How Privilege is Power

You know you have privilege when equity feels like discrimination.

In 1989, Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh wrote White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. McIntosh observes that whites in the U.S. are “taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.” To illustrate these invisible systems, McIntosh wrote a list of 26 invisible privileges whites benefit from.

In 2021, Dana Brownlee wrote in Forbes, This Therapist’s Message To White Men: Become An Agent Of Change Or A Victim Of Progress, which was a lightbulb moment for me because it provided a reason for my career successes?.

Over forty years, I have been in the business of corporate transformation in twenty companies in twenty-six countries. I found it straightforward and wondered why everyone did not execute bottom-line-impacting business change using simple communication tools that aligned people, products, and processes with customer needs.

Toxic Managers

Over my career, I have dealt with toxic managers and stakeholders who abused their power to attempt to force compliance. I have never feared challenging their behaviours, but I have wondered why others didn’t.

• A CEO told his management team, “What we need is Olympians; I have Special Olympians.” I asked if he would like to include my son with Down syndrome, who participates, on his team.
• A CEO chose a different individual at daily management meetings for public humiliation, against all public praise and private criticism principles. I stood up, thumped the table, and screamed at him for his unacceptable behaviour.
• When I was the third manager in as many months, a frustrated customer’s project manager said, “We are going to sue you, your company will close, and you will lose your job.” I delivered a solution in six months, and he sent sweets home to my kids for years.

The last one highlights why sometimes good people do bad things?—?they don’t know any other way.

I believed that tenacity and adding value to the business would make me indispensable, and that has mostly worked in the short term and always in the long term.

Using Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Effectively

Many DEI initiatives aim to make a company a more attractive workplace by fostering a sense of inclusion that enables all employees, irrespective of their status, to feel they belong and are valued by the business.?

This is a bit like a quality program without purpose. It enables newly empowered minority groups to assert their legitimate rights, but it does not expand the productive labour pool to drive value for the business and customers.

As a direct consequence, the historically privileged white male cohort sees their roles threatened?—?the equity of others feels like discrimination against them.

We see this in the pushback blaming woke DEI policies for business failure, but the real problem is poorly executed DEI programs.

If previously excluded groups have recognition and power, they can add value, but previously privileged groups will now feel disenfranchised.?

Using Privilege to Drive?Change

But I never wondered why it worked for me when others allowed themselves to be bullied and were compliant with obviously erroneous directions and abuse.

I attributed my achievements to the willingness of my team members to support me and achieved $300m in direct savings and significant business acceleration and transformation.

I focussed on outcome-based strategy execution and saw the diversity of my teams as a benefit in terms of language, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and neurodiversity?—?because those capabilities enabled them to better meet our customers’ real needs.

I assumed the results permitted me to manage as I did.

Not so.?

I have realised that my white male privilege gave me the power to engage my diverse teams without management opposition?—?the permission to continue was based on impact.

I could not have started to execute change without the privilege of power I had used to enable rather than suppress individual and functional competencies. Previously, the functions were siloed, and individuals were not motivated to take risks in executing change because the consequences were likely to be of negative benefit.

Conclusion

I was correct in my management philosophies, which served me well over the years;

• I take the blame for my teams’ mistakes and give them credit for their successes.
• I succeeded in my roles by adding value and becoming indispensable.

But I was blind to factors which enable change to start.

• I could only initiate change with my teams by using my privilege as permission to start.

Know your power, use it wisely, and achieve impossible things every day.