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PRACTICE
Everybody gets to play While defining the benefits of diverse organisations is difficult, it should not be an excuse to do nothing. Partnering with others is a good place to start BY SARAH CHRISTMAN
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ecent studies are strengthening the link between company performance and diversity. However, distinguishing between cause and correlation can be difficult. For example, the consultant McKinsey & Company wrote in an article called Why diversity matters that “companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnicity/race were statistically less likely to achieve above average financial returns than the average companies in the dataset (that is, they were not just not leading, they were lagging).” What remains to be proven is whether diversity drives results of top-performing companies. It may be that top-performing companies are better at embracing diversity and maximising the benefits it brings. An alternative to waiting for the link to be proven is to assume that performance and diversity have a shared root cause. Failing in either one may indicate that root cause exists within and affects your organisation. Duncan Wardley, PwC director and a subject-matter expert in behavioural and cultural change, proposes the approach of “aiming off,” which entails setting and tracking targets that may relate only obliquely to their actual goals. In a blog post with that title, he writes, “aiming off is a navigational strategy often used in orienteering or mountain walking where targets can be difficult to reach. Rather than taking a direct route to the target and potentially missing it, the walker heads to a line feature
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What remains to be proven is whether diversity drives results of top-performing companies
Enterprise Risk
