Hypercube Podcast Transcript

Title: Damian Dowling, TIDE and Enel X, on Tackling Inclusion & Diversity in the Energy Sector

Host: Adam Sroka
Guest: Damian Dowling

Intro: Welcome to the Hypercube podcast, where we explore the cutting edge of data and AI in the energy and utility sectors. I’m your host, Adam Sroka, founder of Hypercube, a strategic technology consultancy supporting asset owner operators, traders, route to market providers, and energy services companies unlock the power of data and AI.

Join me as I sit down with experts from across the energy industry to uncover how they are navigating today’s data driven challenges. And without further ado, let’s get into today’s episode. 

Adam Sroka: Hello, and welcome back to the Hypercube podcast. Delighted today to be joined by Damian Dowling. Damian, would you like to introduce yourself in the audience?

Damian Dowling: Yeah, I’d love to Adam. Thank you. It’s great to be here today. So I’m a volunteer I obviously work in the energy industry, but today I’m speaking from a position of volunteering on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion EDI. My pronouns are he, him, and I. For anybody who may not be able to see me within this podcast, I’ve got brown hair, blue eyes, I’m white, I’m five nine, and today I’m wearing a black shirt.

So that’s, wasn’t helpful on the tube. I wish I had a t shirt, but at the same time, I think starting a conversation like this, it’s really important to include as many people as possible. So that’s why I gave such a kind of detailed. visual description and kind of identity description. 

Adam Sroka: That’s really good.

And it’s not, again, it’s, I love learning this stuff. I formally ran a political philosophy podcast years ago, and we did a whole season on identity. And that’s a really nice intro. So for those of you that have never seen me on any of these, I’m Slightly uglier than Damian. I also have brown hair. I have a brown beard, brown eyes.

I’m 5’11 and I’m wearing a grey jumper today. So I’m at home in my office. So like, why is a good, an actual follow on. Like, why this? Of all things to focus your time and attention and your, precious scarce free time. 

Damian Dowling: Why? I think the idea that any one person can be an expert in EDI is ridiculous.

So why do I do it? Because I’m just one voice within this space, and we need as many voices as possible. So you’ve got a, as I described myself, I’m a, White, rural, Irish, Catholic person from an educational sphere that is, focused on, on one area and I’m gay. And that’s just five lenses out of hundreds.

So what happens if I’m trying to teach EDI to a company that has completely different religious backgrounds within some of those spheres, different physical abilities, different mental abilities, neurodiversity and so on. That’s why I don’t believe you can be an expert. I think you need to be one of the voices.

You need to speak up and you need to get everybody else to try to talk. 

Adam Sroka: But EDI is like really important to me. I have a gay brother, my best friend’s bisexual. It’s been a significant factor across my life. But it feels unusual for me to try and take the stage, and as someone with a large following online, and like the podcast and things, I want to do a lot, but it’s it’s not my stage, almost.

Have you advised for someone like me that wants to I don’t like to say be an ally, but what could I do in my position to help. 

Damian Dowling: I think the idea of this culture is to listen. You really have to, you really have to slow down a little bit. I do a lot of work with, because of my psychology background, I do a lot of work with teaching people about biases.

So if, for example, you are in what is the system one mentality, which is 95 percent of your life. 95 percent of how your brain works, it might be, I’m going to sit on that chair, I’m not going to do a handstand, I’m going to drive a car, I’m going to really do the things that are almost automated in my life, but then I come across something, the 5 percent in my mind, that’s not in the unconscious, it’s in the conscious side, and You might see a person that doesn’t look like you, doesn’t act like you.

And that’s where we have a knee jerk reaction, where we’re in a nervous stage, or in a danger stage, and really you have to slow down. I mentioned, I think I mentioned a quote to you. Previously, I know on my social media I’ve shared it, but it’s wisdom has been chasing you, but you’ve always been too fast.

And that’s really the emphasis of how our brain works. The bias that we’ve built. built, we just physically can’t take in the amount of information that 95 percent of the world throws us, we would not be able to cope. So what we do is put that on autopilot. And when we reach a new situation, unfortunately, we can often go into autopilot and stereotype people like, so being a good ally, we can stereotype people.

people into a certain category even though they might also be an ally or they might not be going to, they might not be planning to do something that you think they’re doing. So I think it’s really important to teach people about these biases and that’s one of the big pieces that I would do so for your question.

Yeah, it’s understanding the human mind and just letting people know in organizations that visibility is important and that when you get to know a person, when you get to know a community, you realize that actually everybody’s different. 

Adam Sroka: Away from that, what about the energy sector? Let’s talk a bit about, you mentioned a couple of organizations, Pride in Energy and Tide.

Can you explain how they work, how they operate and what they’re looking to achieve? 

Damian Dowling: Yeah, I suppose the idea is that we’re probably one of, we were one of the least inclusive industries in the UK. And the idea of Tides and other organizations was to bring everybody together. And that’s pride and energy that stem within various areas, whether that’s men or women and so on.

But the idea is very Important in the fact that it tries to get numerous organizations that have big member bodies. So we’re talking Energy UK, the Institute of Energy Network Association and loads more to really work on that EDI. Because at the moment, or at least in the last few years, we were in silo.

So a lot of good work was done behind those doors. What we need to do is number one to share best practice so that the work behind closed doors is done in the best possible way, but number two to share that and that allows, TIDE, which is tackling inclusion and diversity and energy to have a mission statement that kind of Covers cross sector learning.

So not only are we looking at different parts of the energy industry, but my role in particular is to concentrate on other industries. So how does health care or rail or water or construction can it give back to us? Because I spoke about, the fact that we have targets and we have. challenges, but each industry has, and they can teach us a lot about how we can go forward with the human side, the social value side.

Adam Sroka: I really like that because it’s like a win environment. There’s no competitive advantage to being like, Oh, we’re more inclusive in healthcare and you both win by learning from each other’s best practice and experiments and what works and trying to bring that so that yeah, everyone, benefits.

Damian Dowling: Yeah, 100%. And the thing is, we are in quite a good position. I don’t know if I want to call it a good position, but we’re in an advantage that we can take a huge energy. piece and use that to change our sustainability reports so we can work on those low hanging fruits and we can work on energy and it makes such a huge impact very quickly but there are other industries that just didn’t have the benefit of being able to move that fast so they’ve concentrated on social value, they’ve concentrated on transparent taxation, they’ve concentrated on STEM.

For women on continual education and so on. So they’re, they’ve learned all these lessons and the idea that we don’t spend time listening to them is ridiculous that we don’t need to invent the wheel again. 

Adam Sroka: I think, yeah, like building on past successes and trying to grow forward together, it’s a really Great take on something that again is so important for my right and thinking you actively mentor like senior leadership and CEOs in some of these organizations to understand where to focus and how to enact these strategies.

Damian Dowling: So when I’m talking to CEOs, it’s having closed door discussions on helping them recognize the really, how can we start this roadmap and I’ll build a strategic roadmap with them and we’ll go from there. I suppose the biggest impact they would see is, I’m not saying that it wasn’t valued in the energy industry, but we do.

As a business, put value in everything, and a CEO would not be a CEO if they didn’t put value on Their time because pretty much that’s their core Dedication to the company what we’re finding is that when you help a community within your Or an individual within your employment Feel more welcomed and that could be just Not hiding their mental health, not hiding their physical ability, their sexuality, not hiding their religion.

It takes a huge burden off them. So if you can imagine that you’ve released that burden off a person, they can bring a hundred percent of their energy into your work. organization and for a CEO to see that 100 percent of their employee base is now being more efficient and more productive because they don’t spend all of that tension and sickness and energy trying to hide themselves.

I mean for me that’s the selling point and unfortunately I do need to sell it sometimes. But I think that just stands to itself that, what’s the point in having 80, 000 employees that are working 50 percent of their efficiency when you can have some kind of program that will release them and you’ll double your efficiency.

Adam Sroka: I love that. And I think as a small business owner, It’s much easier as well to think about the actual impact I’m having on all the individual’s lives that work with me. I want, if they’re going to spend three to five years working at a company that I’m building, I want that to be a positive experience for them.

I don’t want them to be like a miserable time where they had to hide who they were. I think that’s harder to do when you’re a huge scale organization. 

Damian Dowling: It’s, it, yeah, definitely. It’s harder to do, but it means those. I know I made it seem quite cold, but people are being more efficient and, but that’s the language that often I would need to speak in the boardroom.

But at the same time, it’s retention. If you’ve spent, if you spent thousands of pounds training a person and then they leave, they don’t feel welcome. I think that’s really important. 

Adam Sroka: So have you got like a high level quickfire advice for listeners that maybe a

Damian Dowling: I think, again, it’s important to realise that, even though I’ve done all this training, I’m not an expert. So I think what’s super important is sitting down and taking it at stages. So looking at looking at the vision. So why are we doing this? Because you’ll fail along the way. I hope you don’t. Most companies will fail at something, and they need to come back to those values, and what are they trying to do?

For example, for some companies, eradicate homelessness. I know that’s not an energy industry piece of work, but if you start going off on a tangent, why are you spending time on that? Because this is going to take a lot of your focus. You really have to build a strategy. Where are you going?

How are you going to do it? And are you creating value? It’s not just about, you have a why, but I could walk into a boardroom and say, this is a great idea. We need the energy industry to be more inclusive because Individuals will be efficient and they will be, you’ll have more retention. But how are we going to do that?

And what value we’re creating. So it has to come back to the human. It has to change. Management is always difficult. Even if you’re improving people’s lives, change management is probably one of the most difficult things you’re going to do in an organization. And then I’d say, lastly, it’s. It’s just getting that plan together.

So putting timelines on us, getting departments involved. So every department might be different because my targets in utilities might be different from generation or might be different from HR and might be different. And I can’t work as. A macro if I don’t include the departments that each have their own challenges So I would say that’s the high level, but it’s bespoke You need to work with organizations to build these roadmaps and I suppose That’s what Tide does, and we have a number of different organizations that we’re affiliated with that would allow you to work on each of those areas, but, and we’re probably going to answer this in a second, but intersectionality and things like that, you just, you can’t work in silo, you need to bring it all together.

Adam Sroka: So to change gears a little bit, I’m just interested to know obviously the world of work’s changing. Everyone’s going bonkers about AI at the moment, for better or worse, lots of big tech developments across energy. Do you see any of these things making a big impact on the way people work and engage with each other?

How they interlace with EDI strategies? 

Damian Dowling: Yeah, definitely. Gartner had a really interesting statistic that over the last five to eight years, pandemic kind of has messed up my statistics on a number of occasions. Depending on your geography, that’s why I gave such a broad timeline. For the first time in human history, we’ve had a 30 percent change in job descriptions.

So that means that in the past generations, you studied a very certain subject, you finished an apprenticeship, you went to university, whatever it may be, and then you Stayed within that role pretty much until retirement. And now we’re looking at a role within a few years of you graduating or entering the workplace that is changed by 30%.

That’s terrifying. That means we need to upskill and within a very short period. So I think globalization. We’ve got all of these challenges coming at us from different parts of the world. We’ve got new technologies coming at us from different parts of the world. And it’s really important to highlight that we need to embrace AI.

The rest of the world is doing it. And the world is changing so fast that if we don’t, the UK will lose not just its economy, but quality of life. The entire country is based on, a workplace that keeps at the forefront and you won’t see quality of life if we lose our footprint within the global economy.

I think we need to start planning now. We need to start planning yesterday, pretty much. And just getting to know the employees in our workplace, so that with AI and with other technologies, we can help them to find their strengths and to upskill. AI doesn’t mean that we’re going to lose people. It means that we’re going to help them to find new roles.

But that 30 percent isn’t about AI. That 30 percent is about every job. I think the fear out there should never be taken on board as a concern to stop progress. I think the fear out there is just change management. And if we can help corporations and individuals to just move on this journey, I think we can keep the UK at the forefront of business.

Adam Sroka: And so that leads, I think, naturally to. Like magic wand or you? Yeah, you have a genie out the bottle. What changes would you like to see Kind of come about over the next five to ten years and I guess what excites you about Yeah, the near future of the energy sector. 

Damian Dowling: I think what you know, we’re talking about today is Equity, diversity, and intelligence at EDI.

And what the energy industry needs to do is concentrate on people a little bit more. To do that, I’d say two things are really fundamental to broadcasting because I’ve in recent surveys, I’ve found so many individuals that believe their company is inclusive, but other companies are not. And I’m not talking about career progression, but if you’re going to run.

Collaboration, a project, a stakeholder, a partnership piece. That’s what the future is. We need to work together and I’m not talking about EDI there. I’m talking about business. But if you believe the business next to you is not inclusive, you’re not going to include that business in your tender and so on.

So I think we need to be better at telling the industry that we’re doing this. Thanks. On an ADI basis, because at the moment we’re keeping it internal and it’s a monthly meeting or it’s a task group or a round table and me talking to another energy company, I wouldn’t have a clue if they’re inclusive on until I actually get through the door.

So I think that’s important. All the surveys, I’m very much data driven. I’m a scientist, I’m a psychologist. They, I don’t accept warm. Fuzzy kind of statements. I need to have longitudinal surveys. I need to have benchmarking So for example, if we’re moving if we’re looking at a survey in pride and energy, let’s benchmark it against the national census So not only how are we doing within the energy industry, but how we’re doing against other And how are we doing against the country?

So I think that those are the two next steps. We’d all lose talent if we don’t collaborate. So that’s the important part about all of this. And I suppose Tide is an organization that is trying to get us to broadcast and trying to get us to implement surveys. But to wave that magic wand, as you said, when my grandmother was born.

There are 2 billion people in the world, and they all live pretty much rurally, so in the countryside. And now we have 8 billion people in the world, and that’s not a long time ago. Unfortunately gone, but a hundred years, is the timescale we’re talking about. So 2 billion to 8 billion, and now nearly 95 percent are living Of us are living in cities.

So no matter how diverse your workplace is, I think we need to think about bringing these good practices home because if we are living in a new world that’s super populated and we’re all living in cities on top of each other, you’ll see the riots that happened in the last few weeks and months because people aren’t listening to, people don’t understand each other.

Okay. And I think that visibility is really important. So in the next five to ten years, let’s Broadcast, get it data driven, and really make sure that EDI is not something that is just in the workplace, but you bring home. I used to work in the oil industry for a while, and the only way health and safety became so intrinsic is because, Okay, we were not on our phone walking down the stairs with a hot cup of coffee.

And we learned those things, but we have to bring it home. We spoke about if you’re streaming where advisor and so on, and you started living health and safety. And I think we need to start living. EDI if the world is going to change properly. 

Adam Sroka: A good statement to end on. Yeah, definitely food for thought.

I’m conscious of time. It’s been a fascinating conversation, something that I think we could have a very interesting chat one on day of a coffee or down the pub and extend this. But before I let anyone go, I always just like to ask if there’s members of the audience want to find out more about you or the way you’re doing tide or print energy.

Or if there’s something you’d like to promote or plug. Where should we send them? 

Damian Dowling: Yeah. So Tide is if we can think about it, it’s an umbrella organization that will bring in support groups. They’ll, they have advertised organizations on the website. So when we talk about pride and energy, when we talk about women in STEM or even training providers, it’s all on there.

So what I would say is the Tide website is. super helpful. If we can share my LinkedIn, feel free to contact me privately because I understand some people just aren’t comfortable, yes, to contact an invisible organization, but the Tide website is out there as well and I can provide both of those links. My LinkedIn and the Tide website, just rest assured that the only thing that gets heavier by thinking about it is a worry.

And if you’re in the workplace and you have this concern, don’t ever feel that there’s no support there for you. That’s exactly what Tide is for. That’s exactly how I can connect you. And I hope today helped, but it may have opened a few questions for people. Please do get in contact. 

Adam Sroka: Thank you so much for your time, Damian.

I really appreciate the conversation. It’s been great to have you on. And yeah, hopefully this has been a really useful listen for some of the folks. 

Damian Dowling: It’s really helpful to get it out there, because as I said, a lot of companies wanted behind closed doors, but you’re being brave and broadcasting it out there.

And I think that’s exactly what we need if we’re to move forward properly. 

Outro: Thanks very much. Thank you for tuning in to the Hypercube podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode and want to dive deeper into the AI in the energy sector, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’re always eager to hear from our listeners.

So if you have any questions. Any topics you’d like us to cover or feedback, you can reach out to us on LinkedIn or check out our website at wearehypercube. com. And remember the energy landscape is evolving fast. Stay ahead of the curve with the latest strategies and solutions right here on the Hypercube podcast.

See you next time.