The Missing Half - Pt. 1
I spent two days with a large number of founders at Ideas Fest a few weeks back. We had a stage for our new podcast TableTalk so I mainly spent the days interviewing speakers and award winners on our stage, but I also managed to get out in the field at points to talk with others.
The event was great, and I have nothing but gratitude and praise for Frankie James and Dylan Jones-Evans for putting on such an awesome event and for Nigel Cross for arranging the stage and huge screens we used. But one thing that was particularly great, that struck me hard, was that almost half of the speakers and award winners were female. The world is changing, for the better, but it’s clear that not everyone is helping it happen.
So often women are overlooked.
Female led businesses are rarely funded.
When women reach a certain age, they are often discarded.
And, to add a little icing to that cake, much of society still treats 50% of itself as not really serious. The mere fact that the BBC today released an article asking women whether not painting their nails makes them upper class shows both the change and also the absurdity.
This poses the question I guess: Why Invest in Women?
When this question comes up, and it appears to frequently, my first thought is always rather simple.
Why wouldn't we?
A look in the mirror.
Here’s a short personal list of things that make me ask ‘Why wouldn't we?’
In my childhood, the three greatest influences I had growing up were my mother, my godmother and my grandmother. All were inspirational in different ways.
Let’s not forget, we were ALL created by a woman. Our own mother.
The country I’m from is the UK and the greatest leader my country has produced during my lifetime, like her policies or not, was Margaret Thatcher. That’s if we’re not counting Queen Elizabeth.
Throughout my working life, many of the most capable people I have worked with have been women. From industry leaders like Alexandra Steed, Félicie Krikler and Sara Woods, to some of my most impressive employees like Sue Clough and Solmaz Zeidi.
The person most responsible for my two sons becoming grounded, capable, intelligent and rather lovely young men, is my wife.
And to top it off, this planet we are blessed to live upon – we call her Mother Earth. She spawned absolutely everything we’ve ever known, touched, seen or heard.
Throughout my life, the ability of women has been both obvious and undeniable. To be fair, I feel blessed that I’ve never had to question it.
But on many occasions, I’ve been drawn to wonder…
To wonder whether we, a society shaped by men, have got it all backwards.
Around the world, we now discuss equality as though it were principally something we should do for the disadvantaged. The historically less privileged. As though DEI is about fairness.
I don’t really think that’s the way we should look at it.
Let’s look at women. That 50% of our human race who, for millennia, have been excluded. Relegated in so many ways.
Excluding women isn’t only wrong because it disadvantages women.
People from Beatrix Potter to Jude Kelly CBE show us every day - It’s wrong because it disadvantages everyone.
So what do I mean by that?
The People Who See What I Can't
Being around women makes me think differently.
Not because women possess some mystical collective wisdom unavailable to men. I mean they kind of do, but I've met enough foolish women and enough thoughtful men to dismiss that idea as a blanket statement.
But women have experienced the world differently from me. Both biologically and culturally, they see the world through different eyes. And that really matters.
Put me in a room full of men of roughly my age, background and experience and we may get on famously. We'll understand one another's references. Laugh at similar jokes. Recognise similar problems. We may even reach decisions quickly together. But that’s not always a good thing.
Sometimes agreement is evidence of clarity.
Sometimes everybody is simply looking through the same window.
Some of the best people I've worked with have made me look through another one. That’s why my son is my business partner. For all the challenges it brings, that 30 years of cultural difference is a huge advantage.
People who see the world through different lenses notice things I don't. They interpret conversations differently. They can ask questions that haven't occurred to me. And they see risks I’ll dismiss and opportunities I won't recognise.
Women, on many occasions, have made my thinking less narrow.
I think this is where the business case for diversity becomes much more interesting than the corporate language surrounding it.
Diversity is often discussed in terms of representation. How many women are on the board?
How many people from different ethnic backgrounds? Are we filling a quota? And what proportion of senior management comes from this group or that?
Those numbers might reveal something important. But counting different people in the room often counts correlation. And it’s not the point.
So what is?
The real value arrives when different people cause the room to think differently.
The Expensive Habit of Hiring Ourselves
Human beings like familiarity. We trust people who speak like us, think like us and share our assumptions. And given the choice between someone whose thinking immediately makes sense and someone whose perspective feels slightly alien, we have a natural tendency towards the former.
Business then adds another layer. That when we find something that works, we repeat it. So if the last finance director was a 48-year-old man with twenty years in the industry, another 48-year-old man with twenty years in the industry can look reassuringly like a finance director. If the founders of successful technology companies look a certain way, investors become accustomed to seeing that shape of founder.
Yesterday's pattern gradually becomes today's definition of merit. And eventually, we can end up hiring ourselves. Not literally, of course. That would make the Christmas party unbearable. But intellectually for sure. We create organisations filled with people whose experience, education, networks and instincts substantially overlap.
The problem isn't that these people are incompetent. I mean that can happen. The phenomenon of C-suite and managers failing upwards is well documented. But the problem of similarity isn’t incompetence. Quite the opposite.
A room can contain ten extraordinarily intelligent people and they’ll still collectively be rather stupid. If all ten share the same blind spot, the same educational background, the same lack of perspective, adding another similarly intelligent person might well make it worse as it will deepen the chamber of echo with all its familiarity bias.
You need somebody standing somewhere else.
Join me next week for part 2 of this little meander of the mind where I take a look at meritocracy and what we’ve been missing.
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Easter Eggs in this week’s article
“look in the mirror” – Someone To Love, by Queen
“mother” – Mother, by Pink Floyd
“working life” – More Time, by Madeleine Peyroux
“Mother Earth” – Maggot Brain, by Funkadellic
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P.S.
Why invest in women?
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