December 10, 2020
IpX Executive Director True North Calibration
Creating diverse and equitable communities and workplaces begins with listening to one another. I’m white; I’m male, and I’m old enough to remember the evening news with Walter Cronkite. I’m isolated too – I live in Pleasantville, USA, in a subdivision with a gate. I didn’t set out to avoid people who don’t think like me – it just happened.
I’m in an echo chamber: to Walter’s dismay, I like getting my news from the small number of sources who ‘tell it like it is’ (that’s code for news that reinforces what I already believe). I interact with people every day with similar (or nearly identical) life experiences. Listening to alternate viewpoints doesn’t just happen. I believe social injustice in any form is absolutely wrong and completely unacceptable – but I can’t recall the last time I had a real conversation with someone dealing with it.
Creating diverse and equitable communities and workplaces does indeed begin with listening to one another – we have to be willing to exit our echo chambers.
But in the end, only doing counts. Build a bridge. If you’re ready to build, you might be interested in the following:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/white-men-four-things-you-can-do-advance-diversity-robert-e-moritz
https://hbr.org/2019/10/how-to-show-white-men-that-diversity-and-inclusion-efforts-need-them
Michael Benning, Executive Director of True North Calibration, brings over 25 years of experience in various project and operations management roles in the oil and gas and manufacturing sectors. Prior to joining IpX, Michael was the Director of Program Management and was tasked with establishing a Change & Configuration Management competence based on CM2 principles at a tier-1 automotive manufacturer. This global competency included 2 Change Leaders, 1 Change Implementation Leader, 2 Audit Release Analysts, a Director of Change Management, and had direct oversight to the CAD services team. In addition to rationalizing existing product portfolios, and integrating CM2 principles with legacy engineering and operations processes, the team implemented a configurator platform.
