My group is responsible for diversity issues in our organization. Diversity is important to the future of our firm, but I can’t seem to get senior leaders to give it the attention it deserves.
 
This is a great question—a tough question. Let me first set a strategic context. Organizations define themselves through a mix of Strategic Advantages and Competitive Necessities.

Strategic Advantage: A process or position that provides a unique competitive edge. For example, Volvo’s strategic advantage is safety. It’s their identity, their core competency, their monopoly. To maintain this advantage they must do safety right every time, with every car.
 
Competitive Necessity: A process or position that’s required in order to compete, but that doesn’t provide a competitive advantage. Some of Volvo’s competitive necessities include cost, reliability, quality, variety, and styling. If they failed on any one of these necessities, their car would be unacceptable to consumers. Personally, I think they pushed the limit on styling for a few years. Any uglier and they’d have lost their market. However, consumers don’t buy a Volvo for its looks. They buy it for its safety.

You’re lucky when your responsibilities involve one of your firm’s strategic advantages. Your projects get noticed. Your career thrives. Competitive necessities aren’t as much fun. When you do well, nobody notices and your primary goal is to avoid the spotlight. However, if you fall short, not only is the spotlight on you—things also hit the fan. Often someone loses their job or goes to jail.

The distinction between Strategic Advantage and Competitive Necessity is a bit like Herzberg’s distinction between Motivator and Hygiene Factors. Here’s what I mean. If I show up for a meeting dirty and smelling bad, it pretty much guarantees my failure. However, if I show up clean and smelling fine, it doesn’t mean the meeting will go well. Succeeding at a hygiene factor or a competitive necessity is a requirement for entry, but it doesn’t give you an advantage once you’re in.

Ask yourself whether diversity issues are a part of your firm’s Strategic Advantage. Should they be? Or are they a Competitive Necessity?

Let’s imagine a few situations where excellence in diversity could be a Strategic Advantage.

• Your firm is located in a divided, strife-ridden region, where your ability to get people to collaborate gives you an edge.
• Your firm’s technology requires special talents that can only be found in the four corners of the globe—and your ability to find and retain these diverse experts gives you an edge.
• Your firm’s growth potential is international, and your ability to understand and respond to diverse customer needs gives you an edge.

If this sounds like your situation, then the challenge is to prove it to senior leaders. Look for ways to demonstrate the monopoly that will be yours if you can make diversity a Strategic Advantage. Re-read Influencer chapter 3, Change the Way You Change Minds, for ideas. Here are a few of mine.

Create face-to-face, personal experiences for senior leaders. Add ongoing data streams to executives’ dashboards that illustrate the impact diversity has on the business.

An example: a senior sales executive was persuaded to visit one of her customer’s remote locations in south India. When she got there she was swept off her feet by the scale of their operation. It dwarfed the sites she visited routinely in the States. Now she visits this customer’s Indian and Chinese operations several times a year.

If excellence in diversity is a Competitive Necessity, not a Strategic Advantage, then your approach will be different. From your firm’s perspective, diversity will rarely be urgent, and, when it is, it will be too late. You’ll face one of the most difficult leadership challenges: Getting people to pay attention to what’s important, instead of to what’s urgent.

So, ask yourself: “What can I do to help my senior team pay attention to an issue like diversity when it’s not a part of my firm’s Strategic Advantage?” and, “How can I get management to take the far-sighted actions required before an emergency happens?”

I’ll come back to this issue in my next post…