The idea of inclusion triggers a wide range of responses from different leaders. In one organisation I am familiar with inclusion was shunned because it would "slow things down" and "involve everyone in everything". It was seen as a potential barrier to speed of decision-making and rapid execution of business plans. The company had a strong hierarchy and my impression was of leaders who saw an inclusive culture as being like an army with no commanding officers. Nothing would get done, no battles would be won.
Many organisations have Speed among their core values or business principles. Here are just a few examples:
Speed and Agility - HP
Speed, Simplicity, Trust - Vodafone
Speed and Agility - Tata Metaliks
Speed and Flexibility - JD Power and Associates
From recent experience, it's not uncommon for leaders to challenge whether inclusion is really compatible with speed. Can you really be inclusive as well as quick? These are important concerns that we should try to address. Thanks to a helpful conversation with my colleague Rachael Ross I’ve begun to put some thoughts together in three areas relating to the issue. I recognise they are of a very systemising nature!
- Situation - knowing when it adds value to gather diverse perspectives and ideas.
- System - taking a broad perspective and paying enough attention to the potential consequences when decisions are made in isolation
- Practices - learning how tools and resources can help us be efficiently inclusive
Situation
We can look at a decision making process through the lens of diversity and inclusion – see the 2 x 2 matrix below. For me there are clearly phases, like idea generation phase, when relatively high diversity adds value. We are “filling the hopper” with ideas or perspectives. Things change at decision time – leaders still retain their accountability for making decisions. It is appropriate to have lower diversity and inclusion. Once the decision is made we go back to higher inclusion - thinking about how to communicate key messages to a range of audiences. Where will different aspects of implementation come on the matrix?
Where do your own work and personal experiences fit on the matrix?
System
In cultures where speed is demanded – individuals inevitably feel pressured to make the decisions they own as quickly as possible. It would be natural to exclude other people from the process, saving the time involved in engaging them. The problem can come when we zoom out and take a broader perspective (see below). What the individual decides, in isolation, may then be seen as a poor choice for the organisation as a whole. Where this requires rework or causes disruption – the quicker decision at the individual level can have a high overall cost.
Practices
Understandably, one concern pace-setters have is that “it will take forever to get everyone involved”. So - how can we be “efficiently inclusive”? How do we make it possible for many brains to become one brain, accessing all the diverse and unique knowledge to solve problems at pace?
Who are the best practice organisations in this area? Please do share your knowledge with me freddie.a@schneider-ross.com
