Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good
Joan C. Williams
Harvard Business Review Press (November 2021)

Here are the “evidence-based tools” needed to eliminate systemic bias

Joan C. Williams’ thesis: To eliminate systemic racism, organizations must change their systems. How? Mistake #1:  Focusing on helping people to navigate systems that remain fundamentally unfair. Mistake #2:  institutionalizing bias training.

Williams devotes much of her attention to initiatives that comprise “a series of 1 percent changes that, with persistence, can help root out the bias that too often subverts our ideals of meritocracy.” She calls these incremental changes as “bias interrupters.” That is, “evidence-based, metrics-driven tools. If a company faces diversity challenges, typically it’s because bias is constantly being transmitted, day after day, through its basic business systems: the hiring process, performance evaluation, the way access is granted to valued opportunities.”

The Workplace Experiences Survey (WES) was developed at the Center of WorkLife Law and is one of Williams’ most important contributions in this book. (See Pages 5-6, 8-10, and 217-218).

Consider the implications and consequences of these five patterns of bias:

1. Prove-It-Again…and again: Some people have to prove themselves more than others do.
2. Tightrope: Some groups have to be politically savvier than others are.
3. Tug-of-War: Bias against a group causes conflict between and among its members.
4. Racial stereotypes: They compound assumed disadvantages of people of color.
5. Maternal wall: A bias against mothers is the most entrenched form of gender bias.

After reading this book, then what? Williams suggests three separate but related (if not interdependent) steps. First, gather metrics to determine the nature and extent if there is a problem. Hence the importance of the Workplace Experiences Survey (WES). Next, use evidence based-tool kits  such as those Williams discusses throughout her narrative. For example, check out the bias interrupters tool kit for recruiting and hiring in Chapter 14. And meanwhile eliminate or prevent bias one incident at a time. Maintain zero tolerance. And keep in mind that many (if not most) people are unaware of the nature and extent of the biases that influence their judgment.

To paraphrase Albert Einstein, it would be insane for C-level executives to use the same (“legacy”) systems and expect different results. Rather, tghey should use pilots, obtain and evaluate feedback, fine-tune, scale, and ensure that a continuous (and endless) process of improvement increases the impact of every system.  Keep in mind this advice from Marhsall Goldsmith: “What got you here won’t get you there.” In fact, it won’t even be good enough to let you remain here, however “here” and “there” are defined.

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Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out another: What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know , co-authored by Williams and Rachel Dempsey. In the Foreword, Anne-Marie Slaughter observes, and I agree, “If women act on the prescriptions in these pages and men begin to understand the deep culturally embedded biases and assumptions that mean a book like thus still needs to be written, the workplace will be a better place, the United States will be more competitive, and the intertwining of work and family life will be easier for all caregivers.”

Williams and Dempsey focus on “four crisp patterns that provide the framework for this book.” They are (as indicated earlier) Prove-It-Again! (a descriptive bias), the Tightrope (a prescriptive bias), the Maternal Wall (both a descriptive and prescriptive bias), and Tug of War (i.e. between accepting or resisting masculine traditions based on various biases). Williams and Dempsey devote a separate chapter to each of the four patterns. Throughout their lively as well as thoughtful and thought-provoking narrative, they provide an abundance of information, insights, and counsel from a wide variety of sources – including their own wide and deep experience – so that their readers will have the tools needed now to navigate the world as they find it.