Driving Change Through Self-Awareness - A Conversation with Amy Barnett

Amy is an award winning C-suite media executive, storyteller, and public speaker. Her work has been driven exponential content growth at various companies such as Outside, Paramount, BET, ESPN and more. She has also written an NAACP Image Award-nominated advice book for women, and is also an award winning fiction writer with several published and anthologized short stories.

When it comes to equity in the workplace what do you feel people aren’t thinking about? Is there an example you can share that illustrates this for you?

I think that as much lip service is given to micro-aggressions, I don’t think people really process the underlying assumptions and prejudices that often drive micro-aggressions.  Racism and homophobia get talked about in broad terms that are easy for people to deny because they philosophically and even intellectually don’t believe in them. As a result, I think there are often attempts to align intellect with equity, which negates the important process of self-awareness; particularly those who are in positions of power. There isn’t an interrogation around the kind of privilege they have and how they can leverage it to either drive or stop-microaggressions. 

 I think if organizations created more moments and opportunity to hear underrepresented stories, anecdotes and experiences (outside of just ERGs) it would encourage people to look at their own lives and work to understand the extent to which they either relate or don’t relate to those stories. This self-awareness can help contextualize the prejudices underpinning behavior like micro-aggressions which I think is an important step to reducing them in the workplace. I think opening up safe spaces to share diversity of thought and experiences is something that needs to be done more. 

What does the phrase, "culture eats strategy for lunch” mean to you?

We are marching towards a more diverse world and if your organization does not reflect that then you are going to be left behind. This applies to every industry because it will be hard to survive in the coming world without better representation. Right now, there are societal shifts occurring that are much more influential than any kind of artificial people and business strategy. It’s like having teenaged kids, at some point you have to process that their friends have more impact on them than you. As much as I can tell my son what the right things to do are, it really comes down to the influence of who he surrounds himself with and their collective values. That organic influence is important to understand when building strategies. An organization can defend it and talk about it all the time, but at the end of the day, it’s what’s out in the world – the things that make people feel seen and valued will become the leading force of an organization’s success. 

What do you think is changing in the workplace that organizations need to start proactively and preemptively thinking about?

One change is demographics — an increasing number of younger millennials and Gen Z in the workforce will shift the culture of workplaces. The people who make up these demographics were raised in more diverse environments and tend to have more inclusive perspectives. As more and more of these folks who have less tolerance for racism, homophobia, islamophobia etc. become a part of the workforce, the more important it will be for organizations to step up their equity game if they want to attract and retain the next generation of talent. We can see this illustrated in Nike’s solidarity with Colin Kapernick. Other organizations are looking at this and taking notes on the changes they need to make in order to stay ahead of what is most important to their future workforce. 

What strategies, tactics, equity and culture solutions have you personally seen work, and why do you think they worked?

The thing that first comes to mind are old fashioned KPIs. While maybe not the most appealing approach, I've seen it employed successfully. People are incentivized by money, so relating equity back to an organization’s bottom-line through tactics like KPI’s can help. At the end of the day if people are being measured against it and their bonuses are determined by it; it will likely light a fire under them.  

However, in order for KPI’s to be effective, organizations need to be very intentional about defining their diversity and equity outcomes so there is a shared understanding of what the organization is aiming to achieve.  For example, a tech company might say, “We have a diverse staff — 50% of our teams are of Asian descent.” However, research on tech company demographics show that folks of Asian descent are typically in the majority, so this statement wouldn’t necessarily be reflective of the range of diversity the company needs to build in order to be a truly equitable and inclusive work environment. Again, without a clear definition of desired outcomes, KPI’s won’t be useful, but when done right, can really work to advance equity in the workplace.