Julius Pryor III Interview: Moving Beyond Diversity to a New Corporate Maturity

BY PAMELA A. KEENE (Diversity In Action Magazine)

HE’S A REVOLUTIONARY OF SORTS, A CAPTAIN IN the U.S. Navy, a certified Navy Officer Leadership instructor, a consultant, an international speaker, an author and a man with his own views about diversity and inclusion. As General Managing Partner of J. Pryor Group LLC, Julius Pryor III relishes challenging the status quo.

In fact, Pryor’s recently published book, “Thriving in a Disruptive World: 6 Critical Concepts for Navigating the 21st Century,” illustrates his view that an outcome-driven strategy is preferable to an exercise in workforce representation. “I’m not interested in diversity as a program or as an initiative.” Pryor says. “However, I am interested in driving outcomes. That requires understanding how to effectively manage diversity. The way that most companies approach diversity and inclusion hasn’t changed much since the 1960s; it’s still based on workforce representation. That’s counting heads. I think a better approach is to make the heads count.”

As a junior officer in the Navy, Pryor circumnavigated the globe from California to Hawaii, Australia, Egypt, Turkey, Italy, Spain and Portugal and transited the Suez and Panama canals, giving him life lessons he lives by today.

“When we approached our home port of Naval Base Long Beach, California, I looked around the ship at these very different people working together as a team,” he says reflectively. “We had been able to accomplish feats on that cruise that none of us could have achieved individually. I decided that what I did next in my career was going to further explore the ability of people to build and work effectively as teams.”

Pryor’s career after the Navy took him to Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola Enterprises, the SIO Law Group and Genentech, where he brought his lessons learned into practice.

“We need to focus on making a direct connection to driving revenue, sales, market share, EPS [earnings per share], ideation, product development or innovation by leveraging diversity and inclusion,” he says. “And rather than making incremental changes, the organization’s goal should focus on being transformational, managing diversity and inclusion outcomes to develop a higher level of diversity maturity. When we become more aware of individual behaviors and how those behaviors can affect other people, we realize that we should all be more conscious of how we act and think unconsciously.”

Companies have a responsibility to leverage diversity to ensure their organization’s future because it directly affects interactions with their workforce, the workplace and the marketplace, he says.

Pryor strongly supports developing leadership skills and life skills beyond STEM. “Don’t limit your learning to STEM. Understand and engage in disciplines outside of the sciences: investigate the arts, see a play, go to a movie, read a book, listen to music, be open to other perspectives, enjoy nature, take time to think and sometimes — to do nothing. Stay centered, eat well and exercise. Stay connected to family, people and the world around you. As you move through life, be fully extended and be open to taking it all in.”

Pryor says he wrote “Thriving in a Disruptive World” to put lessons he’d learned into writing. It uses parables and stories to illustrate the importance of critical thinking and empirical analysis to develop integrated strategies that align with core business objectives: to build a team and tactically execute a plan and to have the vision and deliver on it. He has dedicated the book to his two sons as codifed life lessons for them.

It’s based on six critical concepts — clarity, quantum-thinking, hyper-collaboration, agility, passion and faith. Additionally, several truisms come to light: relationships are how everything gets done. We all need to become more comfortable being uncomfortable. In a time of disruption, there are amazing opportunities. He encourages —in fact, urges —business leaders to seek out the opportunities and meet them head on.

“One of the most important lessons I learned at Morehouse College was to continue to learn,” he says. “Early on, I accepted the limits that others placed on me. It took a lot of work to not let others define or limit who I am or what I am capable of. We all have multiple diversity dimensions, any one of which may be the spark that drives the next brilliant idea. Keep the faith.”

Diversity in Action Magazine SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER2017