What I mean by the headline is: diversity is a very emotional topic at the individual level within the platform/social economy. Videos go viral of people speaking passionately about it, crying, talking about how it’s a moral imperative. People dedicate their entire Instagram personal brand to DEI. Hashtags become “revolutions” of the moment. There is a lot of emotional intensity and labor around diversity right now, especially since Floyd, but even before that. General social justice reform movements, some of which are performative wokeness, and some of which are real.
Now, you get into a tricky space trying to figure out the role of companies in all this. Companies employ people, so they provide a platform and an income and thus a way of life to individuals, and so they should wade into these things, but a lot of companies have 5-7 true decision-makers, and they are almost always privileged white males in their 50s and 60s, and this stuff is in the “nice to have” bucket, not the “need to have” bucket. In their minds, a need to have is a “Q4 go-to-market strategy.” That’s imperative. That’s something you call 25 meetings about. Diversity on the board or in the plant? Eh, can you send me a deck and I’ll look when I have time?
And to wit, II (same article):
In the latest 2020 edition of our Annual Corporate Directors Survey, we found that the majority of male directors believe either that there aren’t enough qualified candidates from underrepresented groups, or that change isn’t really necessary. In contrast, female directors were more likely to point to a lack of prioritization from board and executive leadership as the reason that diversity gains have been limited.
There’s a bit of stuff we can unpack here, sure.
Issue 1: The lies we tell
Look at the pull quote above.
“There aren’t enough candidates from underrepresented groups.”
That’s a lie. There are. Someone who says that is following this logic:
- “I don’t want to deal with this thing.”
- “I will make a claim I have no baseline for.”
- “Because I have authority in this hierarchy, others will spend time finding the data to refute me.”
- “When they bring me the data in a presentation format, I will acknowledge it’s a nice presentation, then say the same thing I said before.”
- “Then the cycle begins anew.”
It’s the same bullshit as “skills gap.” You want to close a skills gap? Easy. Pay more for the role. You say that to an executive and he grabs his 1514 authentic Italian sword from above his desk and stabs you in the pancreas, though. So, instead of a real discussion, we have 17,982 articles per day about “the skills gap.” Hint: follow the money.
Or consider the line “change isn’t necessary.” That means “Hey, we had this pandemic thing, and I had to spend more time with my wife during the day, and man, that was weird, but ya know what? Revenues were good, bonus is good, things are good even though they were supposed to be chaotic, so … why are we changing stuff again?”
It’s all lies. If you can’t cut through that tier of lies, you can’t impact diversity initiatives.
Issue 2: Who stands up for diversity initiatives?
Usually it’s not people with true power, unfortunately. That’s the issue inside companies. The people who can snap their fingers and say “Do this now” are not thinking about these issues. They’re thinking about revenue and incentives and new markets.
Now, externally — the “thought leader” and “posting” community — that’s a giant rabbit hole too. I get popped a lot for my “chasing woke” designation, which basically describes a person who acts enlightened for the sake of more opportunities for themselves, as opposed to actually caring about the issues they’re purporting to care about. It’s akin to “This topic seems hot at the moment, so let me attach my visual and textual identity to it and see if I get put on a panel somewhere.” Chasing woke.
One of the greatest woke-chasers in the general inclusion/diversity discussion world is Katrina Kibben, who wrote this post about diverse speakers she wants to see at conferences. Great topic. Great start. This is a legitimate recommendation to executives about how they can have a diverse stage at their product showcase. Awesome. And then, here’s the opener:
I still remember the day I told Matt Charney I wanted to be a speaker. I think his exact response was, “you don’t.” I thought he was joking because, well: he’s Matt. He wasn’t.
“Well, he’s Matt!”
Charney is a popular dude in that space, but not everyone knows him. When you open a piece aiming at inclusion by discussing inside jokes and personality traits of someone that might not be known to everyone, you just went full anti-inclusion. You went clique.
And that’s a problem with this bucket of “inclusion voices.” One of the first people Katrina nominates is Madison Butler, who has good posts, but is also nearly militant in her in-group/out-group stuff. If she disagrees with literally one iota of your viewpoint, she will blast you publicly. Very inclusive and tolerant, no? I wrote a guest post for some “millennial influencer” and said influencer shared it on LinkedIn; Madison commented “You’d be pleased to know he’s a racist.” I’m a fucking racist? And that comment is appropriate?
So the problem with the “inclusion voices” community is that they’re often not inclusive at all. They just want like-minded people saying stuff they agree with, and using the right hashtags. There is no effort at conversation, nuance, or understanding. It’s brute force wokeness. Eventually, executive dudes ignore that content, because they need to make sure their widgets are selling in Mongolia. (“Is there a middle class there?”)
Issue 3: Tie it to something
Decision-makers at companies don’t do things because they’re good, nice, rational things to do. They do things because they will make money and be seen as successful by others and feel good about themselves. We only started scaling up electric cars when people realized “Oh, I can make money on this.” When it was just vaguely about “the environment,” no one cared for about 25 years.
Diversity and inclusion is almost never tied to anything except flowery IG language, minus a McKinsey report or two. When there’s no tie, no one with power cares. That’s the reality.
So what now?
- Financial ties, bottom-line impacts
- Executive sponsorship
- Legal and political reform, pilot programs around cops, etc. in some cities
- More narratives about how we’re all human beings
- Realize this stuff will never be easy, but it has value in being done
Takes?
