The Art of Adaptability

My son recently started 7^th grade, and at the end of the first week, he told us his Spanish class was going to be so hard. His teacher, originally from Italy, spent his adolescence in Spain and France. “The entire class is in Spanish!” my son lamented. “And he speaks it with an Italian accent!”

I met his teacher during parent orientation, and I immediately loved the guy. He reminded me of a number of colleagues I had worked with in the past who had adapted multiple times to multiple cultures and spoke multiple languages. Every one of them had strengthened my ability to listen.

“Your Spanish teacher is going to be super good for you,” I told my son.

“Why?”

“He’s going to make you a better listener,” I said. “And he’s going to teach you how to adapt.”

“Super,” he said before going back under the spell of Fortnite.

Adaptable Individuals Lead to Adaptable Organizations

For the past 18 months, the SMI community has worked to raise awareness on the transformative power that diversity and inclusive leadership practices can have on organizations. Led by Nancy LeMaster and Christine Dean, the Inclusive Leadership Team has documented many of the benefits of diversity and inclusion. For instance, more diverse organizations have stronger financial performance, higher levels of innovation, and a stronger ability to attract and retain talent than that of less diverse organizations.

These three aspects of performance are all essential to longevity and sustainable growth, and in many ways, are all representative of an organization’s ability to adapt. An organizational culture that has an easier time adapting stands less chance of stagnating when outside factors require a change of course.

Adaptability, though, isn’t really possible unless the individuals within the organization, particularly its leaders, are themselves adaptable. And this is where barriers to greater diversity and inclusivity come into play, and why it is so hard for organizations to change.

The Inclusive Leadership Team did a rigorous job capturing these barriers, which include unconscious bias, group think, deep-rooted cultural and business process legacies, and leadership uncertain or not committed to the pace of change. This creates a negative spiral that becomes extremely difficult to break free from: Everyone recognizes the need for change; leaders lack the capacity to adapt; the organization’s most adaptable and diverse talent set moves on; innovation suffers; new and diverse talent avoid the organization; financial performance remains, at best, lukewarm; and the status quo is maintained.

Overcoming the Barriers to Inclusive Leadership

The question then becomes how do organizations break from this cycle? One example that comes to mind is that of Intel, which integrated diversity and inclusion objectives into the overall corporate strategy for growth and innovation. Back in 2015, Intel publicly stated its goal “To reach full representation at all levels in our workforce by 2020.” And as of March of this year, Intel anticipated meeting this objective 2 years ahead of schedule.

At a more granular level, our Inclusive Leadership Team uncovered many tips and techniques to moving beyond these barriers.

This team continues to do tremendous work raising awareness of and advocating for the benefits of an inclusive culture that embraces and empowers diverse teams. In two weeks, the team will gather in person at our Fall Forum to discuss progress to date, plan for the launch of the main deliverable from the group’s efforts, as well as record a series of interviews with different team members on their experiences with diversity and inclusion efforts.

This is a terrific opportunity to listen to the voices of a diverse set of individuals who represent some of the world’s most respected companies. I would urge anyone who recognizes the importance of this work to join the team on Tuesday Oct. 23^rd at 1PM CT.

As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions.