Episode 83: D&I Critical to Strong Organizations

Welcome to the Workplace, a podcast by Cal Chamber. I'm Alan Zarenberg, President and CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce. And today on the podcast we are fortunate to be joined by Dr. Jessica Milam. Dr. Milam is a diversity and inclusion advisor to the U.S. navy. And thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Milam. But let me just for our listeners, I recall from many, many years ago my days in the military, that there is.

How my inclusion and diversity training went and how I thought it was one of the most comprehensive programs that I had been involved with. And when this has become front and center for the business community and the private sector, I recalled my days. And I don't think there's probably not an overstatement to say a more diverse workforce in the world than the US Military. And so think we can all learn a lot to deal with bias in inclusion and diversity from Dr. Milam, who's the inclusion and diversity advisor to the US Navy, and Dr. Milam, or Jess, as you like to be referred to. So how important is diversity and inclusion to the US Navy and what role do you play in developing that strategy and implementing that?

Oh, thank you so much, Alan, and thank you for your service. I think you are exactly right. The Navy is such a diverse organization, as diverse as our mission set. If you think about it, we operate in every environment from undersea to space. We're in the information domain and of course all over the seas. The people in the Navy come from around the world, rural, urban, suburban environments with many different cultures, histories, perspectives and ways of thinking. We bring diversity to the fight. It's really our war fighting advantage. And diversity alone is not the answer. Without inclusion, diverse perspectives can lead to friction and conflict of thoughts and opinions. We really need inclusion to actively engage all the perspectives to come up with creative solutions and problem solving. That's really giving Navy a war fighting advantage right there.

I think. You know, people talk about diversity, but I think you explained it very well there. And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but maybe you can elaborate on that, that inclusion is a critical element to making sure that diversity, you take advantage of diversity.

That's absolutely right. Really, to achieve our top war fighting performance, we need our leaders tap into the energy and the capability of an actively inclusive team. That's why Navy puts inclusion first. So we're leveraging our diversity to reach our peak potential and maintain that advantage over our adversaries. You know, different perspectives shine light onto our blind spots and they help us see things that we wouldn't otherwise see. But we have to have the conditions so that people are open to those diverse perspectives.

So we know, I mean, as we discussed and you know, as you said, the members of the military come from all over the country and the world. How do you incorporate that? What is the strategy? How do you talk about that? How do you train people to be open to people's other races, other genders, other ethnicities and other religions? How do you go about doing that so that people are inclusive? And you already have that diverse workforce?

So, Alan, I think we would help this audience to kind of talk through the key parts of an organization's inclusion and diversity approach. And I can share that the Navy's approach with you and then we'll talk about the training and education piece, if that's okay.

That's great. Please go ahead.

So I think organizations need to keep in mind that it's really important to have a strategy that's tied to your particular organization's mission, with clearly defined goals and objectives. It's important that there's a cultural mindset through the organization that inclusion and diversity is important to everyone, that it's necessary for strong teams to excel. It's not the job of one office, but something that every person in the organization practices every day. I mean, true inclusion requires a culture of trust and safety where people literally like in the Navy, count on one another for their life and with their life. So to grow that trust requires a person to be open minded and to listen and learn about others perspectives and apply that knowledge to their work and to their relationships. In that kind of culture, sailors feel a true sense of belonging and the ability to bring their authentic self to work. Let's face it, we spend a lot of time at work, right? We need to be ourselves when we're there. So in the Navy, we support that culture. And if it needs to change, we have policy levers and legislative levers to, to pull on to really have that policy, support the culture. I'll get into details about the education and training piece that the Navy uses. But that's important for the entire organization to have those kind of fundamental inclusion and diversity competencies for your whole organization. And maybe more nuanced and specialized training for the IND practitioners, the people who are really practicing inclusion and diversity every day and helping their units and their leaders do that as well. It's opportunities for knowledge sharing and really practicing and implementing the skills that we teach during this kind of training on a daily basis.

It's one thing to have inclusion and make sure you have training for all Your rank and file, your enlisted people, your officers. But it sounds like it's crucial that the management, whoever that is, adopts this and carries this message forward on a sustainable basis of inclusion.

Absolutely. It's really important at all levels. But every organization really needs that authentic leadership engagement. Right. Your top leaders as role models and examples of being inclusive leaders. In the Navy, our top community, like the people in charge of submarines and then someone else in charge of the aviation, they meet with our Chief of Naval Operations, who's like our CEO twice a year, and they discuss their community's leader development kind of pathway and framework. And that includes how they're building leaders of character confidence in that particular community, that particular field, and also their inclusion and diversity initiatives. And that communication has to then work its way throughout the entire fleet. It's one thing to have at, you know, at the very top levels, but to a sailor on a ship every day, the person that they, they spend the most time with, their team. Right. And their immediate supervisor. So those, those are the, the people that make such an influence on that sailor's day. Their decision to stay in the Navy. Right. Their decision to go for that promotion, to seize that developmental opportunity, everyone in that sailor's chain of command needs to be trained on the importance of inclusion and diversity.

It sounds like to me what you're saying is you have to make this part of the culture of your organization.

Absolutely. So Navy members are introduced to, we have the culture of excellence is what we call it. And Chief of Naval Operations leads this. It's a Navy wide approach that really empowers the fleet to achieve war fighting excellence by fostering physical, psychological and emotional toughness, promoting organizational trust and transparency, and ensuring inclusion and connectedness among every sailor, every family member and civilian throughout their Navy journey. So Navy members are introduced to this culture of excellence, inclusion, diversity, core competencies when they enter the Navy, educational efforts develop core competencies like building blocks throughout an individual's behavioral learning continuum. And there's infusion points, be it professional military education or their community specific training, maybe higher education if they pursue that and their professional experiences. So there's variations in the approach to meet the unique needs of our workforce within all these different communities. But there's a consistency of the inclusion and diversity core competencies that are taught through this professional military education. And that really helps solidify, depending on whatever level that sailor, that officer, that civilian is, that they're getting exposed to those ideas that they can then practice throughout the fleet. So the way the Navy kind of looks at their IND or our IND training is an individual piece and an organizational piece. Right. We talked about it before. People come in from all walks of life into the Navy and they have diverse opinions and they may or may not have been exposed to other ways of thinking. They may or may not understand some of the historical and social, political ways that people have been classified, how there may have been limitations put on certain groups and maybe privileges and benefits sustained by other groups. So there's a period of kind of self reflection and self critique that has to happen first. And then moving on to tools to, like you mentioned, actively disrupt bias and an understanding of what vocabulary to use when somebody should, you know, stand up for someone else and when they should take a step back and really listen. And that helps our Sailors use their own perspective to advocate for change, understand their kind of lived experience and share it, and translate all of this knowledge and education into inclusive behaviors and practice. And then there's an organizational piece that is where we teach sailors to kind of identify the frameworks in the Navy and understand the policies and be able to see if there's barriers, help them encourage positive behaviors. Right. And stand up against negative behaviors and make that action a place where difference is acknowledged and makes us stronger and better. And inclusion is something that's practiced every single day at every decision table in the Navy.

That's great advice for everybody and for every organization. Do you find you had to create special training to develop these issues, a conversation around these issues? In other words, these are sensitive issues, whether it be race and gender bias and all these things that people may or may not want to talk about. Is there special training to make sure people are open about that and willing to talk about that and willing to understand that?

I think it's really important to make sure that.

Facilitators of a discussion like that. Right. Certainly commanders are equipped to know how to kind of tackle a conversation like that. And I'm not saying that there won't be times that they may feel uncomfortable because like you said, these can be very difficult conversations. And you have to have that level of open mindedness to even understand that there might be an issue that someone has a perspective and has directly experienced a discrimination or a barrier that maybe you've never really thought about. So empathy is a big part. But what we've done is put together some resources and tools to having these necessary conversations. Kind of explain.

The need to set up that safe space so that people can really share their stories, because those stories are so powerful. Alan. That's when you really See.

People.

Understand a different perspective, living it through a told story. We find a lot of power in teaching commanders to sit back and listen and really to understand, seeking to understand. And then of course, there's a lot of podcasts like the one you're doing and videos and training and books. There's fantastic books that are out on all kinds of different subjects that really help leaders have these kinds of conversations. Also, the chaplains in the Navy just did a video series where they kind of modeled some of the talk and they did a great job putting in sailor story. And you know, you have to use those relevant examples for your workforce. It has to be. Can't be all theoretical, right. It has to be a valid scenario to kind of walk through and make sure that people really understand the issues at hand.

So it really helps when people open up and tell their stories so that other people understand and can have empathy for each other. Is, I think that's a lesson here for everyone.

Absolutely, yes.

So you are, I have so many questions, but in so little time. But you, you are an inclusion and diversity advisor to the navies for a private sector business who wanted to go out and make sure. I want to get some expertise. I want to get somebody who's experienced like you are in inclusion and diversity. How much collaboration do you bring? Do you ask the Navy to give to you to develop strategy? How much collaboration is necessary so that somebody could say, well, just bringing in an advisor isn't the only thing I need to do. I need to incorporate that into my culture.

Absolutely right. Just having having an independent office, like I talked about earlier, just isn't enough. It has to be part of the culture, has to be something. Inclusion has to be something that people pract every day. And you know, the Navy benchmarks with the private sector as well, we use industry best practices and our training and our framework. I wanted to share a little bit kind of about our goals and objectives and where we think that's going to help the Navy. But it is a very collaborative field. It's also a relatively new field. And it's not something that you can just start because, say, there's something going on in the world, right. And you maybe have a short term focus on inclusion and diversity and then kind of let it go. It has to be a very consistent, very proactive approach in order to get the benefits of inclusion and diversity. So in the Navy, we really think that every person and every unit will maximize their potential and be ready for really decisive combat operations with this idea of our culture of Excellence. And our leaders enabling their teams to think more clearly, learn more quickly, make better decisions with the benefit of diverse perspectives. So we have three goals, and these are all tied to our business case. And they're all inclusive of the diverse population we talked about in the Navy because it's not just enlisted sailors. There's also officers, and there's a civilian population and a contractor population as well. So our first goal is to institutionalize inclusion and diversity across the Navy. And that's really what we've been talking about, the culture piece, the kind of leadership involvement piece. We set up a robust governance system to make sure that we have meetings about inclusion and diversity, where key leaders around the Navy can make decisions about our training, education. You know, really look at the data and have them inform different initiatives to increase that diversity and inclusion. Our second goal is to attract and recruit the best talent from our diverse nation to cultivate a high performing and innovative workforce. And all of the companies probably listening to this podcast are trying to do the same. Right? We're all trying to be an organization, yeah. Where people want to. To join and they want to stay, and they feel like their voices are heard, that they're a valued member of the team, that they can take that knowledge and apply it to their work in a very engaged and satisfied way. And our third goal, to help that retention is to develop and retain sailors and civilians by ensuring that that inclusive culture and it permeates across our workforce. And all of this is to improve our readiness. That's the job of the Navy, right? To be ready and to protect the nation. We want to reduce the barriers that are out there to inclusion, enhance team performance, be a more lethal fighting force, more resilient teams, and understand the role that bias plays in our daily lives and how to disrupt that when we're making decisions, especially decisions that affect other people, their careers, maybe their families. So that's Mavie's kind of overall strategy with inclusion and diversity.

And, you know, that's great because I think the goals that you promoted there, which is what every company want, is to be able to attract the best talent, but also to keep them. We have tried to make this a bit of a campaign here to promote diversity. You have really identified that diversity isn't enough, that if you not take advantage of that through inclusionary practices and promotions, that you're not going to fully take advantage of a diverse workforce. And I think the lesson you have taught us all today is to make that part of your culture, but to be inclusive and to learn how to do that. And Jess, Dr. Milam, I can't thank you enough for sharing that with us and the experience you've had throughout your career for everybody on the podcast. Jess is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and an expert in diversity and inclusion, both with the Air force and the U.S. navy. And I think for all of us who may be in a position to look at a veteran who comes out of the military, if they've had the experience of Dr. Milam's diversity and inclusion culture, they'll be a better employee in the private sector.

Thank you so much, Alan. It's been wonderful to spend time with you. And I agree. If you think about what certainly a military vet or a Navy vet has learned throughout their career, how they are self aware, they're leaders, they're great team members, they have those tools to work with other people and they change units all the time. So it's not that they've been a part of necessarily one team, but many teams and they've had to work in some really stressful situations. But they're well rounded individuals. They practice inclusion and diversity. They can make good decisions in life and death situations. They can do so in any industry or any sphere in corporate America and be a real asset to an organization's team.

Great. Thank you, Jess. Thank you, Dr. Milam. Thanks for joining us on the workplace. Please comment, share and subscribe to Cal Chambers podcast by visiting calchamber.com.