Article 2
Texaco--Life After Jelly Beans
Texaco has an opportunity to go beyond damage control. It
can show leadership in an area that sorely needs it. But only if it breaks
the mold of how it approaches diversity.
Clearly, the tape recorded managers were mocking the language
and ideas presented in Texaco's diversity training program, circa the summer
of 1994. That doesn't make them bigots. I have seen hundreds of people
just like them in other large corporations, tired of the rhetoric of diversity-mongers,
cynical about the usefulness of the indoctrination sessions they are asked
or required to attend.
And well they should be. They have learned something about
navigating the corporate maze, about corporate politics, in getting where
they are in senior management. They could teach those diversity trainers
a thing or two about corporate culture, about getting things done around
here. And it had precious little to do with jelly beans.
What they don't buy is that diversity programs have been
set in motion for a variety of subtle and complex reasons--to rock the
boat, to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, to change the
rules--the very rules from which they have prospered.
Diversity programs are a company's best defense against running
an apartheid system. They are the key to releasing people's creativity
and productivity. They are the vehicle for successfully encountering new
and changing markets in the U.S. and around the world. The stakes are high.
No CEO of a multinational corporation can afford to limit
the company's prospects to the U.S. alone. Indeed, the U.S. is a shrinking
portion of the sales and marketing efforts of most multinational corporations.
After all, ninety-six percent of the world lives outside the United States
of America.
But any company that is based in the U.S. has to take local
and national cultural history into account, or it will be hampered in all
of its endeavors. Which raises the thoroughly unresolved issues of race
relations and of men's domination and abuse of women. So diversity cannot
separate itself from race and gender issues, even when it casts its net
more widely, to encompass all the variations, all the diversities, represented
by the human family.
Many white men fear and mourn the loss of the caste system
from which they have benefitted. Many don't acknowledge that there is a
caste system, and many don't see how they have benefitted.
White men are every bit as diverse and as deserving of attention
as people of any other designation. This is a principle that many corporate
diversity programs have violated. They left out white men. They defined
white men as the dominant culture, the oppressor, the norm, and the enemy
and then they wonder why white men don't rush to join the diversity council.
So the diversity programs themselves have been divisive and
discriminatory. They have systematically tried to alienate white men for
years and they have succeeded-- indeed, in some cases this has been their
main success.
Diversity training efforts are backfiring. It's not surprising,
if the data they promulgate is false and inflammatory--saying, "By the
year 2010, whites will be in the minority in the U.S," as one coporation's
diversity training material said. Or if the approach they take is polarizing.
Diversity training efforts that seem multicultural at the
expense of "the dominant culture" are bound to run into some resistance,
and yet very few of the programs are mediating, and teaching others to
mediate, the culture clash. That's the kind of omission that makes matters
wose.
People are not going to pay much attention to diversity training
that is a one-time event. Everyone knows that an educational effort takes
time, and an effort meant to change institutional mores takes even more
time. So how is it that the great majority of corporate diversity efforts
occur once, for between two hours and two days, and have no follow-up,
no consequences, no accountability, and of course no evaluation? How is
it that most corporate diversity committees have no budget?
People at all levels in the organization can be forgiven
for not taking such a program seriously.
Texaco is thus caught in the commonplace diversity syndrome
of seeming to be hypocrites (we don't practice what we preach) or inept
(we've been doing diversity training for all these years and we don't seem
to have made much progress).
This is where the opportunity for leadership comes in.
First, Texaco must move beyond Diversity 101. A world-class
company has to move on to higher education. Education, not training. Diversity
must address developmental, political, system-wide dimensions--not the
usual focus of training.
Second, Texaco has to include everyone, including white men,
and reinforce its acknowledgment of diversities in all individuals.
Third, it is important to disentangle diversity fom affirmative
action. Too often, they are bundled together. This keeps either area from
accomplishing its purpose.
Fourth, get beyond awareness. Take action. You can't just
have a session for people to look at issues. What about dealing with issues
that are looked at? That's where the rubber meets the road. And that's
why most diversity training doesn't let anyone get that far--because then
they're in over their heads. Most diversity groups aren't sure that their
charter extends that far.
So, fifth, rewrite the charter. Put a system in place that
will transform Texaco. If not, you are deciding to stay firmly grounded
in the 19th century--forget about the 21st.
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