In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Better Boards, discusses with Professor Randall Peterson the role of the board in helping organisations become better at dealing with diversity – moving beyond the presence of diversity to being able to engage diversity to benefit the organisation.
Randall is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, and his recent work includes a report for the Financial Reporting Council on board diversity. He has been active on the board of UN Women UK. He is currently serving on the Leaders as Change Agents board, an expert panel working through the Government Equalities Office to facilitate positive change in the UK's largest employers.
"We know something about what goes wrong - There's a parallel track…"
Randall describes the wide range of research he has looked at in depth with over 100 directors and company secretaries, which has given very consistent results. To gain multiple perspectives, usually, two or three people per board are required.
"Adding diverse voices to the mix is not enough"
Randall explains that although diversity can benefit your business, there is no guarantee that it will unless you embrace it by doing the inclusion work engagement, which is hard to do. Well-managed diversity leads to tangible changes in the culture of how a board operates and interacts (making it more inclusive and collaborative), which has positive effects on the bottom line and corporate value.
"Stop saying that diversity is going to get you a better outcome"
To be world-class, you have to be diverse because the research shows more diverse groups produce more varied outcomes. The very best groups are highly diverse, but so are the worst ones. Randall outlines some areas where his research was surprising. Firstly, the business case for diversity as traditionally formulated can actually have a strong negative impact. When you diversify and put a spotlight on people who are different, it can feel threatening and diminish performance. Secondly, Randall found that boards that are really good at one type of diversity are typically not great at another. Some boards were really good at gender, but not very good at race and ethnicity, and vice versa. There is now a better understanding that the barriers to entry for different groups are different.
"Having a growth mindset, focusing on how we can get better outperforms any other culture"
Randall finds that interviewees are often somewhat reluctant to talk about demographic diversity because they don't want to 'get it wrong.' Most care deeply about diversity and should be braver in raising those issues in conversation, in nomination processes, etc. He wants to encourage people to have these conversations, being positive about what can be done, and what can be done better. The research shows very clearly that having a growth mindset, focusing on "how we can get better" outperforms any other culture, in terms of ways of working.
The three top takeaways from our conversation are:
1. The importance of being willing and able to advocate for diversity, as there are often many more allies around the table than we typically anticipate.
2. Every single director has a role to play in creating a culture of learning and growth and focusing on 'how do we get better', instead of 'what we do wrong'. Focus on what can be improved.
3. To identify a diverse set of directors successfully, pause the search and seek out a smaller search firm that specialises in different groups of people, because there are a lot of highly qualified, highly motivated, great potential directors waiting to be found