Embracing "Why?" Is Key To D&I

Changing habits is hard. We all know that we should eat healthier, drink more water, work less, keep off devices longer, and be more mindful. But “should” is often not enough to overcome inertia. It can take an existential moment – a poor bill of health, a family crisis, an accident – to break us out of our routines and motivate us to prioritize fundamental change and take on the work required to both achieve and sustain it.  

It’s even harder to change foundational processes within a company – like hiring and talent management. That’s due to: a) the need to adjust the behavior of multiple people in a coordinated fashion, and b) in the best-run companies, the systemic tuning that’s been done to optimize for “the way things work today.” As with individuals, in order to spur meaningful change in a company and make it stick, it’s critical to find the through line to the core and diagnose the existential crisis if that change was not realized. This is the motivation behind the burning platform trope.

Recognition of the need to tie to the existential is why proponents of Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) within companies tend to eschew moralistic arguments for performance-oriented ones. Study after study after study finds that diverse teams perform better. Additional research explains why, albeit in general terms; diverse teams are more creative, innovative, and smarter. These are the stats and statements cited to and by C-suite execs. And for their purposes (setting overarching priorities, funding initiatives, making speeches), they're great - quotable, memorable, compelling.

The problem is, they're not enough. While it's necessary to have D&I support in the executive stratosphere, execution happens on the ground. We'd like all managers to think like an owner of the company, but the fact remains that their attention and priorities naturally come back to what they're personally accountable for: achieving that sales target, shipping that product, keeping that system stable. When managers are making talent-related choices - who to hire, promote, or transfer - these are foremost in their minds.

While a general statement about diverse teams performing better can have resonance, it's insufficient to sway managers if they see their decision as a tradeoff between progressing D&I vs. achieving core objectives. In that case, getting the job done will be viewed as "existential" and D&I as "extra." D&I will be DOA.

The solution is to connect D&I to the business need at an elemental level. That necessitates pushing beyond generalities and getting specific. It means not stopping at the company level but instead going down to the individual function and team level to understand the effect of diversity on the ability to get the job done. It means asking "Why?"

"Why?" can feel like a very fraught question when it comes to D&I. It can evoke memories of James Damore's infamous memo on women in tech and countless other antagonists to diversity of all kinds. There's a stigma around it. It can open people up to being labeled an opponent instead of an ally.

The difference here is the intent. The point of asking why is NOT to play the skeptic and find reasons to block or avoid. It's in fact the opposite: starting from a place of steadfast belief in D&I and probing deeper to determine how it would specifically help and fuel the cause. The question is not "Why would we want a diverse team?" It's "Why must we have a diverse team?" When we can answer that in a concrete and compelling way, actions around diversity and inclusion feel much more connected and integral to business objectives, and the team can execute them with more conviction and urgency.

Answering "why" in a clear and compelling fashion is easier for some businesses and functions than others. For example, in a time of rapidly growing multiculturalism, having a product team with diverse backgrounds and perspectives is pretty clearly critical to developing products that meet the needs of a broad base of consumers; lack of diversity on that team could mean you miss a key innovation or even find yourself with an obsolete product altogether. But even in instances where the answer is a bit less clear (e.g., the accounting department of a B2B manufacturer), that doesn't mean there aren't any (e.g., a more entrepreneurial mindset, innovative ideas from other industries / smaller companies, the general fight for talent with the Big Five who aggressively trumpet their own diversity) or that it's any less important.

Take it back to that individual manager, making a specific talent decision - "who should I hire?" If the specific business reason why diversifying the team is clear, it can affect the actions they and those supporting them (e.g., recruiter, HRBP, team members) take all the way throughout the process, e.g.,:

• Writing the job description in a way that maximizes the applicability to a more diverse set of candidates, calling for the removal of some requirements that had historically restricted the set of applicants and adding some that are relevant to the job AND correlate with underrepresented backgrounds
• Exercising the Rooney Rule (or a derivative) to bring more candidates with underrepresented backgrounds into later stages of consideration, even at the expense of making an earlier hire at times
• Ensuring a diverse set of interviewers, to improve understanding in and efficacy and equity of the assessment process

Each of these example steps could be mandated without answering why; if you do a scan across companies (even those regarded as D&I leaders), you will find they often are. However, I believe the answer to why will make a massive difference in the efficacy of these steps, because it all comes down to people executing. People acting out of understanding and conviction are much more likely to be successful than if they're reluctantly complying.

Asking and answering "why" requires sensitivity and experience that exceeds that of many managers. HR need to help create the right environment for them and coach them through it; we need to make it safe to ask "Why?" This is also an area where company leaders need to act first, both to role model and to provide a framing that those in their organizations could layer into (e.g., the ways diversity is instrumental to the overall technology org probably have some bearing on the "why" for the CIO group). It is a lot of work and takes a ton of coordination.

But once you do get to the specific "why" for D&I for your team, you'll know precisely the reason it's all worth it.

Why is diversity important to the performance of your team? How would greater diversity help, and how does being less diverse than ideal hurt... what are you missing out on? Most importantly, what are you going to do about it?

The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my current or past employers. If you would like to read more of my writing, you can follow me here on LinkedIn and/or on Twitter at @chrislouie.

You can also read a few of my other LinkedIn posts:

• Writing My Way [in]
• In The Era of #MeToo, A Hippocratic Oath for HR?
• Can LinkedIn Solve the "Time Well Spent" Paradox?