Diversity Matters: Why Business Needs Balance

By Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

The most progressive companies are realising that women represent a critical, and still largely untapped, source of talent for current and future generations of leadership.

Demographics and skill shortages are starting to worry other companies to the point where they are compelled to take gender more seriously. Women are not only the majority of the talent pool. They also comprise most of the market for many companies. A handful of forward-thinking corporations, mostly in America and Europe understood the enormous potential that lies in better understanding the ocean of opportunity in selling to women, and understand that gender balance lead to more innovation, better business performance and corporate governance. It is time for the rest of the world to catch up.

‘Women’s economic empowerment is arguably the biggest social change of our times.’ The Economist, 2010

The only question is how can business leaders make this happen?

Companies must secure the best leaders available and must bring together a complementary set of skills into leadership teams. Women are conspicuously missing from those teams. Over and over again, studies have shown significant improvements in decision making quality in more gender balanced leadership teams (usually at least one third each from both genders). Women clearly bring new perspectives and skills to the table.

Old fashioned bosses might see women as problematic because of their obvious biological differences and the likelihood that they will require more time to spend with their families. Sharper, more modern leaders will see the talent entering the marketplace and be keen to shape business cultures and working practices so that the majority of that talent pool can thrive. And not just women: many men now are more involved in their families and will eagerly embrace a smarter way of working, one that enables them to give their best to their employers as well as manage their outside commitments.

This is not about the advancement of women: gender balance – a relevant mix of both men and women – is simply better for business. Companies benefit from having gender balanced workforces from top to bottom. So, if a management team is dominated by women (as happens in some Asian countries), it should look at the reasons why more men are not coming in. We need to achieve a healthy and creative mix of skills and views, not one or the other.

As well, companies need to think deeply about the way they market to their customers and end users. For too long the implicit view has been that men are buying everything. Companies need to challenge the old ways of thinking underlying their processes, systems, and cultures to ensure that they are reaching the women who influence directly or indirectly the majority of purchasing decisions in today’s markets. Any company that fails to reach women consumers and end users effectively, whether it sells computers, cars, or fashion clothing, risks the loss of business on a large scale. Can companies ever afford to be so cavalier, let alone in a period in which the world has been rocked arguably by one of the biggest recessions in the past century?

Finally, investors are increasingly aware of the proof that gender balance improves the bottom line. Companies that fail to develop and advance women to the top risk attracting the ire of shareholders who will judge that they are not realising a satisfactory return on their investment in that most valuable resource: talent.

Many companies simply don’t realise how badly they are marketing to or managing women. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of the consultancy 21-first has been a consultant on the issue of gender balance for almost two decades. She had found that most men are well meaning and progressive. The problem is that they have not generally perceived gender balance as a top business priority that requires their attention, focus, and constant vigilance. She is convinced that this is why change has been so glacial.

“I prefer to see businesses developing their own systems, processes, and business cultures to become fully gender balanced.” – Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. This is much healthier than having the change imposed on them by government quotas, as happened in Norway recently. There companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange had to comply with a tough new regulation that both genders had to be represented by 40% of the board. Far better that companies manage the process themselves and develop better methods to develop gender-balanced leadership pipelines and bring more women through to the top executive levels, a much more meaningful measure of balance. This will help to create the gender-balanced organisation, in which the whole culture is more attuned to men and women, with leaders who understand the nuances and differences between the sexes, sharpening their ability to manage women and men in the workplace and sell to both of them in the marketplace. Managers who achieve this fluency are what Avivah call gender bilingual.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox believes it is imperative that entire companies become gender bilingual. It will enable them to utilise the full talent base, bringing to the top a whole new set of female leaders with new skills (many of which may be ideally suited to manage in the hyper-fast, connected global economy). This will lead to optimised talent and marketing strategies and more sustained business success.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, an acknowledged world authority on women and business will be visiting Australia in May 2011, presenting at The Economics of Gender Balanced Leadership seminar. She is a popular speaker on leadership and gender issues across the world and her work and interviews have appeared in publications such as the International Herald Tribune, Financial Times and The Economist.

First time in Australia, Avivah will share her extensive experience in working with CEOs, executive committees and managers across the globe to build gender ‘bilingual’ organisations. Drawing on her direct experience with hundreds of senior teams in companies across the globe, Avivah will also explain why so many current approaches to gender have not worked and why we need new solutions.

Click here to find out more about “The Economics of Gender Balanced Leadership” seminar.

Find out how Optus can help you build your business with a great range of solutions designed for business builtforbusiness.com.au .

COMMENTS