Diversity – Strategy or Goal

Diversity is the politically correct thing to emphasize. The word is popping up everywhere in annual reports and Diversity executives are being added daily with great fanfare.

But, is diversity a good thing, or a bad thing?

The answer quite often depends on how you view diversity. Is it a goal to be met, or is it a strategy to accomplish another, higher goal?

Diversity as a strategy can improve your organization.

For example, you might want to increase the quality of job applicants or raise the average SAT score for incoming freshmen at your college. Reaching out to underrepresented groups will increase the size of the applicant pool. Some of those applicants will meet your standards and will score better than your existing selectees. This occurs even though the diverse group has a lower average score than the original group. The curve still has a long tail.

Therefore, your higher goal is reached and your organization is enhanced. In fact, you can now raise your selection standard.

Diversity as a goal has the opposite effect.

Many organizations have rushed to assign executives with Diversity in their title.

Often, these organizations think they are pursuing a strategy, as above. But, after a year or so, someone will inevitably ask, “How diverse are we?” or “How has our diversity changed?” They have just lost sight of the goal and substituted a new one. Once they start measuring the level of diversity in outcomes instead of improvement in applicant quality or in selection standards, they will call for action to increase diversity. They set a quota, even if only implied.

The result is lower standards and/or lesser-qualified applicants being selected over more-qualified applicants. The organization is worse off than before.

So what should I do?

Be very careful. Understand your motivation for pursuing diversity and watch what you measure.