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Executive Summary

On Nov. 2–3, 2009, DiversityInc convened 11 CEOs, more than 100 chief diversity officers, leading organizational-development professors and top economists for a professionally facilitated learning summit focused on understanding effective leadership and its critical intersection with diversity management.

The two-day learning conference was hosted in New York City at the Marriott Marquis. The audience included business and government leaders making strong connections with each other from such companies as Walmart, Johnson & Johnson (No. 1 in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity�®), Ernst & Young (No. 3), Marriott International (No. 4), PricewaterhouseCoopers (No. 5), Sodexo (No. 6), Merck & Co. (No. 8), Procter & Gamble (No. 11), Verizon (No. 12), American Express (No. 13), Abbott (No. 16), Novartis (No. 20), KPMG (No. 21), Accenture (No. 23), PepsiCo (No. 24), Monsanto (No. 36), Aetna (No. 48), CSX (No. 49), and DiversityInc 25 Noteworthy Companies Burger King Corp., Eastman Kodak Co., JCPenney, Kraft, and Rockwell Collins.

The conference was designed to facilitate interaction and smallgroup discussions on a peer level. Critical observations from these professionally facilitated discussions included the importance of designing accountability into diversity and inclusion strategies and training and retaining leaders with high emotional intelligence that are able to operate in multicultural environments.

Although current economic challenges were top of mind, the key takeaways reflect a longer-term commitment to diversity management and explore the intersection of leadership, innovation and business sustainability.

Highlights From Essential Speakers

J.W. (Bill) Marriott Jr., Chairman and CEO of Marriott International, told the audience he believes strongly in values-driven capitalism and said: “how we do business is just as important as the business we do.”

He stated: “Last year, I found myself in a very challenging place when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supported the ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California. Many people thought that as a member of our church I and Marriott International also supported the initiative. We did not. I decided to respond through my blog. I stated very clearly that neither I nor my company had contributed to the campaign to pass Prop. 8, as Marriott was built on the basic principles of respect and inclusion. We were among the first in our industry to offer same-sex partner benefits and we’ve earned a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index for three years in a row. Many of our hotels have hosted LGBT community functions and events for years. I got a lot of responses to that blog. They were not all positive, but most of them were, and it was a great opportunity for me to reach out and connect with people on such an important issue.”

Dr. Richard McCormick, President of Rutgers University, talked about the importance of reaching young students early “to inspire in them the dream that they can go to college and help them every step of the way to get there.”

He stated: “Each year, we identify 50 rising seventh graders in each of our four hometowns (as part of the Rutgers Future Scholars Program) and we tell them, ‘If you are admitted to Rutgers five years from now, and we’ll do everything we can to help you, you will go for free.’ So we undertake the challenging work of mentoring them, tutoring them, bringing them onto campus for academic programs and basketball games. They came to the Rutgers women’s [basketball] game against south Florida at the end of January and you wouldn’t believe the standing ovation these 200 kids got from everyone in the arena. These are boys and girls who not a single one of which has a mom or dad who went to college … We know they won’t all make it but we also expect that some of them won’t go to Rutgers. They will go to Harvard or Duke. Others may start at a community college and transfer to Rutgers. We’re lifting their sights and raising their imaginations. One girl from Camden, a rising eighth-grader (who we brought in), was asked what she liked best about the day. Was it the academic program? Was it meeting the president? Was it the lunch? No, she said. It was the bus. When the big red Rutgers bus pulled up on her block in Camden, everyone in her neighborhood came out to see it and asked what that bus was doing there and why it had come, and she explained with pride, ‘It came for me.’”

Rockwell Collins Chairman, President and CEO Clay Jones stressed his deep personal and professional commitment to diversity management and candidly shared the struggles encountered when his company decided to offer its employees same-sex domestic-partner benefits.

He stated: “Everyone has a wall (and same-sex partner benefits) is where we hit the wall because there were probably four out of [my 10 direct reports] who are people of very strong religious faith—as am I—who were struggling with what they viewed as the morality of offering same-sex domestic-partner benefits, and that was the wall for us … The breakthrough came from two people in our group who spoke up. The first person said, ‘You know, for us, we may feel that way, but talk to your children. We’re trying to recruit people from the younger generation. Ask them how they feel about people who are gay or lesbian and their acceptance of them,’ and we did. We all went home, and I have two daughters, and I asked them, ‘Would you want to work for a company that discriminated against people because of sexual orientation?’ and they were unequivocal, and they said, ‘Not on your life, we wouldn’t do it’ … The second thing that was pivotal for us was when the second person in our group said, ‘Listen, if we as senior executives draw the line here because of that issue, then it allows everyone in the company to draw their own line too and we will not make progress.

“I’ve been CEO of this company for eight years. And I’ve never received more e-mails than when we announced same-sex domesticpartner benefits. I answered every single one of them personally and we met with groups, and over time we have gotten an acceptance of what we did and why we did it, in some cases very begrudgingly. But nothing we did moved our diversity further along than finding that hard rock that we had to get through.”

Michael Montelongo, senior vice president and chief administrative officer for Sodexo in the United States, Canada and Mexico, shared his disappointment at how schools continue to discourage young Black and Latino students in low-income areas from dreaming big.

He stated: “West Point, my alma mater, asked me to return and be part of a new program designed to send recent graduates out into the country to visit junior high and high schools in minority communities to inform them of the Academy’s existence. In the neighborhood I grew up in, you never heard about places like West Point because you never saw anyone from those kinds of institutions. I was assigned a six-state area in the southwest, and in many of the schools I visited, I would tell the youngsters about the Academy, and more often than not they were surprised that something like that existed and there were opportunities that people like themselves could actually avail themselves to.

“What really shocked me was not their reaction. What really shocked me was what I heard from teachers and administrators. Some of them admonished me for telling youngsters about college-prep criteria. They said they were just happy to have them in class. However nice their intentions were … their reaction indicated to me that they were only expecting mediocrity. And of course, if that is all you expect, that is all you’re going to get. And again, I couldn’t understand why these teachers and principals couldn’t and wouldn’t set the bar higher. That kind of attitude essentially condemns students to underachievement. That was back in 1979.

“Now fast forward to last Friday at the Hispanic College Fund gala honoring and recognizing scholars, most of whom are the first ones to attend college in their families. As they came to the podium to tell their very impressive and inspirational narratives, I was struck by one young Latino’s story, when he said he managed to prevail in spite of a teacher telling him basically to give up and not pursue college. This was last Friday. This is not 1968. This is not 1979. This was last Friday. Again, this is another instance where someone is dismissing or standing in the way of another person’s hopes and dreams and aspiration for a better life.”

Other speakers included Dr. Ella Bell of Dartmouth University’s Tuck School of Business, who addressed the need for the personal connection in effective leadership; Dr. Simon Reich of Rutgers University who spoke about global versus national codes of conduct; Dr. Susan Mohammed of Pennsylvania State University, who talked about the diversity of personal styles, including time management, and how that impacts teams; Dr. Farrokh Langdana of Rutgers University, who spoke about the economy and macroeconomic leadership; Judith E. Heumann, disability-rights activist and director of the Washington, D.C., Department of Disability, who stressed the importance of looking beyond stereotypes to see the potential in people; and Alma Morales Riojas, CEO of MANA, who emphasized how corporate America, especially on the East Coast, puts itself at peril if it ignores the talent pool of Latinas.

II. KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Leadership is personal.
• Emotionally intelligent leaders create trust and engagement.
• Leaders create sustainable approaches to diversity.
• Leaders hold people accountable for the implementation of diversity and inclusion strategies.
• Diversity leaders tackle opportunities and challenges head-on.
• Diversity leaders keep their eye on the big picture.

A. Leadership Is Personal

The importance of storytelling in persuasive leadership

If you were to ask yourself how much you really know about the people with whom you work, how much meaningful information would you be able to list? Do you know what motivates the people on your work team? Do you know what they value most? Are you aware of experiences they have had that have made a significant impact on their lives?

One of the key benefits of storytelling is that stories enable people to form connections with each other on a deeper level. Your team— and the people throughout your organization—work together better, become truly committed to one another, and are able, in turn, to serve your customers more effectively.

Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business Prof. Ella Bell, who teaches a core class in leadership, said her students are often surprised when her course begins with a showing of Disney’s “The Lion King.” By deconstructing the fictional journey of a cartoon leader, Bell told the audience that she helps her students define leadership as a mixture of skills, personality traits, character and life experiences.

She stated: “I think true leadership, the authentic part, the passionate part, the visionary dream part, begins with who we are. We don’t realize that our cumulative life experiences are stories, the stories that connect us to our race, our class, our ethnicity, our sexual orientation, our social location, all those things contribute to who we are as leaders. We like to pretend that this doesn’t even count, that those stories aren’t important, but they are. It is our cumulative life experience that shapes our values, our morals, gives us our dreams, which in the corporate world we call visions, and allows us to make a difference in the world.”

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Use stories to effect change, sketch a vision, align people behind you and connect on a deeper, more meaningful level. Financial statements, income statements, balance sheets, stock tables and ROI percentages don’t capture the hearts and minds of people. Stories do.
• Encourage senior leaders to speak in their own voices and share their own personal stories with one another.
• Mid-level leaders have their own stories too, but they are seldom heard. Create a forum where they can share their stories with others as a learning tool. Many of their stories can also offer real and compelling lessons for those who aspire to become more effective leaders.

In Your Own Words

“Any time we draft remarks for any of our leaders, we leave the first page blank and it’s got a square in the middle that says, ‘Describe your personal story on diversity and when it became something meaningful to you.’ Every one of them has just stepped up to the plate like you would not believe.” Dr. Patricia Taylor, Chief, Intelligence Community EEO and Diversity, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

“Once a year, our CEO and I meet with our affinity groups and their leadership. So when a group walks, what we’re seeing now is they have a more diverse leadership team. In other words, if it’s the African-American group, you’ve got people of other races or ethnicities on that board or serving in an office. Even though the purpose of the affinity group is still focused on whatever that constituency is, there is enough openness and invitation that people who are interested are coming and not only feeling that they can be a member but that they can run for office and that they can actually win office.” Essie Calhoun, Chief Diversity Officer, Director of Community Affairs, Vice President, Eastman Kodak Co.

“Our chairman has some disabilities. He uses the Segway [self-balancing personal transportation device] everywhere he goes and it certainly has caused heightened awareness. It causes us to look at it in a different way … I was in a mall with him and he was in one of our stores … and the mall patrol came up to him and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, you’re not going to be able to use this in the mall. We don’t allow people to use that.’ They didn’t stop and ask: ‘Do you have any disabilities?’ Not sensitive to it at all. He just picked up the phone, called the mall and resolved it. But that’s the lack of sensitivity that exists today. I think the point is as we move forward with our diversity efforts, we need to give it heightened awareness. I don’t think it’s there. Having leaders in place who have visible disabilities, you realize that it’s a disability that affects the way they walk or what they can do physically. But it has nothing to do with them showing up. It really sends a strong signal.” Wilson Dunnington, Vice President, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, JCPenney

“When I interviewed IRS executives as a member of the Executive Review Board, because you always remember the question that you answered for a job that you wanted and you got, I would always ask, ‘Everyone who says he wants to be an executive says that they support diversity. Tell us about a time when you lived out the principles, a time when you spoke truth to power, and a time when you protected the rights of somebody who looked different than you, a time when you realized that these principles were important.’ I ask the question partially just for the shock value, to see if they can get through it. People come up with the most amazing answers and they remember them for the rest of their time as IRS executives.” John Robinson, Chief Diversity Officer, U.S. Department of State

B. Emotionally Intelligent Leaders Create Trust and Engagement

EQ is just as important as IQ when it comes to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace

Developing the capacity to understand and manage feelings and emotions and deal effectively with other people—no matter how great the differences—is a critical skill in today’s increasingly diverse workplace. Cary Cherniss, professor and director of the Organizational Psychology Program in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, defined emotional intelligence as “the ability to accurately identify and understand one’s own emotional reactions and those of others.”

Cherniss identified five core abilities of emotional intelligence:

• Perceiving and understanding our own emotions.
• Expressing our emotions effectively.
• Managing our emotions.
• Perceiving and understanding how others are feeling.
• Helping others to manage their emotions.

Quoting management guru Peter Drucker, Cherniss told the audience, “Your foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own emotional energy and then help orchestrate the energy of those around you.”

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Understand the role of emotions in the workplace.
• Increase your awareness of emotions and your ability to describe them.
• Incorporate emotional intelligence into your executive leadership-training strategy.
• Assess the current EQ level of workers using such things as 360-degree feedback.
• Create a supportive culture and offer classroom training, simulations, coaching or learning from role models.

In Your Own Words

“To me, emotional intelligence is whatever we are not. So whatever position of dominance we’re in, either through race, gender, sexual orientation, faith beliefs—whatever I’m not, do I have the emotional intelligence and courage to hear the other person’s story and to really validate, to listen to it, to ask questions … not to run from it and not try to fix it and just try to feel … what they’re experiencing, the corporate work environment that is so different from me in whatever position of power I’m in. I think that begins the journey.” Frank McCloskey, Vice President of Diversity, Southern Co.

“A big issue for us right now is the white male. There is the thinking that … it’s a win-lose. ‘For somebody else to win, I need to lose’ mentality. So this emotional intelligence is really very important in bridging that gap. We are all winning.” Arisa Batista Cunningham, Vice President of Global Diversity, Medical Devices and Diagnostics, Johnson & Johnson

“One thing I’ve done before going into those challenging conversations is to get permission to say, ‘Hey, for me to be effective in my role, I have to be able to tell the truth. Are we comfortable with the truth being laid out on the table, and is it OK for me to speak the truth in this room?’ And once I get permission, it’s amazing how [people] start to open up to the conversation. But if you go right in and start talking … I see the faces change.” Lorie Valle-Yañez, Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer, MassMutual Financial Group

“Emotional intelligence doesn’t mean that you’re emotional. It doesn’t mean that you are expressing whatever pops into your head. It’s about managing it and I think that has to become an imperative for leadership. We can’t have that leader that explodes during the meeting, going on without some kind of ramification. That can’t be the accepted means anymore. The emotional intelligence piece has to be as much of a leadership competency as the results.” Matt Dreyer, Manager, Diversity Management, Verizon

“Working with JCPenney as we went from a turnaround mode to almost going out of business as a 100-year-old company, the first thing that our chairman, Mike Ullman, said when he addressed the leadership of the company is that to win the battle in the future, you must create an emotional connection. We were festering and most people in the room did not really understand what he was saying because we had not heard that before. What he was talking about was connecting to the heart of that consumer. Your foremost job as a leader is to take advantage of your inherent emotional energy. If your head is not right as a leader, and you’re channeling that emotional energy to the associates, you will never be successful because they’re going to feed off you. To win, you must create an emotional connection with your associates and your customers.” Manny Fernandez, Inclusion and Diversity Director, JCPenney

C. Leaders Create Sustainable Approaches to Diversity

Diversity and inclusion strategies are most effective and sustainable when they are integrated into business strategies

In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, the importance of creating a diverse work environment has never been more important. But the sustainability of those diversity efforts—that is, making diversity and inclusion an integral part of the organization’s culture and fabric—is equally essential.

A serious—and sustainable—diversity and inclusion strategy is rooted in the company’s vision, brand and business goals.

Even when belt-tightening measures or a change in leadership threatens to put diversity efforts in the cross-hairs, diversity leaders remain steadfast in their commitment to diversity and inclusion programs and have systems in place, including mentoring and talent development, that ensure organizational commitment for the next generation of business leaders and employees.

“I think our challenge as executives is to make certain that we create the next generation of executives who will sit in our chairs, who will guide the organization and who will be broadly reflective of the communities we serve,” said Ronald Williams, chairman and CEO at Aetna.

Diversity leaders understand that fostering a culture of inclusion is a competitive advantage for their customers, employees and company, fuels innovation and strengthens their position in the marketplace. A sustainable diversity and inclusion strategy must play a central role in decision making at the highest leadership level and filter down to every level of the company.

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Ensure that your CEO and leadership team are visible supporters of diversity and inclusion initiatives.
• Integrate diversity into every aspect of your business, including the work force, customers, suppliers, products, services and the communities you serve.
• Discourage employee-resource groups from becoming their own little sororities and fraternities within your company. Encourage partnerships and collaboration between ERGs.
• Address grievances and concerns immediately.
• Increase diverse candidates in the internal and external hiring processes.

In Your Own Words

“We can’t be absent in the diversity space because our clients want to know our diversity statistics, our retention statistics, how we’re making inroads in having an inclusive environment. So if we don’t have that to bring to the table to attract new business, then we put ourselves even further behind.” Tori Carroll, Associate Director, Diversity and Corporate Social Responsibility, KPMG

“Leadership change is oftentimes tied to whoever’s heading up this initiative. And it’s hard to be a sustainable effort if it isn’t built into the infrastructure of the company so that it continues regardless of who is overseeing this. So now, they’re going to spend all that money again. I love the way our structure is because I think it has been built into the infrastructure. Whether I leave or not … the program is going to continue on because it’s a part of the objectives of our executive team. So whoever comes in to my place … that person has to pick up the ball, and it’s tied to their compensation to ensure that it’s going to happen.” Robert Perkins, Vice President of Inclusion and Talent Management, Burger King Corp.

“How do you bring your affinity groups together to kind of break down this silo mentality? Because by nature, that’s what it is. So you look to rally them behind things like supplier diversity, around marketing, around recruitment. And so what we’re going to be doing next year is looking at some sort of convergence, looking at a portion of the affinity groups … to take part in this celebration of the richness.” Anthony Carter, Vice President, Global Diversity & Inclusion, Chief Diversity Officer, Johnson & Johnson

“We talk about sustainability. The only way you can do that is to institutionalize this—and contrary to what most people are saying, I don’t believe that it’s getting institutionalized because I’ve seen CEOs change all the time. And when they do, diversity either gets ramped up or is off the radar screen, and typically it’s off … Every one of the CEOs wants to create a legacy, and nobody wants to accept somebody else’s legacy. They’re all creating their own legacy. I mean, these are high-impact jobs.” Bill Wells, Chairman, National Black MBA Association

D. Diversity Leaders Tackle Opportunities and Challenges Head-On

During the professionally facilitated small-group discussions, diversity leaders identified a number of challenges and opportunities. Among them:

• Managing four generations at work has become a key topic fueled by the mix of worker ages and the potential for intergenerational conflicts. Some of the common themes focus attention on the key differences between members of Generation Y or millennials and the baby boomers: work ethic, expectations regarding work flexibility, communication style and the use of technology.
• Judith E. Heumann, a polio survivor and disability-rights activist who is the director of the D.C. Department on Disability, stressed the importance of looking beyond stereotypes to see the potential in people. Unlike other traditionally underrepresented groups being tapped by corporate America, the disability population is one of the most undervalued and misunderstood.
• White men in corporate America feel they have been largely excluded from diversity and inclusion efforts in organizations. This feeling of exclusion is leaving many white men angry, confused or indifferent to their company’s own diversity initiatives.

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Sponsor activities or mentoring programs involving both younger and older employees to help build mutual understanding and positive working relationships.
• Establish Gen Y or multi-generational employee-resource groups.
• Ensure your diversity and inclusion efforts also engage and equip white men to be a part of the dialogue and the effort.
• Learn more about people with disabilities. A good way to start is to contact disabilityrelated organizations for information.
• Talk to people with disabilities in your company and ask for their ideas and input.

In Your Own Words

“One of the biggest challenges we have with our youth talent is their ability to communicate. It bears on emotional intelligence because what I see happening is there is less human interaction and more technological interaction. And you don’t get cues, you don’t read body language, you don’t read facial expressions when you are texting each other and e-mailing each other. If you don’t have the ability to exercise emotional intelligence one-onone with the people with whom you interact, you’re going to be at a real disadvantage in terms of leading anyone. You don’t lead through text messages. You lead face-to-face. I organize several employee-resource groups, one of which is young professionals and another one is boomers with the challenge of how we bridge these gaps, how we tackle these problems. I see this as a huge problem going forward. I came to realize the need for it when one of our recent management trainees who’s obviously still in her 20s came up to me and, first of all, invaded my space, got right in my space and looked at me at a retirement party and said, ‘And when are you going to retire?’, which I thought was very unintelligent emotionally.” Susan Hamilton, Assistant Vice President of Diversity, Chief Diversity Officer, CSX

“Because Gen Y’s are so open-minded and they are so comfortable with diversity as they come into our workplaces, it’s going to be a rude awakening for them and I think they’re going to distance themselves from a lot of diversity efforts. And I think we have to be prepared for that because they have not gone through the history and experience of civil rights and they just think this is the way it should be. My kids will tell me, ‘What is the big deal? Why do you have to have employee affinity groups or network groups?’ They just take it for granted.” Rohini Anand, Senior Vice President, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Sodexo

“It’s important to use our children as a barometer, but [the children of] the people sitting at this table are so different. I think their experience is different from kids in an urban setting where the school system is still 70 percent African American and Hispanic and where there’s still a great deal of poverty. So those kids are part of this mix too. So this picture we get when we look at our kids I’m not sure is always the full picture because kids are still living in urban areas where they’re very segregated and there’s a lot of poverty.” Essie Calhoun, Chief Diversity Officer, Director of Community Affairs and Vice President, Eastman Kodak Co.

“Our strategy is around segmentation and the talent bucket. So, for example, when we look at minorities in the United States, I don’t just look at the minorities bucket. We really segment it. I haven’t done any segmentation around people with disabilities. There is no tracking, which is unfortunate, No. 1. But just to understand the different segments, to understand physical versus the mental—how do we pay attention to that? And I don’t know of an employer that I would say is really good at hiring [people with disabilities]. Nobody has cornered the market here. So it’s an untapped talent pool for all of us.” Kerrie Peraino, Chief Diversity Officer, American Express

“What we’re seeing is the voices of our parents who have special-needs children … we have parents in our organization who have special-needs children, visible and invisible, who are saying, ‘I want my children to have those opportunities and to be independent, be successful.’ And that could be the driving force.” Joanne McDonough, Director, Office of Diversity and Work Life, PricewaterhouseCoopers

E. Leaders Hold People Accountable for Success of Diversity Strategies

Accountability requires more than just keeping track of numbers and “checking off the box.”

How do you make diversity goals stick in your organization? The answer to that question comes down to holding people accountable for effective diversity efforts at all levels.

That means diversity and inclusion initiatives should contain a scorecard or other component that measures progress in terms of hiring, promoting and retaining women and minority employees. It means linking diversity-related metrics and results to performance reviews and incentive pay. In addition to these quantitative measures, some of the more progressive companies believe diversity and inclusion results should also be measured, and rewarded, based on qualitative factors—including behavioral changes, content of character, morals and values.

Joerg Reinhardt, the chief operating officer of Novartis AG, told the audience that accountability—the ability to link diversity results to the achievement of desired business outcomes—is a vital part of his company’s real commitment to diversity and inclusion.

“We pride ourselves in making cultural competencies a key priority,” Reinhardt said. “We have over 100 diversity champions in 63 different countries (altogether we are active in 140 countries so we still have some way to go) who are line leaders and have taken on the responsibility for the execution of diversity and inclusion within their respective countries … and are held accountable for implementing their customized strategies and action plans. We are all being held accountable to ensuring that this business imperative is realized.”

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Incorporate standards for inclusive behavior into the performance-review process.
• Directly link bonus to measurable results including recruitment, retention, promotion and supplier diversity.
• Clearly set a starting point that can be referred to as a benchmark and a means for tracking your progress over time.

In Your Own Words

“The processes that everybody has gotten used to, the measurements, the metrics, the systems, are based on … how many boxes are checked. I think that is a very exhausting and difficult place to be continuously. And it very often just significantly leads to despair because the metrics are never quite good enough and they’re never ideal and they never show all the progress you’d want to see.” Lord Michael Hastings, Global Head of Citizenship and Diversity, KPMG International

“For us, it’s about the metrics. We don’t want to kid ourselves, but it’s the conversation around the metrics. So if we’re using metrics to just drive behavior and not understand what we mean by culture of inclusion, then we shouldn’t be using the metrics. So metrics help guide where we want to be in terms of human capital. But what we’ve done this year is to change the discussion. We’ve parked the metrics and we try to get an understanding of the business imperatives.” Anthony Carter, Vice President, Global Diversity & Inclusion, Chief Diversity Officer, Johnson & Johnson

“We measure it through performance evaluations and how much you participate in our diversity initiatives as a leader in our organization. Our CEO, our chairman, said, ‘This is not volunteer work. I expect you to do this.’ It’s embedded in our goals and it’s embedded in participating in diversity initiatives, being a part of it, supporting it. And a manager can’t get promoted—one of the goals that we’re putting in place this year is a manager will not be able to be promoted without being involved in one of our diversity initiatives.” Kristen Johnson, National Director of Diversity, KPMG

“I think the thing that is missing with respect to diversity, because it’s not something that has a regulatory aspect or a compliance issue, [is that] we have a difficult time defining success. And we have to be able to … set goals that don’t cause issues with compliance and don’t create quotas and things of that nature, but you have to improve what you measure. We are struggling with it as well because in a pharmaceutical company, it’s so regulated, and we say affirmative action is where all the numbers should come from. But we need to look at that and figure out how we can set goals that are directional. They need to understand what they should take.” Steve Hervey, Manager of HR Strategic Projects, Eli Lilly and Co.

F. Diversity Leaders Keep Their Eye on the Big Picture

The concept of diversity is continually evolving. And as its definition becomes increasingly more complex, so, too, do the challenges. This means diversity leaders must take the long view and carefully examine the external market as they map out their diversity agenda.

Leaders identify key issues that could impact the important work that needs to be done.

Diversity leaders understand that corporate America must play an active role by coaching and supporting students in low-income and urban communities if they are to create a sustainable future work force.

Dr. Richard McCormick, president of Rutgers University, spoke passionately to the audience about his own commitment to diversity and about the Rutgers Future Scholars program, which empowers seventh-grade Black and Latino students from low-income families to become successful college students and future productive employees.

“Universities are educating the people who you will employ,” he said. “Their college experience prepares them for the workplace that you will offer to them. Learning in a diverse environment better prepares students to work in teams and to get them ready for the 21st century. Universities are a pipeline for employment and careers but they are only one part of the pipeline. It is still the case in America that too few boys and girls of color imagine themselves going to college. For us at the universities, that means we can’t wait for them to become seniors in high school, by which time they may have failed to take the requisite courses qualifying them for admission to college, by which time they may have never even heard of the SAT or ACT. We need to get to them early to inspire in them the dream that they can go to college and help them at every step of the way to get there. The Rutgers Future Scholars program is directed at urban kids … boys and girls growing up in low-income neighborhoods where college is out of the question and a career in academe is literally beyond their wildest imagination. This is a reality we need to change.”

Successful diversity leaders also understand that the changing global economy underscores the need for greater collaboration and dialogue with other businesses across the continent. They know that the U.S. diversity model cannot be exported overseas and that a better understanding of cultural nuance, language and religious differences will be key to succeeding globally.

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Offer employees cultural-competency training.
• Incorporate cultural differences in all diversity and inclusion training used outside the United States.
• Establish minimum standards that align domestic and global diversity and inclusion initiatives. Understand and enforce the idea that diversity is local to each country and the issues are different.
• Help create a vibrant, sustainable pipeline of future employee candidates by supporting and developing initiatives to bolster the academic pipeline.

In Your Own Words

“In a company like Marriott, where the focus has been completely U.S. in terms of our diversity and inclusion work to date, the tendency is to say, well, the things that we are measuring here don’t apply every place else. So what are the issues there? I don’t think you have to go country by country, in some instances, within country, and identify what the diversity and inclusion issues are in that part of the world and figure out what progress against that looks like and then what the metrics that define progress are. And they won’t necessarily be the same thing.” Jimmie Paschall, Senior Vice President, External Affairs, and Global Diversity Officer, Marriott International

“It’s exactly the reason that many of us around the table have invested in the research that DiversityInc is doing to define this work, this space globally, because I find a frustration back at work … the leadership and our scorecards are very U.S.-focused and so while they may get credit or not for gender globally, we certainly aren’t taking into account the cultural diversity of our leadership teams around the globe, because we don’t have a context in which to measure that. So the metrics will remain important, but if we don’t pay attention to the inclusive culture piece internally at each of our companies, it is sort of a hamster on the wheel.” Kerrie Peraino, Chief Diversity Officer, American Express

“Our company is very global. Half our employees are outside the U.S. And if you look at our leadership team, which is direct reports to our CEO, our CEO is from Scotland. He’s lived in Asia, South Africa, and many of our leaders have also gone through that. When you talk to them, the ‘aha’ moment for them is when they lived and had to make a business run effectively in a part of the world when they had no idea about the culture, and it was very challenging for them to communicate. They had to rely on others who were different from them, and when they looked around that table, they were the only people in the room from the U.S. They were the only people in the room from Scotland or a European country, and they were the only ones that were Caucasian. By the time they are ready to repatriate or move on to the next role, the ‘aha’ moment hits them. Now they understand what it’s like to be the only African American. Now they understand what it’s like to maybe look around the table and see all men and you’re the only woman in that room.” Robert Crumpton, Director of Global Diversity and Inclusion, Monsanto

“We have a very successful supplier-diversity program. It’s not for people necessarily who are ever going to do business with Burger King, but we work with different chambers of commerce and supplier-diversity organizations on identifying small entrepreneurs who could benefit from being coached by anybody with our functional expertise. So we might send a team in and help them with legal, finance, HR, whatever. And our whole thing is just a way to give back to them, to help develop their businesses. Sometimes it might be just listening to their pitch and giving them feedback on their presentation and how to make their presentation more effective to get business. The first one we did that with, it was a small African-American construction firm and the mentoring relationship was so successful that he is now building Burger King Restaurants. But that was not the intent when he came into it. It’s another way that corporations can really give back. If you can’t hire diverse suppliers because they’re not large enough for many of your systems, what are the ways we can help develop them?” Robert Perkins, Vice President of Inclusion and Talent Management, Burger King Corp.

“We have a program and it’s at the high-school level where we bring the kids in for the summer from a high school in the area and we partner them with a buddy and we take them through the whole summer. And we just hired our first student about three weeks ago. So she went through the high-school program and then she went through college and then she came back. And I had the opportunity to talk to her. I said, ‘How did it change you and how did it make you different compared to your peers?’ She goes, ‘Well, at that time when kids were going to camp and everything else, we got to experience a whole different world.’ I said, ‘OK, this is another opportunity. We’re going to revamp it and it’s going to start again this year.’” Theodora Morille-Hinds, Associate Program Director, Kraft Foods

What’s Next?

The 2010 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity�® will be announced on March 10, 2010, in Washington, D.C. Join DiversityInc when it hosts its third learning summit March 9–10 to explore what’s next in the rapid evolution of diversity management.

At the two-day event, CEOs and diversity leaders from the leading companies will come together to share their experiences and keep pace with the latest thinking in diversity and inclusion.

DiversityInc will present the findings of the first global diversity survey and will highlight how companies are developing global-diversity strategies that encompass strong values but are local to each country.

The summit will also feature a primer on diversity management for federal agencies—and anybody who does business with them—covering the basic how-to’s of setting up essential diversity-management initiatives.

DiversityInc hosts two events in March 2010, one for a corporate audience and one for federal agencies and those doing business with them.

For more details, contact Carolynn Johnson at cjohnson@DiversityInc.com.