Building capacity: Navigating organizational opportunities as if they were a subway system

8th Annual NW Diversity Learning Series (2006)

Session One Summary:
Interpreting the Subway Map: How White Men's Values Influence Organizational Culture and Impact Access to Opportunities

By Barbara Deane

This first session of the 2006 NW Diversity Learning Series (February 17, 2006) began with a video clip of the movie, Apollo 13. Presenter Bill Proudman asked us, the participants, to observe the communication of the all-white NASA scientists and technicians (actors) who were discussing how to resolve the problems with the Apollo 13 spacecraft orbiting the earth. The resolution could mean life or death to the astronauts aboard. Bill instructed us to notice both the spoken and unspoken messages and agreements operating among the men in this scene.

The participants identified more unspoken messages and agreements than spoken ones:

• Data ruled in their work environment; the men solved problems by relying pretty much exclusively on data.
• Men directly challenged each other looking each other in the eye.
• Shouting was the way you got heard.
• Respect for hierarchy: no one argued once the decision about what to do was made, they all moved quickly to task.
• They believed the solution was possible.
• The crisis brought them together.
• They looked alike, short haircuts, dressed in similar styles (white shirts).
• Power was everything.
• Fear and uncertainty seemed to pervade their outlook [but no one spoke of it directly].

Participants also noted the following spoken messages and agreements:

• Failure was not an option, stated by the leader.
• They indicated they were hesitant to try things never tried before.
• They spoke to each other using mainstream English language.

Bill Proudman used this exercise to clarify that white men, like any other cultural group, operate with assumptions, agreements, and language that tell them what to expect and how to behave in the world. Although white men grow up bathed in this culture, it may be invisible to them (Bill made the comparison to a fish out of water - a fish doesn't know he is in water until he's removed from it). Bill says white men are often surprised to discover that their way of doing things is not shared by people from other cultural groups.

Pat Dreckman, Bill's co-presenter, and a former executive with Shell Oil Company (ret.) shared his experience learning about himself as a white man and a member of the white-male cultural group and how it affected his career.

"I had a lot of access to opportunities as a white man, but I didn't realize it," Pat said. While at Shell Oil, he reported for 20 years to a neighbor of his, and he confessed that at first, he denied that an Old Boy Network existed, or that it had helped his career. As he progressed up the ladder, he noticed there was little give and take - that is, little dialogue among the men - particularly when it came to staffing decisions. He realized that more conversation was going to be needed if staffing decisions were to become more inclusive.

Pat also spoke about relationships. He explained that what he saw in the Apollo 13 clip were men being in relationship with each other. He emphasized that relationships are very important at work, but he said it's a myth that relationship building is somehow easier if you're white and male. Pat said he realized that it was imperative for him, as an executive, to have a network of women and people of color; this network provided relationships with people that could advise him and that he could learn from.

Session outcomes

The outcomes for this session were as follows:

1. Understand the similarities between the values of many organizations and the values attributed to white men as a cultural group.
2. Enhance awareness and understanding of white male values (on a group level) and their influence and impact on personal values, individual behavior, and organizational culture.
3. Gain a set of strategies and tools to more readily recognize values (espoused vs. real) operating in your organization's culture that help and/or hinder career development, access and opportunity.
4. Strengthen your ability to intervene when values, either personal or organizational, unintentionally put up barriers or obstacles, and what to do to navigate through or around them effectively.

What is white male culture?

Bill Proudman defined culture as the "rules of the road, the way things are, the water some people live in and never have to leave."

He said culture describes the "shared characteristics of a group," but it does not describe individual behavior and actions on a daily basis - what individuals within a group will do and how they act will vary.

Bill described the most important characteristics of white male culture as:

• Rugged individualism (vs. collectivism - i.e. more of a group orientation)
• Low tolerance for uncertainty/ambiguity
• Focus on action over reflection (doing over being)
• Rationality over emotion
• Time is linear and future focused
• Status and rank over connection and partnership.

Pat offered his experience regarding emotionality in communication. He said that he learned in his family that speaking with emotion was okay, it showed you cared. "If you are going to participate in diversity work, you must speak with emotion, in a heartfelt, meaningful way," advises Pat.

The origins of white male culture can be traced back to England, the British Isles and Northern Europe. Bill described the dominant characteristics of the culture in the United States as being middle or upper class, able-bodied, heterosexual, Christian and college educated. Of course, all white men don't fit these characteristics, so those with a different social class upbringing, religious affiliation, place of origin, etc., have to work harder to assimilate into the culture.

Becoming aware of white male culture

Bill asked Pat when he first became aware of having a culture as a white man inside the corporation. Pat said he discovered his culture when he decided to champion diversity as part of the hiring process at Shell. At that point, he believed that if he got women and people of color into the pipeline, he would be able to hire a more diverse workforce. But he discovered that getting people and keeping them were two different things.

To find out why it was so difficult to retain people, Pat began conducting exit interviews. During this process, he realized that people leave a company much more frequently for reasons other than money. He said people leave because they don't feel a part of the organization, which involves a whole range of culturally-related issues. Not getting enough access to opportunities is one of these issues, he said. He found it difficult to persuade people that opportunities really existed in the company because they know they have to fit in first before they can ever hope to succeed.

"You get enculturated into the white male culture without realizing it," said Pat. "People of color are there in the organization because they have assimilated to my culture."

White male culture merges into organizational culture

One of the first places to begin analyzing a culture is with its values. Bill defined a value as "something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable."

Values provide the infrastructure, or the belief system in a culture, and from this belief system come the appropriate behaviors.

Bill described three important values of white male culture and the corresponding behaviors emanating from these values.

Building from these three examples of cultural values and related behaviors, Bill asked participants to describe their organizational cultures - what might be obvious to outsiders as well as what might be more subtle/invisible to long timers. Then he asked participants to answer two more questions:

1. What are some of the values your organization spawns as a result of that culture - both written and unwritten, intentional and unintentional, visible and hidden?
2. What behaviors are derived from these values - personally (actions) and organizationally (policies, procedures, practices, patterns)?

Organizational values & behaviors: Participants' responses

Participants shared the following organizational values and behaviors in the large-group discussion following a small-group exercise:

The impacts of organizational culture (values & behaviors) on people

For the last step in the learning process, Bill asked the participants to discuss how their organizational culture impacts them, particularly in terms of access to opportunities and career development. For this exercise, we were divided into four Caucus Groups: women of color, white women, men of color, white men.

We have posted a separate document that describes the results of each of the Caucus Groups. Overall, women of color, men of color and white women identified different kinds of impacts than those from the white men's group. [Impacts of Organizational Culture on Caucus Groups].

Bill used a fishbowl (a circle of people in the center of the room) as the method to debrief the Caucus Groups. The fishbowl started out with at least one member from each Caucus Group, and participants were invited to enter, share their thoughts, and leave the fishbowl at their own choosing.

During the fishbowl, a number of observations and insights were shared, some very heartfelt.

Three individuals' comments seem to provide good summaries of this dialogue.

To some degree, we are all victims of culture. In every [Caucus] group, it shows that change is happening, the rules aren't clear.

This exercise was a learning process, it helps us discover that we are all alike, that we all want the same things - we just go about getting those things differently. Training like this is important to help us cross the bridges.

I appreciate learning about ourselves in terms of sameness and differences - how do we value both simultaneously?

Conclusion

Although good work was done in this session, many felt we had just begun. The fishbowl exercise was just getting started when time ran out.

However, this was anticipated. The design of Session Two of the Series, to be held on March 23, will continue the learning and dialogue from Session One. Knowing that organizational cultures impact people differently, how can employees and managers initiate and have conversations that address these impacts on people's access to organizational opportunities and career development?

The 2006 NW Diversity Learning Series (now in its 9th year) focused on the theme, Building Capacity: Navigating organizational opportunities as if they were a subway system.

Using the metaphor of a subway system, each of the six-bi-monthly morning seminars explored some of the ways that access to organizational opportunities and career development are hidden and therefore more difficult for women and people of color, as well as people who speak English as a second language, to utilize. The purpose of this Series was for everyone to become more aware of organizational culture and how it impacts building people's capacity, and for everyone, managers and employees, to become better at navigating these cultural obstacles along career paths.

For more information about the NW Diversity Learning Series, please visit the Series section of our website.

2006 Series Sponsors:

Gold Sponsors:

Silver Sponsor:

Bronze Sponsor:

Supporting Sponsors: