The Firm and the Disaster of Lack of Diversity
Sometimes I get a chance to combine my professional and personal passions, and this blog post is one of them! I’m a huge proponent of the business case for DE&I (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) policies, and in my spare time I love to dive into the royal family gossip. Right now the royal family has made front-page news with a cautionary tale about the massive business costs that result from underinvesting in DE&I training and policy implementation, as well as a lack of diverse voices in senior leadership.
Some background for those not tuned in to this saga like I (always!) am: Prince William and Kate Cambridge have been touring Belize, Jamaica and The Bahamas in the past week as part of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebration, which marks her 70th year on the throne. The tour, meant as a “charm offensive”, has succeeded in being offensive to many but few have been charmed, has amounted to nothing short of a PR disaster for the royal family as an institution.
The tour begun with a cancelled event due to a protest, there were continuous demonstrations throughout the week demanding apologies and reparations for slavery, with it all coming to a head with the Jamaican Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, telling Prince William in front of the cameras that Jamaica was ‘moving on’ to become a republic. During this tour people within three countries of the commonwealth have been rejecting, criticizing, and calling-out the colonial legacies of slavery and theft which built the wealth of the British monarchy.
In this context, events and photo-ops which might have otherwise looked okay (read: not good to begin with) are now embarrassingly bad as they are being used as examples of the colonialism of the British monarchy, raising questions of the institution’s relevance and even its survival. This was not the purpose of this tour, in fact the tour has done the opposite of what it was supposed to do and that failure can be traced back to the the lack of diversity in senior palace staff and advisors.
The British royal family, also called ‘The Firm’, is a 28 billion dollar family business with multiple levels of management and staff, which like many older businesses is at risk of collapsing into irrelevancy if it does not adapt to modern realities. How is it possible that such a massive organization can make such bumbling mistakes? These photo-ops are traps of their own making, how was this not foreseen? And how, once it started to unfold, was this organization unable to adapt?
This failed PR campaign of a tour is clear evidence of what a lack of diversity in senior management does to a company through increased risks and lost opportunities. Lack of racial diversity has led to these very unfortunate (in the very least) and colonial imagery of William and Kate.
Prince William and Catherine the Duchess of Cambridge shaking hands with children in Trench Town, Jamaica, through a wired fence, courtesy of The New York Times
Prince William and Catherine the Duchess of Cambridge during a military Parade in Jamaica courtesy of Town&Country Magazine
A lack of trusted and influential advisors and senior palace personnel who are both well-versed in anti-oppressive theory and have lived experiences of the oppression felt by white supremacy has led to questionable and tone-deaf event after event on this tour. The above photo which was part of a military parade in Jamaica and was meant to evoke memories of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Jamaica in 1953 and pay tribute to her reign, was ill-conceived and executed particularly in light of everything that unfolded prior to this event. Going ahead with it encapsulates the extent of the lack of understanding that both the Cambridges and their staff had on why they were being protested. These photos make Prince William’s speech of ‘slavery stains our history’ even more hollow. If The Firm had more racial diversity in their senior management/courtiers, it is highly unlikely that this tour would have unfolded the way it did, but we know too well of what they do with their own racialized members. A racially diverse group of advisors with power would have pulled this event considering its optics in the current climate and would have adapted it in ways that would still pay tribute to both the Jamaican military and the Queen, without harkening back to a time of racial superiority.
It is not enough to simply have diversity in one’s employees or in token mid-level leadership positions. Employees have limited power in bringing about cultural change within a workplace, since culture change is led by the most senior leadership. It is the senior management who holds more power and can speak, instill change, and drive a point home due to that power and status in the company. If the leadership group is not diverse, not only will those voices not be heard but also there will be no one there to advise and guide others in navigating such situations.
This is why affirmative action or equity hiring practices are not ‘charity’. They are recognition of people’s previously unacknowledged qualifications. Diversity must exist alongside power and the ability to bring about change and influence, otherwise the issues that are raised fall on deaf ears because those with power will choose to ignore them and revert back to the status quo, often at their own peril.
