Thing of the Week blog post

thing_of_the_week.md

Combating bias and promoting inclusion in the workplace is something we can all agree needs to happen. The question, then, is how?

The way I see it, there are two directions from which change can come: from the top, or from the bottom. Changes from the top come in the form of new HR policies, training, or declarations for more diversity and inclusion work (all of which Pivotal is already doing). Changes from the bottom are a change in culture and a realization that every interaction matters.

What is Thing of the Week?

With that in mind, here on the Tracker team in Denver, we've been participating in Thing of the Week. The goal of Thing of the Week is to make reinforcing an environment of inclusivity a motive of the group, not a task of the affected individuals. We do this by having members of the group change how they interact in some very specific way.

For example, a member of the team brought up the fact that using the word 'guy(s)' as a stand in for a general 'person' can make them feel excluded. Without questioning the fact that this person felt the way they did, we decided to make the first thing of the week "Use something other than 'guys.' Try y'all, everyone, friends, romans, countrypeople!"

The important parts of Thing of the Week

It's significant that the facilitator of Thing of the Week not be a minority of the group. Having a majority member facilitate Thing of the Week removes the burden that usually falls on impacted individuals¹ confronting bias, models what good behavior looks like, and moreover, having a person of the majority (read: power) advocate for those in the minority is a very effective way to create change².

On another level, Thing of the Week is impactful not just because of the things the group works on, but because it makes diversity and inclusion a topic of discussion. At Pivotal Tracker I announce Thing of the Week every morning at standup, and by doing so, signal that this is a topic everyone should be involved in.

After a few Things of the Week, we decided to take some time for reflection and to think about questions like Was this helpful? Did this make you feel more included? Was this easy?

A few examples of Thing of the Week

• guys -> y'all, everyone, friends!
• genderless pronouns for software components
• be aware of how often you hear someone being interrupted
• who do you assume has the information when you're talking to a pair?

How to try this with your team

The formula for creating a Thing of the Week is pretty straightforward:

1. Ask your team about everyday interactions that make them feel excluded
2. Record those interactions for later and choose one to tackle
3. Find a solution to the problem and provide out of the box solutions
4. Make it a responsibility of the group to address that problem for one week, and remind the group every day about what the problem is, why it's important to address, and the solutions you've suggested

I announce the Thing of the Week every day at standup and put a tab in our build monitor so that it's present throughout the day.

As mentioned above, Thing of the Week is most effective when it's championed by a member of the group majority. On our team, the majority group is white men. Additionally, make sure Thing of the Week is consistent and daily. A large part of the impact comes from making sure inclusion is on everyone's mind.

Points against Thing of the Week

Change is hard

The most common critique of Thing of the Week in specific, and changing behavior in general, is that it's hard. It's hard to watch what you say and how you say it. It's hard to question your automatic reactions. It's hard to change.

There's no way around this. You can make it slightly easier, though, by providing simple, out of the box solutions to problems. As a coworker has said, "[H]umans are good at small changes that are so tiny we don't notice them."

At the end of the day, it's up to you whether or not the friction of watching your speech and actions are worth creating a more inclusive environment for everyone.

Who cares about this small stuff?

Another critique of Thing of the Week is that the examples above seem small and ineffectual. Think about the interactions that created those examples. By themselves those type of interactions aren't a big deal, but think about if you hear this sort of thing a few times a day, a few days a week (because it's baked into the culture you live in). That would be incredibly annoying! It would be exhausting if every time you heard guys you had to mentally replace it with people and remind yourself No no, they didn't really mean men only, they meant everybody[^4]. All of this to say: the small stuff matters.

Thing of the Week makes change easier

Changing your behavior is hard. Changing the behavior of a group is even harder. Doing those things by yourself is super mega hard. Thing of the Week gives everyone a venue to express the ways they feel excluded and an avenue to address those exclusions.

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[SOME NOTE ABOUT HOW WE'RE GOING TO PUBLISH THING OF THE WEEK MAYBE]

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If you've done something to promote inclusion in your workplace, please write in and let us know - change is easier when we all do it together!

Twitter: @pivotaltracker Email: tracker@pivotal.io

Footnotes

1. Very often the people most affected by bias and discrimination are the minorities of the group. They're the ones advocating for the elimination of that bias because they feel it most. This creates a double burden because they must 1. deal with the bias and 2. work towards its elimination. ↩

2. This is typically called "being an ally." See https://twitter.com/betterallies for some good info. ↩

Question: Is mentioning feminism too much? I realize some people have negative associations with that word.

Awesome post! I also hesitated about feminism, but only because there are several groups or individuals that might feel less than welcome or included. Perhaps something like "promoting inclusion" or "promoting a great environment for all" instead of "promoting feminism"?

+1 hopefully this extends beyond feminism to inclusion.

I think you could recommend a more specific process - mentioning bringing it up at standup for example.

Providing a list of some of the things we've tried might also be interesting.

Also - great post

Agree about the initial reaction regarding feminism. I think we reach for that because it's easy, we see it, and its right in front of them. The truth is we need to do a much better job of including everyone. We talk about women in tech but we don't talk as often about people of color, religious diversity, people who are differently abled, etc. If talking about women in tech gets us there then I'm all for it, but I hope thats just the beginning.

Another thing I think you could add would be about how, regardless of what a given Thing of the Week is, there is a moment we share together as we start our day where we think about diversity and inclusion. I wonder how much that shared moment improved our ability to combat bias and take a moment to think before we speak or act.

"for the elimination for that bias" should probably read "for the elimination of that bias"
+1 regarding the feminism comments

Generally really like this blog post and appreciate Thing of the Week.

+1 Having a moment to talk about diversity each day makes a difference
+1 Providing a list of example Things

I feel like this blog post leaves out the main thing that I appreciate about Thing of the Week, which is that the person who has mostly been promoting it (Thanks, Cody!) does not belong to a minority group. The fact that it came from a non-minority and encourages non-minorities to police themselves is a big part of what has made it so successful because it removes the burden of calling attention to the problem from the minority group. As someone who is a minority, that has been the biggest factor that has set Thing of the Week apart from other diversity initiatives.

I definitely agree that feminism isn't the only thing that we should be targeting; with that said, I fundamentally disagree with the idea of leaving it out because it might make people uncomfortable. Leave it out because we're being inclusive, not because it might make people uncomfortable. Or, add more examples in addition to feminism so it's not the only one. (Another thought: are there things we can be doing with thing of the week to be more inclusive? We have been mostly focused on including women).

Anyway, thanks for putting this together!

great post, i agree with all the comments above, too.

i think we can be explicit about championing not only feminism and "diversity and inclusion" more broadly, but underrepresented people (LGBT folks, POC, etc.). i'm not sure it would be appropriate to expand it even further, but we have also discussed interactions that aren't necessarily prompted by diversity issues (e.g., calling out what someone is wearing, or other somewhat less explosive issues like that). that might be distracting, but could be worth prompting people to examine all of their behavior.

and i think piper is spot-on. it feels like burying the lede a bit to not at least acknowledge that our team is largely white hetero males (who are all rad).

minor quibbles under "implementation":
-i think the idea of these interactions being a "bother" is too soft and slippery. these tend to be actions that have a detrimental, negative effect, at least enough to prompt someone to speak up about it. i think we can be a little stronger in defining that.
-similarly, why just pick the smallest issue to tackle? i worry that this gives people an easy way out. i think this whole exercise should be a challenge, not a light lift.
-on the same note, i think we could provide a second example beyond "guys," maybe one that's a little heavier?

and again, while it works internally, i still think "thing of the week" is a little too nebulous of a phrase to roll out publicly without contextualizing it each time. wish it could stand on its own more...still don't have a solution for this, just throwing it out there. "inclusion thing of the week?" i dunno.

i'd also like to hear more about the reflection part. what we've learned, why we keep doing it, is it challenging/awkward? i think we can be more transparent.

again, thanks cody, this is all good stuff.

I like the Thing of the Week because we humans are good at small changes that are so tiny we don't notice them. Also, there isn't much we can do about our unconscious biases except to remind ourselves that we have them, and Thing of the Week is great for that.

From a writing style point of view - I would put a heading between the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs, because 1) otherwise you only have one heading, which is weird and 2) headings make text more readable. I'd even like a heading before the paragraph that starts "Changing your behavior is hard", because that's summing up why the Thing of the Week helps. But it's weird to have only one paragraph under a heading. I might even take that paragraph and put it up at the top.

I'd change the heading "Implementation" to something like "How to try this with your team" or "How to implement".

And, I would add a picture. Maybe a picture of the monitor with the Things of the Week.

Response to comments about feminism

I think my read of feminism is broader (and possibly incorrect, but who gets to define what is and isn't feminism? Interesting discussion here) than everybody else's, in the sense of "Patriarchy hobbles everyone" and isn't just about women. Anyways, if that's not the prevailing definition, I'll do different/more.

I've updated the document after reading all your feedback. Thank you for your help, kind people!