🐟 Red Fish, Gold Fish, Same Smelly Old Fish 🤢 (Issue #7)
Companies have been selling us good intentions and failed efforts for decades. Enough.
Like most days, when I am in a Grinch mood I play my favorite Grinch playlist. While jamming out recently, I started thinking about all the people who hold power and how they have learned to talk about equity, kind of. How they try to say the right thing, or something close to it. But their words reveal more than they realize.
Here’s something the CEO of IBM, Arvind Krishna, said recently: “I fundamentally believe that as we continue to uphold the values of diversity, inclusion, and equity, we will make IBM a better and stronger company.”
A little bland, but his heart’s in the right place. Right? I mean, what’s wrong with that statement? SO GLAD YOU ASKED. On top of the total lack of specifics—no targets, no KPIs, no goals—there’s no acknowledgment of how the company has fallen short in the past. And that lack of acknowledgment is what makes this statement incoherent. Read it again. He’s saying, “We will continue doing what we’ve always done, which will lead to improvements.”
If you’re gonna make your company better, Mr. CEO, you gotta start with naming what needs bettering.
Now, this isn’t about IBM, it’s just that I happen to have their 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Report spread out on my Grinch desk, and it’s an instructive case study. Not because it’s worse than other reports by other companies. It’s actually better than average. Unlike many, it announces the diversity data of its workforce (though we’ll come back to that).
What’s striking—and typical of the way companies talk about themselves—is the triumphalist tone. Like most companies, IBM professes great pride in its history. But let’s take a closer look at the receipts they present. What’s really fascinating is to compare IBM’s 2020 report with a letter they wrote that was included in a 1968 report by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (Huge thank you to Libby Swanger, a friend of the Grinch and researcher extraordinaire, for digging all this up.)
The 1968 letter and the 2020 report have a lot of parallels:
A focus on initiatives and programs for up-skilling Black people to diversify their talent pool.
Investment in HBCUs—$300,000 in 1967 and $100,000,000 in 2020. IBM's revenue was $5.34 billion in 1967 and $73.6 billion in 2020, making these donations 0.0056% and 0.14%, respectively, of their revenue for those years.
Pride in their self-professed historical commitment to equity, with no attempt to reconcile the fact that material conditions for historically excluded groups have not substantially gotten better.
Actual data is saved until the end. Maybe because that data shows Black employees who were highly underrepresented in 1968 are still underrepresented in 2020.
No recognition of the relationship between whiteness and power, or even the concept of whiteness. Dismantle white supremacy without even saying the words out loud? That’s like me trying to wreck Whoville’s Christmas without saying “Whoville” or “Christmas.”
Now here’s what really pisses off your Grinch about this shit.
Business clearly knows how to get things done. When it comes to “business delivery,” they’re not fucking around. They have the tools to make plans and execute. They wouldn’t stay in business if they didn’t. So why can’t they get this thing done? My God, just look at how long we’ve been talking about it! How can we conclude anything other than that they simply don’t want to? And that, since they also don’t want people to be mad at them, they’ve mastered the art of saying the right thing?
And why aren’t business leaders talking about what’s not working? You’d think that would be of interest to the IBMs of the world who have supposedly been working on this problem-that’s-still-a-problem for decades. You’ve probably read similar annual D&I reports yourself, where organizations give themselves an E for effort with no plans to really pivot or course correct. They want credit for simply trying. Who needs action when you got words?
If you’re a business leader, there’s no need to look back with disappointment and shame—what a self-indulgent waste of time that would be. Instead, take failure as a data point. The Agile Methodology (which I use to poop every morning) talks about “failing fast” as a way to learn how to succeed. We’ve been failing slow for years and learning nothing.
Example: that focus on the top of talent pipeline we see from IBM, in the form of education partnerships, internships, and training of current employees. That’s a focus of both their 1968 letter to the EEOC and their 2020 diversity report.
Neither document address the fact that Black people are still underrepresented relative to the size of their communities. This despite IBM’s prior commitments, not just in 1968 and 2020, but also in a 1953 letter and a 1962 Plans for Progress they signed.
You’d think that might be somewhat embarrassing. What if Kennedy’s 1961 vow to land on the moon had been followed by six decades of “incremental progress” and “baby steps,” but no actual moon landing? Imagine how silly it would be if we celebrated May 25, the day of Kennedy’s famous speech, as “Moon Day,” and basked in the warm glow of our own good intentions. Yet that’s what IBM and its ilk are asking us to do—celebrate failure.
Contributions to HBCUs and upskilling programs for historically excluded (AKA non-white male) groups are fine. Great, even. But if we want to solve this, maybe the beginning of the pipeline isn’t where we should be looking. Maybe there are already plenty of qualified Black and Brown folks.
If leaders are serious about this, they need to acknowledge the unearned power that the dominant majority hold in the world, the fact that they will have to give it up, and that it might not feel good. The process of achieving equity will require white people to get uncomfortable interpersonally, and less powerful professionally. White business leaders need to think about stepping back and making space, like how Reddit president Alexis Ohanian resigned and asked to be replaced by a Black candidate.
So all you companies out there bragging about this or that program you’re doing, while dodging your own role in upholding the racist status quo: We see what you’re selling, and it smells.