State of Society
You don’t come here for politics, and I’m not going to give my politics to you.
But the current state of society is crucial to understand if you’re going to be able to credibly present your employer value proposition.
So here comes my take on politics in the “Western” world, as we hit a quarter of the way through this century.
Left and right as we understood it, are not now the main drivers of how we choose to vote.
Instead, I see the two main factions as being those that hold a Growth mindset and those that hold a Fixed mindset.
Classically, these were about attitudes to learning. A growth mindset is the belief that abilities, intelligence, and talents can be improved through effort, while a fixed mindset is the belief that these traits are unchangeable.
In the political sense, I see that a growth mindset is about a desire to do things differently than in the past, a fixed mindset being about being reliant on familiar strategies.
To put that sloganistically: Yes We Can and Things Can Only Get Better vs Take Back Control and Make America Great Again.
It’s not for me to say which is right or wrong, merely to observe that the risks are that the:
· Growth mindsetters are attracted to novelty for novelty’s sake – perhaps they don’t always take a real-world view
· Fixed mindsetters are sceptical to the new – perhaps this can lead them to hostility to different ways of doing things
It is easy for them to feel a long way apart. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to polarise these groups – and social media was almost invented for that very purpose.
If you want to look at UK politics, you can see the tensions within Labour and the Conservatives as they are pulled between these ideas, trying to appeal to both mindsets. By comparison, the Lib Dems and Reform are far more comfortable in their own skins. They know exactly where they sit.
Why do I bring all of this up?
Because DEI has hit the news, and it feels like an embodiment of precisely these tensions.
The debate on DEI
For quite a while, there was little debate about DEI. Not only did it feel like the right thing to do, but there was good evidence that it produced better organisational and commercial results too. (I’ll come back to that).
It’s maybe fair to say that there wasn’t enough scrutiny applied. Perhaps a common-sense and real-world lens wasn’t applied often enough.
The problem with that is exacerbated by today’s hyper-polarised media. You don’t need many examples of an (apparently) nonsensical policy or provision, to enable people to attack not just those instances, but the entire notion of DEI.
Fixed and Growth Mindset and DEI
A fixed mindset believes that the basic qualities of a person (or a society, or an employer) are permanent. Therefore, if you demand the highest standards to fulfil a role – you must already have the best people in role. Any attempt to add different people to the role MUST therefore mean diminishing standards.(And this is not entirely baseless, it’s reported that the UK Ministry of Defence proposed changes to security criteria to be able to attract more widely).
Whereas a growth mindset believes that those basic qualities can be developed. And in this instance, by widening access to a role, you can drive up standards.
Since I have started writing this article, at a time of national tragedy, the President of the United States has – baselessly it seems – invoked the first argument.
A narrow view of DEO
We also find ourselves in the spot where the President has outlawed DEI in federal institutions.
That presumably means that it is unlawful for those in US Governmental bodies to take any action that might help them employ:
· The longer-term unemployed
· Those that didn't have opportunity for higher levels of education
· People who have made their career in commercial environments
· More people from areas that have been more deprived
· Veterans that have served in the armed forces
· People with criminal convictions
Which to me seems, at best, a shame, and at worst, utterly self-defeating. I’m not a mind-reader, I can’t guess people’s motivations, but I’m prepared to imagine that shutting these – and many, many other activities – wasn’t front of the President’s mind.
The thing about DEI work is that it must be truly diverse in its nature, or it fails in its very first objective. In these Executive Order, it feels to me like a lot of baby has followed the bathwater.
So, what of the evidence?
Here’s the interesting thing, and this only just crossed my desk this week.
The case for DEI has always between supported by commercial outcomes. More diversity equals better business performance.
And a lot of the support from that appears to come from McKinsey’s research. As they say:
“There have been far-reaching changes in the business environment over the past few years, yet, companies with diverse leadership teams continue to be associated with higher financial returns.”
A couple of things:
1) This only looks at the executive, not the whole organisation
2) Their findings have been called into question, with some claims that they are only finding that successful companies have the time/energy/will/luxury(?) of creating diverse executive teams
McKinsey themselves have said that all the find is correlation between diversity and success, not causation.
So, does that skewer the case for DEI?
Nope.
McKinsey’s studies aren’t the only ones out there. Others do reach the same conclusions. I’m unaware of studies that find the reverse, but would be delighted to review them.
There is accumulated evidence in healthcare in particular that patients receive better quality care when treated by more diverse teams. Better care almost always means cheaper care too.
There’s strong evidence too of greater innovation, and of a greater ability to tap into new markets. Both of which feel, instinctively, like they should be the case. It’s heartening to see the data support that.
There are statistics too on greater attractiveness to potential candidates. I see no reason for that not to be true, I merely point out that these tend to be gained from reported intention rather than actual behaviour.
There’s evidence too for an improvement in employee engagement – because of the effect it has on belonging in an organisation. Again, this feels like a very natural outcome of DEI done well.
How can DEI be done well?
For me, and I’ve been doing some research around this lately, it’s about starting at the end. It’s about starting with Inclusion.
Because when you start there, you look at whole people, not broad categories.
It’s one of the reasons I find research into generational motivations so unconvincing. 20+% of the population aren’t the same. They have different backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, sexuality, ability, cultures, affluence. They may have utterly different priorities driven by their intrinsic motivations or their extrinsic demands.
It’s about understanding all of those overlapping and interweaving motivations and demands and creating a workplace that satisfies as many of them as possible.
It’s about developing an employer value proposition with the broadest possible appeal – bearing in mind that any good EVP will also be ruthlessly filtering people out. It’s about making sure they’re filtering out on ability, likelihood to perform and enjoy the role – and not anything else.
It doesn’t need to be solely about actively targeting segments of society. It’s about showing – proving – that there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to say that you belong here. That your identity won’t just be tolerated, won’t just be accepted, but can be celebrated.
Not only is that the right approach, it’s the safe approach.
There are people that are hostile to DEI initiatives. There are notably fewer that are hostile to creating great workplaces that perform better.
Your focus must be on the performance outcomes. And frankly, it always should have been. That you’d be able to demonstrate a greater diversity of employee (and perhaps customer) along the way is validation on top.
You may rail against the need to be safe – to feel like you’re compromising, even not being entirely honest about your intentions. But that’s the society we are in. To try to ignore or push against it would be to jeopardise what you can achieve.
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