Gender justice is one of TXI’s four justice pillars supporting our overall Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) efforts. We consider our work through this lens. In Q1 2024, this pillar was our focus for both internal work on developing a positive and inclusive culture of critique and external work supporting community organizations.
Culture of Critique
A strong culture of critique is essential in any healthy organization because it leads to more client value and better quality outcomes, increased innovation, more growth opportunities, and improved client satisfaction. However, through the lens of gender justice, we recognize that in some environments, gender bias may lead to unequal participation and recognition during critique sessions. People from under-represented genders may experience interruptions, dismissal of their ideas, or underestimation of their talents compared to their male counterparts. This can inhibit the open exchange of ideas and hinder the development of a diverse and inclusive culture of critique.
Of course, this is true not only for women and non-binary folks but also for people from historically excluded racial and ethnic groups or other marginalized identities, and especially so for folks with intersectional marginalized identities (for example, a Black disabled man). When we don’t take proactive steps to ensure that everyone’s feedback is heard and receives equitable feedback, we lose the real power of a true culture of critique. In fact, in environments where bias is allowed to persist unchallenged by awareness or techniques to minimize it, it can create a hostile environment where perspectives are undervalued or dismissed, impeding the development of a truly inclusive culture.
To foster this culture of critique, we are encouraging a company-wide embrace of new techniques for giving relevant, timely, actionable feedback.
We kicked things off with an interactive session in January for everyone in the company to engage in a facilitated conversation about what helped them give meaningful feedback, what barriers stood in the way, and what we might try collectively to improve our feedback culture. Afterward, we synthesized the results of those conversations and then embarked on a series of experiments to try new practices around feedback.
Why a series of experiments? Because we know that no single tool or technique is going to work for everyone in every situation - and we want to start small and learn fast. As a company, TXI embraces experimentation and a lean approach not only in the products we build for our clients but in how we grow our business and culture.
One approach we tried was embracing the concept of “10% better”, which we learned about from Dr. Rob Yeung. When we closed collaborative sessions, we’d ask “How could this be 10% better?” trying to focus on small nudges that could eventually make a big difference. One of our senior delivery managers, Hannah Green, even created a template for a 10% better retro, which we’re happy to share here in the spirit of community learning.
By focusing on this goal as a whole company, we give everyone to support in trying new things, and we’re also leaning into a critique on a meta-level by encouraging feedback on our processes and learning in the open.
