Last month, I attended a two-part White House briefing that brought together some 30 CEOs and senior executives from bold-faced corporate names—AT&T, Caterpillar, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, GM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Staples, Starbucks, UPS, Walgreens, and Xerox, among them—to talk candidly about diversity and inclusion in the C-suite, supply chain, and the workforce as a whole. Turns out, Major League Baseball is doing cutting edge work on supply chain diversity. Who knew?
Valerie Jarrett, who is President Obama’s longest serving senior adviser and runs his Office for Public Engagement, told me later, “I was impressed with the number of executives who highlighted their recognition that diversity is a strength and who shared their best practices with us.” The CEOs were clearly there to do the work. “Competitors in the room were very open about their approach, recognizing that achieving their goal of diversity and inclusion is more important than their competition.”
More from my exclusive interview with Jarrett here
These are not small challenges. Lively panel discussions later in the day dug into the issues with data and anecdotes. Mission statements don’t work. Values do. Sisyphus was mentioned. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, but smart strategy builds culture. And tokenism is expensive and pointless. “If you have one minority candidate [for a job or in a high potential pool] that person doesn’t have a chance,” said David Hekman, associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at CU Boulder. “You need at least two.” I’ll dig more deeply into the work that these companies are doing in future newsletters.
Speaking from the floor, John W. Rogers, Jr, the Chairman, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer at Ariel Investments, raised an important question about making diversity a competitive advantage. “How can we be transparent about our data?” he challenged, making a passionate case for peer ranking and evaluation. “Nobody wants to be on the bottom of any list.” Noted.