How Diversity and Inclusion Are Driving Business Transformation
Leaders from Logicalis, Cisco and Microsoft say diversity is a key differentiator in transformation.
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Charissa Jaganath is head of responsible business for Logicalis Group. She believes that inclusive leadership can have an impact on talent retention and business success.
“We’ve seen research that suggests that having a team of diverse, inclusive leaders, creating a space for open innovation and creativity, will invariably lead to teams that feel comfortable and supported at work, strengthening their commitment to the organization. We’ve seen this firsthand at Logicalis. In regions where CEOs already take a more inclusive leadership style, they naturally create more inclusive cultures around them with others tending to model their behaviour.
“As a result, they see the best retention rates, lower attrition levels, and some of the highest employee engagement scores across the group. We also see the benefits of this inclusive culture reflected in other KPIs, with staff feeling more satisfied at work, and even customer service coming back stronger, and stronger and more positive.”
Julie Sanford, VP of solution strategy and go-to-market at Microsoft, said you can’t have transformation without diverse and inclusive leadership.
“If you look at our transformation [at Microsoft] over the last 10 years, it’s been significant. We’ve changed everything about our business,” she said. “We’ve transformed the way we bring products to market, how we have our business models, how we engage with our customers and our partners. To support that kind of significant transformation, you can’t do that without a cultural attribute or diverse and inclusive leadership.
“When Satya [Nadella] took over as CEO, he had two primary objectives. [First], He invested in a diverse leadership team. He took people that wanted to work together that had different experiences, and lead from the top on how important it was to bring all of those different skills and assets together. A second primary focus was on the culture. We had to invest in educating and training and really changed to a one Microsoft approach.”
Shari Slate is chief inclusion and collaboration officer and senior VP of inclusive future and strategy at Cisco. She cited Chuck Robbins’ speech at Davos in 2019. He said a 21st century company must care about all of its stakeholders, not just the majority, and know that it’s good for business.
“When you strike that tone, it fundamentally changes the who, and the how a company thinks about delivering on their promise or purpose. For us it’s to power an inclusive future for all,” she said.
“From a culture standpoint, we say that we have a conscious culture. [It] is one that is built on full spectrum diversity; it is free from bias, harassment and discrimination. It is one where we empower our employees to take care of each other and the environment. And it’s one where we expect them if they see something, they must say something, if it’s counter to who and what we say we are as a company.
“The focus is really about value creation for all of our stakeholders, employees, customers, our partners, suppliers. But from the intersection of inclusion, diversity, collaboration and technology, it fundamentally changes the way in which you think about the integration of inclusion into every system, policy and practice of the company, both short term and long term.”
“The most important thing when you talk about diversity and inclusion, is it authentic? We have not looked at diversity inclusion as a separate initiative in the company; it permeates everything we do. And it’s starts from the top down,” said Microsoft’s Sanford.
“Diversity and inclusion, to be honest, can be a scary and unfamiliar topic for a lot of people. Just knowing that they the company was investing and enabling us to be curious and be vulnerable around this topic. We did a lot of training on unconscious bias, which was amazing.
“Then you look at our product innovation; we’ve been taking a D&I approach to our product development for 25 years. Our employees with disabilities are actually the catalyst for change that’s helped us deliver products like the Xbox adaptive controller, seeing AI.
“D&I permeates everything we do from product development to inclusive hiring practices and how we reward and rewarding behaviour at the organization.”
The leaders also discussed how leaders can approach organizational culture.
Jaganath said key to creating an organizational culture that embodies the values of the organization is “for leaders to live and breathe those values themselves. And not to just have them be the work of the HR team to develop into a pretty sign on the door or for the website.
“Leaders need to be brave and call out when those values are not being lived up to. We know that the most successful companies are captained by leaders who go out of their way to communicate their own cultural identities, their own beliefs and values. They are fully aware of how this shapes their organization.”
The leaders also discussed how leaders can approach organizational culture.
Jaganath said key to creating an organizational culture that embodies the values of the organization is “for leaders to live and breathe those values themselves. And not to just have them be the work of the HR team to develop into a pretty sign on the door or for the website.
“Leaders need to be brave and call out when those values are not being lived up to. We know that the most successful companies are captained by leaders who go out of their way to communicate their own cultural identities, their own beliefs and values. They are fully aware of how this shapes their organization.”
We’ve seen an acceleration in business transformation activities across all industries. To what extent can diversity and inclusion help deliver transformation? We know that the tech industry is experiencing a shortage of available skills and talent right now. At the same time, employees are searching for a better, more fulfilling experience. Can diversity help solve the talent crisis? And what transformation do leaders need to go through when implementing their own diversity strategy?
Leaders from Logicalis, Cisco and Microsoft recently gathered to discuss diversity as a key differentiator in business transformation.
See the slideshow above to see how there can be no transformation without diversity and inclusivity.
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