The Silicon Valley Leadership group, was announced last month with a 25×25 initiative. What’s that? It’s a pledge to boost diversity in their leadership by 25% by the year 2025. The update this week is companies that have signed on. Facebook, Twitter, Zoom, and Western Digital are some of the tech related ones. The list is more expansive than just tech.
Quoting Market Watch: “Companies that take the pledge commit that at least 25% of their leadership will be individuals from underrepresented groups (people of color and women) by 2025, or that by 2025 they will see at least a 25% boost in underrepresented executives in leadership roles. The companies are expected to publicize their diversity data and annual progress toward the goal, although those goals will look different depending on the levels of leadership companies decide will be covered by the initiative.“
Also quoting the piece: “McKinsey have found companies with ethnically diverse executive teams are 36% more likely to achieve above average profitability, with that number being 25% for executive teams with gender diversity. Another study, by Boston Consulting Group, found diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues.“
With a mantra of “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”, this is why I produce the quarterly IT Leadership Diversity report, which comes out next month. Self reporting is great, and then in aggregate we see how this shapes up.
The short answer – the research says investing here causes business results. The corollary is that by not doing this, businesses fall behind.
Targets are good. Now we measure them over time.
Source: MarketWatch