Many of us are now in a place of unconscious incompetence. We don't know what we don't know. Perhaps we believe that we work in a meritocracy. Or we think that, as we read The Guardian, we're good people with a liberal leaning and couldn't possibly be part of the problem. The first step is to raise awareness. We provide tools and training so as to drive awareness of the challenge in front of us. This will hold the mirror up to the D&I challenges in your organisation, demonstrate the business case for D&I in your organisation and consider how we might be getting in the way via our own Unconscious Bias. This is often the most painful step as we find ourselves in conscious incompetence.

We know we need to do something to remove the structural inequalities facing certain groups but we're unsure where to start. The next phase is about systematically removing these barriers. One year we may focus on gender. Another year we may want to do something about social mobility. This phase may take several years to complete as you take a look at the barriers that are in the way for certain groups, and focus on removing them. The Hobbs Consultancy provide programmes, such as parental coaching or our Rising Stars programme, which can support you in your efforts to remove these barriers.

Once you have changed your processes, you may find yourself in a place of conscious competence. You know how to attract and promote more diverse talent in to your organisation but it is a conscious process. The final step is to move to unconscious competence. This is where D&I is so embedded in your DNA that it isn't a topic anymore. It is a fundamental part of how you recruit, how you lead, how you make promotions and how you come up with ideas. The Hobbs Consultancy's flagship product - Inclusive Leadership - (just one of our products aimed at embedding competence) is about changing the leadership skills at the top of an organisation to be with difference, to understand systems, to transform conflict and to be vulnerable leaders.