Yolanda Lee Conyers discusses the importance of connection and culture, and it's about to get electric

"Even today, 15 years later, there is still so much to be gained through cultural training and having open, honest discussions about the unique experiences we have across genders, racial and ethnic groups, orientations, abilities, and more." In this week's You've Got This, we're sharing the insights and answers of guest Yolanda Lee Conyers. As President of the Lenovo Foundation, author, engineer and Vice President of HR Operations and Chief Diversity Officer at Lenovo, Yolanda outlines her approach towards courageous conversations, the evolving impact of the Lenovo Foundation, and how diversity and inclusion are integral to ensuring fair and equitable access to technology. Be sure to check out Yolanda's answers below - and don't miss our next guests, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of obé Fitness Mark Mullett and Ashley Mills.

Victoria: "In your 2014 bestselling book 'The Lenovo Way' you and co-author Gina Qiao outline key learnings - from bridging cultural divides to the importance of diverse leadership - that have helped drive Lenovo's success. As the book continues to resonate with readers, what are some ideas you discussed that have become more timely now than ever?"

Yolanda: "In “The Lenovo Way” we talk a lot about bridging the cultural divides of East and West in the 2005 acquisition of IBM’s ThinkPad business and, in a lot of ways, the same practices we used to navigate that time and those challenges are ones we continue to use today.

"We had some clashing and misunderstanding of cultures at the onset of that acquisition, and we asked our teams and managers to put themselves in one another’s shoes through cultural training and education, and even in some cases having senior leaders spend some time living and working in different countries and among new cultures to really immerse themselves in a new mindset – myself included; I spent 3 years living and working in Beijing shortly after joining the company."

Even today, 15 years later, there is still so much to be gained through cultural training and having open, honest discussions about the unique experiences we have across genders, racial and ethnic groups, orientations, abilities, and more. Particularly today, with what’s happening around the U.S. with regard to racial injustice and the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, we’ve seen the importance more than ever of having raw, sometimes uncomfortable conversations about the challenges people of color continue to face in the U.S. and around the world. We addressed our employees immediately to let them know – we hear you. We developed a strategy of “Show up, Listen, Act” to be present for our employee communities of color, listen with intention, and take actions and steps to contribute to positive change and moving forward as a society. We’ve been having “Courageous Conversations” series between our senior leadership and their organizations across the company, facilitated by external experts we’ve brought in to help guide these discussions and address questions and concerns. We’re also expanding upon our mandatory global anti-harassment training to also include bias education and training for employees to participate in."

Victoria: "As the Lenovo Foundation approaches its second anniversary this October, what milestones will your team be celebrating, and how do you see the work you do evolving into the future?"

Yolanda: "On Lenovo Foundation’s second anniversary in October 2020, we’ll be celebrating how far we’ve come in the past two short years of strengthening Lenovo’s efforts to give back. This year, our business leaders have ensured that Lenovo is responding to the needs of communities around the world as they work through challenges associated with the global coronavirus pandemic. We’ve provided more than $13 million in relief funds and charitable giving to address the unprecedented needs in distance education, hospital IT infrastructure, and basic community needs. Our response has been ongoing since the initial outbreak in Wuhan, to communities in Latin America, the U.S., and Asia Pacific where support is still being allocated today.

In 2019 we launched our “Love On” campaign (an anagram of ‘Lenovo’) to recognize the formal launch of our philanthropic arm, symbolizing our commitment to global charity and corporate citizenship. Our annual “Love On 31” global month of service continues to be a successful way for employees around the world to engage with Lenovo Foundation’s mission to empower under-represented groups with access to technology and STEM Education. We’ve seen a 70% growth in individuals directly impacted through projects and participating offices since we began in 2017; in 2019, the Lenovo volunteers directly benefitted nearly 56,000 people across 54 offices around the world in just 31 days of service (month of May). This year, in 2020, we’re mobilizing the global month of service in October around virtual volunteer opportunities to accommodate COVID-19 challenges. We’ve built a global team that reflects our strategy as a global/local company. While our efforts are centralized, our team is made up of philanthropy leaders in each of our five geographies. This allows us to be more aware, impactful, and measured than we could be without “boots on the ground”. It’s also helping us gain momentum as we work toward the largest annual giving amount we’ve ever announced, with nearly $20 million in charitable impact, which is how we refer to the value of our combined cash, product, and employee volunteer contributions.

We know that improvement has no finish line, but we’re proud of the great strides we’ve made in just two years. Looking ahead, we’re thinking through how to better standardize and measure our global operations, ensuring all of our employees have the same benefits and tools to give back to their communities. We’ll also work on sustaining and growing our charitable entities in the U.S. and China: Lenovo Foundation and Lenovo Foundation Beijing."

 Victoria: "In a 2018 interview with Austin Woman Magazine, you shared this amazing quote: "Different candidates will bring different skills. Employers have to embrace hiring different. Our Lenovo position: #DifferentIsBetter." How have you continued to embrace this philosophy in your role as Vice President of Global Human Resources governing Human Resources strategy for eight organizations across Lenovo? And how would you encourage other HR professionals and businesses to adopt these principles and put them into practice?"

Yolanda: "That “different is better” philosophy has really set the foundation and the framework for our new corporate vision of providing Smarter Technology for All, with specific emphasis on the “for all” part. 

"We believe that tech companies like ourselves have a particular responsibility and obligation to be leaders in the D&I space for the work we do around the world to enable connectivity across cultures and people of all backgrounds – we’re the makers of devices that put the power and information of the world at your fingertips, and so for that to be done without consideration for diversity and inclusion is a really dangerous prospect. We’re in the early stages of a fourth industrial revolution, with emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and AR/VR, and, as an industry, tech has the opportunity to make this revolution more inclusive than ones before it."

When you think about these new facets of tech that are improving the user experience, like facial recognition, voice activation, fingerprint scanning, etc., it’s really crucial that you consider a wealth of biometric data – skin tone, facial structure, accents and dialects, size – that vary widely across gender, race, ethnicities, orientations and abilities. The best way to ensure that you’re considering those diverse factors is to ensure a diverse team behind the scenes that is representative of the diversity of your global customer. We’re really proud to have the amazing diversity we do with our 63,000 employees and contractors around the world who serve customers in 180 unique markets. Our teams continually evaluate progress toward our diversity goals and we began publicly reporting our employee diversity data in 2018 with our annual diversity and inclusion report to keep us accountable to our employees, but also to our customers, that we’re doing right by everyone to make our culture and environment as representative and equitable as possible for the global community. Right now, we’re on track to achieve our goals of 20% representation of women in executive positions worldwide, and 28% representation of traditionally under-represented racial and ethnic groups in executive positions across the U.S. by the conclusion of 2020. We’re meeting regularly with our leadership teams to set new sights on commitments for 2025 that we’ll announce in our 2020 report.

HR professionals have to adopt the mindset that D&I is not a strictly HR function – it requires policies and processes hardwired throughout the workplace culture that eliminates bias and fosters genuine inclusion. To help aid in this, we established a Diversity and Inclusion Board within the company, comprised of 10 leaders across multiple business units, functions, and nationalities to ensure that our policies, programs, and initiatives for greater diversity and inclusion are embedded across the company."

Follow Yolanda on LinkedIn.

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Next week's guests: Mark Mullett and Ashley Mills

I'm looking forward to our next guests, Ashley Mills and Mark Mullett, the Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of at-home fitness platform obé Fitness, based in New York City.

Building on their entertainment backgrounds as former CAA/WME talent agents, Mark and Ashley have built obé's virtual fitness content, discussions, and classes with engagement at the core. Keeping that in mind, here's what I'll be asking Ashley and Mark:  

• How did your personal fitness experiences inspire your company?
• When you started obé in 2018, you were predicting a virtual fitness future. Now that virtual fitness has become a vital part of so many people's experience, what do you see as next for the space?
• How is community a part of the virtual fitness experience? 

Feel free to ask your questions in the comments below as well if you'd like to be a part of the conversation, and thank you for reading.