Rational Diversity Equality and Inclusion

 

Rational DEI

As a Fortune 500 organizational development consultant, I have worked with lots of organizations who are now engaged in significant Diversity and Inclusion efforts.  These efforts are mostly laudable and driven by a desire to create more diverse and inclusive workplaces.  Of course, the positive outcome of creating diverse and inclusive workplaces is undeniable and well-documented.  There are lots of theories about why this is so, but it seems relatively easy to generalize that when people feel valued, when their perspectives are heard, and when we actively seek out different opinions and perspectives, that we get better outcomes.

There is another angle to many D&I efforts that attempts to rectify imbalances in how many diverse people hold leadership positions in the organization, to fix any pay disparities, and to close gaps in hiring, retention and attrition of diverse employees.  These are also laudable.  It is easy to see why it would be difficult to convince people that they are valued if they are treated unfairly or believe the system is somehow rigged against them.  We have seen the damage that this does through the historical experience of women and people of color.  When operating in what was a rigged game, they understandably began to check out and disengage.  This has been extremely costly in terms of value creation in the organization.  And that experience is exactly why we work hard to eliminate bias and any perception that the system is somehow unfair.

And yet, in implementation, our DEI efforts can work against one another.  Increasing representation of diversity in leadership ranks is good, and yet if our efforts to do so create an environment where people believe the system is rigged or unfair, then we have similarly lost the trust of another part of our workforce.  Is this a good outcome?  It is not.  If the experience of diverse people in the past was wrong and damaging to people and to the organization’s ability to create value, then this new outcome is also wrong and damaging.  We have replaced one bad situation with another.

In essence, we have just replaced the target of discrimination.  While the ends may be laudable, the means certainly are not.  G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “High civilizations fall when they forget obvious things.”  And this is an obvious thing.  Dr. Martin Luther King, whom I consider to be a founding father as he led our nation to live up to the promise of our founding ideals for all Americans, knew this.  He longed for a world where you would be judged by your character, not your skin color; or your gender, or your sexual orientation, or any other attribute that you were born with. 

I am fully onboard with creating organizations who value everyone, who seek out differences, and who create environments where everyone feels like they have an equal shot.  I write about this all the time.   I am committed to creating organizations where your value comes from what is in your mind; not what color skin you have or what gender you are.  Places where these physical attributes are about as meaningful as the color of your eyes.  But is that what we are creating?  Do the methodologies we are employing work towards creating that, or against it?  I would argue that we are now often actively inhibiting the creation of that world and culture.  One simply cannot solve discrimination by discriminating.  This is an obvious thing.

When we set quotas or ‘targets’ around who we promote, hire, develop and advance, we are actively discriminating.  When we give one group preferential treatment over another, we are discriminating.  When we generalize the attributes of a racial group or gender, we are discriminating.  And in so doing, we are marginalizing a large part of our organization.  These are also obvious things.  And the outcomes for our organization and for our society are unequivocally bad.  You cannot convince me that we are not smart enough to come up with an approach that gets us to the outcome we desire without actively discriminating against people.  The idea that we aren’t innovative and clever enough to devise solutions to the lack of representation of diverse people in leadership ranks without resorting to discrimination is silly. 

After watching much of this play out in the corporate world over the last number of years, I refuse to believe that we need to discriminate against anyone in our efforts to create organizations where everyone feels valued and where everyone has the ability to succeed and flourish.  And that is why I am advocating for an approach to corporate DEI that I’m calling Rational Diversity, Equality and Inclusion.  It is an approach to corporate DEI that creates organizational processes, systems and cultures that drive the organization to a diverse and inclusive workplace, but with an unequivocal intolerance for discriminating against anyone.

We should create transparent hiring processes where everyone has equal opportunity to compete for a position.  We should build processes to eliminate bias, cronyism and nepotism in our talent processes so that the meritocracy is less corrupted.  We should ensure that everyone gets honest and critical feedback so that when promotions happen, people do not feel like they didn’t get the job because they were the wrong gender or color.  We should, in short, not eliminate meritocracy, but fix whatever shortcomings our meritocracy has so that everyone in our organization feels like they are operating in a fair game.  No one wants to be promoted because of their gender or skin color.  People want to be promoted because they are the best person for the job.  And when people see that the game is played fairly, everyone can get on board with the decision. 

This approach may be difficult, but it is not impossible.  We must stop listening to people who say that we must discriminate in order to fix discrimination.  It is immoral and destructive to our organizations and to our society.  This is an obvious thing.  We must double down on the idea that no one has anything special to add or detract because of the color of their skin or their gender.  We collectively figured this out long ago.  Rather, the value you can create for the organization and for the world has to do with what is in your mind and your willingness to engage.  Whether you are black, white, female or male, you are equally valuable.  And you should feel it at work and in the world.