We Missed the Whole Point

How the Diversity Management Movement Got Co-opted and What to Do About It 

One of my favorite golfers was Payne Stewart (killed in a plane crash in 1999). Not only was he a great golfer, having won eleven tour victories and three majors, he had a great perspective on the game. Stewart’s most famous quote goes like this, “If you can’t look your opponent in the eye and congratulate him after a match, you’ve missed the whole point.” 

As I look at the myriad of activity going on in organizations today under the banner of “diversity” or “diversity and inclusion”, I am convinced that we have “missed the whole point”. Let me explain.

The six areas of focus

In the early 2000s, a group called the Diversity Leadership Forum created a summary of the most common motives operating under the “diversity” banner. Interestingly enough, most practitioners would agree that if you asked a room of 20 people to give you a definition of “diversity” work, you would get at least 40 different answers. We laugh at this fact, but we all know that it is not a good thing. A movement succeeds when there is a common language and a common understanding of its meaning. You cannot sustain a movement without absolute clarity about definition, intent, desired outcomes, and strategy. 

For the record, here are the six focus areas the DLF identified. Ask yourself, “Which one (or more) drives my interest in the field?” 

1. Social Justice – deals with finding remedies for structural inequalities.  
2. Prejudice/Bias Reduction &Prevention– deals with having people examine their biases and tolerance for different “others.” 
3. Affirmative Action and Compliance – Counting heads and measuring the hiring of underrepresented groups. 
4. Academic Enrichment– the belief and practice that different cultural perspectives are a critical part of the learning content of the academy. 
5. Representation and Inclusion–deliberate efforts to recruit and retain certain demographic groups and to make each person feel a “sense of belonging”. 
6. Diversity Management –develop the capability to manage the collective mix in order to achieve goals, fulfill the mission and/or improve performance.  

I would argue that each of these motives has merit and I in fact, support each one. The problem of course is that we use the same word (diversity) for each of them which naturally create a high level of confusion about the intent and outcomes of the work. Here’s a hint for those who work in business, only one of these areas has the potential to produce tangible business results. Can you guess which one it is? 

The origin and evolution of the movement 

I am always amused when I hear someone say “I have been involved in diversity work since the sixties”. I am amused because the diversity (called diversity management) movement only started in 1986. That was when Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas changed the name of his think tank from the Institute for Corporate Leadership to The American Institute for Managing Diversity. That name change signaled a new and unique approach to an increasingly vexing problem. It went beyond multiculturalism, pluralism, cross cultural studies, affirmative action, EEO, confronting oppression, or even inclusion. The issue was not “how do we increase the diversity in our organizations?’ The issue was “how do we manage the diversity that will naturally show up in our organizations?”  

¹Though it rankles his rivals, R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr. put workforce diversity policies on the professional map with a specific variation he termed “managing diversity”. 

Consider the original definition of Managing Diversity as put forth by AIMD.

“Managing Diversity is a process for creating an environment that naturally allows all employees to contribute fully to the objectives of the organization.” 

And the original definition of the diversity we were supposed to manage. 

“Diversity is the collective mix of differences and similarities.” 

If we had simply held to these definitions, there would admittedly be far fewer people on the diversity bandwagon. But those who were would be much more effective. In fact, I would argue that diversity management would now be an established discipline of organizational effectiveness rather than continuing as a disjointed field of study. 

Instead, the language of diversity management got co-opted by people with a social, political, or personal agenda. Since the intent of diversity management was so appealing to corporate leaders, others saw it as an introit to that audience for their cause or purpose. Thus, began the dilution and dissolution of a simple, well-defined, effective, and efficacious concept. 

Missing the point 

Little is being done to advance the practice of diversity management because most practitioners (and CEOs) don’t know what to look for or what to do. In fact, many newer leaders don’t even know what we are trying to do. 

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said,  

“the most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place.” 

By diluting the work of diversity management, we almost guaranteed that little progress would be made and even fewer results would be achieved. There was so much hope in the beginning. We have allowed the promise of diversity management to slip through our fingers. 

One C-level executive observed that civil rights moralism and race and gender militancy would not sell diversity management to CEOs. Diversity management must be sold as “business, not social work.” 

How we got distracted 

The 4 Rs – An informal review of the so-called “best for diversity” list of companies indicates that the most prevalent criteria for “best” are Representation – Recruitment – Retention – and Reputation. According to a recent Rand report on Managing Diversity in Corporate America most “best” companies believe that diversity will improve their business performance. Yet, the rankings are based primarily on a company’s demographic profile.  

The media trap – Why are companies applying to be on “best” lists in the first place? At best it serves to delude and distract them from the hard work of developing a diversity management capability. As one CDO said to me when I asked why he bothered to get on the “lists”, “My CEO likes seeing his picture in the magazines. It’s my job to get it there.” 

The impact of distraction 

Distractions have the impact of lulling us into a false sense of achievement. Instead of contributing to business results, we continue to miss the mark and have embarked on a long journey in the wilderness. That is where we are currently. We are basically spinning our wheels, recycling old methodologies, and touting successes that are of little interest to the leaders of our firms (more rhetoric than substance). 

How to get back on track 

The song, Rock Steady, by Aretha Franklin has a line that may inform our path forward. She says, “Let’s call this thing exactly what it is.” Following that line of thinking, we should go back to calling so-called diversity efforts exactly what they are. We should use language like racial equality, gender equity, civil rights, bias reduction, affirmative action, etc. Calling them all diversity (inclusion, D&I, etc.) means that none of them will achieve their stated intent or desired outcome. After all, we know that a confused mind does nothing. People will not support what they do not understand. 

To answer the original question, I believe diversity management is the only sustainable approach to workforce diversity for corporations. As such, CEOs should go back and rethink the role of the office of diversity and adopt diversity management as the preferred approach. At a minimum, the office of diversity should be tasked to make sure the company is using its diversity management capability effectively and that clear results are being achieved. 

A.G. Lafley, in his book, The Game Changer, illustrates how he used P&G’s long-standing diversity management capability to create an Innovation engine by using a broad range of perspectives from people inside and outside P&G. 

Diversity practitioners have to develop new skills. They must be able to demonstrate how the principles of diversity management have created tangible results for their company. And, tangible results must be defined as those outcomes that everyone in the company uses to gauge success (revenues, costs, efficiencies, innovations, etc.). Anything else is just rhetoric and will remain marginalized and nonessential.

James O. Rodgers Ph.D., MBA is the leading strategist in the field of diversity management. He is the thought leader for the concept of diversity management as a key business strategy, which he calls Deliberate Diversity™. He has become the leading resource for leaders who want to use diversity to achieve better business results.