“The DEI Love-Fest Has 12-18 Months Left”

In a recent post from Neil Miller, Director of ‘The Digital Workplace’, Jimmie McMillian of Indianapolis Motor Speedway was cited to predict that the “DEI-love-fest” only had 12-18 months of tailwind left. He continued “If we can't tie our initiatives to real market growth and expansion, then most business leaders will say some version of: “Let's get back to making money.".

I think Jimmie is right, and it makes me dead scared!

Business Leaders Crossing Arms and Wearing High Heels is not Doing the Job!

A few days ago, International Women’s Day was celebrated across the world again. Social Media flocked with business leaders in glossy pictures crossing their arms to show their support. In Denmark, we even had four male business leaders pictured in high heels claiming their support of Gender Equality.

The same four males have had more than a decade to do something but done literally nothing. One of them could showcase exactly 0% female leaders in the companies he runs. Duh? – and why dress them up in high heels. What does that have do with it?

We Lose Sight of the Objective

I fear we lose sight of the objective! To ensure gender equality in and outside the workplace.

Instead, we see a classic example of the ‘bystander effect’. A lot of people talking! ?

Wanting to be part of the ingroup.

Few taking responsibility and ACTING!

The Bystander Effect 

The phenomenon in which the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in need. When an emergency occurs, observers are more likely to act if there are few or no other witnesses.

Being part of a large crowd makes it, so no single person must take responsibility for an action (or inaction).

The consequences are:

- The presence of other people creates a diffusion of responsibility
- When other observers fail to react, individuals often take this as a signal that a response is not needed or not appropriate        

But we are running out of time, as McMillian predicted. If we want to make a REAL difference for Gender Equality, then the time to ACT is NOW! Individually and collectively. If we keep the same pace as now, then we fail.

This is Personal

This is personal for me. My daughters are 13 and 16 years old. They will probably join the workplaces in 7-10 years.

I don’t want them to work in the same gender biased workplaces that we see when we in Innovisor analyze organizational networks and relationships.

A workplace where women not only have to break the glass ceiling, but also must kick in the door to be part of the networks and relationships. In the +10 years since we started to analyze and report on this nothing has changed! I repeat… NOTHING HAS CHANGED!!!

WE MUST DO BETTER!

So, I urge you to support gender equality NOW! – not only through pictures with crossed arms and likes and shares of Social Message messages. Through real action.

What Can You Do Yourself?

To support you Innovisor has compiled a library of practical ideas and examples from leaders all over the world. We will share them on in our company blog, on social media, and with the people that indicated an interest during International Women’s Day.

If you also want to get this document, then make sure to follow Innovisor on LinkedIn or Twitter.

What Can You Do Collectively? – The Real Change

Individual biases are easier to work on than the collective biases.

If you want real change to happen, you need to work on the system. You must create a collective understanding of your collective biases, and how that impacts your work. How do you connect? – on what? – and even more importantly where are the invisible barriers and unconscious choices in your culture. ?

In Innovisor, we have created a bargain tool that can kick-start your collective change process.

We have made sure that cost cannot be the issue. Nor the resources needed… or any other objection you can come up with. (NB! I will add a link as a comment to this post).

What Will You Do Now?

Finally, please-please-please ask yourself what will you do now.

You got 12-18 months to make a difference.

Start today. Not tomorrow.

Please make your actions visible. Make gender equality the only way!