Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me, and I hope you're having a wonderful time at Women Tech Global Conference 2023.I am so thrilled, and honored to have been selected to speak with you today. To start things off, I want to tell you a little bit more about myself. So my name is Frances Donovan Ryan. I am the vice president of people at Indisio, which is a, cutting edge technology startup that I cofounded 3 years ago. And today, I'm gonna talk about inclusiveness and strategies to build inclusivity and culture into your company with a particular focus on, doing this at small start ups, early stage start ups, and not waiting until till year 57, 10, to begin this work, but actually start on day 1.

So a little bit more about me. Like I said, my name is Frances, and I am a cofounder. I have been, so excited to work at a start up. I started my career in start ups then went to big enterprises, and now I'm back at a start up, and I couldn't be happier. I think it's such an exciting place to work. It's dynamic. It's full of different opportunities. And in fact, I have a a background in marketing and particularly in search technology. And so when I came on board to cofound the the company, I was really doing a lot of the heavy lifting on the marketing side. And then our CEO came to me and asked me to do our people work, our internal business strategy, and help her, run the company in that way.

And it it's been a career shift for me, you know, Let's say about halfway through my career now. So it's been very exciting to have a career shift, and, I'm really, excited to tell you more about what I've learned in that process. Another fun fact about me is that I have 3 passports. In fact, I can have 4, but I have 3, and I've lived, many places all over the world and traveled to over 50 countries and just very fortunate that I have friends that live in lots of fun different places so I can go and visit them, which is a lot of fun. And I'm very glad to be back to traveling, obviously, after the pandemic. And last, last thing I'll tell you about is that I love love love love golf and going to a hockey game, and particularly, looking, forward to more of the Formula 1 races that are coming up.

And the Rugby World Cup that's coming up this fall that I will be going to in France. So that's just a little bit about me, my background, and what I love to do. And, would love it if people in the chat dropped in, where you're based, some fun facts or insights about yourself, and what your role is. And that way, I can help speak to that a little bit more. So why is culture so important, and how would you ensure that you build a culture that is inclusive? So wanted to throw a few facts out there, but the one I liked the most, is actually from a couple years ago, but this number, still holds true, right about true today, that 11 out of 12 startups fail.

This is a higher number, if you have a female founder simply because we, we don't typically get the funding that a male founded, startup gets. But, the three things that contribute to a lack of success, enduring success, at a start up company is obviously a lack of funding. That is the number one thing. Marketing. So this is not just, say, the one pagers you create or the product outlines that you create, but this is really how do you tell the story about what you're building and how it's gonna impact and change people's lives. So it's it's it's marketing, but it's really more about effective layer, concise, and, emotionally charged storytelling. And then last but not certainly least, and also what we're gonna focus on today is team collaboration.

So if you have a group of people that are all doing things independently, there's no culture, there's nothing pulling them together, there's nothing know, you know, working the crazy hours that you work at a start up or putting in your blood, sweat, and tears that you do when you're at a start up.

Employees and and even if it's your friend that you're cofounding a company with and even yourself, no one is gonna stay at work, at a job where they don't feel included, where they don't feel respected and valued, where they're not heard. And, people, particularly in in today's job market and particularly with, the generations that are starting to be the majority of the job market like millennials and now moving into Gen zed, this becomes even more important. So before we dive into some really, key stats and, strategies, I wanna talk about some some high level things that you need to keep in mind before we jump into the work. So inclusive cultures are created by all people, all levels of the company, all the individuals, but they are modeled in particular by leadership. If you spend all this time, you know, creating values, leadership principles, building milestones, and, activities that support the development of the culture. If your employees don't see the leadership modeling those behaviors, modeling those values, participating in those cultural activities, they will not either. They will soon lose respect for them.

They will soon stop participating themselves. And that really causes a lack of motivation, a lack of inspiration, and you're going to start losing employees. And there needs to be purpose first. So what I mean by this is that you have to ensure that the individual has a purpose for their work, and then culture is layered on top of that. If you just have a great culture, if you just have, values and leadership principles, that's great, but that doesn't keep someone at work. It might motivate them. But if they're not doing interesting work, if they don't have a purposeful job, if they don't feel purpose in their work, all the culture, all the inclusiveness in the world is not going to retain work, and that you're hiring the right people for those roles, and then that you're building, cocreating, and cobuilding that culture and then modeling that culture by the leadership.

Something to be very aware of, and this happens a lot, in the tech industry in particular and at start ups is that perks, company perks are not culture, and company perks do not breed inclusiveness. So free lunches, that is not culture or an inclusive practice. Unlimited holidays, although very cool, that's not culture. Pet insurance, fertility coverage, good parental leave. All of these are good things in and of themselves, but do not confuse that with having a good culture at work. It is the very different motion that you have to build in order to have a strong culture. It's not just about the perks you offer. And inclusive cultures adapt and grow. So in year 1, for example, of your company, you may set values that you, that are meaningful and that help the company thrive and grow and be successful.

But those values, might change when you move from 5 to 10, 10 to 30, 30 to 50, 50 to a 100 people. As you include more people in your organization, you really do need to go back, measure, iterate, and very frankly assess, is what we have currently, sufficient enough to create a positive and inclusive culture for the size of the company we have now. Doesn't reflect the population of our employees that we have now. So it's not written in stone. It is malleable, and it is something you should revisit frequently. Something I like to say is that, in DCO, we are creating not a fit in culture, but an adaptive culture. So although when we're interviewing individuals or we talk about the company, we say this is our culture, and we want people who, are aligned with our values to come and join us, That does not mean that there is a culture already fully baked and in place and either you fit into it or you don't, and then you're in the company or you're not.

It is not a fit in culture. It is an adaptable culture. So like I said, as we grow, as we include more people, particularly people that may not look and sound like yourself or like the rest of your founders, you will experience opportunities, and they will come across your path to adapt, to grow, to change, to be inclusive, to recognize the diversity in your company, and then make sure that you are reflecting that.

Don't miss those opportunities to have an adaptive, welcoming, and inclusive culture. Okay. Let's get into the nitty gritty now. So I've broken up this presentation into 3 things, things you can do right away, things you can do in the near term, so let's call that 3 to 6 months, and things you can do in the long ish term is what I called it, which is things you can start thinking about for sort of, you know, 12 to 18 months out.

And I I kept the, the slides light, but I will talk through a lot of details. And if there's anything you want to revisit, if there's, any if you'd like me to create a one pager with more details or you'd like to talk in more detail about certain aspects after the presentation, feel free to reach out to me either on Twitter, Francis Doctor, or on LinkedIn, which is also Francis Doctor.

And message me in those locations, and I'll be able to get back to you and we can continue this conversation, of course. So the first thing I encourage you to do, and like I said, early stage start ups should be doing this right away. I wrote our company values on day 4, literally day 4. I was asked, by our CEO. I think we found it on a Wednesday. It was either a Wednesday or a Thursday. And by Monday, she needed a website up. So we had to, you know, find a template, get our URL, write the copy, get a logo, do a design, and pull it all together and publish it by Monday. And I felt in order to do that work, we had to have values in place right away.

We had to be able to say, this is what we stand for. This is what we believe in. This is how we treat each other. Not just me and Heather, our CEO, or me and Helen, our CMO, but me and our clients, me and our customers, me and our partners. Your values extend out. They extend out to not just be what you operate on within each other, but what you operate on, with everyone that's involved in your company or your organization. So your wider network as well. You don't wanna treat your coworker or a person who reports to you or a person you report to differently than how you would treat your customer. And so in order for us to really launch a company and decide who we would work with, decide how we would work with each other, we had to have those values in place.

So I wrote out, 8 values, and they were based on, conversations I had with the cofounders. There were 6 of us, including myself. And I said, what was it in a past job that you love that motivated you that made you happy? And what was it in a past job or a past company where it made you leave? So I wanted those 2 insights, and I just asked for sort of one, bullet point on of those per person. I put all that on a whiteboard. I group things together. I added my own thoughts, and I wrote 8 values and descriptions of each of those values and published them on the web page. And that is how we started, and that was day 4. We grew from, 6 employees to 12, in a year.

And in year 2, we grew from 12 to, I wanna say, 28 to 30. And in that year 2, we recognized, as I was moved from more of a marketing role into, a chief people officer role that, values are great. They describe what we believe in, but we needed operating principles. We needed leadership principles. We needed to know how are we gonna put our values into practice. What do they look like in real life? What do they look like when we apply them to our work? Now although I had written the values in essentially independently, although I, of course, collected input and feedback, I really wanted the leadership principles to be co created by the entire company. This should be something that we all owned, that we all felt responsible for, that we all felt we had some skin in the game, that we all looked at them and saw our voice, our point of view, who I am as a person reflected back to me.

So it was very important that that wasn't done in isolation just by the people person or by the people person in the CEO. Like I said, you know, culture really has to come from the entire company and then especially So we brought, we have biweekly team meetings. We brought everyone together and took over that team meeting and just started a brainstorming session. I put up examples of leadership principles from companies that I admired and I knew our CEO admired. I put up, leadership principles from female founded companies, from small startups, or, you know, sort of midsize startups to big global multinational companies, to nonprofits. And we took those examples.

Everyone wrote in on, you know, our our virtual whiteboard what what was important to them, what they were thinking, how they wanted to feel in their job. And then I took that all away and compiled it. So I I essentially made buckets, and I said, well, these things are similar. These things are similar. These things are similar. And every 2 weeks, we had a meeting, and people could join or not join. They got to self select. Like, I've put in my 2¢ now, and I feel comfortable and trust the team to take it forward. And then we had probably half the company stay, through the entire process. And each meeting, we clarified and, strengthened those values, or sorry, those leadership principles. So we continue to clarify what we meant by them.

We continue to group them into, similar buckets, and we really continued, to think about what would this be like in practice. What is what is a real life example those meetings, I went through in wordsmith. I went through and tightened up language. I went through and tightened up language. I went through and tightened up language. I went through and tightened up language. I went through I went through in wordsmith. I went through and tightened up language. I went through and made sure that anyone at any stage in their career or a new employee or a tenured employee would be able to read it and understand it and know it right away. So that's how we did our leadership principles. The process took probably 6 weeks, just because we were meeting every other week. And then, as soon as we finished them, we got approval from, our CEO that she was really comfortable with that and and felt like they really represented examples.

I had different meeting. We talked about examples. I had different leaders talk about how, they had put these leadership principles into practice and how they had used the leadership principles to help them make decisions and decide which direction to go. So it was very valuable. And then we published them on our website. We published them in our employee handbook. They're on our intranet. And at the beginning of every biweekly team meeting, we show them. It's the first slide we show. We pick 1 and we talk about it for 5 minutes. So they are not just posted up on the virtual wall, if you will. We we speak about them every other week. We talk about them, and we get examples of how people have used them. So before I go on, there's one thing I wanna cover.

Sometimes, I do think there's often confusion between values and principles. And why do you need both? Because you might think that one is enough for that one simply, copies the other. And I would say they don't copy them. They should certainly mirror each other. They should certainly have correlation. They should certainly, feel like they're from the same family and you're using the same type of language. So values are qualities or standards of behaviors. Principles are rules or beliefs governing one's behavior. So you might believe in, so one of our values, for example, is diversity, and one of our leadership principles is inclusivity. So you can't value diversity unless you're creating inclusive environment, for within, people to work.

And so one is a a value and equality that we admire, and one is how we're gonna actually behave. Values definitely help, like I said, to form those principles, and principles are absolutely based on one's values. And values are qualities principles are rules. So the way I like to think about that is we have a value, for example, that we only wanna work with people that we would be happy to be stuck on a desert island with. We don't want any big egos. And the principle then might be around, that mirrors that we don't want big egos is, one of our leadership principles is, trust and respect. So if we follow the leadership principle wherein we trust each other, we respect each other, we are then, going to be happy, maybe not joyful, but happy and okay to be stuck with, that person, that I work with on a desert island.

Maybe if we have some, obviously, if we have some, good drinks and food and music to go along with it. But that that's the the way to think about them. A value might be a belief that you have, a behavior that you want modeled, and then the principle, is how you behave to ensure that that value can come to life. That's the difference between values and leadership principles. So something you can do today, something you can do today and accomplish in less than 3 months is to write your company values, cocreate your company principles, leadership principles, publicly so that the whole world knows what you stand for and how you behave. So that is something you can do right away. And, again, I really encourage early stage startups to do this. Don't wait till year 5.

Do not wait till year 10 because you will have already auto, like, unintentionally, maybe slightly intentionally, maybe unaware, have created a cult culture will create itself in that time frame, but it might not be the culture you ultimately want. And more than likely, it's probably not incredibly inclusive because that takes focus. It takes dedication. It takes, recognizing your biases. It takes deliberate actions. And if you don't do that, a filler culture will create itself, will mold, and I can pretty much guarantee you that it will not be, the most inclusive culture, you could have created, had you spent time on it and done it earlier. Alright. So what you should plan for in the near term. So you have your values, you have your leadership principles, you have employees trained and devoted to them and, onboard with them. If you would like to have cultural groups in your company, at some large companies, these are often referred to as ERGs or employee relationship groups, employee resource groups.

My personal philosophy is that you should have culture groups. There's so much intersectionality nowadays. I mean, there's always been intersectionality. It's just not had a lot of light shone on it in the past or a lot of recognition. And there are so many different there's so much more, again, light and purpose and understanding of the lived experiences, of 1 woman, of color, for example, versus a white woman is incredibly different even though we both will have some similar experiences as a woman. And so sometimes you might have to join 3, 4, 5 different resource groups, different employee groups, in order to really fulfill all the dynamic parts of yourself. Or you may wanna be an ally of some groups and then, you know, a member of that, of that description of the group, that it's representing. So I may wanna join the women's group because I'm a woman, but I may also wanna join the, LGBTQ plus group because I'd like to be an ally to those, individuals that, are members of that community.

What I have found were helpful, particularly in smaller companies where you may not need 6 or 7 different resource groups because you only have 30 odd employees, is to have culture groups. And so these can these can be based around typical things. Like, we, for example, have a woman's coffee hour once a month, but that's because we really recognize that in tech and in particular in our field in technology, there are very, very few women. And so, our women's group, is open for anyone to join, whether you identify as a woman or not. And, we we do, 2 different things. Sometimes we just have a chat. It's just a time to chat, get reenergized, get some inspiration from each other. And then sometimes it's a space for a workshop or presentation or a conversation around a very particular topic to happen.

It's just voted on or decided on month to month, what people are most interested in hearing or doing that week. But those culture groups need to be started and run by the employees. This isn't something that the CEO says, okay. We're gonna have a, a group at our company for x y zed type of individual or type of community. Let's, you know, let's let's just form it and see what happens. It it really does need to come from the employees, and then it needs to be sponsored by someone in leadership. And then budget needs to be shared with that group so that they can do things if it's bringing in outside trainers, if it's bringing in authors, if it's, running a social activity even for the group, they need budget to be able to actually do things and achieve things within that culture group.

And, also, importantly, if you have, say, you know, a senior leader that's sponsoring that group, you still need chairs. You still need co chairs or, organizers of the group. And those individuals should be compensated. That should not be work they do for free because they feel they need and want that resource in their office. If you are asking someone to do essentially what is a second job, running an employee group or a culture group, they need to be compensated. And you can get creative in that compensation, but it it cannot be, unrecognized free work. So that's a little bit about culture groups and, and how you can think about setting them up in a slightly different way than maybe you might see traditional. The other thing you wanna start doing in the near term is inclusive hiring strategies and practices.

Particularly as a start up or a private business, if you're not public company, there's there's a lot that you can do here. You may not be beholden to the same federal regulations, as a public company, but you certainly have a lot more flexibility and, can do things in a more creative way because you aren't beholden to certain other policies, for example. So something that I have done, and I honestly didn't even tell my team if they watch this, they're gonna find out. I didn't even tell my team that I was doing this is I looked around our company and I saw a lot of people that looked the same. And I don't mean just, all the same race or all the same gender. I mean, even the same background, living in the same area, having the same types of life experiences, the same types of ways they grew up, the same universities they went to.

And this really does happen at start ups because you might found the company with, let's say, 1, 2, maybe, in our case, up to 6 people, and then you're just gonna hire your friends and family. Right? You need to get people in the door as soon as you start signing customers, and the easiest thing to do is hire friends and family, which is very typical and not necessarily a bad thing. But once you do that, you are going to see that you're quite homogeneous, that you have 10 people from the same university, or you have siblings, which is awesome, or you have which I think is awesome, or you have, you know, a group of friends from university who worked on a big project and they all came to the company.

So once you kind of get through your 1st year, that's a good time to start looking at your hiring strategies and practices. Maybe once you close a seed round or once you get a bit more money in the door, and you're actually gonna do, like, what I like to call active hiring versus, sort of passive grabbing people, as you find them, to throw onto a project that you've already signed, and you need help executing.

So, again, early stage start up. We don't have a big budget. We built our own tool to track applicants, and then we just published jobs on LinkedIn. We went to job fairs at boot camp certification programs, not just universities. We went to particular organizations that focus on engineers of color, out in tech, and and other resources that are available, particularly for those people who are interested in start ups. So we you can't just put up a job description and use a line in the description saying, you know, we encourage diverse applicants to apply. You have to go to where those applicants are so that you can talk to them, so that you can sell your business, so that you can hire them. That's the first step. The second step is what do you do when you start getting applicants?

So what I do is the first slate of applicants that a hiring manager will see will be all diverse candidates. Whether that's gender, race, if, if they've attended a 4 year university versus not. Those are the three main things that I look for, or if they come from just a very different type of background. For example, we've hired physics majors who are now computer engineers in our business. We've hired someone who's worked at a zoo. We've hired, people who were musicians and then coding on the side. So if they have quite, a diverse and, let's say, untraditional, nontrivial background, I really, I really take that into consideration as well.

So the first slate of candidates in a hiring manager is gonna see is only diverse candidates. And they always just hire someone from that first slate because they're they're all excellent. You know, every applicant we get is pretty much excellent and on the same level as as each other in terms of, like, skill sets or what they've done and what they've achieved, you know, bar a couple outliers here and there. But if you only put people in front of them that are gonna bring diversity to your company, that is a very easy and quick way to start balancing out inequities that might exist within your company simply through, you know, maybe friends and fire family hiring or just being early stage and needing to diversify.

So that's one hiring practice that I've employed and I have found incredibly successful. Once you do that and you get diverse individuals in the door, if you do not create an opening and inclusive environment, they are not gonna stay. So really be, cautious, that you, have a way for people to both anonymously ask for help, report things that are going on, make sure that they know they can go to a manager, make sure they know they can go to your people person, and really cultivate that open environment, asking questions, having mentors, using open Slack channels, not just private ones, etcetera.

I know we're running out of time, so I really wanna hit on some of these longer term goals. Have a people person, if you can, a people team that is there for your employees. Ensure that you are not just building a HR group that's there to protect the company, that's there to enforce company, you know, benefits, that's there to decide on company perks. Have a people person or a people team that is absolutely 90% focused on being there for the employees, checking in with people regularly, listening to people's problems, problem solving then for them, coaching, being a mentor, doing additional trainings. They should actively always be improving the employee experience, helping employees 1 on 1, helping employees in small groups, as well as bigger groups, as well as ensuring larger company culture. But you have to be there for your employees.

A lot of large companies have missed this or HR groups have shifted to sort of company protectors, you need to

be an employee protector.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, you need to measure, iterate, and report. You're not always gonna find super easy

things to report on, but you need to be an employee protector. Like I mentioned at the beginning, you need to measure, iterate, and report. You're not always gonna find super easy things to report on, but you need to be an employee protector. You need to measure, iterate, and report. You're not always gonna find super

easy things to report on, but you need to You're not always gonna find super easy things to report on. For example, I report on demographics and retention, and, we also have the You Done Goods, reward and recognition program. And so I pull word clouds from that. I pull verbatims from that. And those are the kinds of things we show our board, our leadership, even our customers so that they understand the type of company we are, who they're investing in, who they're deciding to work with, who they're putting their trust in, and that is really incredibly important.

So I just wanna close today with some key takeaways. Having values and leadership principles are crucial for a healthy team. Take the time to do that. It will not take you longer than 3 months. You can get it done, get it live, get people trained, and really start seeing a change in your culture with those things in place. To have an inclusive culture, you need to have an open and radically safe environment. And having a people person that's there for employees is what starts to build that safe and radical environment or sorry. Well, you can have a radical environment if you want, but radically safe environment and respectful environment.

And the more diverse candidates you're able to bring on board, absolutely the better as well. And it's never too early to start this. I think I've said it a 100 times already, but you have to start early. And in fact, it's never too late. If you haven't done it yet, now is the time to dedicate time to it. So we are right on time. I would really love to answer questions to continue the conversation. Like I said, you can reach me on social at Francis d r. That's on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. You're gonna find me fastest on Instagram and or sorry, on Twitter and LinkedIn in particular. So message me, connect with me, and I love talking about this stuff. I'm very happy to be be open and share what we've learned, what's worked for us, but hasn't worked for us. And so I hope to continue this conversation.

I wish you the best of luck in this work. I hope that you enjoy the rest of this conference, and hopefully, we'll be able to meet in person one day. Take care.