50
Dick Kovacevich
President and CEO, Wells Fargo
Dennis Nally
U.S. Senior Partner
and Chairman, PwC
one, as a way of ensuring that I am meeting the talent coming up the
pipeline and motivating my colleagues to do the same.”
RYAN: “I learned very early in my career that to have a successful team,
all of the players must contribute. So when I joined Prudential Financial,
diversity considerations were already part of my management approach.
Today at Prudential, diversity is incorporated into the company’s business
strategies, ensuring that our products and services increasingly reflect the
needs of our diverse marketplace. All of our employees contribute to these
strategies by bringing their unique insights and perspectives to their roles at
the company. In the end, Prudential is a stronger company because employees are encouraged to embrace and share their unique cultural attributes.”
Q. How do you keep white males engaged in the
diversity debate?
NALLY: “First, by making clear to them that our diversity efforts are
also targeted at the issues of people we hire from nontraditional academic
backgrounds and industries, and other categories of employees that are not
defined by gender, sexual orientation or racial-group membership.
Secondly, we emphasize that diversity excellence will be achieved when the
only thing that impacts everyone in the organization is how good a person
is at what they do, and that includes our white-male partners and staff. At
some point, most white males have been ‘the only something’—the southerner in the room, the lone graduate of a certain school, etc. So, the key
is getting them to connect emotionally to that time in their life.”
KOVACEVICH: “At Wells Fargo, diversity isn’t just about gender, ethnicity, national origin, socioeconomic background, age or other traits.
When we talk to our team members about diversity, we describe it as just
another word for ‘creativity,’ for ‘fresh thinking,’ for ‘different perspectives,’ for ‘intellectual capital.’ Each of us have our own personal story on
diversity—we grew up in different towns, have different educations, have
different life experiences than the person sitting next to us.”
JONES: “One way is by continuing to educate our people on the topic,
so they understand that diversity is about everyone—not about everyone
else. For example, over the past few years, everyone at the manager level
and above attended mandatory Inclusiveness Awareness Workshops. We
also know that what gets measured gets done. Therefore, we require each
partner, principal, executive director and director to set an annual inclusiveness goal. Ernst & Young also uses an annual balanced scorecard and
semi-annual ‘snapshot’ to continue to hold leaders accountable.”
ANAND: “At Sodexho, we have clearly communicated the business case
for diversity and inclusion. Showing the link between increasing diversity
and inclusion to the growth of our business demonstrates the increase in
opportunities for everyone at Sodexho, not just women and minorities.
Our diversity councils and employee-network groups engage all managers,
including white males. And our Champions of Diversity internal awards
initiative recognizes those employees who have gone above and beyond to
