The blended approach meets the requirements thoroughly and then overachieves expectations by leveraging synergies throughout the culture shift journey.

Our firm offers two experts with over 35- years of combined DEI, Human Resources, Organizational Development, and Change Management expertise, leveled against your strategic objectives. We believe that our team can work in concert with your team to engraft DEI leadership strategies into your business drivers, ultimately embedding them into your organizational DNA.

Our team is small, nimble, and mighty, possessing strong relationships with resource partners in Organization Development technology, Talent Optimization technology, and Change Management methodology and practice.

How we got here

The Inside Out Effect

In the year 2000, I was asked to head up our Diversity initiative as the new Diversity Champion for our office. It was a non-paid role that I’d have to do in addition to my main job—is anyone in the same situation at your organization? I accepted the role and within a few weeks I was sent off to attend a two-day training in Baltimore. There I met and went through training with the other Diversity Champions from our offices around the country, there were about 40-50 of us. I learned a lot; it was an honor to be selected. I’m still not sure of the selection criteria used but I was thrilled to be amongst those selected, and the person representing our office.

The training subject matter was primarily centered around increasing self-awareness, understanding social inequities, and having people in the majority group better understand some of the plight of marginalized groups specifically in the workplace and workforce. There were a few “in your face” methods used to drive the learning objectives. Overall, it was a good experience, meeting new colleagues around the country as well as working for a company that deemed Diversity important enough to invest in it. I returned excited ready to share the experience with my colleagues which I did in a meeting on my first day back in the office in which we planned our first office event—dinner at an Indian restaurant which was a new experience for most people in the office. The event went great, however if I’m honest, during the two-day training we learned nothing about how to lead this diversity initiative for our respective offices, so I spent some of my time talking with other offices to see what they were doing. To summarize what most offices were doing it all boiled down to three things:

1. Office outings (or potlucks)
2. Recognizing special months or religious days like Women’s History or Yom Kippur
3. Booking Guest Speakers often in conjunction with a special month/day

In short, we didn’t have much instruction on setting up or leading an effort of this importance we had to figure it out. I found myself researching this subject so I could assemble an effective plan beyond the aforementioned activities. Around that time, one afternoon my manager called me into his office and said, “Armers you seem to be enjoying this diversity stuff.” I said yes, I’m researching now so I put a good plan of action together for our office. He said, “that’s good but let me remind you of your main job, I need you to refocus on that.” I said yes sir. I felt a little dejected by the conversation, but I knew why he said it, I had two roles one I get paid for, the other was volunteer. Unable to do both effectively at work, it wasn’t long before the Diversity Champion role lost its momentum and fell by the wayside, and this was happening around the country with other offices Champions as well. In other words, we didn’t figure it out. (Lesson 1: DEI needs a dedicated leader or consultant partner to lead this work, otherwise the momentum you build will be lost when everyone is focused on their main job.)

It would be 10 years later when I came back to Diversity or maybe I should say it came back to me. I changed industries and went to work for a Diversity Consulting firm. In fact, the same firm that trained me 10 years prior when I first began. Much to my delight, I immediately noticed a few things had changed:

1. The field of Diversity is evolving; it was now being called Diversity and Inclusion
2. Delivering Unconscious Bias training was quickly becoming the norm
3. Some organizations began with a culture assessment before rolling-out training

For the next 10 years, I did some assessment work and became an Unconscious Bias SME, delivering tons of Unconscious Bias Keynotes, workshops and trainings. After year 2, I started my own Diversity Consultancy while still consulting with the firm that hired me. In the 10 years, from 2010 to 2020, I worked with nearly 100 organizations, across 35 industries throughout the US and in 13 countries. I was a training machine, training over 100,000 leaders, managers, staff, attorneys, doctors, nurses, highway patrol, etc. for some of the top companies, organizations, state and federal government. In 2020, when the pandemic shut us down it took me off the road and I began reflecting on the decade of work I’d done and begin asking myself a few questions like, “How effective has my work been for driving change?” “Is training alone enough?” “Should all engagements start with an assessment?” “What interventions should come after training?” And “how do we make the training stick, i.e., change behavior?” —just to name a few. The verdict simply put (Lesson #2, Training alone does not cause transformation.)

I began sharing these ideas with a colleague, an HR Executive/former client and we begin dissecting our engagement asking what worked well, what happened internally once the consulting engagement ended, and what things could be done better? This conversation which combined the external view of the consultant and the internal experience of the executive leader we applied to our approach of blending DEI strategy and practice with Organizational Development technology, tools and principles to create a superior offer for the marketplace. (Lesson #3, installing a DEI function is culture change work—a series of interconnected systems, processes, key stakeholders all moving together toward a single vision.). This realization lays the groundwork and provides the philosophical approach to this very complex, yet simple work. Our clients are raving about how the CSC DEI Optimization Blueprint simplified their life, while empowering them with a step-by-step process with clear milestones and measurable results. The method becomes the light beacon a leader can use to head up this work.