Claudia on Hiring Quotas

Quotas are interesting.

I prefer to have people think about targets, but the reality is we do what we measure. Whether it's business results, or whatever, we do what we measure. The fact that there's so many underrepresented minorities when you look at the top of corporations and board representation is a thing that does need to be addressed.

Sadly you know we as corporate folks should be behaving in our own enlightened self-interest because all the research shows that when you have diversity on the board, when you have diversity in senior management, your company performs better. Right?  So for our shareholders , for our employees,  for the clients we serve, it's a better thing for for us to have diversity in in leadership whether it's board leadership or senior executive leadership.

Quotas to me are controversial in that there there's a legal requirement, but you know targets are things that we measure and hold people accountable for. You can do that by saying here's IBM they have good representation on their board or here's company ABC and they don't, and look at the performance. IBM is performing better. There are lots of ways to hold corporations accountable just by publishing their diversity, or lack thereof, without a a legal quota.

We all ought to be acting in the corporate world in our enlightened self-interest, it's just hard to to change the inertia, so sometimes things like this that at least open the conversation help to change that inertia.