Diversity in an Age of Disruption

Hiring for diversity is top of mind these days with virtually all of the companies I am spending time with. There are two forces driving this attention—social equity and competitive advantage. I want to talk more here about the second.

Diversity does not always create competitive advantage. In times of stability, getting more and more refined on the core winning play will outperform the norm. Think of Intel’s long history with Moore’s Law. As long as it could continue to deliver amazing price-performance gains, there was no better game plan than to double down and double down again. But now as those returns begin to approach asymptotic limits, it is no surprise that the company is undergoing a dramatic change in direction, seeing more and more growth coming from computing layers high above transistor density. And that in turn is leading to a demand for new organizational models and new pools of talent.

This is the nature of evolution’s “punctuated equilibrium.” Times of stability reward incremental improvement and times of disruption reward radical innovation. We are living in one of the most radical disruptions to the economic order ever, one in which the industrial product economy is everywhere being displaced by a digital services economy. In this shift, every institution is seeking to shift its focus from a supply-chain-centric strategy anchored in its systems of record and business intelligence reports to a customer-centric strategy anchored in its systems of engagement and machine learning algorithms. In such a world, we do not yet know the location of true north, and so it behooves us to look outward and inward both through as many lenses as we can. Hence the need for diversity in our talent base.

Hiring for diversity, however, is easier said than done. Too often we start with a diverse pool of candidates and end up hiring someone all too similar to ourselves. We say they are the best person for the job, or we say they are the best fit for our culture. Thus, homogeneity quietly suppresses heterogeneity.

Now, we know this is a losing tactic, and we do want to change, but we could use a little help here. Fortunately, there are some words of wisdom to share. Here are two tips that Sallie Krawcheck, prior CFO of Citigroup, now the head of Ellevest, shared during a talk at Dreamforce last month:

1. Instead of asking, is this person the best fit for our culture, ask, is this person the best add to our culture.
2. Instead of asking, is this person the best one for the job, ask, is this person the best one for the team.

They are just tips, but boy are they jewels. I hope they help you make diverse hiring a reality.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

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Geoffrey Moore | Zone to Win | Geoffrey Moore Twitter | Geoffrey Moore YouTube