Atticus Finch, the patriarch in one of the great post-war novels, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” is a very compelling character.
When we first open the book, the narrator, his daughter, Scout, tells us that Atticus is a bit boring.
A lawyer, a widower, he’s on the older side, doesn’t have a lot of money, and doesn’t seem to do much outside of reading books in the evening. Zzzzzzzz.
But as the book progresses, we see this “old & boring” fellow emerge as a man of very strong character.
He’s a real mensch. The biggest example is his defense of an African-American man in court who the townsfolk all mistakenly think is guilty of rape. In the face of a ton of backlash, he does not change his mind. He does not take it personally. He does not lose his love for the townspeople and does not hold it against them.
In other words, he’s got a lot of character.
So what does this fictional story have to do with us, we hear you ask? A lot, actually, especially these days.
Companies are under attack—not for what they make or do, but for their positions on issues.
Ad Age magazine writes about companies having to increasingly walk on eggshells in case they upset the wrong crowd.
“Consumers care more than ever about brands’ views on political issues. But when brands take stands, they’re also more likely than ever to alienate people, even on issues that once seemed apolitical. […] That leaves brands looking for ways to thread the needle by appearing to take a stand without offending consumers.”
A recent example is the agriculture supply chain, Tractor Supply, who just ended their DEI initiatives after they caught the ire of some of their conservative customers.
It’s broadly accepted that attention to cultivating diverse, fair, and inclusive workplaces is key to building effective and humane organizations. But for many companies, it is a box-ticking exercise that is mostly about risk mitigation.
Often, there is no deeply held conviction and people are pursuing them for reasons that have nothing to do with their stated aim. What’s more, while DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs were meant to address longstanding social issues, the Wall Street Journal reported that consulting firms like McKinsey oversold them, promoting DEI not as a solution to social problems, but also as a way for companies to increase their profits.
But there’s a tension. As WSJ writes, “Doing it because it is the right thing is not the same as doing it because it makes more money.”
The problem is jumping on the bandwagon is easy. Caring is hard. Too many companies chase trends without asking, is this right for us? For our customers? For the world? That’s not strategy, that’s being a copycat.
Of course, all of this leads back to a conversation about culture and its role in things such as DEI, employee engagement, and other organizational characteristics.
People often look to fix bugs in organizations, e.g. gender gaps, racial inequalities, ‘engagement’, etc. What they fail to realize is that these are emergent qualities of complex human systems. Trying to fix these problems directly is like playing whack-a-mole – solve one, and another pops up elsewhere. Most of these issues simply can’t be resolved through the “usual” tools like training programs. The hard truth is that training will fail every time, and DEI training alone is an $8 billion industry. All wasted.
Culture is to companies what character is to Atticus Finch. If, like Atticus, you’ve articulated who you are as a company, where you’re headed and what you believe is right, you will be far more able to stand up to the ever-changing and often arbitrary slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
In the end, our legacies won’t be determined by how well we followed the crowd but like Atticus, for how well we stood for what we believed was right.
