Don’t Let Your Organization Work Against Diversity

Getting Equality with Men: Don’t Let Your Organization Work Against Diversity, with Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and Co-Founder, Ellevest, and Author, Own It: The Power of Women at Work

Recognize a surprising truth

In my experience, most CEOs and boards get the power of diversity. There may be some who are giving it lip service still out there. But in my travels, these individuals understand that not only is it the fair thing to do, and it’s really the tenants upon which our country was built, but it’s really the smart thing to do. Financial results, reaching different customer bases– I think they get it.

Sadly, middle management is where diversity goes to die. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because there’s research I’ve recently come across that says that diversity is actually worse in meritocracies. It’s really surprising. You think, a meritocracy– people will search out the best person, will search out the best strategy, and we’ll judge them later, and the capitalism, the market forces will decide.

But it’s worse in meritocracies. And I think it is exactly that sort of hands-off perspective. But if you’re a CEO, you get it, you’re hiring all the time, et cetera. But you’re in middle management– you’re hiring what? Once a year, twice a year, four times a year? Once every few years? It’s not a regular part of the job.

And the research tells us that while there are these supposed benefits to diversity, that we tend to retreat to the comfortable. We tend to overvalue products that we already have. We tend to overvalue environments in which we already exist. And by the way, the longer we have it or exist in them, the more we overvalue them.

And so what you see in the middle management is, I like working with people like me. And maybe I read some research report one time they said diversity was better, but gosh, I like Jim. Gosh, I like him.

Compound that with that we tend to allow ourselves, in this country, to ask the wrong question. And the question we usually ask when hiring people is, can you help me find the best person for the job? The best person for the job, our cognitive shortcuts, is typically someone who reminds us so darn much of ourselves, whereas what we should be asking is, can you help me fill out the best team, build the best team with diverse skill sets et cetera?

Override the meritocracy

As a CEO, my advice is changing. My advice is to often override the meritocracy. This desire to let your managers manage– honey, we tried it. Nothing more meritocratic than Wall Street, and look what happened there– the most homogeneous of environments, and, oh, financial crisis. And so to set those goals, to pay people on those goals, to put metrics out there, to pay managers on diversity is, I think, the only way to drive it.

And as for the old diversity committee, which you sort of did that 10 years ago, and, look, we’re working on diversity because we have it– if you’ve had something in place for five and 10 years and your diversity is not moving forward, it’s time to stop it. It’s time to do something different– to change the tired mentoring program into a sponsorship program

PS, it’s not a pipeline issue. It’s not a lack-of-talent issue. There are plenty of women. There plenty of professional women. There plenty of people of all kinds of diverse cognitive perspectives out there. It’s not just bringing them in and letting the organization work. The organization is working against you.