It’s time to sunset DEI (and ESG, come to that). Why? Because the existence of these businesspeak acronyms shouldn’t exist in the real world. For good reason. They are symbols of public and private sector virtue-signaling that is now backfiring in an ugly way.
Like Joe Biden and the aging DNC leadership, it’s time to retire.
These acronyms and their associated programs exist only in the world of business and political posturing, increasingly disconnected from the realities of life in the real world.
Thanks to some form of malignant obsession with the nomenclature of bathrooms, pronouns in business emails, and the demonization of the multicultural backbone of the American labor industry, what has historically been a political dog-whistle for racist white America, DEI-labelled programs have leached into the purview of moderate American voters.
It’s time for DEI to retire and for smart businesses to get back to real world principles and practices which are more broadly and clearly understood by our real-world employees, customers, partners, and investors.
Moving Beyond DEI
As a term, DEI has been hijacked and misrepresented to such an extent that it’s shape-shifted into this catch-all for extreme woke-ism, ripping chunks out of the values that once made America great. And you think that this new emboldened white masculinity is what the world needs right now? We’ve come too far to be fooled by this new Gilded Age. This gilding came from the fool.
We need to move forward, fast. Not with a sense of abandonment, but with a smart savvy understanding that volatile times are also times for opportunity. At time like this, fortune really does favor the bold. Those who choose to bring common human decency back to the leadership of good business.
This is the time to quiet the noise, to filter out the bluster and dopamine for the unexpected, to focus hard, with conviction, to better articulate what decent business practice truly looks and feels like, with absolute clarity, and not a slither of room for ambiguity.
5 Steps to Smarter Business Leadership:
- Don’t Give Them a Target
Retire the use of DEI-labelled anything, and instead embed human respect and dignity into all business functions with measurable accountability. By sunsetting standalone DEI programs, you remove an easy target on your back for cheap, bad-faith political attacks. Don’t give them a target.
And be mindful that some of the reported American businesses “abandoning” DEI programs are not retreating from more inclusive practices but acting smart and savvy, as we need to. Let the conservative media lap up these headlines, because behind the brainrot and noise, smart businesses continue to embed existing initiatives in broader and more subtle ways that neuter political bullying.
- Keep it Clear and Simple
Start by reviewing and refining your company’s vision, mission, and values in plain, straightforward terms. More importantly, ensure your values translate into specific, visible behaviors. Because corporate values are only brought to life by how we behave with each other, our employees, customers, investors and partners as the decent humans we aspire to be.
Two of United Healthcare’s most prominent corporate values are Integrity and Compassion. Behaviors matter.
- Peas and Carrots
Forrest Gump said it best. Building a business that is both ethical and profitable is not an either/or decision—it’s an AND decision.
An abundance of case studies, big and small, exist today, demonstrating the commercial business benefit of embedding diverse and inclusive business practice.
The most authentic brands have no need to virtue-signal. Our human instincts are highly adept at informing us on the true intentions of the companies we work for, partner with, and purchase from. Trust in smart. Drop the jargon.
- Watch out for the Smiling Assassins
Critical to smart business growth is ensuring your boardroom operates with absolute comfort to debate the commercial benefit and need for balance between profit and purpose in all lines of business transparently and assertively. As a capitalist democracy we need your business to do very well from doing good. And your Board need to feel emboldened to drive for the right commercial balance.
Smiling Assassins in management are the greatest threat to this commercial balance. Identify them. Weed them out. Because a Boardroom without one is both a rarity and an enormous business advantage.
- Lead with Legacy
A big ego is a healthy leadership attribute. Harness that energy. We’re at a pivotal moment in American democracy. We need your leader ego to shine.
As your customers and employees watch this political Death Star spin-up, with a growing sense of bewilderment and regret, there is only so much we can expect from the youth movements, currently suiting up in the wings. And as the hacker communities quietly make final checks to their quantum-powered X-Wings, they can only get us so far. We will need the commercial might of strong capitalist business leaders to lead when it matters most.
Let’s show a confused world that human decency still stands tall in American business. And let’s keep making healthy capitalist returns. Because we need you and your businesses fit, healthy, and ready to lead.
The Force is strong.
Let’s go.