President & CEO of Sorenson, a provider of accessible communication for people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
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Business leaders today recognize that agility and adaptability are essential to long-term success. To achieve that agility, companies must overcome organizational inertia, constantly looking for ways to reshape behaviors in order to promote a learning mindset. Strategies to implement change include process redesign initiatives, technology innovation centers and design thinking workshops that embrace psychological safety.
While these measures can have an impact, they're often limited by the experiences of those involved. In other words, the perspectives of the people being asked to drive change have been shaped within the confines of the rigid and inefficient modes of operation that need changing.
True transformation requires the infusion of fundamentally new perspectives and backgrounds. That’s why initiatives that bolster diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) can foster a sense of belonging within a workforce, as well as facilitate organizational agility and serve as powerful drivers of business growth and transformation.
Starting At The Top
We tend to think of diversity and inclusion primarily in terms of race and gender. And the lack of such diversity in business is striking and well-documented.
In the history of the Fortune 500, for example, only 19 of the 1,800 CEOs ever listed have been Black. Hispanic representation in the S&P 500’s CEOs is limited to 16 individuals. Women fare similarly—last year, 41 of the CEOs on the Fortune list were women.
The disparity is also evident in technology and entrepreneurial fields. The 2022 Forbes list of Cloud 100 companies includes only eight women-led startups out of 100—up from six last year.
What’s involved in changing these dynamics? I can speak to this question from personal experience. In January 2022, I joined Sorenson, a Salt Lake City-based company that develops communication tools for people who are deaf and hard of hearing and whose leadership roles had traditionally been held by white men.
When a new group of majority shareholders acquired a controlling interest in Sorenson, they sought to implement a new business strategy, which included an increased emphasis on diversity and inclusion. As CEO, part of my role was to facilitate those changes.
Not Complicated
When I joined Sorenson, there was one person of color on the board. Today, seven of nine board members are people of color. Women and people of color now comprise almost 60% of our C-suite, compared to no people of color and only one female executive at the end of last year.
Across the entire leadership team, 50% of the Sorenson team are now people of color, compared to 3% last year. Most of these changes were implemented in the space of four to five months.
But let me be clear: The rationale for undertaking such significant change in such a short time wasn’t so that we could cite these statistics and pat ourselves on the back. Rather, the drive to build diversity was based on a business imperative: The company needed to be more adaptable, flexible and agile. Specifically, Sorenson had to respond to an evolving global strategy and, relatedly, to changing competitive requirements.
The people we hired were not only the best qualified in terms of skills and expertise, but they could also—by virtue of their diverse backgrounds and experiences—look at problems in different ways and bring new ideas to the table.
Was the change difficult? Yes. Did some employees resist? Absolutely. Quite a few felt directly threatened. For others, change was perceived as a betrayal of longstanding principles that had built a successful company.
To address these issues, we established a transformation office and enhanced our internal capabilities by engaging outside expertise around change management. And we’re continuing to work with our teams to build awareness of different peoples, histories, cultures and experiences—and how they can all contribute to our future success.
But while the change was painful, the choice to proceed wasn’t difficult. The alternative—the truly difficult approach—would have been to attempt to redefine the business while looking and acting the same and doing things the same way as before.
Diversity vs. Inclusion
In this context, it’s important to make a distinction between diversity in a literal sense and inclusion in the sense of genuine acceptance and participation. Put differently; an environment can be diverse without being inclusive. An organization in which women and minorities account for 40% of the leadership team could, on the surface, be considered relatively diverse.
But that same organization could be characterized by a traditional, narrow-minded, “boys’ club” mentality that excludes or condescends to anyone considered an outsider by the leaders of the dominant culture. As a result, the potential benefits of diversity—in terms of exposure to different experiences and ways of thinking—are significantly diminished.
To take another example: Consider the employees who are deaf and hard of hearing who use our tools and services. A company that provides sign language interpreters so that employees who are deaf and hard of hearing can converse in meetings and presentations could be seen as taking positive steps towards diversity. However, if those employees are able to seamlessly ask questions, provide feedback and interact with colleagues, they’re much better equipped to make a positive contribution to the business.
Whole-Brain Teams
To enable true inclusivity, our mission as a company is to provide “functional equivalence,” or the ability to communicate on an equal footing with a hearing person. That seamless communication, meanwhile, can fuel innovation.
Research shows that people who are deaf and people who can hear have different learning styles in how they process information, perceive things and solve challenges. For businesses facing a competitive imperative to transform operational models and redefine customer strategies, such differences can inspire fresh approaches to complex problems.
The concept of functional equivalence—and acceptance—must be applied more broadly to any initiative designed to build diversity and inclusion. Through a purposeful, direct and intentional approach, business leaders can take steps to ensure that different voices and experiences are heard and considered. Moreover, they can build truly diverse “whole-brain” teams that integrate logic-based analysts with free-flowing creatives to imagine new possibilities for disruptive businesses.
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