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Diversity and globalization go hand in hand. I don't think you can have one without the
other. If you think about what globalization means, it means working with various people
from different cultures to sort of get your products and services out to new markets and
different markets. Your ability to relate to the other person on the other end of the
table and do business with that person means that you don't just know your products and
services, you understand where they're coming from. You understand how they work. You understand
how they think. And you understand what's going to resonate with them. Diversity and
inclusion plays a very important part in that. The smarter you are on this topic, the easier
and the more effective you'll be as a business person working in a global economy.
One of
the biggest barriers is that really the C-suite level, those teams don't necessarily look
that diverse. The more in tune senior executives and C-suite executives, who may not be minorities,
can be with sort of the experience of a minority and what it actually means to feel included
or not included, what it means to be diverse, I think the more effective they'll be in their
jobs.
I think a lot of senior executives and C-suite leaders might, you know, they tend to dance
around the topic. And so when you can't address the issue at its core and you're talking around
it, it's really hard to solve that.
Another barrier is one can be too politically correct, I think. I've always put it out there.
I've always said, "You know what, here's your opportunity to talk to someone who happens
to be African American, Hispanic and gay. I invite you to offend me." Because by being
able to talk openly as a senior leader about some of these sensitive issues, I think we
can really get at the heart of what these issues are about and we can really solve for
them. So I've always encouraged a lot of C-suite executives that I've worked with and advised
to let's talk openly and frankly about this particular topic and then we can really solve
it.
I always felt that it was important to try and quantify the return on investment. I think
firms and large organizations tend to overcomplicate it by having too many metrics and trying to
track, you know, hundreds of metrics. I say track 10 to 12 that are important to you,
everything from, you know, advancement and promotions of minority employees, representation
at the board level, at the C-suite level. Reducing turnover metrics that might be encountered,
you know, on a yearly basis.
Diversity and inclusion programs, when done well, will have results. But they've got to
be focused and they can't -- you can't try and boil the ocean. In many professional services
firms there aren't enough women partners, female partners. And that was a challenge
that, I think, any professional services firm would say they had, you know, 10, 15 years
ago and they still struggle with, right. That's changed over time. It continues to be a struggle
but it has gotten better. And it's gotten better because of focused programs, leadership
development programs, mentoring programs, coaching programs.
Understanding that, you know, no one career progression necessarily is the right one and
being conscious of that and aligning your human capital and your talent manager programs
for that, you know, make a difference. By focusing on specific, you know, targeted groups
that need more inclusion and more representation and executing those programs, I think, is
a way to actually move the needle in that respect.