R U Ready?

So are you ready? As a leader of your company ready?

For what you might ask?

May 25, 2021

If you don’t know why that date is important that would mean you are not ready. And that should worry you.

May 25, 2021 is the one year anniversary of George Floyd’s passing.

You can guess what will happen. The will be retrospectives. Stories recounting what happened. The protests. Black Lives Matter. The international impact. The charges or lack thereof. The trials. And the list of victims since: Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Aubrey, … too many.

But are you ready? Is your company ready?

Because also what will happen will be a view on what’s changed. How have things improved? How have behaviors changed?

What has your company done? Oh company’s will point out the town halls and “tough conversations”. That’s adorable. You’ve Black history month events and done things for international women’s day. OK but you need to do more.

But what substantive actions have been done?

Have you done internal compensation surveys to identify salary and bonus inequities?

Have you reviewed your leadership training programs to see if they are diverse?

Have you reviewed your hiring procedures see if they are encouraging diversity or preventing it?

Are you recruiting from HBCUs?

Have you established reverse mentoring programs for executives to understand different perspectives?

Have you utilized employee surveys to understand your company’s views on diversity issues? Do you do employee surveys?

Or are you merely talking and not walking?

You see the world changed on May 25. Talking, Town Halls and wonderful speeches quoting MLK are no longer enough. Companies need to demonstrate real action not just window dressing. This isn’t going away. This isn’t a fly by night issue. On May 25, 2020 that changed. Everyone from investors to job applicants to newspapers are looking at companies differently. You need to SHOW what you’ve done.

And what if you haven’t? That will be recorded too. And your employees will know. So will customers and investors.

As always I hope this helps. I look forward to continuing the conversation. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

All the best,

Dave Terné