I speak to lots of business leaders around the country and the one constant phrase I hear — to the point of being cliché — is that “We are in a war for talent”. This is true. Our future is at risk if we don’t create and utilize the very best human talent.
Also true is Bill Gates’ famous comment to a Saudi Arabian business audience: “If you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the top.”
If we really are in a war for talent, then leaving women out of the equation is a great recipe for annihilation.
Leaders in the tech sector objectively know this. As do leaders in manufacturing, construction, transportation, and just about any other business sector you can think of. They also know from established evidence that companies with higher levels of gender diversity perform better than their competitors. Use whatever metaphor you want; the simple fact is that if you have more women in your workforce and your leadership, then you are much more likely to win and drive higher returns for your shareholders. Full stop.
So with all of these objective facts, why are so many companies — including many in the tech sector — so bad at hiring women and developing them into business leaders? There are lots of anecdotes and half-baked theories but no common understanding as to how to break through organizational barriers and drive real improvement in workforce diversity.
The Center for Women in Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation decided to attack that specific question and study the best practices of major companies that have strong records on gender diversity. What they found is that it isn’t magic; it’s just focus and leadership. Specifically, the key factors for success were:
There is no single winning attribute that all companies can simply copy. But driving higher levels of gender diversity isn’t impossible or even necessarily that hard. Organizations just have to understand the competitive imperative, and then have leaders throughout the organization who can and will follow through and drive the company to be better tomorrow than it is today. It is a way to win in the marketplace, and that should be a universal goal.
David Chavern is President of the U.S. Chamber Center for Advanced Technology and Innovation, and Founder of the Center for Women in Business. He wrote this for this newspaper.
