Our Company’s Next President Probably Shouldn’t Look Like Me

Diversity is real to me. It is human. Because people are real and people are human, and if diversity isn’t about people then we’re not having the right conversation.

When I stepped into my role as CEO last October, I held a leadership meeting of the top leaders across the enterprise. It was important to me to meet with our enterprise leadership team immediately. First and foremost I wanted to honor our heritage and our long history of success and nearly 130 years of innovation and continuous improvement always delivered with the utmost commitment to integrity and doing things right.

I also wanted to identify a few areas where I believe step change is critical, and diversity is at the top of that list. Not because our leaders don’t believe in diversity, because they do, as I’m sure is the case for most business leaders. However, it’s time to start thinking about diversity differently.

Real attention to diversity requires us all to be willing to become decidedly uncomfortable. As leaders, we need to lead by example and give our employees permission to talk openly, and respectfully, about how to transform the complexion of what the leadership team looks like so we purposefully employ and promote the best talent across the entire diversity spectrum and better represent the marketplaces we serve.

I believe for any company to truly be world class, it needs to be the benchmark for diversity leadership. Why? Companies with diverse talent and inclusive cultures are winners:

• Attract and retain the best talent that stays longer, is more engaged and productive
• Consistently outperform the S&P and Dow Jones Industrial Average*
• Bring more ideas, perspectives and experiences to solving problems
• Have greater access to customers, suppliers and markets
• Are more responsive through greater efficiency, accuracy and risk mitigation

Our workforce expects a workplace that is diverse and supports inclusion. As leaders we owe it to our employees, we owe it to our customers, and we owe it to ourselves. When the gender, complexion, ethnicity and background of our leaders reflects our customers, markets and communities, we will be competitively advantaged.

The world is changing. How we work, where we work, and who we work with will be dramatically different in the future. It’s no longer B2B or B2C, it’s H2H: Human to Human. And this is even more true for diversity.

Let’s get serious. And stay serious.

*Diversity Inc. Magazine, 2013