Corporate Role Model: BlackRock
by Miki Saxon
Lots of good external reading today.
At every level, some of the toughest, most hard-headed, business people work for Blackrock; not surprising, since it is the world’s largest asset management firm, with more than $7 trillion under management.
That’s large enough to get most financial markets to sit up and take notice when it speaks — and speak it did early this year.
Larry Fink recently created a shockwave. As cofounder, chairman, and CEO of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest global asset management firms, in an open letter to CEOs he caught the attention of financial markets and beyond by insisting on the importance of companies serving a social as well as financial purpose.
The idea that corporations have a social responsibility to a much larger audience than their investors are heresy in the financial world.
But Fink can’t be ignored as a liberal do-gooder, especially when he backs his comments with hard data.
This was followed up a few months later by Jonathan McBride, managing director and global head of inclusion and diversity at BlackRock.
Blackrock hit the nail on the head with McBride’s title — not ‘diversity,” but diversity and inclusion.
Hiring a diverse workforce is actually the easy part, because there is a multitude of talented candidates available once you knock down bias, unconscious or not, laziness, and trying to substitute apps and AI, which carries the same bias as it’s creators, for human thought.
Changing attitudes so those hired are included, developed and utilized is the hard part.
Recently, the company distributed a booklet called BlackRock at Our Best: The Power of Diversity that captured the diversity and inclusion guidance that the company had been providing to its managers for about a year and a half. He said it was placed on every U.S. employees’ seat on International Women’s Day (March 8), which was also the last day of an extended company “jam.”
The booklet included research findings about diversity in business, which McBride describes as “a key unlock” for getting people on board. He said it shifts the burden of proof away from the individual person arguing for diversity, where it traditionally has been. Having hard data, he said, helps managers respond to questions such as “So has diversity ever worked?” or to statements implying that because a particular employee didn’t do well, diversity must be wrongheaded. And to those suggesting the company is fine as is — if it ain’t broke, why fix it? — you can hit the ball right back over the net. Said McBride: “The data says we can do even better.”
And that is the difference.
When you have hard data, not touchy-feely or do-the-right-thing arguments, and that data provides a proven path to more and better success for both individuals and the company as a whole, people will embrace it.
Keep in mind that diversity and inclusion is a way to improve business results, not a demand that people change their personal values.
People can believe anything they want as long as those beliefs don’t interfere with achieving their company’s objectives.
Image credit: Blackrock
