The Paradox of Meritocracy

Meritocracy,  a term,  admittedly  I was not familiar with until this past December's 2015 Business Insurance Women to Watch Annual Leadership Conference.  Then suddenly it seemed 'meritocracy' was being discussed everywhere at the event.  If you read my first post, you can surmise by now that this women's event made a huge professional impact on me as I found the conference to be an extremely worthwhile investment of time, effort and cost to attend. Almost every session had actionable take away concepts you could readily implement regardless of your gender, role in your organization or industry. These were universal ideas.

Many of the  presenters spoke about this concept  'meritocracy.' Let’s turn to Merriam Webster for a basic definition: “A system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement.” On face value isn’t this what we think is supposed to happen when we enter the workforce? The belief that if you work hard and strive to be the best at what you do... good things will follow. Unfortunately, research and the real world have shown there is still an inequitable balance in our modern work environment. The Atlantic magazine published new research in an article titled “The False Promise of Meritocracy” this past December. In the article researchers conducted at MIT shows that when companies openly commit to meritocracy reverse outcomes can still and do occur. The research concluded that women, ethnic minorities and other groups did not receive similar pay increases as their white male coworkers. This research was mostly focused on performance based upon salary increases. There were still many stories of financial inequality and that unfortunately still needs to change. The positive is and The Atlantic article and research referenced said just because this research was not positive doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to forge ahead. It points out is that at least in America, unfortunately we still aren’t quite there yet.

As I have mentioned before, the Women to Watch event was inspiring because there were so many talented professional women as well as men in attendance who are making strides to change this disparity, especially within our industry. Perhaps, if each of us makes small changes this year then when we all come together again in December, could it be possible the landscape will be a bit more balanced?

In the meantime what can organizations do to change? “If a firm wants to look more like a meritocracy and less like a mirrortocracy, then it will have to take a real hard look at its numbers and data set.” This is a great sentence from an article by Renwei Chung, “Another Year Has Passed; Are Your Firm’s Diversity Initiatives Helping Or Hurting?” I close by urging you to look around and look at the data and the facts and try to do the right thing with compensation and promotion in 2016. I would like to hear your thoughts on this term and subject. It is not an easy one and there is no one answer that solves everything. Good open dialogue is a great first step.