There  are two main questions to analyze. Use the concepts reviewed in the  first part of the class to answer the questions, i.e., management  theories, controlling strategies, management of teams among other  definitions, or include thoughts from any work experience you may have.

Please  pay special attention to the format of your report. Make sure that it  is not just the body with your answers. Include information relevant to  your document that makes it easy to review. For example, do not forget  to put a main title, your name, date the document is submitted, numbered  pages, and any other relevant information. For example, numbered pages  would help making reference to an idea you wrote. Also, please use the  APA format for any citation you make to support your answers or  comments. There is no minimum nor maximum answer length as long as you  feel you got all covered. I will grade the way you organize your paper.

For  your answers, use examples of the cases mentioned in the Groysberg  & Connolly article (2013), uploaded in Blackboard, and make  reference to them.

Groysberg, B. & Connolly, K. (2013, September). Twenty-four CEOs on creating diverse and inclusive organizations. Harvard Business Review, 69-76.

Extra bonus point questions for Exam 1

1. Diversity (15 points).

Today,  more than ever, a company’s workforce develops in a multi-diverse  environment. This is done in the aim of getting competitive advantage  over other companies in terms of differentiation or innovation. (a) How  will you define diversity at work? (b) What are the benefits and  challenges of diversity in a work setting? (c) How do you manage  diversity in the workplace in terms of communication, teamwork, beliefs?  (d) What kind of management (example: bureaucratic, administrative,  human resources, others) do you recommend for a company that is  predominantly diverse like those that have factories in one country and  representative offices in another, and why? (e) What kind of controlling  management could be mostly exercised when there is a multicultural  workplace?

1. Minorities (15 points).

Companies  try to balance diversity in staff but it is frequent to have some  minorities and some managers belong to these groups. (a) What is your  concept of minority? (b) In your opinion, what challenges or obstacles  face managers of this kind? (c) Do you believe they could sometimes play  favoritism towards individuals of the same minority? (d) Being part of a  minority, sometimes the environment could become extremely competitive.  How could a manager succeed in an environment like this? (e) Do you  think a manager of a minority should use different strategies than a  non-minority manager, to keep workers engaged with the company?

Great Leaders Who
Make the Mix Work

Artwork Janet Echelman, Target Swooping Down…Bullseye!
2001, hand-knotted nylon lace net, 140′ x 140′ x 90′
Madrid, Spain

Spotlight

68  Harvard Business Review September 2013

Spotlight on WoMen in LeadeRSHip

Boris Groysberg is a
professor of business
administration in the
organizational behavior unit
at Harvard Business School
and the coauthor, with
Michael Slind, of Talk, Inc.
(Harvard Business Review
Press, 2012).

Katherine Connolly
works in the organizational
behavior unit at HBS.

Twenty-four CEOs on creating diverse
and inclusive organizations 
by Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly

B
Business leaders send a powerful message when
they demonstrate a commitment to diversity and
inclusion that goes beyond rhetoric. But how does
diversity make its way to the top of a CEO’s agenda?
To find out, we interviewed 24 CEOs from around
the globe who ran companies and corporate divi-
sions that had earned reputations for embracing peo-
ple from all kinds of backgrounds. These executives
represented a wide range of industries and regions,
as well as different stages on the journey to creating
an inclusive culture. Our goal was to understand not
only why they had made diversity a strategic priority
but also how they executed on their goals and what
that meant to the organization and its practices. PH

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september 2013 Harvard Business Review 69

The CEOs we spoke with did not see diversity as
a once-and-done initiative, nor did they hand off the
responsibility for it to others. Rather, each of the 24,
in his or her own way, approached inclusivity as a
personal mission. When we asked these executives
why advancing diversity in their organizations was
so important to them, the aggregate answer was
twofold: They believed it was a business impera-
tive because their companies needed it to stay com-
petitive, and they believed it was a moral imperative
because of their personal experiences and values.
As Mikael Ohlsson of the Swedish home-products
company IKEA put it, “My leadership on diversity
is vision-driven from a business point of view and
value-driven at the foundation.”

These CEOs spoke forcefully about diversity as
an advantage. Paul Block of the U.S. sweetener man-
ufacturer Merisant pointed out, “People with differ-
ent lifestyles and different backgrounds challenge
each other more. Diversity creates dissent, and you
need that. Without it, you’re not going to get any
deep inquiry or breakthroughs.” Or, as Jonathan
Broomberg of the South African insurer Discovery
Health put it, diversity is “a source of creativity and
innovation.”

A diverse workforce also prevents an organiza-
tion from becoming too insular and out of touch
with its increasingly heterogeneous customer base.
Many of the CEOs asserted that it is crucial for a
company’s employees to reflect the people they
serve. Brian Moynihan of Bank of America saw an
important link to customer satisfaction: “When in-
ternal diversity and inclusion scores are strong, and
employees feel valued, they will serve our custom-
ers better, and we’ll be better off as an organization.”

The Role of Personal Experience
A CEO’s commitment often arises from his or her own
understanding of what it means to be an outsider.
Take Andrea Jung of the personal-care- products
firm Avon. (Note that Jung, like a number of other
CEOs we talked with, has stepped down since our
interview with her.) Describing her career, she said:

“I was often the only woman or Asian sitting around
a table of senior executives. I experienced plenty of
meetings outside my organization with large groups
of executives where people assumed that I couldn’t
be the boss, even though I was.” Master Card’s CEO,
Ajay Banga—a Sikh from India who was hassled in
the United States after 9/11—shared something simi-
lar: “My passion for diversity comes from the fact
that I myself am diverse. There have been a hundred
times when I have felt different from other people
in the room or in the business. I have a turban and
a full beard, and I run a global company—that’s not
common.”

Carlos Ghosn of Nissan Motor Company told us
how bias had affected his own family. “My mother
was one of eight children,” he said. “She used to be
a very brilliant student, and when the time came to
go to college, she wanted to become a doctor. Unfor-
tunately, her mother had to explain to her that there
was not enough money in the family, and that the
money for college was going to the boys and the girls
would instead have to marry. When I was a kid and
my mother was telling me this story—without any
bitterness, by the way, just matter-of-fact—I was
outraged because it was my mother. After hearing
that story, I said I would never do anything to hurt
someone based on segregation.”

To Ghosn, gender bias is a personal affront.
“When I see that women do not have the same oppor-
tunities as men, it touches me in a personal way,” he
said. “I think it’s some kind of refusal related to my
sisters or to my daughters.”

Even white male CEOs had stories to share. Ken-
tucky native Jim Rogers of the electric-utility hold-
ing company Duke Energy felt like an outsider at the
start of his career. “When I went to Washington to
be a lawyer, I felt like I had to work harder, be bet-
ter, and prove myself because I had a southern ac-
cent and came from a rural state,” he said. The self-
awareness, insight, and empathy that Rogers and
other chief executives acquired from personal ex-
perience have clearly shaped their attitudes toward
diversity and inclusion and informed their priorities
as leaders. Ill

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70  Harvard Business review September 2013

SPoTlighT on Women In leadersHIP

AjAy bAngA CEO OF MAstErCArd
my passion for diversity comes from the
fact that I myself am diverse. there have

been a hundred times when I have felt different
from other people in the room or in the business.
I have a turban and a full beard, and I run a
global company—that’s not common.

Persistent Institutional Barriers
The CEOs were generally disappointed with the
lack of progress on diversity in the C-suite. While
several women have risen through the ranks to
become leaders of multibillion-dollar corporations,
the statistics are grim overall. Only 4% of companies
on the 2013 Fortune 500 list are led by female CEOs.
As Banga acknowledged, “That’s more than what it
used to be 20 years ago, but it’s nowhere near where
it should be.” The disparity also persists in other
senior leadership positions and on boards. Ken Fra-
zier of Merck offered a harsher assessment: “I think
that the progress of women in the last two decades
has been so limited, so slow, so inadequate, that it
would defy even the most skeptical people from 20
years ago.”

We asked the CEOs what they perceived to be the
greatest obstacles to women’s advancement in their
own companies and industries. Although there’s no
one truth about what holds women back, the leaders
we spoke with offered candid views based on years
of observation.

If there’s a single barrier that affects all women,
it’s exclusion from networks and conversations that
open doors to further development and promotion,
according to seven of the CEOs. Woods Staton of
Arcos Dorados, the largest operator of McDonald’s
restaurants in Latin America, defined the offend-
ing mechanism as “social cliquishness,” a pattern of
interaction in which men seek out the company of
other men and ignore women. “The men come out
of a meeting, hang out with each other, and then go
out at night for drinks,” Staton explained. “It’s sub-
tle discrimination, and it’s difficult to work around.”
Barry Salzberg of the professional services firm De-
loitte described this pattern as a tangible, negative
consequence of “the old boys’ network.”

Frazier went so far as to say, “I’m an African-
American, and I’ve worked in the business world

all my life, and I believe very strongly that whatever
barriers race presents in the workforce, they pale in
comparison to the barriers that women face when
creating the close mentoring relationships that are
necessary to be promoted.” We find that this kind
of discrimination is often unintended, unconscious,
and embedded in a company’s culture.

The CEOs also reported that the contributions
of women are often underappreciated. As an ex-
ample, Jim Turley of Ernst & Young described an
incident when he himself was called out: “I like to
facilitate our board discussions by getting right into
the more contentious points, and we were having a
discussion around a particular topic. Three women
on the board made individual comments that were
similar in direction, which I didn’t respond to. Not
long after they spoke, a fourth person, who hap-
pened to be a man, made a comment in line with
what the women had been saying, and I picked up

Idea in Brief
The Challenge
CEOs readily admit that diversity is a
moral and business imperative. But how
do they create truly inclusive cultures?

The ReseaRCh
The authors interviewed 24 CEOs who
ran organizations that are recognized
for diversity. Each of them approached
diversity as a personal mission, not an
initiative that could be delegated. As
a group they were highly attuned to
the obstacles and biases that impede
women’s progress and were committed
to breaking them down.

WhaT TO DO
Noting that diversity concerns the mix of
people you have, and inclusivity focuses
on making that mix work, the CEOs
pointed to eight practices that lead to
improvements on both fronts.

AndreA Jung former Ceo of Avon
I was often the only woman or Asian
sitting around a table of senior executives.

I experienced plenty of meetings outside my
organization with large groups of executives,
where people assumed that I couldn’t be the
boss, even though I was.

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September 2013 harvard business review 71

Great LeaderS Who make the mIx Work

on his comment. I said, ‘I think Jeff’s got it right,’ not
even aware of what I had just done. To their great
credit, the women didn’t embarrass me publicly.
They pulled me to the side, and they said, ‘Jim, we
know you didn’t mean for this to be the way it was
received, but this is what happened.’ They played it
back to me, and they said that that’s what happens
to women throughout their careers. It was a learning
moment for me.”

Clearly, even leaders passionate about building
inclusive cultures can inadvertently allow uncon-
scious biases to shape their behavior.

Five of the CEOs asserted that unexamined as-
sumptions also constrained women’s chances to
progress. As Frazier explained, “If a job requires
a woman to travel a lot, sometimes people decide
preemptively that she’s got a young child at home—
this won’t be something she’s interested in.” Double
standards can also trip up women in line for promo-
tions, as when characteristics prized in male leaders
are viewed as negative qualities in women. “When
men come into the environment and they’re tough,
they’re perceived as strong business leaders,” said
Block. “When women come in and they’re tough, it’s
not always as valued.”

Geographic immobility due to family constraints
was another problem, mentioned by three of the
CEOs. “People often require geographic mobility
to get the appropriate amount of exposure to the
various aspects of the business that they need to
understand,” Randall Stephenson of AT&T noted.

“As managers mature, we observe that some female
managers get to a place where they want to begin
families or their spouse also works, which makes
them less inclined to move and physically relocate
their families.” Jung concurred: “In my experience,
where part of career development and part of tal-
ent management was getting a ‘global passport’
stamped, one of the barriers for women could have
been mobility. I saw that beyond the opportunity
for the individual, we also had to try to create all of
the opportunities necessary to make sure the whole
family could in fact move.”

Another three CEOs cited insufficient support
for women who were rejoining the workforce after
taking time off to raise children. Any organization
that hopes to encourage women to succeed needs to
address that, noted Rogers. “If a woman is pregnant
and leaves, you have to have the flexibility to allow
her to do that but not lose her place or her momen-
tum,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, five CEOs brought up barriers
related to childbearing and child rearing, and six
mentioned a lack of flexible work hours. They ob-
served that the push-and-pull between work and
family, though increasingly an issue for men too, re-
mains predominantly a barrier for women. George
Chavel of Sodexo North America drove home that
point, asking, “Why should women have to be super-
human, have these reputations of ‘They can do it all,’
and make these major sacrifices, and men don’t have
those kinds of expectations placed on them?”

Do Women Lead Differently?
Eight of the CEOs perceived a distinction between
male and female leadership styles. Though social
scientists may not agree with their take on things,
the CEOs said that women were less political, less
likely to define themselves by their careers, more
collaborative, better listeners, more relationship-
oriented, and more empathetic and reasonable. We
also heard that women were more likely to focus on
completing the job at hand and to neglect to position
themselves for recognition or promotion, while men
were more apt to seek attention.

This tendency not to assert themselves could
hold women back. George Halvorson of the Cali-
fornia-based managed-care consortium Kaiser Per-
manente explained the problem this way: “There
are cultural barriers, in that leaders who are looking
for the next generation of leaders, for the people to

72  Harvard Business Review September 2013

SpotLight on Women in LeadeRsHip

Carlos Ghosn
CEo of nissan Motor CoMpany

my mother was one of eight children.
she used to be a very brilliant student,

and when the time came to go to college, she
wanted to become a doctor. Unfortunately, her
mother had to explain to her that there was not
enough money in the family, and that the money
for college was going to the boys and the girls
would instead have to marry. after hearing that
story, i said i would never do anything to hurt
someone based on segregation.

promote, are less likely to see and understand the ca-
pable women that they have in their shop, probably
because the male style tends to focus more on being
in the spotlight, and the female style tends to focus
more on bringing people together to get things done.
The very thing that makes the best female leaders
very successful also makes them less visible, and
that’s an incredibly important distinction. A good
leader knows to look for things that have gone really
well and then drills down to find the person who
really did it, as opposed to just looking for whoever
has a lot of accolades and did the dance.”

But some differences in leadership style can work
to women’s advantage, said several CEOs. “When
you’ve got a complex project involving multiple
layers, you need a leader who is collaborative, and
more often than not I have found that leader to be a
woman,” said Halvorson.

What Is an Inclusive Culture?
Resoundingly, the CEOs agreed on what an inclusive
culture meant for their organizations. They defined
it as one in which employees can contribute to the
success of the company as their authentic selves,
while the organization respects and leverages their
talents and gives them a sense of connectedness. “In
an inclusive culture employees know that, irrespec-
tive of gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, and
physical ability, you can fulfill your personal objec-
tives by aligning them with the company’s, have a
rich career, and be valued as an individual. You are
valued for how you contribute to the business,” said
David Thodey of Telstra, the Australian telecom-
munications firm. Brad Wilson of Blue Cross and
Blue Shield of North Carolina described an inclusive
workplace as “one where all who come with the
professional skills sufficient to perform the require-
ments of the job feel welcome, supported, and re-
warded, and are inspired to succeed based on their
ability.” That’s similar to the point that John Rowe of
Exelon, a U.S. energy producer and distributor, made
when he noted that a culture of mutual respect helps
his company address the complexities of its business.

“A big organization needs only a few generals and a
lot of sergeants,” he said. “The sergeants deserve re-
spect too.”

Some CEOs observed that the proof is not only
in how individual employees feel about opportuni-
ties for growth but also in how teams operate and
decisions are made. “In an inclusive culture, we cre-
ate and support heterogeneous teams,” said Chavel.

“They may take longer to make decisions than ho-
mogeneous teams, but it’s worth the investment
because their decisions will be better informed.” To
these CEOs, inclusiveness is not merely a matter of
the composition of the organization or of particular
teams (though such metrics can be helpful); it also
has to do with how people relate to one another.

“Broad diversity is necessary, but if you just walk
away after you have it, you may not get the out-
comes you want,” said Steve Voigt of King Arthur
Flour, a company where women account for three
of eight board members and three of six senior ex-
ecutives. “You really have to manage it, grow it, and
educate around it.”

Practices That Make the Difference
Turley drew an important distinction: “Diversity
itself is about the mix of people you have, and cre-
ating an inclusive culture is about making that mix
work.” We asked the CEOs which of their organiza-
tions’ practices had been most effective at harness-
ing diversity. Here’s what they told us:

1. Measure diversity and inclusion. The CEOs
agreed that metrics are key because, as we know,
what gets measured gets done. Bank of America,
for example, puts questions about diversity and
inclusiveness into its biannual employee engage-
ment survey and compares the results for any team
that gets at least seven responses against those of a
normative group of companies. “We’ve also built a
diversity-and-inclusion index that tells us if people
here feel they are treated fairly and to help us ensure
that people of diverse backgrounds can succeed at
Bank of America,” said Moynihan. “With this data,
each team can have a dialogue to determine what

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September 2013 harvard business review 73

GreaT LeaDerS Who Make The MIx Work

Ken Frazier CeO OF MerCK
I believe very strongly that whatever
barriers race presents in the workforce,

they pale in comparison to the barriers that
women face when creating the close mentoring
relationships that are necessary to be promoted.

we’re doing well and what we can improve to make
Bank of America a better place to work.”

2. Hold managers accountable. Merck, Nis-
san, General Mills, Telstra, and ABB North America
are among the many organizations that make di-
versity and inclusion goals part of their managers’
performance objectives. “Each of my direct reports
has things that they’re going to do personally to help
promote diversity, not things that they can assign
to their team,” explained Moynihan. “I say, ‘What
are you going to do to get involved?’ For example,
they can mentor somebody individually or sponsor
diversity events.” AT&T takes a different approach.

“We benchmark diversity objectives at the senior lev-
els of management, and we have regular meetings
around my table about how we’re advancing,” said
Stephenson. “A portion of our officers’ compensa-
tion is based on achieving those objectives.” Many
CEOs also reported that managers who embraced
diversity were more likely to be considered for pro-
motion at their companies.

In some organizations a favorable attitude to-
ward diversity even determines whether an em-
ployee is viewed as a good fit for the organization.

“We really have challenges when the leadership
group is not diverse and they don’t get it. And so
you have to educate them—and if they still don’t get
it, I let them go,” said Tim Solso of the engine manu-
facturer Cummins. He elaborated: “We hit a serious
downturn in the second half of 2000 through the
first half of 2003. I mean, we were on the brink as

a company, but I didn’t back off on diversity. One of
the senior officers basically said to another officer,

‘Why doesn’t Solso get off this diversity stuff ? We
need to save the company.’ I fired him. It was well
known why he was fired. After that, people either
got it or didn’t talk that way anymore.”

3. Support flexible work arrangements.
Many of the CEOs reported that their organizations
offered benefits that helped employees balance their
professional and personal commitments—such as
flexible hours, on-site child care, and onboarding
support after a leave of absence. Ken Powell of the
U.S. food processor General Mills explained his com-
pany’s efforts this way: “I’ve had officers at General
Mills say to me, ‘I realize that I’m one of several peo-
ple who could be the brand manager for Cheerios,
but I’m the only person who can be the mother to
my children.’ While some of those women make the
decision to leave the company—sometimes perma-
nently—we’ve learned that we can retain many of
them by providing greater flexibility during those
hectic childbearing years.”

At Sodexo North America, Chavel and his leader-
ship team have made work/life balance a personal
matter. “Although the job is 24/7, I try to send the
message that I’m open and receptive to any kind of
flexible arrangement,” Chavel said. “For example,
I will end a meeting early to get to one of my sons’
athletic events or travel somewhere for a family
commitment.”

4. Recruit and promote from diverse pools
of candidates. Workforce diversity begins with the
search for talent. At General Mills, Powell’s leader-
ship team tracks metrics during and after the hiring
process. “From the beginning, we’re looking at the
composition of the pool of candidates that we inter-
view on campus, because that’s an important early
indicator,” Powell told us. “Then we look at the com-
position of the group of people we hire in any given
year. We track the retention rate for different groups,
such as women or African-Americans. Even interns.
At what rate are they leaving? At what rate are they
getting promoted? What percentage advances to
each level in the company? Our metrics help us diag-
nose and understand what’s going on—enabling us
to develop action plans to address any issues we see.
It’s important, and that’s why I review those metrics
myself on a quarterly basis.”

Ghosn has taken a different approach at Nissan
in Japan, where women are strikingly underrepre-
sented in management ranks. “We’ve implemented

74  Harvard Business Review September 2013

Spotlight on Women in LeadeRsHip

Jim Turley CeO OF ernsT & yOung
Three women on the board made individual
comments that were similar in direction,

which i didn’t respond to. not long after they spoke,
a fourth person, who happened to be a man, made
a comment in line with what the women had been
saying, and i said, ‘i think Jeff’s got it right,’ not
even aware of what i had just done. To their great
credit, the women didn’t embarrass me publicly.
They pulled me to the side and played it back to
me. it was a learning moment for me.

quotas in hiring, particularly in the populations
where there are fewer women—like engineering—
and we make sure that in the succession plans of
the company we always have a specific number
of female candidates,” he explained. “This forces
management to identify women in their own ranks
or to hire more women. So when it comes time for
promotions, we have a diverse group of candidates
from which we can choose. I believe quotas are a
great way of advancing diversity, particularly when
you have a long way to go and you don’t want to wait
forever. After a company attains a certain level of
diversity, I think quotas lose their effectiveness. But
when you’re moving from 1% female managers to 5%,
if you don’t enforce a quota, it’s going to take forever
to reach that number.”

Owing in part to this strategy, the representation
of women in Nissan’s management has increased
three times as fast as the average rate in Japan over
the past decade.

5. Provide leadership education. Another
key practice is providing leadership development
opportunities for women at the lower levels of
the organization, which tend to be more diverse.
Broomberg described Discovery Health’s CEO Pro-
gram like this: “It’s a brilliant two-year program
which involves candidates in intensive internal and
external training, significant exposure to senior
executives, and travel to the U.S. to do a course at
Duke. It includes external candidates and young
candidates from previously disadvantaged back-
grounds already in the company. It’s a big financial
investment for us, but we’ve been able to add quite
a lot of muscle to our recruitment capacity and also
invest significantly in the more rapid advancement
of existing internal candidates.”

And Johnson & Johnson’s Bill Weldon noted that
diversity training cannot be hived off from the rest
of the operation. It has to be woven into the culture.

“About 10 years ago one of the women’s leadership
initiative programs was being held across the street,
and I asked the people running it if I could go to the
program,” he recalled. “They said no. I asked why
not, and they said I couldn’t go because I was a man.
My response was that that may be the problem—you
have to broaden it beyond women. We evolve and
learn and grow to make sure we’re capturing not
just the people involved but the views of the whole
community.”

Needless to say, companies should also offer their
high-potential employees opportunities for external

education and development. But according to Har-
vard Business School, only 23% of participants in ex-
ecutive education programs on the Boston campus
in 2012 were women. Companies also need to invest
in women-only leadership development programs
and in educating both men and women about subtle
gender biases and how they manifest themselves
in firms.

6. Sponsor employee resource groups and
mentoring programs. Several of the CEOs’ com-
panies offered less structured professional devel-
opment opportunities to various subgroups of em-
ployees. One approach is employee resource groups,
or networks of employees who share an affiliation
(such as women, ethnic minorities, or young profes-
sionals). Angela Braly of the U.S. managed-care firm
WellPoint underlined the importance of leveraging
such groups in substantive ways. “I visit each group
twice a year and give them real assignments,” she
said. “I am very clear about my expectation that
they will have a real impact on the business.”

Companies must also invest in these groups,
according to Banga. “Here at MasterCard we have
many business resource groups, or BRGs,” he said.

“We have women’s leadership networks, a YoPro
group for young professionals, a group for em-
ployees of African descent, a pride community, a
Latino community, and an ‘East’ community for
Asian employees. Each BRG has a business sponsor,
who’s normally a direct report of mine. We do a ton

September 2013 Harvard Business Review 75

HBR.oRgGreat LeaderS Who make the mix Work

To find leaders who were at the
forefront of the diversity movement,
we first identified companies with
reputations for successfully leverag-
ing diversity. We then assessed
their progress at creating inclu-
sive cultures by examining, where
available, employment statistics,
leadership attitudes, and third-
party recognition. (Information
pertaining to employment statistics
and third-party recognition was
collected using public sources.
Leadership attitudes were assessed
on the basis of public sources, pub-
lished interviews, and involvement
in diversity initiatives.) We also took
cultural differences into account.
For example, 6% of the Japanese
automaker Nissan’s management is
female, a ratio that sounds dismal

from a U.S. citizen’s vantage point.
But the Japanese national average
for female representation in man-
agement is 2%; Nissan is actually
significantly ahead of the curve.

After identifying these compa-
nies, we selected CEOs to par-
ticipate in interviews as part of an
exploratory study. We wanted them
to represent different industries and
regions, as well as different stages
of inclusivity. For example, some of
the companies had well-established
practices for leveraging diversity,
while others were initially develop-
ing practices. We also asked CEOs
whom among their peers they ad-
mired for creating inclusive cultures
and used this information as leads
to other companies and other CEOs.

How We Chose the CEos

of things with them, from employee-networking
events to multicultural summits to a women’s fo-
rum for which we get outside speakers as well as
panels comprised of me and members of my board.”

7. Offer quality role models. It’s no surprise
that diversity at the top promotes diversity through-
out an organization. A varied array of leaders signals
an organizational commitment to diversity and
also provides emerging leaders with role models
they can identify with. Several of the CEOs, includ-
ing those from Kaiser Permanente, Sodexo North
America, King Arthur Flour, Duke Energy, and Cum-
mins, said that putting women in leadership roles
was key to attracting, retaining, and developing
other female talent. Rogers described how Duke did
this: “This historically has been a man’s industry. So,
early on, we worked to move a woman into a plant
manager position. That set an example. You have
to be intentional and make sure you populate your
organization with leaders who represent diversity.
That creates an environment that allows those with
diverse backgrounds to say, ‘If they can, I can.’ That
is a very important feeling that needs to be embed-
ded in the people in the company.”

As for individualized employee development,
many CEOs cited the importance of mentorship
and sponsorship opportunities. Ohlsson explained
IKEA’s unique approach to mentorship this way: “We
have a grandfathering/grandmothering principle at

IKEA—that is to say that a hiring boss has to have
another manager say yes to a candidate before that
person can be hired. Two people then share the re-
sponsibility for the development of that individual.”
Such double sponsorship increases the likelihood
that talented employees of any background will feel
supported and stay with the company.

But Halvorson warned against tokenism—the
practice of putting people into jobs because of their
classification, not their ability. “If you put someone
in place who fits a certain category but doesn’t have
the skill set needed to do the job, then you basically
set the whole agenda back significantly,” he said.

“My sense is to hire stars, and the constellation is far
more effective if it’s a diverse constellation.”

8. Make the chief diversity officer position
count. As this relatively new role proliferates across
industries, CEOs must decide how to maximize its
effectiveness. At the time of his interview, Enrique
Santacana of ABB North America had just received
approval from the firm’s North America Executive
Committee to create a chief diversity and inclusion
officer position, reporting directly to him. “We want
to make sure that people understand that it has full
support from the top, and it’s not just a communi-
cations message that goes out there with no follow-
up,” he explained. “It institutionalizes the process
and the intent, and it establishes a formal means by
which we will develop programs as well as metrics,
so that we can track our progress.”

Lead by Example
Once the vision of an inclusive culture has been ar-
ticulated and best practices have been put in place,
what is the CEO’s daily contribution to seeing that
the vision becomes a reality? Nearly half the CEOs
said their most important role was to set the tone for
the organization’s culture by demonstrating a com-
mitment to inclusion.

Perhaps the most meaningful way to do that is
by dedicating time to work personally on diversity
and inclusion initiatives. A quarter of the CEOs we
interviewed mentioned direct involvement with
diversity programs, such as meeting regularly with
employee resource groups and diversity councils.
Banga, Moynihan, and Thodey even chair diversity
and inclusion councils themselves. By pointing the
way, CEOs will help their organizations attract and
develop the best, most diverse talent, giving them
the edge they need to succeed.

HBR Reprint R1309D

“Although our quarterly earnings dropped by 25%, I feel compelled
to point out that our Facebook likes have doubled.”

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76  Harvard Business Review September 2013

SpotLigHt on women In LeADeRSHIp HBR.oRg

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