Why we should not accept that change is slow
I think many of us hoped that 2021 would be different, that for so many reasons it would represent a new start.
2020 was exhausting. Perhaps it was naïve to think that we would ring in the New Year and that all the turmoil and the chaos would magically disappear, but the first couple of months of 2021 have brought more of the same.
Of course, change takes time. The coronavirus requires the delivery of a vaccine programme on a scale never before seen; the inauguration of a new president doesn’t just wipe the outrages of the past four years away; black squares on Instagram don’t undo years of systemic oppression and prejudice; the conviction of one predator doesn’t fix a culture of misogyny, harassment and abuse.
But as we celebrate Black History Month, and with International Women’s Day coming up, what change are we actually seeing?
What are all those that proclaimed to stand for diversity and inclusion, that promised to do better, actually doing? How are they truly changing?
Should we accept that change is slow?
I write this days after the resignation of the UK chairman of one of the world’s most prominent and powerful businesses disputing the existence of unconscious bias. An organisation that has won awards for its commitment to equality in gender, race, sexuality, accessibility and social mobility.
When a leader in such an organisation is happy to espouse those views in an employee forum, is it perhaps unsurprising that we would struggle to wonder what has changed?
The company in question acted quickly to suspend the individual in question, who subsequently resigned. That isn’t something that should be celebrated, but the bare minimum we should expect.
There is an assumption that change takes time. That many of the issues we’re calling out will only be fixed as new generations mature and become leaders. That the old excuses of the only candidates being straight white men because that’s who’s qualified will only die when other people come through the ranks.
Yet at the same time we live in a world that venerates the young and the fast. From entrepreneurship to the arts, there are a host of awards and recognitions for those that combine achievement and youth, while companies that grow fast are showered in hype and praise.
I should know – as the founder of a PR company working in technology with a focus on start-ups, I speak with ambitious entrepreneurs every day, and growth is one of the areas we like to highlight.
When businesses want to, they can change very quickly. We saw that at the beginning of the pandemic. So, the argument for not accelerating diversity and inclusion, not improving the gender and ethnicity split at all levels of the organisation, does not work.
Look at talent attraction, for instance. If your regular hiring pools are only delivering a certain type of candidate, find new ones. One of the few benefits to come out of the last year was the realisation that a lot of industries could operate remotely, and so the ability to only work in certain geographies wasn’t needed any more. You can even use technology to reach, attract and on-board talent in a quarter of the time it used to take.
We should not accept that change is slow.
The opportunity to change
The emotion that surrounded the election of President Barack Obama meant that there was always going to be disappointment in what his administration did. But one of the charges levelled at that government (and many others in power in 2008) was the missed opportunity. Elected during the worst financial crisis in living memory, there were many that felt the whole system that caused the crash could have been pulled down and rebuilt for the benefit of all, rather than the few.
As I look at the economic and social turmoil we are all living through now, I wonder if we’re going to let a similar opportunity slip through our fingers. Are we going to allow ourselves to take the easy road, the path filled with promises of change, or are we going to seize the opportunity to completely upend the existing system and rebuild it in a way that delivers true equality to everyone?
I am a woman of colour, a founder, a communications specialist working in technology. In almost every meeting, every room, I am a minority, and I have been for my entire career. One of the main reasons I set up my business was because I didn’t see people that looked like me in the roles I wanted, and I realised that the fastest way to change that was to create it myself. More and more, I’m seeing other women, other people of colour, other people that do not fit with the perceived norm doing exactly that.
Meeting the demand for change
In PR, an industry that struggles to reflect the communities it apparently serves, a number of initiatives are taking steps to tackle inequality. The likes of the Taylor Bennett Foundation, No Turning Back 2020 and The Blueprint are each coming at the issue from different approaches but with the same overall goal, whether through providing training and employability skills, bringing through the next generation of talent, or highlighting those employers that are truly committed to improving diversity and inclusion in the industry.
Elsewhere, Bumble founder Wolfe Herd has just become the youngest CEO to take a company public in the US, a business she started in 2014. Bumble’s whole approach is framed around changing dating. Its board is 70% female.
What Bumble and its leadership team has achieved is newsworthy, but thankfully it is no longer an outlier. Female founders have always been disproportionately underrepresented when it comes to securing investment – teams with at least one female founder secure 11% of funding, while that figure drops to less than one per cent when founders are black. However, new data from Crunchbase suggests this might be changing – in rounds of $100 million or more for US companies at Series A and B stage between January and mid-February, 30% of these investments went to teams with female or black founders.
Change can happen, and it can happen fast. People want it to. We need to make sure that we do everything we can to make it happen, and that we do not let ourselves be waylaid by promises, but only accept real, true and demonstrable change.