Written by: Chesline Pierre-Paul, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The best-kept secret that is costing corporates billions in market share, run rate, competitive intelligence, market dominance, and innovational capital is also core to the greatest reason why “all global businesses are poised to fail within ten years” (Chet Holmes).
That secret is diverse executive leadership.
It sounds counterintuitive, woefully anticlimactic, and very much against the grain of how EDI (that is, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) has been caricatured, co-opted, and perfunctorily executed, and yet, it is true.
Here’s why.
Most companies are institutionally wired and driven to cater to markets that racially mimic their own psychographics, demographics, cultural intelligence, and company culture.
Case in point; as of 2021, only “4 Fortune 500 companies had a CEO who was Black” (Yahoo 2021).
In other words, we are institutionally rewarded for alienating markets and segments that do not correlate with our projection of racial privileges. That is reflected not only in the compositionality of our core leadership membership but also in the stature of our client base and that of our slated strategic partnerships as well.
That means that statistically, a US-based or Western-first company will selectively opt-out of diversifying its internal executive talent profile because it is rewarded for mining a smaller pool of competitive talent and assets in ways that detrimentally enforce operational convenience as a superseding priority and strategic direction over operational efficiency.
What does that mean?
Well, statistically, trade is shifting to other markets that are high-growth, fast-growing, emergent, and non-English-speaking. Thus, market dominance requires that there exist a readily established capacity as a team to function internally with talent sourced from the very regions and markets our brand aims to gain from, revenue- and expansion-wise.
Having a team that is internally self-driven and groomed to understand the target market, speak its language, run the point, and broker in new target high-value segments is key because it enables the business’s capacity to:
cut down direct labor costs
take down the middleman
increase bilateral trade
accelerate the establishment of strategic inter-company alliances
facilitate the global integration of operations at scale
As a matter of fact, Deloitte’s 2015 study shows that diverse management in corporate accounts for “2.5 times higher cash flow per employee”.
Therefore, operating a business without a diverse senior-level team of executives is tantamount to managing operations with a “tariff on trade.”
Here’s another way to bring this home; imagine you enforce a monolingual corporate mandate. Now, let me ask you; how much would it be worth to you to connect to another 30% of your core target market?
EDI empowers you to connect to high-potential clients that are already sitting right in front of you but are alienated because your mandate, branding, language, scaling strategy, and strategic vision alienate them.
Your lack of diverse leadership and representation translates into you failing to “explore profitable business growth opportunities” because your original focus is narrowed down to what is operationally convenient, self-fulfilling, preestablished, and privilege-reinforcing.
EDI makes you market-relevant, market-dominant, globally competent, and expansion-ready.
By sourcing, grooming, and nurturing diverse internal global top talent, you increase competitive differentiation, develop trade both domestically and abroad), and develop new profit centers by catering to global audiences and submarkets that had historically always been available but rendered unleveraged because of your lack of diverse focus.
Having a talent that isn’t conditioned by the reinforcing of your internal systemic corporate biases empowers you to pivot and gain new audiences and capture new markets, all of which, in turn, amounts to exponentially maximizing your bottom line.
What’s more, EDI, when properly enforced, correlates your capacity to make big money with your capacity to make a big impact domestically, abroad, and cross-organizationally.
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Chesline Pierre-Paul, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Ches is a multi-award-winning global thought leader & executive transformation coach. They help C-suite, world leaders, & global activists make big money to make a big difference. They help them double growth, revenue, and impact by deploying the power of EDI, transdisciplinary intelligence, superstar business growth strategies, and by stepping into the fullest truth of their becoming.
