Fixing the workplace: how to make the best of representation
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
In their analysis of ethics in the workplace, Hanson and Young (2024) note how the incredible wealth-creation potential of business can be subverted by the few at the expense of the many. Three common countermeasures are: regulation, representation and renewal. Here we consider representation, which increases the number of views that influence your business.
Can it work for you? As with regulation, representation works best as a state of mind rather than a response to rules.
My angle comes from running cross-disciplinary research across several universities. The most obvious divides were down to academic discipline. If you doubt me, put an economist, engineer, medic, nurse and sociologist in a room and ask them to agree a 10-page specification for a medical product that would bring greatest benefit to the people of Birmingham within 5 years. Beneath disciplinary divides, however, was layer upon layer of variety around people, teams and organisation: even the universities managed grants differently! It was hard work: we all learned a lot and made some unusual discoveries.
Most business problems need a balance of inputs from very different places. If they don’t happen inside your organisation, you’ll either fail or have the same conversations in the more difficult environment of the market or society at large. My sense is that in the UK in particular, our boards are becoming exceptionally detached from the workplace.
However widely you recruit and consult, that fingerprint must be reflected in your senior team. I once sat on a diversity panel chaired by a government minister where, as the only (other) white man, I was the token with impairment. In one discussion, head-hunters were criticised for fielding such similar candidates on their short lists, and so we investigated how to interview a broader set. You’ve guessed it! Better short lists come from better long lists, so we experimented with LinkedIn to build a shadow long list for an existing vacancy and found the technology yielded great candidates.
Your elephant in the room may be the risks in broadening participation without limit, particularly at board level. I’m sure some fears are valid, and I’d also been deeply surprised if some weren’t greatly overblown. There are lots of examples where top managers took risks with people and the sky didn’t fall. Often sky was the limit!
Sometimes, it’s because ordinary people are not stupid and because groupthink at board level is subtle and can be dangerous. Sometimes it’s because there are excesses that really must be reined in. Sometimes, our economic presuppositions are just very, very wrong.
As Ron Chernow points out in Washington: a life although the first President was deeply uneasy about slavery, he believed it an economic necessity. Economically, the opposite was true and, quite apart from the moral bankruptcy of the system, it cost the planters more than it delivered. It took decades of misery before a system that thought it couldn’t live without slavery was ruined by one that realised it couldn’t live with it.
To make the most of representation, leave the checklists behind and think it though. Then plan how you want it to work for you. You must get smart if you hope to get lucky.