8th Installment of RESET by Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.

To Win the Future of Work Leaders Must Look Past Traditional Talent Pools

A HISTORY OF FRUSTRATION Our diversity efforts have failed. Period. We should own that. In 2020, there were only five Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, just 20 percent of C-suite jobs belonged to women, and just 4 percent of those women were Black. These numbers have been stagnant for a decade. What we know is that countless organizations have spent “time and treasure” on trying to address diversity and inclusion to little avail. Accountability’s time has arrived. Organizations must also recognize that inclusion and diversity extends far beyond race, gender, and sexual orientation. True inclusion and diversity embraces abilities, veteran status, criminal history, and even political differences. To create an enduring pipeline of diversity, employers must tap into these different talent pools and acknowledge how inclusion and diversity benefits everyone, not just those in the minority or outside the mainstream.

THE DEFAULT DIVERSITY SHOP Hiring the right person would be the first place to start. That sounds doable, right? But too often organizations plant a flag in the name of commitment and use that position— say, chief diversity officer—as more of a symbol than a strategy. You need diversity strategists, really smart people, to lead your teams. Oftentimes, the choice from the default diversity shop is the Black or Latinx or woman executive who is sharp, well-liked, and talented. But, you know what, their expertise is in marketing or corporate law. Yet they didn’t get the chief marketing officer position. And they didn’t land the general counsel role. So “chief diversity officer” (CDO) became the place to which a star minority employee ascended, but their lone qualification was their minority status. They were not steeped in diversity strategy.

We don’t apply the same rigor to a chief diversity officer that we do to a chief financial officer or chief technology officer or chief human resources officer. Why? In talking to CEOs about this, I challenge them. I say go back and look at who you’ve hired to address your diversity issues. There is a term for the opportunity loss generated from overlooking talent from nontraditional sources. That term is “brain waste.” The US government has commissioned numerous evaluations of brain waste among immigrant populations alone. In your case as a leader this may seem abstract, but the mind and identifying talent function the same way. We compartmental- ize and overlook. It is a way of interpreting large amounts of data without causing information loss. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work too well. So what is the lesson for you as a leader? Train yourself not to overlook talent. This starts by focusing on what is really needed in any function or role and then looking inward first. We confuse performance appraisals for a proxy of skills inventory, and that isn’t very reliable.

THE CEO IS THE CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICER Every CEO should be the chief diversity officer of their organization. Period. This is what I mean by the do-well CEO. If anyone is accountable for diversity and inclusion, it’s the CEO. Sure, they can delegate the responsibility on this to the chief HR officer, or rely on a chief diversity officer for the execution of the strategy. Part of the execution is to ensure all the People Managers live our guiding principles. And one of the truths is that we value diversity, equity, and inclusion. Talk is cheap, though. It’s owning those values that takes resources and often a significant financial investment. Once you have this visible, visceral commitment from the CEO and the C-suite, the chief diversity officer is a key hire. And as I’ve detailed, the attention around selecting a CDO should match the test you place around your next CHRO or CPO. Yes, the buck stops with the CEO, but a great diversity officer can put all the pieces together. Imagine what your business could be if your employees came from diverse backgrounds and held different points of view. Insularity stifles innovation, productivity, and invention.

In an economy growing more knowledgebased by the day, thinking small on inclusion means losing big.

That’s on the CEO. We need to do more, and now.

LEADERSHIP LESSONS Untapped is the latest buzzword in the world of talent management. I hate jargon, but it fits here. Too much of an organization’s missed opportunities stem from a failure to recognize the potential of its current workforce or the applicant pool it uses to identify talent. Here are some key questions you should consider making part of your Reset repertoire:

• How do we equip People Managers with the tools they need to find talent? • How do I deal with a poor talent evaluator, someone who hires poorly? • How do I access the skills of my current workforce and assess their adaptability? • What is the key to sourcing untapped talent? • Where is the most important source of untapped talent for my organization?

Adapted from Chapter 7 of Reset: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval (PublicAffairs), by Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., President and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)