Using Design Thinking to Ideate Diversity & Inclusion Strategies
THE ASK
Despite efforts, women still make up only 25% of the technology workforce; Black or Latino professionals are just 15% of the industry.
In 2018, Dropbox, Inc. launched the Better Together Summit, bringing together Diversity & Inclusion professionals across the industry to tackle common challenges.
OUR PROCESS
The Cee Suite was engaged as an external facilitator to help create a high-impact and engaging summit for more than 15 technology companies.
Through a series of meetings, we worked with Dropbox to brainstorm priorities and innovative ways in which we might develop solutions to the industry’s challenges.
We decided to use design thinking, typically an ideation process for technology, engineering or product development, to help the participants spark ideas around recruiting, engagement and retention.
WHAT WE DELIVERED
Over the course of the half-day summit, more than 100 ideas were generated, including:
Company-wide allyship training
Partnership with other organizations to share ‘near-miss’ candidates
Sourcing technology candidates from non-tech companies
Here’s how we did it:
‘How Might We’ brainstorming challenge: participants worked in teams to develop strategies for expanding the pool of technology candidates.
‘The Fishbowl’ debate: participants weighed Deloitte's decision to phase-out their ERGs, helping us to explore new ideas and perspectives for meaningful employee engagement.
‘Design for Human’ (empathy) exercise: teams used personas to design initiatives to address real-life challenges and develop new retention strategies.
TESTIMONIALS
“The Cee Suite’s ability to bring our ideas to life and her insight into what would resonate with the audience [was very helpful]. They are a wonderful collaborator, detail-oriented, and an idea generator. They empowered us to drive the direction of our workshop while bringing the details of our ideas to life. They facilitated the workshop with ease, flexing to the needs of the audience and building on the goals for the day. Our [summit] was a huge success because of their partnership. We couldn’t have done this without them.” - Dropbox, Inc
“There are so many gems, nuggets that I took away from this. Most D & I events only scratch the surface on content, but this summit allowed us to get real and really discuss what can be done. This was the D & I event I have been waiting for. Onward.” - Summit Participant