Diversity Means Opportunity, Not Distraction

I'm a "boomer," a child of World War II, a military veteran of the Vietnam Era, and withered combatant of the Cold War. I'm a white male, married only once and to a woman I love with all my heart, living peacefully in a lovely but not luxurious suburban home in a state capital. Physically I am unusually healthy but basically ordinary, still having all my natural capabilities and original components -- even my wizzies. I am, from all outward appearances, boringly typical. But am I?

To say that I am the last of a dieing breed would be ridiculous, but the population segment I represent is becoming smaller and smaller as a proportion of the whole. When I was in the first decade or two of my career most of the people around me came close to fitting the same description as I did, but as time goes by there is no way anyone could confuse my description with that of most of my colleagues. The contrast is so stark it reminds me of something dramatic.

One of the best Super Bowl commercials ever made was by Apple, the computer company, when it was much more of an upstart than it is now. Then it was something of a David, with IBM being the Goliath of that industry. In the commercial IBM automatons were characterized by a huge roomful of white, middle-aged and ash-grey men, all wearing identical, nondescript suits and being mesmerized by Big Brother on a huge TV screen, symbolic of IBM's reputation as "Big Blue." In ran a smallish young female athlete with neon-red athletic skivvies, who whirled around a big hammer and launched it at the screen, smashing it in symbolic fashion as a representation of the Apple vision of the future of computing.

Forget the Apple v. IBM thing. I'm offering that imagery as a metaphor for what has happened in the workplace, the smashing of the white male majority by the inclusion of women, minorities, and people who are just plain different in every possible way.

Personally, I love it. The only way I've ever suffered discrimination is due to my advancing age, but that has given me a modicum of compassion. If you are a new manager and you do not love workplace diversity, perhaps you feel threatened because your unfair advantage is being matched by someone who is equally qualified, but otherwise disadvantaged. If so, you are thinking like one of the commercial's automatons and it's time to get with the program.

Now, many organizations manage workplace diversity with both words capitalized. That is, they manage a Workplace Diversity program or initiative, with specific goals that look a lot like controversial Affirmative Action programs and goals. I have to agree that many organizations need aggressive programs in order to be dragged into the 21^st century. At the moment, though, I am thinking more philosophically, with stubbornly bad management attitudes in mind, not bad demographics that can be forced to change.

Being politically correct is one thing -- we all put our best foot forward in our very first job interview and it never seems to stop, in fact only increasing in importance all the way up the ladder of success. That's not lying, it's being proper and professional. It's living up to the reasonable expectations made of you. Being a phony is another story, and some people, managers, and organizations don't seem very genuine in the statements they proffer about their positions on diversity.

Philosophically speaking and as a matter of attitude, workplace diversity is not a program. Workplace diversity is a fack, Jack. It just is. To deny reality is pathological, self-destructive, self-defeating. Around you is a wonderful variety of people with an equally wonderful variety of ideas, educational backgrounds, personal experiences, skills, approaches to solving problems, cultural insights, personal connections, and anything else that a manager could want from her (ha!) people. It's not just "right" that you treat them fairly, it's imperative to use them for strategic success.

A lot of very intelligent business researchers are always trying to figure out why, at the root-cause level, some business organizations outperform others. By "outperform" I mean that some firms consistently achieve a better economic return for their investors than their rivals.

The most popular theory based on the preponderance of evidence suggests that the ultimate locus of success lies in organizational competencies, capabilities, and resources. Of the many capabilities an organization may have, one of the most important is an organization-wide ability to consistently out-innovate the competition, whether the innovations are technological, financial, marketing, speed, or otherwise. We also know that when it comes to innovation, two heads are better than one, and by extension, a diversity of ideas, experiences, approaches, skills, and so forth are key.

If you've read my previous essays, you know that I am not a big champion of the idea that business organizations should be managed as social laboratories. People who pony up the investment capital for any business have the right to get a fair return on their investment and that's why the business exists. But I also noted that despite the simplicity of this idea, achieving it is a rather complex dynamic, and that difficult-to-quantify social goals are legitimate if the ultimate outcome of achieving them contributes to overall business success.

So the next time you consider your employer's mission and/or vision statement, look with a critical eye to see if it champions workplace diversity as part of the very fabric of its existence. Is workplace diversity given an honorable mention beyond even political correctness, or is diversity recognized as the source of competitive advantage? This telling difference, if it does reflect the culture of the organization, may indicate whether or not you should keep your resume up-to-date at all times. The truth will out.