Monica Mast
Senior Program Manager
Evanta
MODERATOR
Vernice “FlyGirl” Armour
FEATURED SPEAKER
As Evanta hosts virtual town hall discussions for C-level communities to learn and share with their peers during the pandemic and recovery, a new theme emerged amidst the backdrop of protests against racial injustice: how should leaders and companies respond? To help C-level leaders engage with their peers on this topic, Evanta recently hosted a first-of-its kind virtual session on racial justice for executives from around the country.
Moderated by Senior Program Manager Monica Mast of the New York CIO community, the session featured Vernice “FlyGirl” Armour, a frequent keynote speaker at Evanta summits. FlyGirl – Armour’s post military call sign – is America’s first African American female combat pilot in the U.S. military. She was a police officer before joining the Marine Corps.
More than 170 executives from organizations across the U.S. attended the session: “A NEW Conversation: Actively Transforming a Company, Culture and Company.”
The Conversation
FlyGirl kicked off the session recalling a story of her father teaching her to drive at age 16. Her father asked if she knew what to do if she got pulled over by the police. She did: make her hands visible on the wheel. Her younger self asked him, “What if I didn’t do anything wrong?” He said, “It doesn’t matter.”
“It DOES matter,” FlyGirl told the group.
FlyGirl continued: “This is the conversation that nearly every black person has had with their parents, and they pass it onto their kids. We have an opportunity right now to change the trajectory of that conversation — and have a new conversation.”
She posed several polling questions to the executives in the frank and interactive session:
- Have you ever experienced discrimination of any kind? 110 out of 115 responding said yes.
- Have you ever discriminated against someone, either knowingly or not? 55 out of 91 said yes.
- Do you have opportunities for facilitated conversations in your organization? 74 of 94 said yes.
Changing the Culture
FlyGirl described reading about the police officers who arrested George Floyd and how two of them had been on the force for only five days.
“It made me think – if I was a rookie cop, in the police force culture, what would I have done? After only five days of being a police officer? How well do all of us stand up and speak up in the moment, when it’s happening?”
She challenged the group to think about the culture of their organizations. “How do we collectively change the environment in which the ‘good cops’ get caught up? How do you get people out of group think and enable them to speak up?” she asked.
The executives had many questions for her, including:
“How can we keep the momentum from the protests going?”
“What does a good ally look like?”
“What can we do as an organization beyond issuing a statement in support of Black Lives Matter?”
On going beyond a corporate statement, she suggested examining what you are doing inside the organization. Are you conducting town halls, discussions, and focus groups? Have you looked for pay gaps and biases? She encouraged them to go through the process of examination and then take action on the challenge areas.
“If you ask, ‘Is our private face matching our public face?’ and go through that process, then it’s not just a banner on a website,” she added.
Thoughts from the Community
One CHRO commented that HR or Legal shouldn’t “own” the issues of race or cultural change. “It has to be owned collectively by the entire leadership team.”
Another executive asked how to normalize having courageous conversations at their company. FlyGirl pointed out that courageous conversations are by their nature uncomfortable. “The point isn’t to make it comfortable -- the point is to keep having those conversations even though they’re uncomfortable.”
Earl Newsome, CIO/VP Americas for Linde Plc and a long-time co-chair for the New York CIO Community, said, “I’m exceptionally proud of those who broke the silence and joined the conversation to begin the process towards unconscious competence where equity and justice are a habit.”
Mast added that she looks forward to continuing to advance this new conversation at future sessions.
Special thanks to Vernice “FlyGirl” Armour.
by C-Level, for C-Level
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