New Pattern

Yes, it actually does matter

It’s 2019 and people still treat diversity building in their organization as a checking-the-box exercise. If you are still applying the Rooney Rule or saying things like “we need to fill our quota,” you’re getting it all wrong.

What do I mean by diversity? I’m not just talking about the obvious gender and ethnic diversity, I’m also referring to diversity of thought that is born out of having different experiences: education, work experiences and life experiences.

The data is compounding showing that diversity yields better performance and better innovation. From the board level to workforce composition, the yields are higher and challenging thought yields higher performance and more novel outputs.

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Kauffman Foundation, SURGE, Blink, Global Entrepreneurship Network (Startup Genome), among others all offer individual rankings for the entrepreneurial ecosystems across various regions. Each includes a measure of the density of either high-growth companies or mature ones. The fact is both are important indicators that can also influence another metric — the quality and strength of the workforce.

Given that workers currently spend a median of 4.6 years at a given job (and for ages 25-34 only 3.2 years), in deciding to relocate for a specific opportunity, people often look at what their next jobs may may be within that market. A tipping point occurs for many growing ecosystems such as Chicago and Austin such that there are so many opportunities that attracting talent becomes easier and the population growth accelerates. These opportunities need not only be within startups but often include more mature businesses as well. The transference of work talent spills over in both directions and they catalyze each other.

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The tech boom of the 1990s was largely driven by “business guys” with MBAs or career experience as well as entrepreneurs that crossed over to tech from unrelated industries such as real estate and consumer packaged goods. As the tech boom euphoria rose, venture capital and angel investors showered these business types with capital based on their pedigrees and beautifully-designed business proposals rather than the merit of their innovations in meeting customers’ needs.

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The leaky tech pipeline issue has been well documented and largely acknowledged by the industry. As various companies struggle with how to attract more women and minorities in their hiring process and how to train their personnel in “tolerance” (please don’t call it this!), I’d propose that we examine this problem through the lens of growth hacking as I think there is much to be learned from this approach. In essence, the problem that growth hackers are trying to solve is identical: how do you attract and keep people using your product? The question that executives at tech companies ask is similar: how do you attract and maintain a diverse workforce?

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