Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good by Joan C. Williams

Companies spend billions of dollars annually on diversity efforts, with remarkably few results. Too often diversity efforts rest on the assumption that all that's needed is an earnest conversation about privilege. That's not enough. To truly make progress with diversity, equity and inclusion, we must focus less on documenting the problem and more on just stopping the transmission of it.

In Bias Interrupted, Joan C. Williams shows how it's done, and reassuringly, how easy it is to get started. Leaders just need to use standard business systems and standard business tools—data and metrics—to interrupt the bias that is constantly transmitted through formal systems like performance appraisals and the informal systems that control access to opportunities, like mentoring programs. The book presents fresh evidence based on Williams's research and work with companies, in that interrupting bias helps every group—including white men.

Comprehensive, though compact and straightforward, Bias Interrupted delivers real, practical value in as efficient and accessible manner as possible to an audience that has never needed it more. It's possible to interrupt bias. Here's where you start.