Widening the way in
This is a ONE THING article, which is featured in FDI’s monthly newsletter.
Author - FDI Founder, Paul Smith
ONE THING is for the busy (speak of the devil) Future Director, in which FDI Founder Paul Smith picks just one thing Future Directors oughta know or do or stew on for the next month. We hope you get something (at least one thing) out of it.
This month’s ONE THING is about diversity. And how a bald man in governance has been compared to a certain starship captain from a fictional TV/Film series.
As we know, the typical gateway into the corporate boardroom is through the C-Suite (CEO, CFO etc.) This means boards are always pulling from the same pool. So if the makeup of the C-Suite doesn’t change, neither will the boardroom. And companies will be the long-term losers.
This is where the comparison to Star Trek comes in.
Go with me.
On the bridges of various starships, you had people of many races, genders, skills and abilities. You had a race called Vulcans and an AI named Data, both specialising in logic and reason. Geordi La Forge was blind since birth and saw things differently thanks to his visor. There were other races who brought unique talents, perspectives and cultures. And yes, the fiery, emotive captains Picard, Janeway and Kirk were all white, so the metaphor isn’t perfect. But together, and only together, with all their various perspectives and skillsets, were they able to steer the starships where no one had ever gone before. It wasn’t always clean and simple, but then life anywhere never is.
I know this is fiction. But there’s a startling human truth that the creators of Star Trek seem to have intuitively recognised (Gene Roddenberry was a founder of the World Future Society after all) – that for any large enterprise (sorry) to operate, it’s necessary that you have diverse experiences and specialisms, plus an inclusive leader, at the helm.
OK. Trekkie/Trekker geekdom over.
My point is that, if we don’t want to wait many generations for true diversity to slowly emerge in the C-Suite and by extension, the boardroom, we need to see more pathways into governance. If we want to see diversity in the boardroom, we need to see more diverse pathways recognised by those recruiting directors.
Another crucial bit in widening the way into the boardroom is through affordable and accessible education.
That’s what FDI is all about – bringing in people, from every background and with very different skillsets, and being their entry-point into and through the board world.
This sparks a chain reaction. Affordable and accessible board education leads to opportunities. Opportunities lead to experience. Experience leads to consideration. Consideration leads to recruitment. Recruitment leads to diversity. Diversity leads to normalisation. And normalisation further legitimises diverse talent, and the affordable and accessible routes they used to get up the flagpole.
These are just a couple ideas of how we might widen the way in. There is no one answer.
But one thing’s for sure.
Once there’s true diversity in the boardroom, the organisations we govern will truly live long and prosper.
Oh, and if you really want to know. At Decision84 2021 (our annual-ish online summit about the future of governance), Coco Brown, founder of our US counterpart Athena Alliance, likened me to Patrick Stewart’s character in Star Trek, captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise. In Coco’s words, the likeness was my desire and ability to bring together so many different people in one place which the goal of making the world a better place via the boardroom. I love that comparison. Thanks Coco!
