Survival is Optional

It seems to be that it starts with convincing companies that diversity is powerful. You're dedicated to convincing corporate leaders, for example, embracing the LGBT community. Why is diversity powerful? What's the case you make to them?

Well, what's interesting, I jokingly say that if people are still asking us what the business case for diversity is, they've already lost. That case was settled 20 years ago in my opinion.

Good point.

Right? I mean, I think forward-thinking companies have taken that as a factor and have really moved into the okay, now, how can we actually capture this opportunity? There's a great quote that I love that comes from some of the business school literature that says, "In business, you don't have to change; survival is optional." And if you sort of think about it in that way, I think that is how forward-thinking companies look at this diversity opportunity, and it is an opportunity. There is a guy named Martin Davidson at the Darden school at UVA, he's a professor of leadership and he contrasts managing diversity with leveraging difference, and you'll note, I used the term 'leveraging difference' just a minute ago, that's because it really is focused on opportunity. If you're managing diversity, then it's a problem to be solved. It's only focused on the six areas of visible difference. It's not connected to any sort of business or bottom-line opportunity. It generally gets put into the HR bucket only and senior leaders don't really feel like they have a role to play. They feel like, oh, that's HR, that's talent. They'll take care of it, versus if you're leveraging difference, it's an opportunity to be capitalized on. It connects to your business goals at your bottom line opportunity. Every element of difference matters, and that's really important because if you're excluding people from diversity, which happens and has happened the last 30 years for so many of these populations, you're missing the opportunity to actually have the inclusion matter and to draw the bottom line, and so I think companies, when I talk to companies about why they should be doing this, it's really less about, I never go in with "This is the right thing to do," because of course, it's the right thing to do, but there are so many things in the world that are the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do for their business, and so I start with trying to understand what their fundamental opportunities are or their business challenges, and then tie that to something that diversity can help them with.