A War for Talent, and Fossil Fuel

SustainableIT Issue 6 -

Last week I had the honor of presenting at the ABSL summit in Katowice Poland with my colleague Simone Whitfield about the role of technologists and the importance of diversity and inclusion in sustainability. It was great not only to be presenting at such a prestigious event but also to collaborate with Simone and weave our different areas of focus into a single narrative. I think we did so pretty well, with all the credit for that going to Simone for providing the insights that were most relevant for this audience.

The ABSL summit is focused on the rapid migration of business services into the Polish market by global companies. With over 400,000 workers and 5% of Polish GDP coming from the segment it has become a vital growth engine for the Polish economy. Due to the nature of the work the most pressing issue for this segment is an overall shortage of talent. By no means specific to business services or the IT industry, the global talent shortage is one of the key constraints on economic growth. 

Since some might not think of the “talent gap” as a sustainability issue, it is worth briefly exploring the connection. While there are certainly limits to growth and what some will argue is a need for de-growth, the knowledge work of IT (and business services) is an essential enabler of sustainability across sectors and is itself entirely dependent on the supply of knowledge workers. In my consultations with business and IT leaders this shortage of talent is the most common issue that comes up, irrespective of which industry sector or region they work in.

Among the many great presentations at ABSL there was a consistent theme of needing to attract, retain and re-train talent in order to sustain business growth. Among the experts it was universally agreed that drawing on candidates from more diverse backgrounds was essential. There were also some very insightful comments about the importance of inclusion, one of my favorite being, “if a vendor brings a nice diverse looking team into the meeting but only the two old white guys speak, that is diversity without inclusion.”

Diversity and inclusion can positively impact the sustainability of a business in a number of different ways, from expanding the talent pool, to helping retain workers in a tight labor market to giving a workers an increasingly vital sense of purpose and fairness in their day to day work. More specific to the technology capabilities of a business, diversity is vital in the development of new technologies such as AI, where unintended bias risks introducing fatal flaws. 

What may be the most significant diversity issue within IT organisations is the direct correlations between the diversity of teams, the quality of design and the resulting business performance for those companies that excel at design. This relationship needs to be better understood as a crucial component of technology systems design and deployment. One of the the most important foundational principles of “sustainability by design” is diversity of perspectives.

Diversity Takes Many Forms

So what does diversity mean in the context of business and technology? There are the obvious challenges with insufficient numbers of women and minorities in IT, but there are also other types of diversity that are less well understood. As we emerge from the pandemic the phenomenon of “spectrum disorders” is becoming better understood as a set of symptoms that may present with or without the presence of an underlying disorder, and can be addressed in a variety of ways. 

Many tech companies have actively recruited neurodiverse people and been more accommodating for neurodiverse individuals than other fields. In my experience technology professionals are often allowed to work self directed and even to behave unconventionally so long as the work they produce is sufficient in terms of quality and quantity. Although it is by no means a universal rule, it seems likely that many neurodiverse people have been able to thrive within the tech industry and to build great careers even when they are not aware of or asking for accommodations related to their own diversity.

At the same time the industry struggles to attract and retain talent from other diverse groups, most notably women, for a variety of cultural reasons that have not been effectively addressed. Given the role of technologists in driving other types of transformation efforts, I believe the capacity to lead and sustain transformations depends on our ability to embrace diversity more enthusiastically and take advantage of our current opportunity to reinvent work for the benefit of women, minorities, and people with a greater variety of neurological, educational and cultural backgrounds.

As just one example let’s consider the person some might call the poster child for neurodivergent success, Elon Musk. Wildly successful and willfully unconventional, Musk has accomplished some amazing things and at one point said in relation to recruiting for AI talent “I don’t care if you even graduated high school”. However, last week Mr. Musk announced a requirement for Tesla staff to return to full time office based working, which is a model that discriminates against against women, and working mothers in particular. This illustrates how a leaders personal perspective can create unintentional discrimination with a policy that might make sense to them but does not make sense for everyone.

Surely Elon Musk knows how to build and run successful companies so who are we to criticize his business decisions? In his brilliant book Range, David Epstein illustrates how depth of expertise and experience not only fails to prevent us from making bad decisions but is often what causes them. Epstein’s book and others such as Think Again by Adam Grant suggest we need to redefine what economists call “match quality” - a term that describes the fit between the work we do and who we are in terms of our abilities and proclivities - and recognize the potential value in less obvious matches between skills and jobs.

While it is easy to criticize public figures for highly visible missteps, it seems clear that our collective efforts to arrive at the best possible working environments and conditions cannot possibly be answered with simplistic approaches like “everyone back to the office”. Many large companies like Accenture are also recognising the need to expand the potential pool of talent by looking beyond traditional qualifications such as college degrees.

With all of the focus on environmental and social issues it is sometimes easy to forget that the most important sustainability issue for any business is to stay in business. While supply chain disruptions and other challenges such as environmental impact are important long term issues, how we sustain people, protect our society and create conditions where humans can thrive right now are some of our most pressing and immediate challenges.

The two most inspiring presentations at the ABSL summit were the keynote addresses that bookended the event. The first was by Garry Kasparov and detailed how the appeasement of Vladimir Putin by Western governments made the current situation in Ukraine not only predictable but probably inevitable. His brilliant analysis of the issue and the way he illustrated the historical context for an audience sitting in Poland resulted in a well deserved standing ovation. 

The wrap up keynote was by Al Gore, who as expected focused on the climate crisis but also made an impassioned plea for recognition that the situation in Ukraine was very much a fossil fuel war. Bringing together the need to address the climate crisis, the need for the political will to stop Russian aggression, and the poisonous effect of money in US politics that was making both of these efforts more difficult was Gore at his analytical best. It reminded me of how Vice Presidents are often the deep thinkers and policy experts that enable Presidents to play the role of celebrity spokesmodel. 

The thread that runs through all of these issues for me is that our sustainableIT challenge is fundamentally a human challenge. As business and IT leaders we need to recognise that sustainability starts with enabling our teams to function well in spite of all the personal and societal challenges we are facing today. Doing so requires a recognition of the fact that diversity is not just an issue of race or gender, inclusion is not just having a seat at the table and that belonging is the assurance that every voice, no matter how quiet or quirky, is heard.

We have a tremendous opportunity to leverage technology in serving the needs of human progress, but being surrounded by shiny things and potential distractions, we sometimes need to be reminded that the human comes first.