In Which a Homeboy Finds Global Business Diversity in ObamaLand, Or Toward a Color-Blind Economy

 

 "Chicago - View from the Hancock Center Skywalk" by Roncaglia, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A. -- While U.S.-based pundits and politicans debate diversity hiring and racial profiling, the corporate and small-business world is speeding toward global business diversity beyond skin color, beyond gender.  Driven by overseas growth, an immigrant workforce and millions of multi-ethnic consumers, the companies are dramatically transforming the U.S. and global economies.  And no Supreme Court rulings will slow this juggernaut.

 

To find such thriving diversity, I flew not to Dubai or Shanghai, but to the commercial crossroads of ObamaLand.  This blue-collar kid from South-Central L.A. digs this town, its urban grit and big-city soul.  You can take the homeboy out of the ‘hood, but you can’t take the ‘hood out of the boy.  Hardworking entrepreneurs everywhere:  The down-home Latino shopkeepers near Oprah's upscale studio.  The Southside restaurant owner with the heavenly barbecue links.  The muckraking Japanese journalist/media exec fighting power-brokers with his pen.  The marketing director-turned-fishing guide who helped me land huge salmon in Lake Michigan.  It's easy to sing the praises of the world's rising multicultural economy in the global city of Chicago.   ("Los Comales is Open" by Senor Codo, under Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

Even bigger signs of the cross-cultural economy could be found at the packed Marriott hotel on The Magnificent Mile, a short walk from Grant Park where Barack Obama gave his victory speech last fall.  The Conference Board, the business-and-research nonprofit, was hosting a confab on global corporate diversity that showcased diversity executives and gurus from all time zones.  And those diversity chiefs confirmed that many companies -- including Terex, PepsiCo, Microsoft, Royal Dutch Shell, Campbell, Procter & Gamble and others -- are raising their games and embracing global-style diversity at a higher level than ever before.  ("Chicago" by Suvarn, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

Why?  Because a confluence of forces is shaping a multicultural economy unlike any the world has seen.  A multitude of middle-class consumers – immigrants, women, minorities, gays and lesbians, the mature and elderly – boast trillions of dollars in spending power, and they’re creating a global bazaar that never closes.  Futurist John Naisbitt (photo right), author of the Megatrends bestsellers, and other experts predict that cross-border industries will rise to power and soon transcend the influence of governments.  Developing nations and cities continue to grow quickly, and billions of people desperately need decent housing, water, energy, food, jobs.  In the financial markets, $140 trillion in capital was racing around the world before the recession, and the global downturn won’t chill that money forever.  In a post-apartheid world, caste-free capital will seek its greatest return.

 

No one knows this better than blue-chip businesses, often at the vanguard of cultural change in their pursuit of profits.  As the world economy evolves, so does their definition of multiculturalism.  Not mired in a generation-old paradigm of race relations, the most visionary global companies are embracing Global Diversity 2.0.  Rather than charge into foreign lands like corporate conquerors, they're forging real cross-border partnerships and creating true cross-cultural teams.  They're hiring diverse talent from a global immigration workforce that's 3 billion-strong.  They’re developing leading-edge products, services and marketing for global consumers that take into account hundreds of cultural differences.  "Boundaries are no longer geographic and physical,” says Rhodora Palomar-Fresnedi (video clip below), Unilever's global vice president of diversity based in Singapore.  “We’re meeting and greeting and interacting in ways that are very different from the ways we looked at the world before.”

 

 

Companies are promoting a global-style approach that goes beyond U.S. compliance-driven diversity and federally-required hiring data.  Among many other traits, global diversity looks at generations, gender, languages and dialects, religions, ways of thinking, business practices, cultural traditions – even soccer rivalries.  In other countries, the U.S. concept of “minorities” has no meaning or historical context, and American-style diversity does not translate well overseas.   So Terex, an equipment manufacturer with sites in Europe, Russia, Asia and Latin America, came up with a new term:  “non-majority.”  According to Terex diversity executives Amy George and Rueben Stokes, the word is very flexible and can refer to anyone who is not part of the majority at any global site.  Says Stokes:  “In Germany, it could mean a non-German male.  It could mean a non-U.S. candidate for a U.S-based job.  It could mean a person of color, an ethnic minority, a woman.  It could be someone who brings different characteristics to the table.”  ("Terex" by T! Mo, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

Another global diversity leader:  PepsiCo, where a pioneering black executive named Edward Boyd set the foundation for niche marketing to ethnic consumers in the 1940s.  Boyd launched the first African American sales team to help the company break into what was then called the $10 billion Negro market.  Today, business watchers know that the $40 billion PepsiCo is led by Indra Nooyi, a Yale-educated native of India who is transforming the legendary U.S. company “to take full advantage of the new marketplace,” says Ronald Parker, PepsiCo’s global diversity officer.  "We're at the juncture where we need to redefine the meaning of diversity in a much broader context," Parker says. “This is a whole new game.”  Mark Schiller, president of PepsiCo’s Quaker Foods and Snacks, adds:  “It’s not about representation and numbers.  It has to be about leveraging the fact that we live in a very diverse society.”  ("Indra Nooyi - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos 2008" by Remy Steinegger and World Economic Forum, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

For many years, corporate boardrooms of the West have been ruled by what Infosys Chairman Narayana Murthy has called “a tyranny of ignorance and a tyranny of bigotry.”  Even now, some in the business realm believe that leadership skills, creative chops and the work ethos belong only to people who look like them.  Luckily, that’s changing.  More corporations are led by global and cross-cultural executives whose business views and management styles reflect the world:  Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn (photo left).  Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers.  Walmart CEO Michael Duke.  Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger.   Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata.  AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega.   CEMEX CEO Lorenzo Zambrano (photo right).  Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll (photo lower left).  The new breed of business leaders will transform industries for the better.  A generation from now, most U.S. corporations will look vastly different.  Their workplaces will be integrated by hundreds of cultures and ethnicities.  Their dragon’s share of revenue will come from other countries.  Their corporate headquarters will be based in multiple nations.  And their global diversity strategies -- in workforce training, in sales and marketing, in product development, in mergers and acquisitions -- will come as naturally to companies as posting profits.

(Photo credit above left: "Carlos Ghosn - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2008" by Remy Steinegger and World Economic Forum, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

In the new mulatto world, brainpower and innovation know no borders, and the colors of currency will prevail.  Our DNA comes from Africa, our movies from India, our laptops from China.  As more cultures and industries converge, the hybrids and half-bloods of the new business order can no longer be ignored.  We might even see a color-blind economy in our lifetimes.  No doubt, global diversity and cross-cultural companies only will grow in value.  We're all mutts now. 

("Cisco CEO John Chambers at Cisco Live 2009 in San Francisco" by Cisco Pics, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)