A corporate focus on flags, days of celebration and other signals of extreme virtue is undermining the ability of organisations to achieve genuine diversity, support talent and manage risk. And the ideology that underpins this frantic flourishing of flags is, through well-meaning attempts to include everybody, achieving precisely the opposite. These are the conclusions of a research report that Simon Fanshawe and I published this week, based on interviews with leaders from FTSE 100 companies, NHS trusts, universities and others. 

It starts with the best of intentions. Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) leads put in place policies that they believe will correct historical injustices and allow under-represented groups to flourish. They often follow the ideas of critical social justice, believing that society is structured around oppression and it is their job to upend it. They set targets, celebrate days of action and photoshop their companies’ logos against a backdrop of the Progress flag. Their social media accounts trumpet International Women’s Day while the pay gap between men and women remains.

Groupthink provides no solution to deep-seated structural issues

This is how the deeper problems that EDI should be fixing remain unsolved. Ideological purity means that challenge is absent and heterodox opinions are silenced. Groupthink provides no solution to deep-seated structural issues. These require, instead, a diversity of perspectives and well-rounded debate. The surface layers of performance leave little time or energy for the hard, ongoing, complex work that shifts things in a more positive direction. “What we have to be seen to be doing takes up an awful lot of our time,” one EDI lead told me. “I’m exhausted.”

A focus on categories has also erased the value of individual difference and created divisions between groups that undermine performance.  As one interviewee said, “When all you do is focus on differences and put people into boxes, you are not bringing them together.” While people from some groups face genuine discrimination and barriers that need to be addressed, constantly separating people into categories — by sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability or some kind of categorical mashup — often makes people feel divided and excluded. It also hinders genuine progress. Barriers fall when people see themselves as a single community, and they remain while companies reinforce our evolutionary suspicion of difference.

In their 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind, psychologist Jonathan Haidt and lawyer Greg Lukianoff made a similar point. “Tribalism is our evolutionary endowment for banding together to prepare for intergroup conflict,” they wrote. “When the ‘tribe switch’ is activated, we bind ourselves more tightly to the group, we embrace and defend the group’s moral matrix, and we stop thinking for ourselves.” What is the result for businesses, universities, hospitals and government when their staff align with competing internal interests and stop thinking for themselves? In the best case scenario, decisions are poorer than they otherwise might have been. In the worst, organisational performance becomes terribly compromised and legal cases mount up.

As evidence builds showing that the current model of EDI isn’t working, fears of a backlash are mounting. The good risks being undone with the bad. So what can leaders do to turn EDI into something that genuinely makes things better for their staff and supports organisational performance, in the process saving it from being dismantled all together?

We argue that there are seven steps leaders need to take to save EDI. The first is linking it to their activities and goals — making it about talent, not ideology. The second is creating a culture of productive disagreement, encouraging alternative perspectives on thorny organisational challenges. We argue that leaders must ensure that inclusion efforts must focus on all staff — not, as is often the case, including some people and, in the process, excluding others. 

Diversity of thought, regardless of groups or categories, is the real win for businesses

The next step is making better use of data and evidence, thinking about what they want to achieve and tracking (only) what matters. We propose a more constructive model of staff networks, giving a range of ideas about what this might look like. Checking the quality of training is critical — so much of what has gone wrong can be traced back to poor-quality training, often led by people who have failed to understand the Equality Act and case law. Finally, we argue that finding and articulating a common organisational purpose is key, to which diverse contributions are essential. This avoids the potential tribalism of which Lukianoff and Haidt warn us. A common purpose binds diverse individuals together and promotes independence of thought.

Diversity of thought, regardless of groups or categories, is the real win for businesses. “There’s my way, your way and the truth,” said a chief executive during an interview. “Multiple perspectives will get us to a better outcome.” A culture that fosters this in the wider context of a common purpose is one that’s likely to underpin success. 

As an EDI lead told me, “The second you feel like you are truly part of something – well, that is when you give all of yourself.” Perhaps organisations don’t really need their staff to give all of themselves. (The “bring your whole self to work” narrative implies bringing some elements that should never be seen in a workplace. Magazine pictures of John Lewis staff wearing fetish gear come to mind.) But this quote, really, is about commitment — and if leaders can get their staff to commit through common purpose and valuing difference, perhaps they can simultaneously steer the EDI ship away from the rocky waters in which it’s currently sailing. 

Flying Flags and Ticking Boxes: What Went Wrong with EDI and How Leaders Can Fix It can be read here.