How Organizational Diversity Initiatives Lose the Plot

Contrary to popular opinion…

Diversity is not an initiative. It is not an imperative. It is not a strategic priority.

Diversity… is a fact.

You see, nature tends toward abundance and redundancy. When nature is left to its devices, not only is there enough, there’s also a variety.

Not just one type of cloud

Or grass

Or cat

Or human.

But many. And for no more apparent or justifiable reason than survivability. Of the whole.

Nature: Better make sure we have a lot of different types of these, so if something happens to one of them, at least we’ll still have the others:

Humankind: Oh, so you mean, ‘survival of the fittest?’ 

Nature: Um, no. That’s not at all what I mean. 

Where there is either lack or ‘excessive sameness’, there is usually an unnatural and / or external cause.

An Impact on Diversity

Decreased genetic diversity in plant crops puts the entire ecosystem at risk.

A dam constructed.

A toxic chemical introduced.

A meteor fallen from the sky.

Something happened to cut off the naturally abundant and redundant supply. And it remained. Continued. Settled in. Permanently changing the landscape.

Later, someone with short sight or memory will come along and wonder, ‘Why are there none of that particular flower here? Is this not its natural habitat?’ 

A committee will be convened, monies will be raised, campaigns will be launched. The naturally abundant flower will be trucked in from its natural, undisturbed habitat and planted in this place with its nearby dam or insidious chemicals. 

Over time, most of the flowers will wilt, die off. A constant committee will be needed to transplant a new batch every growing season.

Annuals.

Not perennials.

And the numbers are reported out at the height of the growing season. “We have hundreds of them here, thriving!” 

But no one ever stops to ask the flowers.

****

If the idea of solving the wrong problem could be summed up in a word, that word would be, ‘diversity’.

I’ve been involved in diversity initiatives at work in one way or another since I started working over 2 decades ago. 

I myself was what you’d call a ‘diversity hire’. Young, inexperienced, plucked directly from the natural habitat of an Atlanta HBCU thanks to a Big 4 diversity recruiting initiative. I was a lucky flower. I got transplanted into a patch with some experienced and invested black women who ‘understood the assignment’ and took me under their individual and collective wings, giving me the ability to take root in unfamiliar terrain with the aid of familiar associations.

This is an uncommon story. 

The more common one?

A ‘different flower’ is brought in as a transplant. She may thrive initially, but soon the toxic cultural norms of ‘one-size-fits-all’, ‘when you’re here, you’re family’, ‘it’s a lifestyle, not a job’ creep in. She realizes that there is no such situation as thriving here, there is: ‘conform and constrict’, ‘grin and bear it,’ or ‘wither and shrink’. Her other flower-friends, once she finds them, are usually the ones to inform her of her choices. After all, these are the choices they have made.

And so the flower makes a choice: survive, wilt… or grow feet.

In short, the story being told about organizational and corporate diversity is a narrative missing perspective. A thin plot hurtling toward a flimsy ending. 

Diversity initiatives don’t just need a rewrite, they need a whole new editorial team.