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RYA create greater diversity and inclusion – DIAP journey

Royal Yachting Association (RYA) is national governing body for dinghy, motor and sail cruising, all forms of sail racing, RIB and sportsboats, windsurfing and personal watercraft, and is a leading representative body for inland waterways cruising in the UK.

Faith Anyanwu, Marketing and Comms Manager at AKD Solutions sat down with Misha Engineer who sits on the Board of Directors at RYA, and Katie Loucaides the Safe Guarding and Equality Manager at RYA to discuss their DIAP journey so far.

Afternoon Misha, we understand you were recently appointed as a Non-Executive of the RYA. Why did you decide to join RYA?  

Misha: The opportunity came about through the relationship between Sport England and Perrett Laver with whom I had signed up as a NED candidate. I was keen to take on this role as I had a previous history with volunteering as a mentor to disadvantaged children in London and as an informal Board member for the RISE Campaign at the Prince’s Trust. In addition, my motivations through my career as a doctor-turned-pharmaceutical entrepreneur have been on social impact and driving changes for positive societal benefit. I felt that the RYA was an excellent organisation in which I could contribute and bring my Executive and volunteer experience in order to improve opportunities for participation for those who may not have ever considered being active on the water or for those who may not have had the chance in life to do so at a leisure, grass-roots or elite level.

Can you please share some of the EDI challenges RYA is currently experiencing? 

Misha: We have challenges around perception: the perception that sailing is for privileged members of society. There are also perceptions that sailing is an exclusive sport. The challenge is to ensure that our sailing clubs and environments are warm, welcoming and inclusive; where all feel comfortable to ask questions about learning new skills and barriers are broken down.

Katie: We are aware that there are still some groups and communities who continue to be underrepresented across the RYA in a variety of different areas. We are very fortunate that as a sport and recreation, boating has a wide variety of disciplines which means that anyone can have a go and get involved no matter their age, ability or background.

Misha: The RYA, through the launch of our new strategy is committed to increasing participation at grass roots and elite level from all sections of society. We want to ensure opportunities are available to those who may not have ever considered the sport or to those who may not have had the circumstances in life to participate.

Katie: We recognise that sailing and boating is an activity which might not initially appeal to everyone; however, we want to ensure that everyone that wants to get involved can and is welcomed. We want everyone to have positive experiences and an amazing time on the water where they will want to return time and time again.

How did you feel at the start of your DIAP journey and how has the process been? 

Katie: As an organisation we were really looking forward to starting the process of reviewing our existing action plan to ensure that it was in line with the expectations of Sport England. Our strategy and action plan was launched in June 2021, so we were due to review it to ensure it remained relevant. We also wanted to ensure that we were maintaining momentum and continuing to challenge ourselves to push our EDI agenda even further forward.

Misha: We were excited at the prospect of working closely with the AGS consortium to produce a DIAP. This has been a wonderful opportunity for the RYA to put a plan in place to help shape our strategy.

Katie: Since the launch of the EDI strategy, we have been focussing our work on identifying the barriers to participation that some groups face when accessing on the water activities and finding ways to eliminate them. The DIAP journey so far has been really positive. Our conversations with the consultant have enabled us to focus our plans and priorities going forward, and offered a diversity of thought that has checked and challenged what we have done in the past and inspired us to be creative and bold for the future. We are now in the process of formulating the action plan and hope to have it signed off by the RYA board in a few months time. This will then become embedded within with our new organisational strategy where inclusion is a strategic imperative.

Have you experienced any challenges on your DIAP journey and how did you overcome this? 

Katie: We have had a great experience so far; however we did have some challenges around the partner questionnaire. We felt that the questions were very black and white and didn’t really allow us to portray an accurate picture of what we do and how we do it. This area is very rarely black and white, so we fed back our thoughts on this process which was welcomed [RYA were part of a ‘go-early’ pilot group ahead of launch]. Throughout our process we were continually asked to feedback on our experiences to ensure the formal roll out went successfully. Other than that, we have been really pleased with the support we have been given.

What aspect of the DIAP journey has stimulated brilliance?

Katie: I think the discussions we have had with our consultant have really helped to formulate our thinking and gave us direction on our priority areas. It was following this that the DIAP started to take shape. We had so many thoughts and plans, all of which we felt should and could be a priority, but by having those discussions, we were able to refine what we were trying to achieve. This included identifying our long-term ambitions and some quick wins that we could indicate progress etc.

What do you see as the benefits of diversity and inclusion? 

Katie: There are so many benefits of diversity and inclusion. To ensure that sailing and boating is relevant for future generations, priority must be given to developing and growing in this area. Having amazing role models to inspire and empower is super important, along with listening to the lived experiences of our stakeholders, this gives us a platform for learning and developing. People now have higher expectations when it comes to their engagement with organisations and participating in activities and will look for them to be progressive, inclusive and sustainable. It is therefore imperative that we strive to meet and exceed those expectations, which will ultimately ensure the future of sailing and boating.

Misha: In my view, when you have an organisation that is more representative of society, it will be more effective at serving the community. So, at grass roots level, we will attract even more people to the sport. If we can create more opportunities for people from the whole of society to try our sport, there will be more people who come back and continue to develop, learn new skills and be part of a wonderful community. At the elite level, if we can attract even more talent drawn from a wider pool of the population, we can win even more medals. I believe that there is a sport for everyone. People just need to have the opportunities to try, develop their skills and be nurtured in that journey.

Brilliant, we couldn’t agree more. As we round up can you please share your hopes for RYA and how the DIAP will have an impact?

Katie: As an NGB, we want to change the narrative around boating and on the water activity to ensure that there is an environment and culture which supports inclusion and celebrates diversity. No matter who or where, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to be involved in all aspects of on the water activity. We want to inspire people to discover sailing and boating, either as a sport or as a recreational activity by approaching their local club and having a go.

We appreciate that there is more work for us to do and with our experiences so far, the help and support of our consultant and our new DIAP, we are even more motivated to continue our journey.

We would like to thank the RYA team for their time and sharing their experience of the DIAP journey. To find out more visit the RYA website.

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The importance of data for creating a Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan

The role of data is fundamental to the process of producing a credible Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). If we are to bring about meaningful change and create a more inclusive landscape for sport and physical activity to thrive, we need to start by looking at ourselves, our volunteers and our participants.

We also need to pose ourselves the really difficult question ‘to what extent do we represent the communities we purport to serve?’ Tackling this question is where the importance of data becomes apparent. In short, we need to know about who we are and the extent to which we reflect society more widely. For example, all things being equal, we might reasonably expect to find that 51% of the workforce in sport are women and around 15% are ethnically diverse.

We know from the Tackling Racism and Racial Inequality in Sport research that women (44%) and ethnically diverse communities (7%) are underrepresented in the sport and physical activity workforce. If we extend the analysis to the nine Protected Characteristics as well as data on socio-economic status and lived experiences, we find that those who have encountered disadvantage in their lives tend to be underrepresented in both participation and the workforce.

By being aware of these issues, we can do something about them, which is why Diversity and Inclusion Action Plans will be drivers of the change we all wish to achieve. Data can be bit of a dry subject matter, so it pays to illustrate a few basic points with some practical examples and where better to start than with UK Sport and Sport England?

UK Sport’s DIAP makes it absolutely clear about its ambition to reflect the wider population as shown in the quote below.

By 2031, the people in UK Sport will be fully reflective of UK society. Specifically, this means that our Board, Senior Executive Leadership, and Workforce, will separately and collectively be comprised of min: 50% female, 20% disabled, 14% diverse ethnic background, and 3% LGBTQ+, as well as people with different lived, regional and socio-economic experiences.

If we do not have a baseline of who the key people are, then it is not possible to produce credible evidence about how representative organisations are and how they have changed over time. This is where UK Sport has shown ambition and leadership with some unambiguous metrics around what it wishes to achieve. In its current draft, the UK Sport DIAP does not contain baseline data, which means we can’t see the extent to which UK Sport is representative of UK society at the start of its DIAP journey. However, a good example of using baseline data can be seen in Sport England’s DIAP which states:

We prioritise and collect good quality people data to assess the make-up of our workforce and our Board, assisting us to identify barriers and solutions. The data is at 28 February 2021. Our data focuses on four protected characteristics as defined in the Equality Act: race (referred to ethnic group), disability (referred to disabled/ long term conditions), sex (referred to gender) and sexual orientation (referred to LGBT+).

Using the data in Appendix 3 of Sport England’s DIAP enables a clear diagnosis to be made about the organisation’s levels of diversity on the characteristics it has selected as being important, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: The representativeness of Sport England’s Board and workforce

x= Not measured //= Measured AND representative /x = Measured BUT NOT representative

Sport England measures the representativeness of its 12 Board members on the basis of ethnicity and sex. When we compare the findings with the population of England, we find a higher proportion of women and ethnically diverse people than in the population as a whole. On these two measures the Board more than adequately represents the wider population. By contrast, Sport England’s senior leadership team is eight strong and its data are not reported separately, because:

As numbers are less than 10, Sport England is unable to report diversity breakdown due to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

The GDPR issue is a really important learning point and System Partners will need to think carefully about what data they hold about their Board and workforce and what permissions they have to use it and publish it.

Finally, Sport England has around 290 paid staff (including the senior leadership team) and reports against five of the nine Protected Characteristics. For disability and ethnicity the organisation is under representative of the wider population, whereas for sex and sexual orientation the scores are representative.

Another important learning point is that achieving representativeness can be limited by the small numbers that are apparent in some groups. For example, a typical Board will be no more than 12 people. If 5% of the population describe their sexual orientation as LGB+, then we might expect 0.6 Board members to have this characteristic, which is clearly nonsense. However, amongst a staff of 290, we would expect at least 14 people to be LGB+, which is entirely reasonable.

As we get further into the DIAP support process, we will be developing resources such as question banks and case studies to help Partners collect and make sensible use of their data. In the first instance, we will be delivering a webinar in May which will examine data in more detail and hopefully provide Partners with increased confidence as to what data they collect; how they collect it; and most importantly how they use it.

We believe that morally, greater diversity is an important goal to pursue and it is also good for business. We will support you to use your data to meet these objectives, as we work our way through the DIAP process.

Written by Simon Shibli, Sheffield Hallam University

Do you want to know more about how the Sport Division at AKD can serve you and your organisation? Click here to find out more.

Contact the Sport division team by simply completing our contact form here.

Blog Post · Leadership · Organisation Development · Uncategorized

Disruptive Learning- Creative and Adaptive Learning Model for the Emergent Future

Introduction

Society is evolving rapidly and it feels like often we can’t keep up. Our children will be doing jobs that we’ve never heard of. Business will be conducted in ways which for many of us are unimaginable. So if we don’t know what our world will look like in the next 5, 10, 20 years, how do we prepare our organisations for such uncertainty. What learning methodologies do we need to adopt to allow our people to design and create the future that truly optimizes the possibilities ahead of us?

The potential of people is huge and yet for the majority sadly squandered. In our organisations lies so much latent talent and yet we have failed to galvanise this and use it for the advantage of our businesses and society as a whole. How have the cultures of our organisations, and the way in which we learn and develop allowed for such inexcusable waste of human brilliance?

In this paper, we introduce the concept of Disruptive Learning as a tool to address the above. Disruptive Learning is about how we learn forward and not backwards. It’s not a complex idea, but it is unconventional and for many organisations, it will be uncomfortable and counterintuitive. However, nothing great was born from convention, so why are we so determined to cling to it? Disruptive learning is a mindset and thought process for designing learning experiences that challenge the norm, facilitate exploration and discovery. If you want to design the future, then at some point you need to disrupt your present.

The danger of learning backwards

Although there is much to be celebrated about how we learn in the workplace, we must acknowledge some key flaws.

Firstly our learning is heavily influenced by our formal education process. For many of us around the world, we experience an education system designed for an industrial revolution era. At its core is creating a workforce for compliance and conformity. You are rewarded for getting things right and penalised for getting things wrong. This is one of the biggest flaws in how we learn. Mistakes have rewarded us with some of the most significant inventions and breakthroughs that we benefit from now.

John Pemberton was a biochemist, who fought in the American Civil War and sustained a sabre wound to the chest. This led to an addiction to morphine. Pemberton sought to find a cure for this addiction. Instead, he discovered Coca Cola. Everyone reading this paper has probably used the invention created by Dr Spencer Silver. Dr Spencer Silver, a 3M scientist, was busily researching adhesives in the laboratory. In the process, he discovered something peculiar: an adhesive that stuck lightly to surfaces but didn’t bond tightly to them. The Post-it was created.

Percy LeBaron Spencer was working on magnetrons—high-powered vacuum tubes that generate short radio waves called microwaves—when he accidentally discovered microwave cooking. The engineer was doing his job as usual when he noticed that the candy bar in his pocket had melted. Quickly Spencer realized that it was the magnetron that was causing this phenomenon. By 1945, he had filed a patent for his metal cooking box powered by microwaves.

These are a few obvious examples, but millions more exist. If you reflect on your personal experience, you will probably find that profound learning experiences have often come from getting things wrong. So why do we struggle to embrace this truth?

Unfortunately, we are taught to fear failure. This is indoctrinated into us as children and remains with us throughout our personal and professional lives. So naturally, it’s a very present feature of many organisations we work for. We have to get things right. Our jobs, our reputations depend upon this. Therefore our learning processes reinforce this reality. Getting things right may provide gratification, but it depreciates learning opportunities and experience. You may get an immediate reward, but you won’t learn much from getting things right. Our most profound learning often when we got things wrong.

Your best future cannot be created by playing it safe and striving to get things right. And if we provide learning methodologies and opportunities that reinforce this, we do ourselves, our organisations and our societies a great disservice.

I was recently listening to Jim Rohn and he said something that resonated:

“Here’s why we don’t really reach into the future. We are trapped, either by regrets of the past or the routine of the present. (We are) so busy with the routine of the present that we don’t give much thought to designing the future. Or (we are) trapped by the past with regret of past losses, past failures, past mistakes and we relive them over and over again, not for the benefit of changing it for the future, but just because we feel that our lives have been less than favourable, simply because of all the things that have happened to us in the past”.

This statement is as applicable to an individual as it is to an organisation. Routine can consume all your energy. There is never enough time. We are constantly busy. We are being measured on the “now performance” and if “now” isn’t good enough then there could be serious consequences. Football managers have only a handful of games to get it right before a replacement is being sought. When your shareholders are your boss, there is constant pressure to deliver for the now. So where is the time and space for the future?

And let’s not forget the regrets that Jim Rohn referred to. Mistakes paralyse leaders and therefore the organisation. And when mistakes are perceived so negatively (and some rightly so), then bravery will retreat and “steady as you go” will come to the fore. Your focus will be on now and ensuring self-preservation rather than creating new spaces of opportunity and possibility.

We need to recognise the importance of now and optimising now. But we must understand the importance of the future and carve out time to think about this. We need to acknowledge the mistakes of old, learn, but move on. How do we move forward with the right balance?

Disruptive Learning

At the core of this paper is the question “How do we create a learning culture and platforms that allow our organisation’s intended future to emerge?”

The first thing we need to do is learn forward and not backwards. Convention can’t create your intended future. But disruption can. Disruptive learning is a method to enable the fullness of your future to emerge.

Disruption is now part of the language of business and gradually becoming part of the learning vernacular. But let’s be clear about what disruptive learning is. A dictionary definition of disruptive is to prevent something from continuing or operating in a normal way. For clarity, I am defining disruptive learning as:

A learning experience that radically challenges conventions and norms and provides the catalyst to new possibilities, opportunities and outcomes.

Disruptive learning has no predicted outcome other than if you embrace the experience and reflect deeply on the experience, something of immense potential could emerge. Professor Jules Goddard, a fellow at the London Business School helped to shape the concept of Disruptive Learning. He said it’s a challenging learning method that is deliberately deconstructive to allow for new thinking and possibilities to emerge. He continued there are aspects of disruptive learning that may be counterintuitive. Professor Jules Goddard said “ If you think it’s measurable, it’s not worth doing! The real value we bring by definition is immeasurable. We have a sense of whether something is important and making a difference. When you start to put numbers on it, the experience and the potential are distorted. Measures make it comfortable.

Uncomfortable..but let’s explore anyway…

The disruption is highest when the feedback is lowest. When a group of senior executives from France found themselves in a remote village in Mumbai, some simply didn’t want to be there. They were extremely uncomfortable and didn’t understand the purpose. They hated the lack of structure. But the journey didn’t end there and profound learning was the result. It was back in the hotel, in the moments of reflection and discussion that profound learning and ideas emerged, that was transformational for the individuals and the organisation.

Disruptive learning means that you must be courageous and be willing to look beyond the immediate feedback and trust in the process. The return on investment won’t necessarily come from the actual activity. It will probably come from the experiments that the experience stimulates. “What is the one question that comes from my experience that if we found the answer would have a profound impact on the organisation?” This means we will need to rethink how we evaluate a disruptive learning experience. Conventional measures of learning that we use in organisations will be too restrictive. The evaluation will be the experience, the impact and what emerges. This means courage and patience!

What does it look like?

Because Disruptive Learning is unconventional, I can’t give you a nicely presented package. And you shouldn’t want one. What we can do is share some examples of disruptive learning and some of the characteristics you should be seeking to include.

I asked Professor Jules Goddard about his most disruptive learning experience. He provided two examples:

Finding Your Voice in a Remote Village in Mumbai

“It was when I was at the edge. I spent a week in Mumbai, with executives from Danone. We found ourselves remote in a village with no agenda, other than to find our voice and hear the voices of others living very different lives from ours. I still remember the flavours. Some of the executives couldn’t understand why they were there and wanted to leave. We experienced extreme discomfort, physically and mentally. We found a health centre and a school. We taught at the school for a few hours. We placed ourselves in the minds of very different people for a while. Later in a luxury hotel, we had a sense of guilt and voyeurism, but we reflected on our discomforts and mental models. Those who didn’t want to be there suddenly got what’s going on.

Who is the Most Interesting Person you know?

On another occasion, Professor Goddard took a group of executives from Prudential to California and hooked up with Andre Norman. Andre Norman is also known as the Ambassador of Hope. Andre’s years were framed by crime and violence and led him to be sentenced to over 100 years in prison. Whilst in solitary confinement Andre had an epiphany, went from an illiterate to teaching himself law, and eventually won an appeal after 14 years. Professor Goddard team up with Andre Norman with a group of executives with the objective of “finding the most interesting person in the city”.

We went into the most dangerous parts of LT in a car. We drove around, when saw someone interesting, we stopped the car and ask the person “who is the most interesting person in the hood”. We met some remarkable people. We did this 5 times and ended up meeting a woman hosting 25 homeless people in a park. We talked 3-4 hours to this woman and those who were homeless. I recall it had a profound impact on HR Director. She stayed in contact with one of the people for at least one year after the experience.

Designing a Disruptive Learning Experience

The key thing to remember in your design is that you only create the framework and the spark to ignite the experience. The rest is down to those involved.

So what are some of the characteristics of disruptive learning experiences:

Discomfort

The common denominator for all disruptive learning experiences is discomfort.

Steve Murphy is the Managing Director of MTR Elizabeth line in London. He recalled having to deal with the most controversial industrial relations issue the industry had faced in a generation. On top of that, he had to face Bob Crow, one of the UK’s most formidable union leaders. Steve Murphy recognised the issue had the potential to destroy the company he had built and rip the industry apart. On reflection, he said that his most profound learning was when he was genuinely afraid. “It turned out to be really successful, but what made me focus and perform at a high level was fear”.

Chizoba Mojekwu, the former HR Director for the Central Bank of Nigeria, recalls a 9-day course at the Harvard Business School. She recalled she spent 3 of the days in tears (along with other colleagues). She noted that the pain was worth it for a profound learning experience that has never left her.

We are not advocating that you deliberately make people cry or construct scenarios with the intent of scaring people to death. But there must be discomfort. If you accept that convention will not allow your best future to emerge, then you need to create a framework for learning that places people in uncomfortable (but managed) circumstances.

Forget the classroom!

In our research, another common feature is that disruptive learning doesn’t take place in a classroom or sitting in front of a computer. It is more likely to take place in an unusual location with people you normally don’t engage with. Professor Jules Goddard participates in a village outside of Mumbai and to the suburbs of California, not normally reserved for senior executives of global brands.

Going with your gut!

A lot of the learning experiences I’ve developed for clients have been intuitive, lacked a lot of structure, but were unbelievable impactful. The parameters were outlined and within this space, we provide freedom to see what would happen.

Playfulness

One of the most powerful and liberating learning methodologies. It is the most natural form of learning. Playfulness has two key components, exploration and problem-solving. But when children begin their play, they don’t have a structure for what the issue is nor an intended endpoint. But through play, they discover both. We need to liberate those designing the future to play.

Carefully Constructed Chaos

Often disruptive learning is an experience that is in the moment and without rehearsal. We need to help people recognise, reflect and truly embrace these experiences to optimise them.

We can also construct these experiences. A great way to describe it is Carefully Constructed Chaos. This means carefully constructing the parameters of the experience, but allowing the middle (the content, the chaos) to emerge.

Also remember the experience itself is only one component of the experience. True learning will often follow through reflection and asking deeper, more challenging and meaningful questions than would have been previously generated.

To carefully construct chaos you first need to understand what normality is to those involved. You need to gain some insight into the individuals involved to gain some understanding of the professional and personal challenges they have experienced. I work with an amazing charity, Breaking the Silence, which works with victims of domestic violence, forced marriage and human trafficking. I have included them in the design of some leadership programmes because I know that participants will find it hugely uncomfortable and transformative. But if there are victims/survivors of domestic violence then it would not fulfil a chaotic dimension.

Often these are constructed engaging with people outside of the participants’ normal social field. The London Business School has facilitated sessions where former gang members and ex-prisoners have worked with senior executives, allowing them to explore London in ways that for them are unimaginable.

The Role of Technology

Technology is now an inextricable part of life, including learning. Therefore we need to understand its role in disruptive learning.

Artificial Intelligence is a good starting point. Artificial Intelligence is “The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.” (1) Amazon Web Services also mentions learning, problem-solving and pattern recognition in their definition.(2).

AI has four key components: human thinking, rational thinking, human acting and rational acting. AI wants to think like a human, but move beyond so that it can think and act in the most rational, optimised way. This is powerful, but can it be disruptive? If we agree that human creativity is responsible for the future, can AI create the future or merely optimise the here and now. No doubt geniuses are working hard to achieve this.

What technology provides is accessibility and connectivity. We can access information in ways which are incredible and connect with people and ideas that were inconceivable even 10 years ago. But this does come with a health warning. Technology can democratize information. However, the notion of personalisation can be counterintuitive to democratisation. The architects of social media seek to understand your profile and preference and then push information to you that suits who your persona says you are. This is particularly prevalent in our politics, where we see how political parties are using social media to carefully pinpoint campaign information that suits your profile.

Netflix will suggest you may want to watch this, and more often than not we trust these recommendations. Personalisation may make it easier to sift through the noise, but it can also make us lazy. Disruptive Learning requires you to be intentional, going beyond what Facebook or Twitter or YouTube predict you will engage with. Disruptive Learning requires you to deliberately seek out new ideas and new people.

Who is disruptive learning for?

Disruptive learning is a tool that should be used by anyone who has responsibility for imaging and creating the future for an institution. Here we focus on organisations. (corporate, public or voluntary). But it can be applied on a micro lee

When should you apply Disruptive Learning?

Disruptive Learning is a tool that you should be used sparingly, otherwise, you run the risk of losing its uniqueness and unconventionality. I think that two great opportunities for disruptive learning are:

Developing new and emerging leaders
When there is deliberate space for future planning

When working with new and emerging leaders, you want them to be responsible for the present, but more importantly the future. They are the talent that are likely to have some responsibility for governing the future, so surely they should have a stake in creating it. By applying disruptive learning in their formative years as leaders, you create a foundation, which will be profound and shape how they lead.

When your organisation is embarking on planning its, be brave enough to rip up the rule book, start with a blank sheet and facilitate a disruptive learning experience. It will remove the barriers of convention and allow them to explore possibilities that other “workshop sessions” will potentially inhibit. From the experience, questions and hypotheses will emerge that will allow for a much fuller experience of future planning.

Akin Thomas is the founder and CEO of AKD Solutions

AKD Sport – Our story so far…

When I first met our CEO (Akin Thomas) at a Sport England conference held at Aston Villa Football Club, we exchanged pleasantries. Well after a short lunch meeting with Akin we concluded with him proposing we could do some work in the future of which I was open to. A couple of months after that I was contacted by a colleague regarding a tender and I went to Akin saying ‘I think together we could win this’. We had a week to bring together our submission and I hoped that we could compete with all the other established organisations out there. We won and the small team delivered a seminal piece of research that still reverberates across the UK sports and physical activity space, that piece of research and report was ‘Tell Your Story’, that was the birth of the Sports Division at AKD.

In the past two years, we have conducted pioneering research within the sport sector including ‘Tell Your Story’ which looked at the stories of those within ethnically diverse communities and their experiences of accessing or involvement in sport, click here to read. Following this, we delivered 2 more pieces of research. We are also working with a host of national governing sport bodies, Sport Wales, UK Sports, Sport England and more. The growth has been swift but our range and impact is testament to all the people involved in AKD Sport Division.

Our mission is to be pioneers in sport by bringing insight, stimulating brilliance within the sector and giving original thought leadership to help make changes that benefit all. This gives all the opportunity to access the rich ecosystem of sport and physical activity.

Written by Ladi Ajayi, Head of Sport Division

Blog Post · Diversity and Inclusion · Sports · Uncategorized

AGS, UK SPORT AND SPORT ENGLAND DETERMINED TO MAKE SPORT AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY MORE DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE WITH DIAPS

AKD Solutions together with The Governance Form and Sheffield Hallam University (AGS) have forged a consortium to provide a wide range of skills, experience and creativity for sporting and physical activity organisations as they produce actionable and robust Diversity and Inclusion Plans (DIAPS). Ladi Ajayi, Head of Sport Division at AKD stated; “As the landscape of sport shifts towards becoming more inclusive and diverse, AGS is determined to be part of the cohort of organisations involved in positively shifting the dial.”

Lady Ajayi — Ladi Ajayi, Head of Sport Division

There is a consensus that sport and physical activity sector in the UK is excluding large numbers of people. The sector must be progressive in breaking down barriers for more people to gain access and enjoy the physical and mental well-being benefits of sport and physical activity. When Sport England and UK Sport reviewed the Code for Sports Governance in 2021, they introduced a new requirement for their Tier 3 funded partners to create a Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). The plans are expected to be ambitious and robust and clearly show how partners will work to improve diversity and inclusion across their whole organisation. Karl George, Lead Independent Review said; “We hope to help each partner to follow a process that enables them to enhance any existing action plan they have around diversity or if they haven’t got a DIAP we envisage that the process that we have recommend will help them to prepare bespoke, ambitious and proportionate plans.” Additionally, the plans will include clear and accountable actions which involve all stakeholders.

AGS are keen for partners to work collaboratively to not just draft another plan but to see this as an opportunity to action and embed fundamental change. Simon Shibli Sheffield Hallam University notes, “I’d like to see a culture change, whereby using data on diversity and inclusion is embedded in the DNA of sport and physical activity organisations because we agree that it is the right thing to do and good for business.”

To achieve this, AGS believe partners cannot do what they have always done. Akin Thomas, CEO of AKD adds “We need to disrupt our normality to create something better. This is an opportunity for partners to fuse their knowledge, experience and goals with our energy and expertise to develop and deliver DIAPs that will shift the dial.”

To find out more information visit www.akdsolutions.com/ags or email diapsupport@akdsolutions.com

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Black History Month : the importance of context

To be honest, for many years I avoided Black History Month. I questioned the motives of many organisations, who I believed weren’t genuine. But I’ve witnessed changes with many individuals and organisations being more intentional about their approach to celebrating this month.

I’m forward thinking, acknowledging the past but not necessarily given it the credence it deserves. But in my reflections, increasingly I understand the importance of context. The more context I’ve been afforded the greater my self-awareness, self worth and therefore my impact. But for many my personal context has been distorted, blurred or even erased.

I was fostered at 6 weeks old to a white family in the late 1960s. It was a common practice for Nigerian parents to foster their children privately to white families outside of London. For many children it was a traumatic experience. I wouldn’t describe mine as traumatic, but definitely it was hard and challenging. I don’t blame my mum, she did what she thought was right and it’s a huge contribution to who I am today.

I recall my friends being on the football terraces on a Saturday with their National Front chants and then on Monday telling me “you’re alright Akin, you’re not like the rest”. I didn’t really know what it meant, but you begin to believe it.
Akin Thomas, AKD Solutions

I was one of only 4 black children in the area and I was the only black child for the entirety of my schooling from 5-16. It was often challenging, but when you’re 10, you’re just existing because this is all you know. I recall my friends being on the football terraces on a Saturday with their National Front chants and then on Monday telling me “you’re alright Akin, you’re not like the rest”. I didn’t really know what it meant, but you begin to believe it. So I grew with a massive void, of knowing that I didn’t really fit in my environment, but being deprived of context.

So fast forward. The first time I went to Nigeria, I was 28 years old. I had delayed going, because of being estranged for such a long time, but importantly I had a point to prove. I felt the need to go back with a sense of achievement and accomplishment. It was need to show my family that I had amounted to something despite them. What I got was so much more. The two things I got was a big dose of humility and a huge amount of context. The humility came from being in a go slow (traffic jam) and I remember two people running to the car to sell me their oranges, one I suspect was an 80 year old woman, the other a 4 year old boy. If they didn’t sell, they didn’t eat. In that moment all of my career and entrepreneurial accolades were insignificant.

The other thing I got was context. Being in Nigeria, in the buzz of Lagos, going to my home town in Abeokuta, climbing Olumo Rock, visiting the original compound of family, hearing the origins of my family was so grounding. Seeing thousands of people like me, brilliant entrepreneurs, those struggling but going about life with a sense of joy and expectation, the loudness of conversations, the sea of colour, the sense of possibility, I just remember thinking “I get it”. I get them, these people who I have little or nothing in common and yet we share so much. I understood the power of language and feeling cheated for not having the opportunity to speak Yoruba. But also being honest that it wasn’t required to for me to thrive in the UK.

But more importantly “I got me”. I got where my burn, my thoughts, my drive came from and it gave a sense of a sense of acceptance and of greater completion. Context has allowed me to be much more than I was without. So for me I want Black History Month, to give context, to those who have been denied theirs so that they can be unshackled to be who they were gifted to be.

Written by Akin Thomas, Founder and CEO of AKD Solutions.

Find out about our most popular Equality, Diversity and Inclusion workshop Equally Yours which has been used by leading international organisations. Equally Yours uses the power of conversation and playfulness to help organisations navigate EDI.

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Bespoke Training Course -Toyota

Toyota is the largest car manufacturer in the world. In the US over 70% of customer engagement was online. In Europe it was 5%. ‍Toyota Europe wanted to address this and make it easier for customers to engage with them online. They wanted to develop a comprehensive strategy that facilitated this, included a programme of learning and development that could be rolled out across all the European nations.“Kaiwa (the Japanese name of our programme) was an excellent and refreshing way for our national marketing & sales companies across Europe to experience the wide range of social media available on the internet, and to be challenged and learn the practical impacts of customer handling in a safe social media environment.”David Heming, Customer Relations Manager, Toyota

Our ApproachA Bespoke training course for Customer Relations and Marketing staffWe worked very closely with Toyota to develop Kaiwa (Kaiwa means conversation in Japanese). This was a 2-day course that was attended by customer relations and marketing staff. This equipped employees with the skills to communicate more consistently and clearly with customers online, optimise different channels, and work together more collaboratively. We delivered the programme across Europe to delegates from over 30 nations. ‍It has supported countries which had little or no social media presence, as well as providing a stimulating learning event for more mature markets

OutcomesContinuous development over the past four years. Our programme has now become an integral part of Toyota’s social business model and feedback received from Toyota reports that tangible improvements regarding customer experience have been made nationwide. The success of Kaiwa has meant that we were regular guests at their annual European conferences, where we deliver customer experience based workshops.

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Customer Experience Training Programmes

Mears is one of the UK’s leading housing repairs and care providers to both the public and private sector. With 6,500 employees looking after 13,000 people, customer satisfaction is a top priority.

Mears goal was to put the customer at the heart of everything they do. They wanted to ensure that all colleagues had the awareness, understanding, and tools to do this. They asked AKD Solutions to help develop a programme to deliver significant improvements in customer satisfaction.

We worked with Mears to create the Customer Success Acceleration Programme. This was a five-month talent management initiative for Team Leaders and Managers in their Customer Service and Community team. ‍The programme covered a range of topics from; Communication Skills and Management Development to Social Value.

We developed a disruptively creative programme to stretch participants. Their collaborative challenges included designing a restaurant and project-managing the arrival of 4000 Paralympians to an Athletes’ Village at a global sporting event. Finally, delegates received an opportunity to demonstrate their learning by completing a project set by their senior managers.

The programme was a great success with 92% of delegates saying they would recommend it. Mears
told us that our work had enabled employees to better connect with both their customers and colleagues, instilling a more collaborative culture within
the company.

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The influence of women in Sport

AKD and BWB making Basketball more inclusive and diverse.

We are really proud to announce our newest client, British Wheelchair Basketball. We are working with them to explore how to make the sport even more diverse and inclusive.

Wheelchair basketball is a fast-paced and fast-growing sport that allows non-disabled and disabled people to compete together in its domestic leagues and competition. British Wheelchair Basketball is the governing body for wheelchair basketball in the United Kingdom. Currently there are 17,000 people playing the sport with the hope of growing it to 70,000.

The first thing on our agenda was to watch a match and see this exciting sport in action, we were not disappointed! Ladi, Nana and Akin watched East London Phoenix win their opening match against the Cardiff Met Archers, one of the first matches in the Women’s Professional League, the first disabled professional league in the UK. It was brilliant game and we were privileged to be part of this historic event.

“We are really pleased to be working with British Wheelchair Basketball.It is a great organisation who recognize the challenges in diversifying their sport and we value their honesty and transparency in tackling these issues. We are at AKD are looking forward to working together with BWB.”

We are looking forward to working alongside British Wheelchair Basketball as they set out to make basketball more inclusive. We will be sharing with you the great work we are doing so do follow us on this journey.

Make sure you check out the fixtures and get to a British Wheelchair Basketball match, we promise you will be amazed and inspired!

British Wheelchair Basketball we are super excited to be working with you. Signup to our FREE Sports ACE Leadership taster workshop, this disruptive workshop is designed for sport Leaders, find our more here.‍

Download our racial diversity report #tellyourstory here.

We are always adding to our free leadership and management courses and demos, to spark brilliance by designing and delivering stimulating, challenging and fun learning experiences and training programs. Our ACE free online Leadership Workshops can be found here. Contact Us for a FREE demo on 0345 034 1105 or email info@akdsolutions.com

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AKD and BWB making Basketball more inclusive and diverse.

We are really proud to announce our newest client, British Wheelchair Basketball. We are working with them to explore how to make the sport even more diverse and inclusive.

What we do