T e manual outlines specifi c steps in order to
achieve the end goal of an inclusive work culture. After taking stock of your organization’s culture, determine whether or not action is necessary (in most cases it is). T e next step is to gather and analyze information. Diversity metrics, employee surveys, anecdotal observations, and billable hours are all game. T e next step is asking: How does one remove
the structural barriers to inclusiveness? T ese include intangibles that are critical to advance- ment. Examples include a lack of informal or formal networking opportunities, information from internal networks, work assignments that build skills, mentoring, and sponsors, training and development, and substantive contacts with clients. “T e biggest barrier to inclusiveness is inertia,”
Lake says. “We have found exceptional support from the fi rm’s leadership who, to a person, is interested in improving our fi rm’s diversity and inclusion. T e barrier that we refer to as inertia is that old way of focusing primarily on diver- sity in recruiting to solve the riddle of creating a more diverse workplace. It is inadequate by itself. Overcoming the idea that hiring a diverse workforce will ultimately result in a diverse workplace is very much ingrained in many legal workplaces, and that is probably true of Lathrop & Gage for some time.” Change is required on two levels. Organizations need to
“from having diversity as the goal to having inclusiveness as a goal, and that requires conversations, education, and diligent practice of inclusiveness principles outlined in the Inclusiveness Manual. T e same conversation, education, and diligence necessary to overcome inertia also create a culture that allows everyone to be in it together.” Once an action plan is ready it needs to be supported by
everyone in the organization, especially top management. Everyone has some responsibility for diversity and inclusion. It should be built into job duties, evaluations, and compensa- tion decisions.
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KATHLEEN NALTY, THE DEVELOPER OF THE INCLUSIVENESS MANUAL What does Lathrop look like a year after implementing the
change policies and procedures. Individuals need to change behaviors to allow the policies and procedures to work. “We are changing our fi rm culture,” Lake continues,
plans outlined in the manual? “It does not look substantially diff erent, but it does have a diff erent understanding of what our goals should be in the diversity and inclusiveness arena,” Lake says. “T e inclusiveness eff orts are in their beginning stages and have yet to bear fruit in terms of retention and certain other inclusiveness benchmarks. “We have had success. For example, we revamped our asso-
ciate evaluation process to incorporate many of the CLI prin- ciples, and we are currently working to retool the mentoring program to be more sponsorship-oriented than the traditional mentoring approach. T e diff erence between sponsorship and mentoring is explained in the CLI Manual, but in short it involves a senior attorney taking a greater personal stake in the development and involvement of young attorneys in areas that really matter, such as marketing, signifi cant roles in legal work, and involvement in fi rm leadership.” T ere is a Japanese proverb that sums up inclusion per- fectly. “None of us is as smart as all of us.” D&B
MAY/JUNE 2012 DIVERSITY & THE BAR®
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