Page 228 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

I recently called somebody on this. I was having a bite to eat while I was
traveling and wound up sitting next to somebody who worked for a mutual
fund company. We talked a bit about
how little the financial services industry
THERE IS A reflects the diversity of America.“Com-
CERTAIN GUMBY- panies have ways of not hiring minori-
LIKE FLEXIBILITY ties,” I said, “by simply saying they can’t
TO MANY find qualified minorities.”
CORPORATE VOWS. He then told me a story about trying
to recruit a candidate from North Car-
olina, a person of color. They’d spent so
much time on it that when the guy ultimately decided not to come to work
for them, they’d given up on the idea.
It was a very weak-livered excuse.“Did you ever ask the person,”I asked,
“what it was going to take to get him to join your company? Offer him
another $30,000?”
“No,” the guy said. “I can’t make my numbers if I give away money.”
“Well, I assume your mission statement says how committed you are
to a diverse workplace.”
“Sure, but how could I justify to my shareholders paying this person
$30,000 more than I would pay someone else in the same position?”
“Your shareholders have bought into your mission statement, too, so
you shouldn’t have to justify it to them. But what you are really saying to
me is that you don’t really practice what you preach.”
He shrugged.
There is a certain Gumby-like flexibility to many corporate vows.
This is not to say that all cultural claims are nonsense. Some organiza-
tions really do build powerful cultures that serve them well for a long time.
IBM in its mainframe-era heyday was a terrific example. In his book Who
Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround,former
CEO Lou Gerstner points out that IBM’s stated ideal of respect for its
employees actually made IBM uniquely progressive: “IBM was the leader

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