Though Goldman Sachs is not listening to the voice of the people, the Harvard Business Review is, writing that the "key to the long-term sustainability of business" is not simply shareholder value creation but corporate social responsibility.
This, of course, is not a new idea. Unfortunately, it has been honored by corporate America primarily in the creation of brightly colored brochures, mission statements, core value recitations and self-congratulatory speechifying (with a little help from their expensive PR firms).
Nevertheless, it's good to see HBR so strongly supporting the premise that what's good for GM must also be good for the country.
Where's the Diversity?
There is, however, a troubling omission from the following list - diversity in the highest ranks of American business and professional life.
It's been years now since the top consulting firms - McKinsey, Deloitte and Catalyst - have exhorted American business to promote women and minorities into leadership roles or suffer the consequences of lowered expectations and lost profits in a flat, fast, and diverse global economy.
If American businesses, global financial behemoths and the AmLaw 200 continue to pay lip service to diversity without investing the funds necessary to create it in their own front yards, the consequential losses will eventually "trickle up" to the bonus structures that keep Goldman Sachs executives clothed in Prada, traveling in private jets, and serving cases of Cristal to dinner guests along with the occasional unveiling of that cherished Shipwrecked 1907 Heidsieck, priced at $275,000 per.
HBR's Must-Do Action List
Aside from the absence of diversity from HBR's must-do list, those in power should be encouraging their businesses and industries to get cracking on the following action items.
- CEOs [should] inspire and align employees to a set of defined values that encompass, for example, principles of trusteeship and ethical conduct, and to have a zero-tolerance policy on willful violations that lead to a loss of corporate reputation.
- Business leaders should encourage and reward innovation within their companies that spurs business models that not only deliver economic value but larger societal value as well.
- The company should try to do social good not just by philanthropy but by forming partnerships with the national and regional governments and local communities that "co-create" local community assets.
- Companies should involve the consumer in supporting sustainable business practices by creating unique value propositions that enrich the consumer experience.
via What Business Should Do about Occupy Wall Street by S. Sivakumar at the Harvard Business Review.
The Revolution Must Be Funded
Business and professional firms have invested minimal resources in diversity and inclusivity programs. I am repeatedly told by women in charge of AmLaw100 women's initiatives, that they do not have the funds to retain my company, She Negotiates, to train their women in the skills necessary to their retention and promotion. I no longer work for free. Usually they find the money in other budget items - library (they buy my book), client development or associate training.
The sums of money these purportedly forward-looking, diversity-promoting law firms refuse to commit to actually doing something are often less than the cost of a single lunch their rainmakers host to land a single client. Teach a woman to fish . . . (etc.)
As my friend and colleague Gloria Feldt, author of No Excuses, 9 Ways Women Can Change the Way We Think About Power, says, the diversity revolution must be funded.
Empower your invaluable women knowledge workers by,
- providing them with rain-making training, starting with attorney and consultant Lauren Stiller Rikleen's programs at the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership where she has developed inclusive leadership training and provides workshops to strengthen intergenerational teams;
- providing women returning from maternity leave with the resources available from the behavioral health company AbilTo, to help new parents transition back to work.
- Hiring laterally from MomCorps nationwide and, if you're in the South, from MomCorpsDallas, who will provide you with retention- and promotion-ready, rainmaking able women leaders.
- Hiring No Excuses author Gloria Feldt to speak to your executives, Board members, and high-performing women to crack the diversity and inclusivity nut American business has so far found to be as elusive as the creation of cold fusion.
- Hiring Cali Yost's Flex+Strategy Group to tailor your place of business to get the most out of your human resources.
- Getting your women media ready with Judy Martin Speaks on the east coast and Pincus Presentations on the west.
- Bringing negotiation training customized for your business or industry to your professional, executive, managerial and entrepreneurial women, preferably the She Negotiates Custom Training, which not only gives your women the negotiation, networking and rainmaking strategies and tactics taught in the most prestigious business schools, but which enables them to use their skills in a business environment that keeps telling them to walk the razor's edge between confident leadership and ingratiation.
- Hiring Chrysula Winegar who uses her extensive management experience in international marketing, training and organizational change with companies like Ernst & Young, NatWest UK and Aveda (Estee Lauder Companies), to write, advise and coach on work life balance strategies.
- Reading everything written at the Harvard Business Review by investment banker and co-founding partner of Rose Park Advisors, Whitney Johnson about empowering women like this piece Getting the Mentoring Equation Right.
Crack the nut of women's disempowerment and the rewards of dramatically increased efficiency and bottom line profitability will be yours. The quickest way into the Fortune 500 or AmLaw 100 if you're not already there? Empower your women with concrete tools that will crush your costs of attrition, improve morale, and break the bonds of stifling group think.
We're here to serve. What are you waiting for?
