879 Miranda McKie:

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Miranda McKie:

We can hire diverse talent from how they appear. So maybe women, people of color, et cetera. But if they all came from the same college, they’re all located in the same city, et cetera, et cetera, all from Harvard. You may get some diversity, but you won’t truly drive as much thought diversity as you want or innovation.

Melinda Wittstock:

After the shocking police murder of George Floyd back in 2020, businesses scrambled to embrace diversity equity and inclusion. DEI consultants were in demand. Now some four years later, there’s a backlash and many businesses still committed to embracing DEI are still struggling with implementation and results measurement. So today we dive deep into DEI with leading innovator in the space, Miranda McKie, and learn why integrating it into your company’s DNA drives revenue growth, talent acquisition, and innovation.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so this podcast is all about catalyzing an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other …Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is on a mission to help companies large and small utilize data-driven techniques to identify and mitigate systemic institutional barriers that impact underrepresented groups – and ultimately a company’s growth.

Miranda McKie is a dedicated and insightful diversity, equity, and inclusion (or DEI) advocate who has observed the challenges and missteps many companies face as they implement DEI initiatives without strategic foresight or clearly defined metrics and objectives. Today she shares practical tips and insights on how to use DEI to turbocharge your brand, attract top talent, spark innovation, and drive revenue growth.

Miranda will be here in a moment, and first,

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Melinda Wittstock:

Back in 2020 in the wake of the brutal police murder of George Floyd, the world had a collective wakeup call about institutionalized racism. Companies large and small scrambled to build more diverse teams and market their products and services more effectively to an increasingly diverse society.

Then came the backlash. The Supreme Court reversed affirmative action. Anti-woke sentiment spread on social media and beyond. And companies genuinely committed to incorporating DEI into their strategies, corporate cultures, products, and branding struggled to measure their effectiveness.

Four years later, it’s becoming clear that there are ways to do it right, and many ways to get it wrong.

Miranda McKie is one of the world’s leading experts on DEI, bringing her data-driven expertise, HR background and product management chops to the growing consulting business she founded to help businesses boost their bottom line. Today we get into the do’s, the don’ts and the benefits of DEI.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Miranda McKie and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Miranda, welcome to Wings.

Miranda McKie:

Thank you so much for having me today.

Melinda Wittstock:

You really focus a lot in your consultancy on work in diversity, equity, inclusion, or DEI under attack recently. What’s going on there?

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, no, you’re so right. It definitely has been. And I think for a couple of reasons. After the murder of George Floyd, especially, a lot of organizations kind of jumped on this. I would say jumped on the Di bandwagon. It raised a lot of concerns all over the world around what are we doing to support people of diverse backgrounds within our organization? And we saw a lot of organizations jump to hire and fill these specific roles. But unfortunately, a lot of the organizations that did approach this didn’t look at it from the perspective of what do we want to do from a strategy perspective, what do we expect the DEI role to drive from an ROI perspective? So, a lot of people were kind of hired into these roles, some with maybe junior employees, asking to drive huge initiatives across an organization with little metrics or KPIs associated to it. And like any other business function, if you can’t prove your ROI, if you can’t explain essentially why this initiative is important, especially in the times we are in, from an economic perspective, of course those roles are going to be cut, and of course those roles are going to be the ones that would be under fire.

Miranda McKie:

So, I’d say what I specifically see in the industry is just a lot of really great initiatives in the sense of let’s do employee events and initiatives such as that. But again, it’s not tying back to what is the ROI of this? How am I driving productivity within the organization? How is what I’m doing in these investment dollars, actually, again, driving the bottom line. And that’s where I think the disconnect is with the field. Where I see organizations that have been really successful in DEI and those roles are still in place are the ones that are doing that successfully and having more strategic conversations around. You know, as well, when we talk about the concept of DEI, often a lot of people think about it from the perspective of just employees that we serve, where it’s so much broader than that. And again, organizations that are doing very successful in DEI have it embedded in their entire organization. So, to give an example, when organizations embed DEI in products or in their suppliers and diversity there, they’re able to drive a bunch of other initiatives. So, for example, if I’m serving a community and I want to establish a new go to market in a different community or a diverse community, what is essentially the DEI perspective there and having a lens on the users or the consumers of my product and thinking about what would they need and want from a DEI lens.

Miranda McKie:

Or when we’re thinking about supplier diversity and looking at how we’re evolving our procurement strategies to support new vendors coming in, that, again can help innovate our organizations. That’s where we start to see success as well, where it’s not just about the employees, but it goes beyond that. And I think a lot of organizations have really kind of only adopted it a little half-heartedly from the DEI perspective of let’s do an event for Black History Month or for International Women’s Day, but not looking more broader at some of the strategic priorities of the organization.

Melinda Wittstock:

Of course, those are sort of the nice things to have, and they feel like they’re doing something. But you’re right if it doesn’t tie back to the data. And a moment ago, you were talking about products and services. So obviously this is about customer success and making your products more successful in the market if they resonate with those customers. So that’s kind of obvious in so many ways, right? Depending on exactly who you’re serving in a diverse society, making sure your products are relevant to those people and then tracking that data. So, I want to go back to kind of the beginning of what you were talking about with the data and the KPIs. A lot of people went into this really well meaning, but they didn’t necessarily know what to do or what they should be tracking or let alone how to track it.

Melinda Wittstock:

When you’re consulting different companies that want to implement this successfully, what are some of the KPIs and what are some of the data points that you really suggest they at least start tracking in the early days of this?

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, great question. So, there’s so many, and I always like to preface, it really does depend on your organizational strategic priorities and goals. I know that’s not a great answer, but let me just explain. So, when you’re setting up your metrics, your KPIs, et cetera, they should truly align to the organization’s OKRs and goals. Every organization is different, right? And every organization has different strategic priorities and plans over the years, but you want to be able to ensure that you’re tracking to that. So as an example, if an organization has a strategic priority, such as around kind of sales, and they want to increase revenue in a certain product or service, and maybe that involves supporting different go to market strategies, again, supporting new diverse communities, some of them, those KPIs would be looking at how are we essentially tracking our engagement with community groups in that target market that we’re going after from a product and service perspective, how does our brand resonate with that community? What do they think about our employer brand? What is our NPS, essentially with customers in that specific region?

Melinda Wittstock:

Promoter score, right?

Miranda McKie:

Net promoter score. So that would be an example, kind of, of aligning back to that goal of, we’re trying to increase revenue in this specific market. Whereas if you have, let’s say, a goal around your organization on maybe increasing representation, let’s say at a leadership level, it would be looking at, okay, what is our sourcing strategies and are essentially our pipeline of talent coming in the organization? If we’re hiring, let’s say we’re an engineering firm. We know that there is limited, to be honest, still in 2024, we don’t see as strong of a pipeline of women, for example, coming in in the engineering track as men. Things have changed and improved, but it’s not as maybe what we’d want to see is a 50 50 representation. So then when you’re building out your KPI, you’re taking into consideration my sourcing strategy in that specific pipeline. So maybe there’s only 30% of women in college and university programs.

Miranda McKie:

So that means we’re trying to recruit for 30% of individuals, maybe within our talent and acquisition practices. But then you would be diving into, what does our sourcing strategies look like when we’re sourcing candidates? Are we actually getting that representation from those groups in the proportions that we want to do? Are we seeing higher proportions of voluntary leaves of women in these specific groups, or are we seeing higher proportions of involuntary leaves of women in groups? So, again, aligning back to that strategy. So, when we’re thinking about it, what I see often of KPIs is these really broad. And what I see, again, where organizations aren’t as strong in the DEI space, I see them having KPIs that are extremely broad. So, they’ll say across the organization, we want to have 50-50 representation of women, and that’s where their KPI stops. And it’s like, okay, but is that at the leadership level? Is that at the junior level, et cetera, et cetera. So, when organizations are successful with KPIs, they get much more granular and specific across these different areas, and then again, making sure that those KPIs are aligned to those strategic priorities. And I always like to know, especially in this DEI profession, we get it.

Miranda McKie:

We understand the importance of DEI and that it’s the right thing to do. But that’s not who you’re convincing. Right. You need to show to your CEO, your CFO. Why is this an important initiative to invest in? And the way you do that is with data. And if you don’t have that data, it’s going to be very difficult to continue to get those dollars to support your programs.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, when we’re talking about employees and diversity, bringing in women engineers, for instance, or just having a good, diverse team, whether you’re looking at it in terms of race or experience or anything like that, how hard is it, though, to tie it back to your company, KPIs, for instance? Like, how is it going to improve your revenue or profitability or any other metric to have a diverse team that seems a little bit more advanced. Because you can make the assumption that, yes, if we have a more diverse team, we’re going to have diverse perspectives that are going to go into our products or services and our marketing and our sales efforts and whatnot, that are going to be more relevant to the community we serve. But how is that tracked? How can you prove that?

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, and it’s tough, and there’s ways to look at it in terms of output. So as an example, and I should have mentioned another point as well, is to always consider intersectionality. So, I always give this example as well, we can hire a diverse talent from how they appear. So maybe someone that women, people of color, et cetera. But if they all came from the same college, they’re all located in the same city, et cetera, et cetera, in those areas. Exactly. All from Harvard. Will you truly? Yeah, because they’re going to solution the same.

Miranda McKie:

They were educated the same. Like, yeah, you may get some diversity, but you won’t truly drive as much thought diversity as you want or innovation. So, it is important that when we’re thinking about diversity, we’re not just thinking about it by how someone looks. I think that’s also been very common in now modern or now in society, where that’s how people talk about it, which is disappointing as a DEI person. So much more than that. But I digress. But when we’re looking at it, it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Is the experiences and the perspective and such that you really need in the context of diversity.

Miranda McKie:

Exactly. It’s socioeconomic status, educational attainment, country of origin, like so many different things that make people unique and diverse outside of just how someone looks. So, I think that’s something, I hope that starts to change within the DEI space. And I think it’s challenging, though, for.

Melinda Wittstock:

Founders because we’re limited by our own networks, many cases. So, from the early stages of a company where you’re kind of like you’re in that situation where you’re persuading people to work for you for not very much money.

Miranda McKie:

Right, yeah, exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Delayed gratification or whatnot, and you’re sort of scrambling to kind of get things done and then you’re in a fast growth track and whatnot. So many of those hires are going to come from your own networks, and so everybody’s got there. So, let’s just break that down a little bit. For somebody who’s genuinely committed to making sure that they are actually adopting DEI in their hiring or recruiting practices, how do you get out of that sort of either conscious or subconscious comfort zone to source from elsewhere, right?

Miranda McKie:

Yeah. And it’s tough. Right. And I like to be realistic with it. If you’re an organization of 20 people, are you truly going to invest in these very complicated recruitment processes to source talent and bring it in, have the money. It’s money, exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

To do it.

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, exactly. It’s not realistic. So, I think especially with entrepreneurs that are trying to move into the space and be more kind of a DEI, have a DEI lens, it’s looking at maybe some of your internal processes for hiring. How is my recruitment process standardized? How am I looking at, even when I’m bringing in through my network that there’s a proper validation stage in that job interview process, knowing that they may not have the time or the resources to go out and build unique connections with all of these different diverse community groups or recruitment channels, as an example. And it is important for these organizations to be realistic, but similar to any grooming organization, as you would have a strategy around your financials or your go to market, et cetera, you can build these strategies and these roadmaps of some of the goals that you hope to hit within your first year to five-year plan and then execute against that. But again, I always like to coach my clients to be very realistic with what’s feasible, with your resources, and as well as the value that you’ll believe it will add. So again, coming back to that example, you’re an entrepreneur. Maybe you have ten employees.

Miranda McKie:

Usually what you’re looking to fill are roles where there’s gaps, right? Like maybe you’re as a CEO doing all the marketing, and what will help you is just bringing in a marketing person. Right. Like fill that role first as opposed to thinking about how do I truly bring in the most diverse individual in that position, because I just need these tasks or this kind of strategy done. And then thinking about, okay, maybe when I aim to grow my marketing team to five to ten people. Now, how would I look at some of those sourcing strategies to bring in some more diverse talent with innovative thought as an example. But again, I like to coach people to be realistic with where they’re starting at, because I have seen a lot of organizations that are really committed to DEI, which is fantastic, but they spend a ton to do some of the things that these larger organizations can do because they have access to capital to do that and invest in it.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, it’s really getting the staging right, understanding what kind of resources you have, but also looking for alternative places to recruit, whether it’s a LinkedIn group or whatever.

Miranda McKie:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

You’ve got to kind of put that time and investment in. And I guess it comes down to the “why”. What is it going to actually mean for your product and service? And so, when you’re working with companies, I imagine sometimes the why is just well intentioned, but it’s not really thought out. Take me through your process on this recruiting side first, because there’s lots of other things that you do. But staying with the recruiting theme, what’s your process for? How you get the founder or the executive team to actually kind of get conscious about why it’s going to be helpful to have a diverse team, how to recruit, and what success actually looks like for them?

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, great question. And I find most of the time when organizations are realizing this, it’s one when they’re starting to just see the general makeup of their team, or it’s also being driven by, hey, we’re not maybe selling as much as we wanted to do, or our marketing has not yielded more leads than we were hoping to. So, what’s happening with our talent? And how do we now bring in more talent than can help achieve some of those strategic goals? And that’s when some will start to think about, oh, maybe we do need to think about our hiring strategies and looking at that from a diverse angle. So usually when organizations start to come to us with those problems, it’s because of some of these offshoots that they have around, again, products and services that they offer or kind of issues that they’re having internally with accessing new markets or getting into other business areas. So, they want to understand, again, how can they bring in that diverse talent? And then in terms of that process, what really happens? It’s looking again at what’s your sourcing strategy? Where are all those students coming from? Are they all coming from Harvard right already. That’s an understanding of a potential gap. How do you actually hire? Is it a conversation that you have with your buddy, or is it actually a standardized recruitment process where you’re scoring candidates? How are you accepting resumes? Is there blind resume screening involved? Or you, again, just kind of looking for what school they went to and then pushing people through that way? And then also, once they’re in the organization now, how are you checking and understanding their productivity? How long is it taking them to get to productivity? Is it a week or is it six months? And are they yielding those benefits? Some roles are very easy to do that with, like sales roles. Other roles, like maybe an HR role is a little bit more challenging.

Miranda McKie:

But again, setting up those kind of checkpoints of your employee across that employee lifecycle is so important to, again, see that they’re adding that value.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Miranda McKie, DEI advocate, HR and product management expert and the CEO and Founder of McKie Consultants.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, the other flip side of this too is, is your company attractive to people of diverse experience? Because if someone evaluating, like, do I want to work for this company? And then all your marketing materials and your website and whatever, like, everyone’s a white dude.

Miranda McKie:

Yes, 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

Who wants to be the first to come into that? So, what are some of the things that you have to do to kind of lay the groundwork? If you take this seriously and you really do want to dive?

Miranda McKie:

That’s such a great point. So, employer brand and employer branding is a huge piece. So many organizations will be that, especially in sectors that haven’t traditionally maybe attracted diverse candidates. So, if we think of like maybe mining sectors or manufacturing sectors, and again, you go onto their website and you’re like, oh, I don’t think I would want to work here. Right. So how do we showcase day in the life of employees that actually work there, that are from diverse backgrounds and make that authentic? How do we showcase the actual culture of working there? How do we showcase, what are some of those growth opportunities when working at the organization and some of the professional development opportunities that they have to, again, increase that employer brand. It’s interesting. Now some of the larger companies will actually bring in their marketing teams to focus on that.

Miranda McKie:

Right. On how do we again perceive or show the culture of our organization in a bit more of an exciting way so that we can attract the top talent? Because that’s really the goal, is that you don’t just want diverse talent, you want the top talent. And we know that the top talent is made up of diverse people. So that’s really why employer brand is so important in those pieces.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, assuming you’ve got the recruitment and the hiring and the branding, the onboarding, all that part, right, and you’ve got this growing diverse team, how does that start to translate in your product development? If you’re a consumer products company or a technology company, SaaS company, whatever it is that you’re doing or a service, how do you start to tie that back to what that actually means for your bottom-line numbers, whether we’re talking revenue, profitability, differentiation in the market, seizing market, I don’t know, whatever we want to talk about in that context.

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, great question. And that’s where concepts, now that you have that diverse team, this is where the concepts of equity and inclusion come in. So now that you have these people in, how do you support them to actually innovate within your organization? Are they comfortable challenging the status quo? Or do you have processes and policies that are very hierarchical in nature where they can’t do that, and they can’t foster innovation? So, I think a lot of that as well is looking at not just the individual and being like, okay, I hired this person of color, now we’re going to get the best interesting product out of them. It’s then looking at your internal processes and your policies of, okay, are we actually fostering now a culture where that person can drive change within the organization and drive product development or whatever it is, and measuring that? So, from a measurement standpoint, there’s obviously things that people do just to understand culture from engagement surveys, do people feel that they can challenge status quo, et cetera? But then it’s also looking at the productivity of the team. Let’s say you’re an organization, you offer different products, one of your teams are more diverse than the other. Right? Tying that back to sales numbers, are we noticing that this team is driving higher sales rates? Are we noticing that this customer success team that’s more diverse in nature is getting better customer success results than this other team is? Obviously, correlation is not causation. So, there’s a whole bunch of other things that could factor into that, whether it’s leadership of different levels or maybe the products maybe is just better in one other area, but always kind of bringing that in where it’s embedded into that area and you’re tying in those metrics to kind of try and understand insights around that. So again, it’s not kind of a one size fits all approach, but it is always building in those measurements with that Dei lens to, again, see, was it worth us investing x amount of money to now go to all of these unique sources to bring in this diverse talent, or are we still yielding the same results? Got it.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, at a high level, when you’re working with your clients, from the time that they start working with you, how long does it really take for them to have the knowledge, the systems, everything in place for this to actually translate into a more robust bottom line?

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, great question. And again, I hate giving these answers, but it depends. It depends on the organization and the organization’s commitment to the change. But what I’ve seen also in the market a lot, especially in the DI space, which is another reason, to your earlier point, why I see it under attack a bit, is you see a lot of organizations that spend like a year to two years building out their DI strategy, not even implementation, just the, you know, I always say, like, imagine Uber. It took Uber two years to release a new, like, we wouldn’t use Uber anymore, right. We would use another product that was getting to market much quicker. So, a thing I see is a huge gap with a lot of DEI initiatives is we take way too long to prove out if something’s working and we don’t adapt to that kind of agile spirit that we do in the products or the services that we’re offering. So again, we’ll spend a year to two years just building a strategy and taking account that ideologies change, and all of these things change and that maybe make us go back to that strategy as opposed to running it like we would with any other, again, product or service.

Miranda McKie:

So as an example, let’s try and do an MVP. We want to bring in diverse talent from this recruitment source. So, let’s try and see what we can do within a six week to a three-month time frame to do that and prove it out, get lessons learned, and then initiate again and build off of that again, as opposed to these long, drawn-out strategies where we don’t see change until two or three years down the road.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, Miranda, do you ever get kind of pushback or resistance in any way from your clients? Obviously, they’ve hired you, so they want to do it. There are all kinds of subconscious drivers and beliefs and attitudes and people in corporations particularly that are just sort of resistant to change. Does that happen? And how do you navigate when it does?

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, great question. I find the most I get is surprised because a lot of people will bring us in and our energy is okay. We believe Dei is like any other business function within an organization. You should show results, you should show ROI, you should move quickly, et cetera. And a lot of them are thinking when they come in that we’re going to be one of those firms. I would say that takes like two years to drive a strategy and there’s not much execution. So usually most organizations are kind of happy when we talk to them about this, of like, no, we’re not going to take a year, we’re going to discuss this one use case, your clear issue that you’re having, and then we’re going to work with you to actually implement change over this period of time so that then we can see again if it’s yielding the value and yielding the ROI to then maybe invest in a bigger initiative that you scale across the entire organization or we try and address a different area or different issue. So, I find a lot of organizations are actually really receptive to that kind of different view of thinking.

Miranda McKie:

And I think that in what we’re seeing, especially in mass media, around concepts of DEI, it’s not communicated as much that way. I think that’s what kind of has given it a lot of a bad rep around that space, especially in business. So yeah, I think it’s more of a bit of a surprise for organizations like, oh, this is good, we actually can see what our investment is going to support.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, exactly. And so, tell me your ideal client and the size of the companies you tend to work with, are they usually pretty large by the time they’re thinking about this, or do you also work with much younger emerging growth companies, startups, and that kind of thing?

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, great question. So, we usually work with organizations with at least over 100 to 200 employees, but our sweet spot is really in those mid-size organizations around the maybe 1000 employees. And then of course we do work with enterprises as well. Enterprises, however, do struggle to move as fast as everyone knows because there is a bit more red tape there. But primarily the mid to large organizations.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And with all the product side of what you do and design thinking and all of that, it seems like it just requires just a completely different perspective from not only the executives in the organization, but all the way through the company. That’s a big culture change in a lot of cases.

Miranda McKie:

Yes, exactly. It is for sure, especially on a lot of the product pieces where we’re getting people to think about their user. But I’ll give the example of, let’s say you were again, developing out a product, an app. This is a very common practice in product development where you think about what does my user need? What do they want? All we’re really talking about and getting them to think about is some of the other intersectionality components of that user. So, if a user is using an app, what is their aptitude around digital technology? Do they need different offerings to support them? Because maybe they don’t have a strong knowledge on how to use tech as. And I’m just giving a kind of high-level example. So, we’re almost kind of getting them to just think a little bit differently and change their perspective slightly as opposed to reimagining all of their processes from a product and service perspective. That’s kind of opening their minds a little bit more to how things can be done, to always have that user or the consumer in mind.

Miranda McKie:

And some organizations kind of do it, but I think they could be doing a lot better in that space. And then, as always with large organizations, change management is a huge thing. Right? Like, how do you now get your champions to buy into this and then feed this down to the teams? And the training that’s required in these large organizations is what usually takes some of that time.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, when you have these really loud voices, like I’m thinking like someone like Elon Musk or some of the folks pushing back on and, or just even the battles going on with universities, you got a Supreme Court ruling here against affirmative action. You’ve got all that sort of cultural stuff. Has that impacted your business in any way, like in terms. Right. Has that impacted your business in any way in terms of your deal flow? I suppose, and the number of customers that are doing this.

Miranda McKie:

Yeah, great question. So, I would say not necessarily what I find has been the biggest change over the past is how organizations are approaching. Before, you know, again, after murder of George Floyd, we had a lot of tick the box clients come to, you know, we need to do DEI training on unconscious bias. Okay. Or things like that that are a little bit know, to show that they’re doing something around Dei so they can now what, report or whatever. Exactly. Now what we’re having is a lot of the organizations that are more committed to it is like, oh, we’re trying to drive this new go to market strategy and we don’t know how to get into this specific community. So, we want to understand what we could be doing around our products or around our go to market and marketing strategies to support this new user group or this new consumer that we’re trying to bring in.

Miranda McKie:

So, I’d say it’s shifted where the organizations that are kind of moving to this new wave of DEI are much more focused, again on that ROI piece and less on some of those tick the box initiatives.

Melinda Wittstock:

What are some of the most compelling before and after stories you can share in terms of a company that comes to you? And they’re at the very early stages of this and then they start implementing all the different things, the metrics, the marketing, the product insights, the recruiting, all that kind of stuff.

Melinda Wittstock:

What is the impact?

Miranda McKie:

We were working with an organization, and they did consumer goods, I’ll just say consumer goods. And we were working with them on their marketing teams and their field marketing teams to think through essentially their go to market strategies. They noticed that their current product offering appealed to a specific user group, but they wanted to obviously increase market share and access other communities and groups. So that made the entire marketing team having to think through their strategy of go to market. So, we are offering this product this way, but we know that the way our brand is being perceived or our employer brand is being perceived is not attractive to this group of people. So, what can we do from a marketing perspective? And I don’t mean to unauthentically change who they are, but to go into these groups, build organic connections to showcase how great their product is to this group. And it was very successful.

Miranda McKie:

And what had happened through this process is we embedded it across their entire marketing teams, working with them, training them, looking through their strategies. And we actually even worked with them to build their business plans with this Dei Lens and Dei focus. So again, it was embedded to the organization as opposed to this nice to have tick the box piece. And they are now seeing higher consumption in those groups that they wanted to access primarily, again, because they had this Di lens and di focus. So, they were empathizing with that consumer base and user base, understanding their needs and then looking at how they can actually adapt and change their product to support that group. So highly beneficial yields ROI. And now their perspective of Di oh, this is not only great because now we’re supporting this community and this group with our amazing products and services, but also great from a financial standpoint across the organization because now we’re accessing a…

Melinda Wittstock:

Larger market share, 100%. I mean, it just makes so much sense, business perspective. So, if someone listening to this wants to connect with you and learn more and actually dive into this. What’s the best way?

Miranda McKie:

LinkedIn is always great. You can reach out to me there or even, I’ll even be so bold and share my email, which is miranda@mackayconsultants.com. And you can also visit our website@mackayconsultants.com.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, Miranda, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Miranda McKie:

Oh, I appreciate that. It was great to be here.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Miranda McKie is a DEI advocate, HR and product management expert, and the CEO and Founder of McKie Consultants.

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