2. Failure of Strategy: Margin Choice vs. Growth Choice A margin choice focuses on short-term needs and aims for incremental change. When the diversity numbers go down, the company strengthens its recruiting efforts to “buy” diversity. Whereas, growth choice focuses on “growing” diversity by investing in the incumbent workforce through purposeful talent development and providing an ecosystem that supports and advances diverse talent. In the volatile and complex digital age, DEI becomes a strategic imperative and competitive differentiator. While advanced technology and new opportunities can accelerate business growth, there is no substitute for people. The innovation, knowledge acquisition, soft skills, and
agile nature that are wired into our human DNA will help us successfully navigate a rapidly changing marketplace. This long-term growth mentality will unleash the full potential of diverse talent and energize companies around agility, innovative thinking, and continuous improvement. To activate the growth choice, we must be crystal clear about our vision and create a blueprint for what to achieve, where to bet, and how to win. Strategy to win the game: • Form a DEI Executive Council to lead the journey, set objectives, connect all the touch points, and provide direction. Leverage their clout to invite and engage more leaders and employees to champion DEI efforts. • Conduct prescriptive, descriptive, and predictive analysis with leading and
lagging indicators to better understand the organization’s DEI history, lessons learned, and challenges; set up stretch goals for the future. • Increase transparency of DEI data by granting access to business leaders. Leverage DEI data to uncover WHAT (issues that stand in the way), use insight and intelligence to explain WHY (root cause), and commit to HOW (SMART plans to tackle the issues). • Converse with business leaders regularly. Use Bayes’ theory to actually update our beliefs when we encounter new evidence and theories that conflict with what we already know. Validate pre-existing beliefs, while reviewing new evidence (data), by asking if the new evidence confirms our beliefs or if alternatives exist that better explain the challenges
www.diversityjournal.com
61