One of my executive clients joined a pre-IPO firm. With extensive experience in User Experience, Product Design and Sales, she was hired as APAC and EMEA Head of Sales Operations. She excitedly told me at the outset that this role would be career defining for her, unlimited possibilities, and was to lead a virtual team of experts to scale their Asia and European operations. When I read the company’s website, I wanted to work there too. The site described a place where everyone mattered, brimming with teams of passionate innovators doing meaningful work and shaping the future. It was compelling, along with a page which stated a commitment to diversity, embedded within the firm’s values. Diversity and Inclusion seemed to be in their corporate DNA. Equality, transparency, and grateful were a few words on their Values list. It was rare to see ‘grateful’ as an organizational value, and I thought ‘who wouldn’t want to work there?’`
Pulling down the facade
A very different story emerged about this company last year. The firm’s culture was apparently much more partial than equal, more intrusive than inclusive. When preparing for an IPO, they had to rebuild their reputation, after several senior women resigned or were pushed out.
They were hardly the first tech firm to publicly fall short on proclaiming that ‘Diversity is at the core of our values and fundamental to our success.’ A lack of gender diversity has been a long-standing issue for many tech companies.
Pre-IPO, diversity data is required reading for investors. We all now know the value of diversity; better decisions, critical for long-term success, improves problem-solving, higher ROI, and so on. In Goldman Sachs, found that such firms performed “significantly better” with at least one female director than those without. BUT diversity is only one part of the equation. The other necessary component must be inclusion, which drives innovation and delivers tangible results.
For some companies, diversity may require integrating into the prevailing organizational culture (which typically translates to “you need to communicate and lead like the rest of us.”), as a new hire always tries to fit in, minimizing or maximizing one dimension of themselves.
A Japanese investment banker shared her experiences with me on the need to act like someone else. In order to be heard at meetings in New York she had to behave one way, reverting back to an entirely different communication style in Japan. She was used to shifting styles, having worked for an investment bank, but admitted it was exhausting. While organizations talk about diversity, the leadership tends to replicate itself, operating from similarity bias and narrow band of successors.
This way of ‘doing’ diversity dismisses inclusion.
