Diversity and inclusion

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There is surely an ever-present, crushing irony in the fact that the most monotonous, robotic, cliché-laden, straight-out-of-central-casting, phoned-in, ditch-water dull patter in all of modern business discourse — and stone the crows, that’s quite some bar to overcome — is uttered in the name of diversity and inclusion.

“Only by actively engaging different perspectives can we challenge and stretch our thinking, enrich the experiences of employees, and empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Every day, we strive to create an environment that brings the power of diversity to life; where people with different backgrounds and experiences thrive in both their professional and personal lives—and where we’re all able to channel our passions to help others achieve more.”

The above is, verbatim, a real-life example plucked from the remorselessly unhumble pages of LinkedIn.

Actual diversity in an organisation’s workforce is vital for risk and opportunity management in the complex environments that any self-respecting organisation should be looking to stick itself in the middle of.

Oddly, current management dogma, while long on platitudes curated from the random word generators in the D&I inspectorate — see above— seems hell bent on identifying and systematically rooting out actual diversity, through devices like the law firm panel — get legal advice if you must, but only from this mandated set of firms, all of whom provide more or less identical service from carefully filtered Russell group graduates, who also populate your legal department; the playbook — welcome, young proverbial school-leaver from Bucharest (D&I kerching!): Now, follow these simple instructions and for God's sake don’t improvise or bring any of your own idiosyncratic perspectives to bear on the issue; and most galling off all, the AI reg tech solution — a.k.a. the algorithm, which must be the dictionary definition of homogenous, Having not even a White Anglo-Saxon Male cultural framework, as spiritually bankrupt as that may be to bring to bear on your confidentiality agreement but no cultural framework at all.

Diversity — real diversity — is not a box to be ticked. It may be the difference between survival and extinction when that existential crisis arrives unbidden. Best not leave it, therefore, to well-meaning virtue signallers in HR.

See also

• (Actual) diversity
• Middle management
• Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
• Parkinson’s law