How I Built This with Guy Raz - How I Built Resilience: Live with Y-Vonne Hutchinson

Episode Date: June 13, 2020

Y-Vonne Hutchinson is the founder of ReadySet, a consulting firm that helps companies make authentic commitments to diversity and inclusion. Y-Vonne spoke with Guy about the progress she's starting to see on these issues, and the substantial work that still needs to be done. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Hey, everyone, and welcome to how I built this resilience edition. This is where we've been talking with entrepreneurs about how to think creatively during this really disruptive moment. And in addition to a global health and economic crisis, we're also facing a longstanding racial justice crisis.

The mass movements and demonstrations are opening up a whole series of conversations about race, justice, representation, and fairness. And you've probably been noticing companies big and small putting out statements in support of these conversations with pledges to take action. So today we're going to hear from Wyvon Hutchinson. She's the founder of a consulting firm in the Bay Area called Ready Set. They help companies become more inclusive. Here's an excerpt from the live conversation I had with Wyvon earlier this week, which you can also watch at Facebook.com slash how I built this. And just a quick note, there are a few moments where the internet connection gets a little glitchy,

but it doesn't last too long. So first of all, how are you doing? I mean, we're in the middle of a global economic health crisis, mass demonstrations. It's, I mean, the pace of change and the things that are coming out of us is almost, it's overwhelming, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I talked to my mother the other day who was in Detroit during the 68 riots. And she was like, you know, this feels the exact same, but it also feels different. Because the people, the diversity of people out in the street look different, you know. And so in some ways, I think we're at a real, like, precipice, you know, we're at a point where we could kind of push for revolutionary change right now, or we can not and deny the power of the moment that we're in.

So I'm certainly hoping that it's the former. Wyvon, as you know, the show is about entrepreneurs and you came to the summit. And you are an entrepreneur. You are founder of a business called ReadySet. For people who aren't familiar with it, can you just tell us a little bit about ReadySet? Yeah, I'm happy to. ReadySet is it's a high touch boutique consulting firm. We really specialize in building human-centric management practices that embed diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the business.

Like, walk me through a little bit about your approach. Like when you are brought on by company to work with them, what are some of the things that you start to do? I think very early on, we decided we wanted to be a little bit different. So just to kind of set the stage for you, when I started, companies were kind of in a place where some of them recognized diversity and inclusion were an issue. But many of them thought you could solve the issue with like a one-off training, an unconscious bias training, or, you know, these quick kind of ad hoc initiatives. And we saw that that didn't work. So we decided we were going to be very intentional about really providing an evidence-backed

approach that was customized for the companies that we worked with. So we go in and we take a really close look at what's happening in their organizations. We talk to the people who work there. We look at their policies and processes. And we try to figure out what are some strengths this origin has for sure? How do we build off of those? But where are the gaps? Where are people falling through the cracks?

Where is the culture coming apart? Where is there a lack of communication, a lack of transparency, et cetera? And then based on that, we craft our support for the organization. And that could look like a training, although that would be a training that's customized for them. Or it could be through the provision of advisory support. Or it could be revamping, you know, from the top down their policy. sees, their processes, et cetera, it really depends on the client. I mean, one of the things that is so clear and evident is that organizations that, you know,

have the best of intentions to be diverse environments and to be inclusive environments and fall short of that need to have difficult conversations and need to have uncomfortable conversations. And human beings are kind of wired to avoid that, to avoid conflict, right? Most humans don't want to be in discomfort. It's why so many of us don't exercise because exercise is uncomfortable, bad analogy. But, you know, discomfort is, to me, it seems like we are in a moment where discomfort has to be front and center. I think you're right. And I would say it even goes deeper than that.

I think if you look at the history of work in this country, it's always been segregated, right? It's always been segmented. And so we're working within systems that weren't designed to be inclusive. So even if we have the best intentions, the organizations that we work for, how we structure them, who gives to advance, what's considered professional, how we prove our competency. All of those are biased in some way towards a certain kind of individual. And so we have to undo those biases and that. And to your point, that process can be really, really uncomfortable. And at ReadySet, we like to say it's like a muscle.

You don't, you know, we all think we can show up in a moment and be somebody's hero or say the right thing. But we've also all had that moment where we're in an uncomfortable or a weird situation. And, you know, we leave it. And then two seconds later, we're like, oh, I should have said this. Or I could have handled it this way. And that's, you know, that's natural, right? It's because fighter flight and we're not always practiced in how to navigate it. and we don't want to disturb the relationships we have.

So that is part of what ReadySet teaches folks to do. There's a lot of talk, as I mentioned, about diversity and inclusion, especially in Silicon Valley. You are based in the Bay Area, so you deal with a lot of these tech companies and VC companies. The vast majority of them are not diverse. There's an article in wired in recent days, it was something like between 2013 and 2017. out of all venture-backed founders, only 1% were African-American entrepreneurs. And let's be clear here, this is not for a lack of investment opportunities, right? I mean, there are plenty of black entrepreneurs looking for funding, but they don't have the same

connections or inns or networks or business school types or whatever it is at these B.C. firms, right? Well, I think it's partially that I always think that there's a lot of bias in B.C. We have black entrepreneurs who go to the right schools, whatever that means, who, you know, have access to some of these networks. They also don't get funded. So I think in Silicon Valley, there's a culture of pattern matching, which it's very limiting in a lot of ways. But when, you know, these pictures the next Mark Zuckerberg, they don't picture a black kid, you know. They don't picture a black woman. A lot of times the people that they take a leap of faith on, that they invest in with just a slide deck, I think those days are long gone. But the people who they used to invest in with just a slide deck and an idea, they weren't black. They looked like those VCs, and they reminded those VCs of themselves. And so I think the pipeline and the in-network is part of it, but I think also a big part of it is just the bias towards a certain kind of entrepreneur.

that builds a certain kind of this. You know, I know that you joined Black Tech for Black Lives. It's committed to a set of specific actions in the tech industry. Can you talk a little bit about some of the ideas, recommendations, proposals that you're putting forward? Yeah. So I think Black Tech, Black Lives, it's about leveraging the black community and allies in tech to push for social change. and to create connections between us and the people on the ground, people working in grassroots organizations,

working with the city. People have done this work for years locally so that we can leverage our privilege on their behalf. So we launched with a call to action essentially for black folks and our allies in the tech industry. We really wanted people to move from words because it's super easy to sign. a pledge to actually committing to do something. And so those action items that we suggested run the gamut from build more equitable tech companies, fun tech companies, supporting criminal justice organizations and organizations that are committed to accountability in the police. And what we're really trying to do is build something that feels holistic and informed by community activity.

I think quite often it can be tempting for someone to see, you know, these marches and say, we're going to start our own thing. And there are people who've been doing this for a really long time. And I think the best use of our energy is support their work to build up black folks locally. And that's the last thing I'll say about it is that black tech for black lives is modeled the idea that local action can be a catalyst for broader change. And so we're really focusing on Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area. There are people who are interested in tech for Black Lives and other parts of the country.

We encourage them to use the action plan as a model and to work with the organizations in their cities as well. When we come back in just a moment, if you're still wondering whether diversity training can really bring about meaningful change, Wyvon tells a story of how she saw that happen. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Resilience Edition, and we're talking with Wyvon Hutchinson about how companies can build more inclusive workplaces. Wyvon's consulting firm is based in the Bay Area, so she's worked with all types of companies from tech to health care. And as with all these conversations I've been having, we opened it up to the audience. And just a reminder, we're taking questions for Wyvon via Facebook.

Twitter and YouTube, so please submit those questions. We have a question in from Will. He asks, in a group setting and training and maybe even in their own mind, people believe they are not racist, but then they still exhibit racist actions. And he asks, how do you balance a systemic approach and curb undesirable individual actions? Because he says it doesn't seem like diversity alone is enough. Yes, he's absolutely right. That's a great question. I think, you know, we can start with training, but it doesn't end there. So I think self-education is important. To your point, understanding the ways in which we all are racist, understanding the way that systemic racism works. And I, and you know, I work with organizations in the workplace. So we do

training on systemic racism at work. What does that mean? How do we understand it? How does systemic racism affect who we hire, who we promote, the communities that we're embedded into, people's access to even getting to work? What does that mean? But I think that training itself is not enough. And if you really want to tackle systemic racism and you really want to engage in behavioral change, you have to have structures in place in your environment to incentivize the behavior you want and address the structural gaps that you've identified. So for example, if you are, maybe you are getting black people in the door, but they're not getting promoted and they're not in leadership positions. Well, something is wrong with how those people are being evaluated,

the assignments that they're given, the mentorship and sponsorship opportunities they have, how they relate to their managers. And this step is not necessarily really easy to solve. It's a lot more difficult to look for this than it is to just survey their office and see how many black people you have there. And individually, I would say, you know, a lot of times organizations talk the talk really well. We've seen so many great Black Lives Matter statements, and we've seen organizations that have really beautifully written values on their wall. And a lot of times those organizations are organizations that don't hold people accountable when they're harming other people, or they don't reward people who do the cultural and inclusion work

at their office. And we know the behavior that it gets rewarded and the behavior that it's punished or censored is what really forms the culture. You can say words all you want. You can go to all the trainings you want. But if there's no accountability around personal behavior and how we build relationships and how we live by our values, then those values aren't stick. Yeah, I mean, and in an environment today where so many businesses that use data for everything, You would think, and you can imagine, that businesses can use data when it comes to diversity as well. I wonder whether you've encountered businesses and companies that actually evaluate and hold people accountable to the point where they are evaluated on their job performance based on promoting people of color, on hiring people of color and on having people of color in leadership positions around them, above them. Have you seen anything like that where the CEO is evaluated that way and the CFO and on.

down and middle managers and so on? I've seen proposals for something like that. And I think we have to be really careful too, because sometimes those metrics can like push us into tokenism. I think the metrics to evaluate managers are, you know, pretty old and closely tied to traditional business outcomes. And while those can be valuable, they don't necessarily reflect all of the aspects of a manager's job.

You know, a lot of what a manager does is, this work with people. So I think to answer your question, no. I've not seen companies do that. I've seen some proposals that would encourage organizations to do that, but I haven't really seen it in practice on the ground. I know that you can't necessarily talk about specific clients that you've worked with, but have you had an experience with a company that's brought your team in where you actually have seen them walk to walk and talk to talk? Or be. begin to approach it that way? Yes. I have a favorite experience, and this is like very, very close to my heart, just because I used to work in public health internationally. But we work with a hospital

system in the area. And, you know, no work environment's perfect. I'm not going to say that they're perfect. But what we did see is we saw a dramatic increase in the number of residents from underrepresented groups that went through the program. So when we started, it was something like 12 And eventually it went up to something like 45%. We saw folks graduating who attended our sessions, who were then bringing our trainings to the hospitals that they were working in. We saw people having really deep conversations about racism and medical bias. And again, the culture in that organization, not perfect. They're in the middle of their transformation. But we've seen some really positive indication. And what I really love about this example is that, you know, this affects people's

lives. When a doctor walks into a room and they're aware of their own bias, they're much less likely to treat a patient in the way that can negatively impact health care outcomes. So for me, that's one of my, that's the thing that I reflect back when I think about positive impact. That feels really, really strong for me. For other organizations that aren't necessarily health care organizations on the front lines. We work with a lot of tech organizations. You know, we do see some structural changes, some policy changes. The thing with this work, though, is that it's long and hard. We're seeing this now in the grassroots movement. It takes time to affect sustained change. And I'm always very conservative about saying

we've done everything, you're there. But we've certainly seen positive indication. One of the crazy things about how I built this is, you know, it's a show about entrepreneurship. And a lot of people don't know that actually entrepreneurship has been declining in the United States over the last 30, 40 years. And it's been particularly acute in the African American community. I read an article in the Washington Monthly. It came out a few years ago. And there's some really just very surprising statistics. Like in the – I'm looking at my notes here.

In 1985, there were 60 black-owned banks in the United States. Today, they were only 23. In the 1980s, there were 50 black-owned insurance companies. today only to remain. A lot of this has to do with big companies consolidating, buying up smaller ones. A lot of it is basic lack of access to capital, to loans and investments. And I think this is a big part of the discussion that the demonstrations that we're seeing aren't just about racial justice. They're also about economic justice because they're connected. Those things are connected.

Yeah. So I think it's interesting when we think about entrepreneurship, particularly as it relates to black folks. Because I think when we look at larger black businesses, that picture is right. I mean, we see consolidation. But we also know that like some of the fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs are black, like black women and the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs. But we also, our businesses tend to be smaller. We tend to hit a ceiling fairly quickly. We're not necessarily able to stay over the long term. So I think to your point, you know, there is energy there. And I think a lot of people, a lot of black people I've met who are entrepreneurs are actually saying, I chose this path because I no longer want to be in an environment

where I feel it's a racist environment or I feel unsafe because of my race or I can't advance because of my race. And that was my story. I left a organization that was incredibly harmful to my well-being. And I didn't realize that part that was driven by race them until I could step back and saw it, but I got lucky. I had people who were willing to back me, but I also had a lot of privilege. You know, you talk about those schools and those pipelines guy, like, I went to Harvard, so, you know, I was able to walk in a room and check somebody's box. And a lot of black entrepreneurs don't necessarily have that. And I think it's a missed opportunity as well. I think a lot of times economic justice is framed almost as charity. When we see that the innovation happening in black

spaces, creative spaces, quite often it's just not compensated in the same way that it is when it's done in non-black and white spaces. I think there's some positive indications like I don't know how closely you stay on Twitter, but publishing paid me where people are, you know, doing salary transparency around what their publishing deals look like, salary transparency within organizations, white people and non-black people leveraging their privilege and giving folks just access to the information because quite often we don't know you know we don't know how much somebody's getting paid and how much somebody's getting funded and that's part of the problem um you know i find those to be to be really really encouraging i want to get to one more question from our audience before

we we wrap up this is from claire she asks them what are some ways that organizations can amplify black voices pass the mic without bordering on tokenism or or being performative That's a really great question. There are a lot of really good resources out there right now circulating in response to protests and the movement happening on the ground. I would first encourage organizations to look there. I think the challenge relying too much on the black voices within your organization is quite often black people do culture work, diversity and inclusion work, and a lot of emotional labor. So if tokenization is something you want to avoid, I think first doing that self-education, second, and I don't say this out of self-interest, but bringing in an expert and accepting that the black people in your org might not want to do or speak to some of the questions that you all may have around racism and how to improve your organization. But where you are relying on black people to do that work, that work is compensated.

And those black people are elevated as leaders and they're given power to make the the changes that they're suggesting. I think a lot of us have kind of done this dance over the past few years where we're the first point of contact when something serious happens and we make a bunch of suggestions. A lot of them are ignored. We don't get promoted. We don't get any credit for that work. And we don't get access to leadership positions. And sometimes we're punished behind the scenes for saying the wrong thing. So I think you have to back up that. quest for knowledge with rewarding the people who are saying, this is what we need to do to fix our culture. So those are some of the things that I would suggest. And I would finally say that this

is long-term work for us to really think about how we're leveraging this moment. It's going to require sustained effort. And I think that is also where your business can really move from. We're just talking to the talk to we're walking the walk. We're investing over the long. term and we're putting forth sustained effort. Byvon, thank you so much for joining us for being here on the podcast. Thank you for having me. That's an excerpt for my conversation with Wyvon Hutchinson, the founder and CEO of ReadySet. To see our full interview, you can go to Facebook.com slash how I built this.

And if you want to see all of our past live interviews, you can find them there or at YouTube.com slash NPR. If you want to find out more about the How I Built This Resilience series or other virtual NPR events, you can go to NPRPresents.org. This episode was produced by Candace Lim with help from John Isabella, Julia Carney, Gianna, Capadona, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, and I'll see you right back here in a few days. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.