Winston
Churchill once said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.”
He was talking about how to ensure greatness for a country, but I think
it’s just as true for a company.
If we want our businesses to remain competitive, if we want our companies
to be great idea-generators and problem-solvers for our clients and great
places to work, we have a responsibility to ensure that diversity and
inclusion efforts succeed. And when I say “we,” I mean all
of us.
Too often, I think, the burden of reminding people about diversity, of
speaking to people who may make an insensitive remark, of championing
minorities – too often that burden falls on the minorities themselves.
I remember one story I heard of a woman who was one of the first female
administrators in an Ivy League university. She was at a meeting where
someone mentioned that another woman employee had been discriminated against.
All the heads in the room turned to look at that woman administrator.
They knew she’d be mad about it, and they knew she’d do something.
Instead she said, “Why are you looking at me? You know it’s
wrong. You should fix the problem.”
We ask a lot of our people. To meet our clients’ needs, we ask them
to work away from home and travel extensively. Just asking our employees
to do their jobs is hard enough. We cannot then expect each minority employee
– people of color, women, gay, lesbian or bisexual people –
to become his or her own chief diversity officer. That’s what leaders
are for.
So our responsibility – my personal responsibility – is to
set the tone. To make sure that all of my direct reports – and in
fact all our people – know that I expect them to take personal responsibility
for making our organization great, which means making diversity work for
us. |
