The BrandLab
Report date
September 2019
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Since starting Fearless, we have created different offerings with the marketing industry. As we’ve grown, other organizations beyond marketing agencies have reached out for our workshops. Target invited us to lead a session at their national agency-partners summit and then invited us to lead 6 internal marketing department workshops throughout the summer and fall. The growth has required us to re-align and re-focus.
We revisited the purpose of Fearless and it’s structure. We are being challenged to think through if we are a mission or income driven program. Fearless is a mission driven program first. We are working on a strategic plan with Social Venture Partners to think through how to connect what we do with what we say.
Concurrently, we needed to examine the profit side of this work and be sure of our compliance with tax structures. We realized we needed to understand how legally and structurally Fearless should exist. We hired lawyers from Gray Plant Moody to help us understand our options. We learned we can continue to stay with our model as long as we track clients within the scope of our mission or as taxable income when non industry partners hire us.
We revisited the purpose of Fearless and it’s structure. We are being challenged to think through if we are a mission or income driven program. Fearless is a mission driven program first. We are working on a strategic plan with Social Venture Partners to think through how to connect what we do with what we say.
Concurrently, we needed to examine the profit side of this work and be sure of our compliance with tax structures. We realized we needed to understand how legally and structurally Fearless should exist. We hired lawyers from Gray Plant Moody to help us understand our options. We learned we can continue to stay with our model as long as we track clients within the scope of our mission or as taxable income when non industry partners hire us.
We’ve learned what the industry feels they need to continue their d&i journey and we have made significant recommendations based on best practice for what we believe they need. However, more and more of our partners are asking us about what to do or how to do the work of DEI and we feel we are doing a disservice if we do not help move people from knowledge to action. We will work to change the systems and practices in the workplace that perpetuate bias and inequity. With this vision, we have created The Fearless Pulse.
The Fearless Pulse is an assessment that every employee in each organization we work with will take before engaging in the Fearless program. We will continue to focus on three areas: their work, their workplace culture, and their workers. We will then analyze the results and provide customized next steps to help them move forward.
We are in the early stages of piloting The Pulse with five agency partners and will analyze the results in late October. We plan to have the final first version of Fearless Pulse out by the beginning of next year.
The Fearless Pulse is an assessment that every employee in each organization we work with will take before engaging in the Fearless program. We will continue to focus on three areas: their work, their workplace culture, and their workers. We will then analyze the results and provide customized next steps to help them move forward.
We are in the early stages of piloting The Pulse with five agency partners and will analyze the results in late October. We plan to have the final first version of Fearless Pulse out by the beginning of next year.
Key lessons learned
During this year, we learned that we do indeed want Fearless to grow and after having our Fearless Director track her time, we found a dissonance between our goals and our capacity.
As Fearless continues to grow, we see that it could have an equally lasting impact on our students than previously believed. As TBL grows outside of Minnesota, prospective cities are asking for Fearless first versus starting with our other student-facing programs. Additionally, as Kansas City and the Twin Cities interest in Fearless grows, we must develop new content, frequently check in on our clients, and create consistency with flexibility between all of our sites for the Fearless program.
To create more time to focus on growing the program content and helping new upcoming cities, we are going to try having Fearless integrated into the national team to collaborate with the CEO and National Design Director. This will give Fearless the ability to work across cities, support on The BrandLab expansion, and as we grow, potentially hire on more support within each city.
As Fearless continues to grow, we see that it could have an equally lasting impact on our students than previously believed. As TBL grows outside of Minnesota, prospective cities are asking for Fearless first versus starting with our other student-facing programs. Additionally, as Kansas City and the Twin Cities interest in Fearless grows, we must develop new content, frequently check in on our clients, and create consistency with flexibility between all of our sites for the Fearless program.
To create more time to focus on growing the program content and helping new upcoming cities, we are going to try having Fearless integrated into the national team to collaborate with the CEO and National Design Director. This will give Fearless the ability to work across cities, support on The BrandLab expansion, and as we grow, potentially hire on more support within each city.
A majority of Fearless is built with the support of a volunteer team called Fearless Leadership Team. Currently, they are comprised of industry professionals of color who are passionate about the mission and vision of The BrandLab and are excited to support their peers in their DEI journey. Their work has been critical to growing Fearless to where it is today.
We are starting to feel uncomfortable about how much they are contributing to TBL including their emotional labor without financial compensation. We have thanked them for their work by providing them with a small gift card and small tokens of our gratitude We provide facilitating and DEI training to them which has a monetary value and is something they utilize for TBL and for their own professional development however we believe this is not enough.
We want to solve this, but it is more complicated than just giving them a salary or making FLT a paid position. Many of them are only able to make time to work with us because their workplace provides volunteer hours. If they were paid, they may not be considered a volunteer and may not be able to work with us anymore. We do not currently have a solution but we are working
We are starting to feel uncomfortable about how much they are contributing to TBL including their emotional labor without financial compensation. We have thanked them for their work by providing them with a small gift card and small tokens of our gratitude We provide facilitating and DEI training to them which has a monetary value and is something they utilize for TBL and for their own professional development however we believe this is not enough.
We want to solve this, but it is more complicated than just giving them a salary or making FLT a paid position. Many of them are only able to make time to work with us because their workplace provides volunteer hours. If they were paid, they may not be considered a volunteer and may not be able to work with us anymore. We do not currently have a solution but we are working
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
All three are so critical to our work! We have leaned heavily on inclusion and collaboration with our Fearless Leadership Team-- our group of volunteers who focus on the development of Fearless. They bring in many different professional and personal perspectives and experiences that inform our work and make it stronger. Without them, TBL would be creating content that we assume the industry needs versus what they actually need. For example, we have had a workshop called Unpacking Creative Blindspots in our portfolio. This workshop looks at different ads and then provides a space for people to uncover their own biases through the analysis of each ad. TBL had been using ads from 2008- 2012 up until this year until one of our volunteers let us know that all of these are over discussed and overused. The Fearless Leadership team has since then updated all of the example ads to be from 2019, and has been able to tailor the examples towards the different audiences that ask for the workshop.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
Mutual Curiosity is one more element that we have found extremely useful. It is common to hear people or organizations get defensive or dreading diversity, equity, inclusion training. This is understandable because this work can be so personal and many times, we’ve seen people come to this work from a place of trauma and hurt. It can make people feel defensive and double down on the status quo. We have approached Fearless from a space of curiosity-- a desire to learn more about the organization and the people who make it because each organization knows their workplace, outcomes they’d like to see, and people the best. When we approach their work with curiosity and a desire to learn from them, we also receive that back because it is much more reciprocal. It allows for humility and grace to learn from one another and say “I don’t know, can you tell me more?” without judgment.
Understanding the problem
Fearless needs to be more than workshops. We’ve realized that workshops are impactful and people leave feeling like they have learned something new. Workshops also focus on helping create personal and relationship change, including how to have a difficult conversation and how to own up to your mistakes and move forward. However, workshops do not address the systemic and policy changes that may need to happen in the organization to allow alumni of TBL to thrive in the workplace. We realized there needs to be more support to help workshop participants take what they have learned (the definitions, theories, examples) into action.
To address the gap, we have started to integrate at the end of each workshop tactical ideas to address the question, “what now?” Additionally, we are creating the Fearless Pulse to assess each organization on their unique DEI journey and provide suggested action steps as well as benchmarks to hit based on where they are on their journey. We are piloting TBL Pulse in late September/ early October 2019, with hopes to launch it as an offering in 2020.
To address the gap, we have started to integrate at the end of each workshop tactical ideas to address the question, “what now?” Additionally, we are creating the Fearless Pulse to assess each organization on their unique DEI journey and provide suggested action steps as well as benchmarks to hit based on where they are on their journey. We are piloting TBL Pulse in late September/ early October 2019, with hopes to launch it as an offering in 2020.
If you could do it all over again...
When we first started building Fearless, there was an idea that changing the face and voice of the industry didn’t just happen with the number of students who go through the program-- but the responsibility was also on the industry. Fearless was built based on this idea but there was not much time spent (because of constrained capacity) to think through what are the problems that need to be addressed in the industry. If I could go back, I would suggest thinking through the purpose of Fearless a bit more by spending more time clearly articulating the problems that exist in the industry (and why those problems exist) and aligning solutions to address the problems.