Book Notes: The Person You Mean To Be: How Good People Fight Bias

Raw notes from the book : The Person You Mean To Be: How Good People Fight Bias

  • Not a binary notion, bounded ethicality
  • Important to us that we are a good person, we feel threaten when we don’t hit the bar.
  • We have blind spots, as a good person, if there is no room from mistakes and blindspots. As an example, if you feel attacked, your desired to be a good person, may prevent you from accepting critisizm.
  • Let’s break out the corner, and give ourselves room to grow.
  • Being a goodish person and be able to learn from mistakes
  • Don’t focus on binary boundaries
  • Not evil or good, we are always improving
  • Growth mindset or fixed mindset
  • We can always grow
  • Psychological safety
  • “Because I have unconscious bias, I’m not accountable?”
  • Prison — education program
  • Savior trap – feel good feeling, warm glow
  • Puts her above others
  • Treat them as people – as normal people
  • Headwind and tail wind
  • A systems approach is “What are the ways we create more visible headwinds and less tail winds?”
  • Even if bias is solved, the system still has bias built in
  • What does cultural fit mean? That type of questions creates headwinds
  • If you are on the inside, email falculty to signal your interest.
  • The email experiment sending the same email to Falculty. With gender, race, fictional students and falculty from different schools. Would the falculty write back?
  • Compared with white students – 87% chance of getting a reponse, 62% response to your email
  • Work organizations
  • Diversity
    • Getting into the door, the gateway. Relatively easy to measure
  • Inclusion
    • Pathway process, not measurable. Who interrupts who, who sits next to who. Everyday moments
    • Meetings present opportunties to be inclusive
      • Salesforce : Run better meetings, your meetings mirrors your headwinds and tailwinds. Who should be in the room, are we balancing air time, did we interrupt people or not. Did we have a meeting where we disagree? Meetings is like 5th ave realestate
  • Belonging