From Academy Leadership Affiliate Rob Cannon
A few weeks ago I went through an 8-hour “diversity and inclusion” workshop. “Diversity” is a word that seems to be everywhere these days. It’s a major topic in many walks of life — educators, politicians, business people and religious leaders all seem to be asking, “Are we diverse? Do we need to be diverse? How do we become diverse? What do we do once we are diverse?”
There is no question that the demographic make up of our country, and the world-at-large, is constantly evolving. The question for leaders is, “What, if anything, to do about it?”
The Superintendent (aka The Supe) of the U. S. Naval Academy created controversy and headlines recently when he stated that achieving diversity would be one of the Academy’s top goals. The Supe defended his policy by pointing to the Navy’s projections of future enlistment demographics, which show that the Navy will enlist an increasing amount of minorities in the future. These minorities, it is assumed, will be more satisfied if more of their leaders are from similar racial and cultural backgrounds.
There is hardly a more controversial issue than the idea of using race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other “diversity”-based factor as a factor in selection and promotion. That is why every leader must take time to think long and hard about how he or she will handle this issue when (not if) it comes up.
Here are the bottom line questions for leaders, “Can diversity engineering enhance an organization’s strategic or tactical competitive advantage? If so, is it ethical?”
