December 1, 2020
By Larry Dunivan, Forbes
For CEOs in 2020, leadership has become only more complex. A pandemic, major cultural unrest, vast political differences across the populace and an economic crisis unlike any other we’ve seen in our lifetimes make the work of leading more difficult than ever.
While all these have lasting implications on companies, I believe the need to respond to the cultural changes as a result of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, along with the Black Lives Matter movement, is perhaps the most urgent.
High-functioning companies in 2020 must have an effective set of cultural, organizational and operational norms that address the diversity and inclusion considerations necessary to be a world-class organization.
While effective D&I strategies most definitely “start at the top,” they do not end there. When I joined my company 16 months ago as its CEO, I inherited a strong D&I employee resource group and a leadership team who supported it, but most would say that it was only marginally effective at moving the needle on the metrics that matter.