Do White People Need to Share Power?

Management of diversity in business doesn't require white people to share power and control. It requires equity in managing business relationships. Effectiveness demands that power and control are given to the most talented.

Saying that white people need to share control assumes that control should belong to them in the first place.

In a publicly held corporation, control belongs to shareholders and directors. Shareholders' best interests are served by the best talent being in the most effective positions. For government (in the United States), control belongs to the people. The positions of authority belong to the people, too.

The economic reason for doing this is simple: Science tells us that all people are created equally; therefore, talent is distributed equally.

If a system is a true meritocracy, people in positions of authority and power are representative of the population. Not even the companies on the DiversityInc Top 50 can say that they are meritocracies (yet) and they have representation up to double that of U.S. work-force representation--at all levels.

The reason most senators, representatives, Fortune 500 CEOs, judges, governors, admirals, generals and clergy are white men is systemic and historic bigotry and sexism (the two largest axes of discrimination). By the way, our data shows that sexism is still more of a problem than racism, even in the most progressive companies.

The business case for diversity is, therefore, very simple: If you put the most talented people in the best possible places, you will be most effective in accomplishing your organization's mission.

Diversity management ensures equitable recruitment, development and retention. Logically, this drives engagement, which in turn drives productivity and innovation.

People who feel that they're being treated fairly and respected equally will put more of their hearts and minds into their work. The process can be measured by engagement surveys (Hay Group and Gallup provide these services).

On the flip side, you can measure the penalty for discriminatory behavior.

Recently, we benchmarked a technology company that had seven white men and two white women reporting to the white, male CEO. They asked if this really made a difference, as the rest of the management was very diverse.

I asked them to count regrettable loss in their junior vice presidents and senior director-level people over the past three years and see if that demographically compared with the entire population of that level.

They indicated that the regrettable loss was indeed disproportionately Black, Latino and Asian and/or female.

I told them that they can then count the net cost of replacing people, consider the value of a few engagement points, factor in less retention of the same groups at all levels--and especially consider the benefit to competitors who picked up their former executives. The cost is enormous.

It is critical to not confuse preparation with talent. The fact that tests such as the SAT discriminate by race doesn't mean Black people, for example, are not as talented as white people. It means that the test is ineffective.

The most recent travesty perpetrated by the ETS (which produces the SAT) is allowing test takers to choose their best score to send to colleges. Aside from the inequity of allowing children who can afford extensive prep courses to be compared equally with children who cannot afford the prep courses, you now have a situation where children who can afford to take the test multiple times can now choose their best score to be used in applicant evaluations!

Our country does itself a grave disservice economically to not take "all people are created equally" very seriously. We regularly shortchange children's education on a socioeconomic basis. If we insisted that equity in outcome is the ONLY acceptable result in public-school education, we would have an explosive boost to our economy. That's why I'm in favor of a funded No Child Left Behind program and against school vouchers. As a society, we need to demand effectiveness from our public schools--with the funding required--and the testing to provide accountability.

Ultimately, it is talent that is expensive--preparation is relatively cheap. Companies that don't take that to heart cannot build a representative pipeline for talent. That's an organizational death trap in a society that is rapidly becoming less than 50 percent white.