In addition to helping creative businesses successfully invest in their people to survive and thrive; Pello's goal is to partner with our clients to raise awareness around unconscious bias and its implications on business and people so we can help create a more diverse, successful and sustainable creative industry.

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Our recent Pello Talk brought together two of the founders of the Great British
Diversity Experiment with a Chartered Psychologist to share latest thinking on
unconscious bias and the facts, findings and insights into how we can change
the creative industry by embracing diversity.
We are excited to share what we discovered at the event.
Pell Talks:
a collaborative community for leaders in the creative sector
Pello Talkers: Nadya Powell, GBDE Co-Founder, MD of Sunshine, Jonathan Akwue, GBDE Co-Founder,
CEO Lost Boys and Dr Simon Moore, Chartered Psychologist & MD Innovation Bubble

2. Why does diversity matter?
Lack of diversity in the creative industry and the impact it is having on the quality and relevance of
relationships, creativity and teams cannot be ignored. Progressive agencies recognise this and the
effect unconscious bias is having on limiting their talent pool and ability to stay relevant to clients and
consumers. It has also been proven that a more diverse team delivers better creative and has a tangible
impact on bottom line. It’s no longer an HR issue. It’s a business imperative.
THE WINNING TEAM ‘Everybody Freeze’ was made up of 10 people all from highly diverse backgrounds.
For example one individual was brought up in Albania when food rationing was still in place. Another was brought up
in South Africa where she encountered individuals struggling to ensure they had enough food to survive. This meant
they had a totally different attitude to food waste than their colleagues who grew up in the UK.
In January 2016, 140 people from different backgrounds were recruited to the experiment. They were divided into
20 teams, each with a mentor, and briefed on a world changing challenge by Tesco – to solve food wastage in the
home.
The teams then worked on this brief for a month and during this time were ethnographically studied by Flamingo to
enable an understanding of what is different, difficult and advantageous when diversity is in action.
THE EXPERIMENT

3. Diversity enables solutions to be fit for purpose
Having diverse opinions on an issue, product or service ensures solutions are created from multiple
perspectives and evaluated from multiple angles. Over 50% of inner London come from a BAME background.
When talking to the UK about your services or products you are talking to a diverse society and your team and
solutions needs to authentically reflect that.
“As an industry we need to embrace messiness, respect diversity of
experience, and be open to new creative processes”
What specific advantages does diversity deliver?
Diversity enables the authentic self
We found that when people were working within an organisation as the only individual of their gender, ethnicity,
or sexuality group that they felt defined by who they were. They would often assume a role for the group they
felt they had to represent, this can be inhibiting to the creative process.
By creating a genuinely diverse pool of people we take diversity off the table enabling us to be ourselves and
essentially the best we can be. Our differences and our diversity becomes the new norm. In short, diversity
allows people to be true to who they are, increasing their creative potential and job satisfaction.
Diversity enables new connections and new solutions
It is well documented that diversity is the lifeblood of creativity. By putting similar people in a room together,
you’re going to get similar creative solutions. Contemporary innovation theorists believe that the ability to draw
upon a wide variety of references and different backgrounds brings new perspectives and that will generate the
new ideas we need. Diversity gives us a broader, richer, more vibrant role within the creative process.

4. 15%
A truly diverse workplace reflects a truly diverse culture
Diversity is fundamental to continually creating new, distinctive work, as it gives you more personal and
culturally raw material to drawn upon and make creative connections with.
35%
More likely to outperform when companies are gender diverse
More likely to outperform when companies are more ethnically diverse
Source: ‘Diversity Matters’ report, McKinsey
Studies show that we are:
And

5. What are the hidden challenges to overcome?
The leadership challenge
Groups that had mentors that used more autocratic leadership styles groups often struggled. The groups
that did best were the ones where leaders used an enabling approach that was facilitating and allowed for
difference and debate. If you have people in leadership positions that are very clear about what success looks
like, and what they need from people, you create an environment in which people can succeed.
Consensus is elusive
The experiment shows there are challenges to diversity too. New modes of consensus have to be found;
tokenism is an easy pitfall and will quash the diverse experience. It requires a new kind of leadership skill set,
one which is way more varied than our current industry standard. This is the flip side of meritocracy, where
a greater bandwidth of creative ideas, rooted in different backgrounds, requires more rigorous and different
modes of consensus. This takes time and can really be frustrating and out of sync with how those in the
advertising industry think and behave. How many times have you seen the speed of idea generation prized
over quality?
Unconscious bias
Whether we like it or not, we all make snap decisions based on people’s appearance. The factors that are at
play are often driven by preconceived ideas that are out of our control. Studies show that within 15 seconds
into an interview situation the interviewer will know whether they are going to hire that person or not. The
challenge here is to overcome our preconceptions and stereotypes. Recruitment is fraught with unconscious
errors. This costs organisations money they can ill afford to waste. These decision-making errors also impact
organisational wellbeing, employee engagement levels and customer experience.

6. 1. Change your creative process
The experiment showed that ideas have to progress on merit – this can be slower and “messier” but offers a truer
reflection of creative value. So try not to fixate on speed and ease, let divergence, difference and merit win through.
2. Retrain your leaders
We can see from the experiment that success is directly linked to leaders and their leadership style. If leaders
cannot provide ‘clear enablement’ they will not get the benefit of diversity. We need action at the upper echelons of
our industry to demonstrate clear intent.
3. Implement the Rooney Rule (not Wayne Rooney)
By opening our doors to diverse talent. This is not a CSR project, we believe it is critical to business success. So
demand that every new role has a diverse short list – the Rooney rule. Look harder, further and accept that often a
round peg in a square hole is a good thing. It is also great to implement the Rooney rule for those people who are
doing the interviewing too.
4. Access new tribes
It is not about tokenism. Diversity is one of the things that makes Britain great. If you hire people from different
backgrounds you will have access to new communities and networks which will mean the Rooney Rule won’t even
be needed. You need teams of super heroes in order to compete.
5. Total diversity
More than 10M people in the UK identify as having limitations in their daily activities for physical and mental health
reasons, yet how many people in your company are from this community? This is an issue that isn’t receiving
the attention it deserves. To have a voice that represents our society we must equally have those people we are
representing working within our organisations... Let’s start the debate and inspire change.
“Its about finding your tribe and then creating a team of superheroes.”
What are the 5 things you should do now?

7. If every leader implemented the recommendations discussed at the GBDE event we would
ultimately build a better communications industry reflective of the society we communicate with. 50% of our
population is female, and 14% disabled, yet our agencies do not reflect this. Let’s start by creating better
working environments and a more rewarding place based on merit and ability.
We create growth in people to grow companies. Our work helps companies thrive with the right people, in the right roles performing in the right way.
YOU HAD ME AT PELLO...
twitter: @wearepello website: www.wearepello.comemail: hello@wearepello.com
Together, let’s build an industry that
represents the society we live in, that
is fit to survive and ultimately prosper.
Download the report from
thegreatbritishdiversityexperiment.com
Pello’s Unconscious Bias (UB) workshops
are tailored for the creative industry and cover:
• Understanding UB and how it affects us all
• The impact UB has on key hiring decisions
• How to master UB to stay ahead of the competition
Email sally@wearepello.com to find out more.