Create structure and boundaries to make sure that you have the strength, balance, perseverance and willpower to remain strong and centered.

Seize the Opportunity in the Chaos

• Accept circumstances for what they are, but embrace the circumstances to make opportunity. 
• Every crisis has two elements – Danger and Opportunity. 
• Be bold – go for it. Embrace failures as learning lessons and seize the day.
• Be open and curious about what’s next, what’s new. Never settle into complacency.
• Ask yourself how this challenge with the pandemic, or any challenge really, levels the playing field and opens up new ways of doing things better or differently.

Be a People Person 

• It always boils down the the people around you and how they can each rise up in the midst of change, under extraordinary circumstances. 
• The human spirit is stronger than we all realize. People accomplish the impossible every day.
• Put people first in your mind, in your words, but most of all, in your actions.
• Be positive, supportive and empathetic to others. Choose kindness and support. Everyone is going through so much in these uncertain times.

Unite People in Community, Align Them on Purpose

• Share your humanity with others.
• Create platforms and community to unite people, to align them to common causes at work and in life.
• Accept that change is hard and help people help each other to address changes.
• Be a force for good. Make a stand for others, for values, for principles. 

Leverage Technology as a Tool to Connect and Create

• Use tools to build social connections even during a pandemic.
• Show your empathy and authenticity regularly through through technologies and processes.

The bottom line is that through this change, we have remained productive to date, but we need to take care of our physical and mental health and build connections and community, plus leverage technology to maintain that productivity. 

Notes are available online at  and bios are online at .

CNBC, Oct 2020: What the Workforce will look like in 2025 as it morphs due to the pandemic 

Excerpt from the CNBC October article mentioned in the program:

A recent Boston Consulting Group study of 12,000 employees in the U.S., Germany and India found that productivity can be maintained surprisingly well in a virtual or hybrid work setting. This may be a result of many factors. Without long commutes, small talk with colleagues and leisurely coffees in the break room, many workers — especially those who don’t have to worry about child care — are getting more done.

Companies, too, are discovering that processes and procedures they previously took for granted — from lengthy meetings to regular status updates — are less essential than once imagined. And though some executives are concerned about burnout as working from home continues, they are enjoying the gains for now.

But key to success is tracking the pulse of employee sentiment. When analyzing the data, BCG found four factors that correlate with employees reporting continued or even enhanced productivity on collaborative tasks: social connectivity, mental health, physical health and workplace tools.

What the workforce will look like in 2025 as it morphs due to pandemic
PUBLISHED TUE, OCT 6 202010:05 AM UPDATED WED, OCT 7 202010:00 AM EDT
Lori Ioannou @LORIIOANNOU1

Automation Use Cases

FountainBlue’s October 9, 2020 VIP Roundtable: Automation Use Cases

FountainBlue’s October 9 VIP roundtable was on the topic of ‘Automation Use Cases’, conducted online with introductory remarks provided by our host company at Automation Anywhere. Below are notes from the conversation.

We were fortunate to have a diverse range of executives in attendance who shared a wide range of perspectives across organizations, across industries, across roles, across teams. 

It was exhilarating and exciting to hear of all the automation use cases envisioned, designed and implemented across industries by some smart, collaborative innovators and leaders. The future is bright for continued advancements in automation, providing more efficient, more effective support and information. Fundamental to the success of automation use cases is an understanding of:

• the needs of the customer
• the origination of, type of, format of and volume of the data produced
• the processes underlying the solutions
• the desired efficiency and effectiveness goal of the automation
• the role of collaboration in the automation
• AI to rapid process the volumes of available data and understand trends

One of the challenges for producing effective automation use cases is the latency involved in getting the right information to the right places/location/software/person. As we move from 4G to 5G, the latency get better addressed (going from 50 to 1 millisecond). Strategies for minimizing that latency were proposed.

Below is a list of potential innovations around automation.

• Documenting transfer of property and information from one party to another
• Humans training robots how to do what they do on the manufacturing floor for example
• Further integration of 360 and other sophisticated cameras to better understand status before and after an event
• Bridge between the AI which understands the data of the now/past to the Machine Learn – predicting a trend/action/pattern/event based on past data
• Move between just the collection of data (what temperature is it) to the second degree of sensors which summarizes what a collection of data could mean and alerts the user (temperature plus respiration plus oxygen might mean infection)

Below are some best practices for producing automation use cases.

• Test each software and hardware element independently and collectively.
• Automate things that need to be frequently measured, processed in detail, etc.,
• Provide actionable dashboards for the user.
• Curate and collect data quickly and efficiently, filtering out what’s irrelevant.
• Protect the privacy of users, but gather the aggregated data to make decisions, inform users, etc.,
• Frequently track the time-to-value for your own company, and for your clients.
• Figure out what’s true data, and only include the data that’s true within the offering you’re providing.

The discussion turned to the role of humans in automation use cases (process automation vs attended automation). We concluded that humans will never be obsolete and we listed specific circumstances where humans are needed.

• Humans will have to be the decision-maker/fall-guy (or girl). This can not be delegated to a robot or hardware or software.
• Humans decide what data is important and how important for what scenarios. In other words, the automation use case is generally designed by humans.
• Humans need to evaluate the automation use case and make improvements. 
• Humans define how to make the customer experience valuable for each type of customer – something which may not be inherently logical.
• Humans have the creativity to solve a problem whose solution is not logical.
• Humans know best how to bring the joy and passion to other humans.
• Humans will have empathy for other humans, something difficult to program in. 

We conclude by looking at hybrid models, where humans and robots with hardware and software elements are fully integrated. What would it take to make this happen? 

All industries, all companies, all people will be progressively impacted in ways big and small by automation. Embrace this reality and do your own part in leading and innovating so automation is well integrated into your work and life. And while you’re doing it, make sure you’re focusing on the ‘human’ problems, not just the business opportunities which are profitable for some.

Please join me in thanking our hosts at Automation Anywhere, and our participating executives.