LinkedIn's Equity Flywheel and Why Your Company Needs One Too

TL;DR: LinkedIn has an "equity flywheel," wherein creating equitable outcomes - which depends on us living DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) in our business practices - fuels our business results AND our ability to attract + grow + retain a diverse population of talent... who contribute to a platform and products that enable more equitable outcomes. And the flywheel spins faster. Every company needs a version of this if they're to truly embrace DEI holistically and sustainably.

Disclaimer: This is the product of some deep thoughts from me on Creativity InDay and not an official company statement or position.

The flywheel concept

Twenty years ago, as dot-com bubble 1.0 burst, Amazon.com was reeling from seeing its stock plummet from $107 to $6 while its cash reserves dwindled. Jeff Bezos asked Jim Collins (profiler of Great companies) to coach his leadership team on how to get out of the crisis. Collins advised them not to react impulsively to bad news and instead to build a "flywheel" for growth, to focus them through the storm and guide them into the future.

This is the origin story of Amazon's famed "growth flywheel," which is the simple framework to explain how they have been able to grow quickly and consistently over the past two decades, even as millions became trillions. It's a simple but accurate view of the key components of growth for Amazon and how increasing each leads the overall system to improve and the flywheel to spin faster, driving greater growth. The anchor of the whole thing is the only element with multiple inputs and outputs: customer experience.

It's no coincidence that Amazon's first leadership principle is "customer obsession."

Long-time Amazon exec Jeff Willke explains their growth flywheel, complete with "fancy Powerpoint"

LinkedIn's equity flywheel

For LinkedIn, our "customers" are the global workforce, both as individuals and as aggregations in the form of companies and organizations. And the "experience" we provide them is in service of creating opportunities. Sometimes this takes the form of job opportunities, sometimes it's being able to consider or market professional services and products, and increasingly it's in the transfer of knowledge and information between members (periodically prompted by designated influencers and our LinkedIn News team).

This all ties closely to our vision and mission as a company. The thing I believe is unique is that our ambition is not to just create opportunity for some people, but it's explicitly to "create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce." This puts equity at the heart of what LinkedIn is meant to be all about, especially as the type of opportunity that typically attracts people to become members initially is potential employment, where issues of bias and fairness are continually in the foreground.

A few weeks ago, LinkedIn's CEO Ryan Roslansky publicly declared a set of "equitable outcomes" the company was uniquely positioned to drive:

1. Professionals can build strong networks and access opportunities regardless of demographics
2. Companies have the data and tools to accelerate their ability to create diverse workplaces
3. LinkedIn strives to be a company that reflects the diversity of our communities in our workforce and is a place where all belong and thrive

What struck me was how synergistic and symbiotic this all is: to create equitable outcomes, we need to develop the platform and products that promote and enable an equitable environment and activity. That development requires that we have a strong and representative level of diversity in our company. And as a recruiting leader here, I can confirm that attracting and retaining a diverse set of talent requires equity in our internal practices and external presence.

The idea that we need to fire on all cylinders to make this work can be daunting. However, it can also offer an advantage, as (a) the core of our business requires equity, making it easier to drive and reinforce the change needed to be equitable (although it's never easy), and (b) if we inject energy into one aspect, it can provide a boost to the rest. Sound familiar?

Like Amazon, LinkedIn has a flywheel. What we have, though, is an "equity flywheel."

On the left side: equitable outcomes attract more active members and communities on LinkedIn. Their presence convinces companies to show up and get engaged, and they create opportunities through their job posts, inMail outreach, advertising, and sales navigator outreach. If we've created the right environment - both technically and behaviorally - these opportunities will lead to the aforementioned equitable outcomes, which will attract more activity from members and companies. As the cycle continues, we find that we're realizing our vision: "create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce"

On the right side: equitable outcomes encourage and enable LinkedIn to make more authentic and meaningful connections to communities of talent, both to strengthen those communities and LinkedIn's ability to attract talent from them. These connections enable us to hire, grow, and retain a more diverse population of talent at LinkedIn, which is the lifeblood of our company and #1 operating priority. That diversity is fundamental to building, evolving, promoting, and bringing to market a more equitable LinkedIn platform and products, which is the key to driving those equitable outcomes that strengthen our connections to talent - externally and internally. As the cycle continues, we see we're executing effectively against our mission: "connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful."

These cycles connect to one another: our execution of the mission (right side) creates the inputs that enable our realization of the vision (left side) as an output; we can't get the fuel for inputs (i.e., talent) without the outputs to excite them (i.e., brand) and fund it (i.e., business success). And equitable outcomes are at the center of it all.

This does NOT mean we have figured it all out. FAR from it. We need to get better on every dimension of this flywheel, especially on diversity of talent and inclusivity and equity of our talent processes. But we are committed and holding ourselves accountable. And with this flywheel in place, we are able to answer the "Why?" behind DEI and have the business alignment to increase the likelihood of achieving lasting change.

Why every company needs an equity flywheel

I think LinkedIn is on advantageous footing here, by dint of owning a consumer social network and having a sizable business focused on talent. There's a reason we can say "talent is our #1 operating priority" with a straight face. The belief in its distinctiveness is a big reason why I decided to come work here in the first place.

Despite this, I believe every company with a meaningful commitment to DEI (which should be every company) needs to have their version of an equity flywheel. A couple reasons for this:

1. It forces a company to think through and answer "Why does DEI matter to our business?", its inverse "What are you missing out on if you lack DEI?", and "What equitable outcomes are you creating?" As I wrote in an earlier article, going beyond platitudes and understanding why diversity is core to your business is essential to making DEI more than performative or a nice-to-have.
2. It connects your talent practices (e.g., hiring, talent management, employee engagement) and social impact initiatives (e.g., community building, investments in schools and talent incubators) to your product development and go-to-market, elevating them from corporate cost centers to front-of-house priorities. It also shows that every function has a role to play in driving equitable outcomes, enrolling the entire company in the effort.
3. It creates an opportunity to gut-check whether your vision and/or mission are built for modern times and culture. DEI is fundamental and timeless, and I believe it will be a focus of society and YOUR workplace for the foreseeable future. If you don't have a vision/mission that accounts for this, your team and clients will question it.

This not just the domain of startup and teenage tech companies. For example, I'm proud of my former employer Nielsen (nearly a centenarian!) for its recent launch of inclusion analytics, which was developed by a diverse team in line with its core business of audience and content measurement. Their head of DEI, Sandra Sims-Williams, said “By democratizing information around representation in content, Gracenote Inclusion Analytics holds the power to push the industry toward better balance and a more equitable future.” When's the last time you saw a head of DEI quoted in a product press release?

If you'd like to learn more about LinkedIn's drive for equitable outcomes, see the following:

• "Driving Equitable Outcomes: A Journey We're Taking Together” (CEO Ryan Roslansky)
• “Amplifying the Voices and Experiences of Black Professionals” (CMO Mel Selcher)
• "What We Mean by Equitable Outcomes for the Global Workforce" (Head of Equity Strategy, Imani Dunbar)
• “How We Can All Create Equal Access to Opportunity” – announcing the launch of member Self-ID (product leader Monica Lewis)
• "Building Pathways to Workplace Equity" - thought leadership on what Black professionals are seeking in the workplace (engineering leader Sabry Tozin)
• "Addressing Bias in Large-Scale AI Applications: The LinkedIn Fairness Toolkit" - (LinkedIn engineering team)

If you're interested in helping create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce by achieving equitable outcomes, see careers.linkedin.com and follow our company page.

If you want to define and develop your own company's "equity flywheel," many kudos to you! And if you need some help or would like to chat about it, comment below or inMail me.

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:

• A Framework for What Comes Next
• 12 Questions Managers Should Ask Themselves For an Inclusive Hiring Effort
• Embracing "Why" is Key to D&I