welcome to new beginnings with karen dell and i am so thrilled to have joining me once again anthony lopez who is founder and managing director of l and l associates and the former president of ancyl healthcare anthony welcome to new beginnings aaron happy new years good to be back with you again and we did this just about in your go exactly exactly i do remember you were in subzero temperatures outside the studio and we had we did two shows that were really really excellent on diversity and inclusion and your legacy leadership book what i wanted to have you back because you've been doing some thinking around diversity and inclusion and you've developed the top ten so tell us a little bit about your thoughts around that corporations creating a chief diversity officer and the work done by many companies to essentially improve the process around diversity which back then didn't even have some of the better ones of course you don't find them johnson and johnson because i was there for eighteen years and i think jane jane is one of the pillars of companies that have done well with diversity and inclusion and have really integrated into their culture as an organization but i've also seen over the past you know twenty five years that the progress has been made in a glacial pace in many cases and in some cases we've seen actually steps backward and sore started to people of color men and you know women people of color arm those executive teams but if you look men seems like it's sort of reverted a little bit but i would agree i go to a number of organizations and there's been retrenchment i would agree with specifically composed less than three percent are board seats and those numbers are not changing even with the latest movements and emphasis on putting more women on boards and promoting more men and women into the executive ranks them the members are just so far behind they're really not actually our best and often if we continue with the peace there we're going it's going to take another twenty or thirty or forty years before we get to the parity and it's not good it's about parity specifically it's not just that it's about the fairness of the number it's about the power having to diversity at all levels of organization that really enable a company to be more effective and get better results because we all know that the companies that have greater diversity outpaced the results of those and don't absolutely absolutely and i just want to add something because i  trend that they're saying is that term limits are extending what's happening is those who are on boards who are mostly male mostly most people recruit people like themselves and sure they do go outside and engage a search for then it's for someone who they're looking for someone who  is either already on a board and so you know it's kind of circulating the same thing people which was very insightful very insightful there and that and i've attended meetings recently as a member of the latino corporate directors association which is how are competing in national congress just a few months ago and we had some of these you know executive firms that focus on or recruiting as a part of the process come and then present some of the latest data is not just dynamic that you mention about the extension of terms which is ironic because they're already long enough but but but there's also the additional dynamic that they're actually less more seats it's really you know your reputation and other things and maybe even a bit of work being in the right place at the time to lend you the opportunity to be on board and the final day damn it since we're trying to cover all the bases on it is that getting their first born is the hardest after they keep calling and i redirect all of it because you kind of already passed the filter that you know that you are all five or executive and they keep going back to the same well so that's what we have there are people who are sitting on two or three in four or five boards which which doesn't quite add to the diversity that we probably need or want all of that said that also leads us to say well maybe there are other ways to increase diversity for example you have a lot of companies that amount is that you want to be if you're targeting that fortune one thousand you're really talking about a board that half a billion to a billion right  below that maybe you get you know five hundred million or or below now those are huge numbers but in today's economy you know not really that that was very insightful for mean to to learn that but to your point you know nonprofit board service is really the stepping stone to for profit board service and to your point you don't have to go to the one thousands there are many many companies domestically as well as internationally that are looking for very qualified individuals who can bring a level of experience to a board but but as you said this isn't all about boards but it's certainly you know where we started the conversation the conversation really that conversation and to take greater action faster to move things are up the spectrum a little bit more dramatically then and they move before and so i can are sort of thinking about when i'm speaking to two colleagues when i speaking on stage on leadership topics and of course as a leader having diversity of inclusion front of mind is one of the strategic imperatives that has to be you want to research and you compares because again the data are clear that if you have a diverse organization they're going to do better the results will be better so it's not a it's not a sort of a nice thing to do it's a smart leadership business thing to do and yet it doesn't seem to get the traction and as it doesn't always stay on the table it sort of falls back or gets delegated onto the chief diversity officer or the h r officer or it's sort of land someplace else and it doesn't stay on the radar always the leaders of your musician become something they don't think about as often as they should and before you share you know your tips let's talk a little bit about why we think that is delegated you know well look elite leaders haven't run a large global company with thousands of employees as i mentioned to you last time we spoke  traveling three hundred thousand plus miles per year many priorities you know in which shareholders sometimes dealing with investors doing them in a we're i mean all the complexities of running a corporation there's a lot there's a lot still so sure as a leader you clearly must select the things they you focus on more specifically and things that you don't hate who to your colleagues and to your teams i'm not suggesting that leaders like c e o s and companies don't think of diversity they often do and they often speak on i just don't know that permeates down to a brick to becoming a to do and a measured to do with the same equal force in the same equal weight perhaps that the other metrics that some of the leaders in the organization have under armed or p p i for that year so that may be one reason the other reason is that macro economics of the world sometimes just sort of overcome that you know it's easy to cut things when times are tight like trainee travel these are things that you can quite easily because you've got a picture expenses times  leaders of the organization but just rather something they must do or perception reasons or whatever other reasons then it might fall into that category of you know it's not as important when times are tight let me focus on the wheel business drivers when it really should be part of the real business drivers because it has delivers real business results and that's that's the ironic part of this right there isn't probably a leader who are at least publicly not admit that they understand the data the data that the data are very clear that they intuitively understand that having greater diversity of all levels of all types of true diversity of thought that comes with true diversity of the organization but i don't want to judge too harshly because i think back to when i was running at full health care and care fusion before that and yes the person it was because i cared deeply about it it was kind of it was always there but i also can confess that it wasn't always front of mind in every business discussion you know yes we made sure we had diverse lates and that sort of thing but was ever really really really driving it as hard as i should have all the time probably now probably not just just sort of that you have of other pressure of other things that become important so i don't want to judge my colleagues in leaders who are out there trying to do a good job and bring corporations were very busy with a lot the last time i spoke to an audience where the subject was diversity inclusion they had asked me for my my thoughts on i want to be a bit provocative when i made a statement simply because i had a lot of folks in the audience his job was our corporations whether they were cheap diversity officers and managers and mercy or somehow they were involved h r people folks like that who are involved with the process and who i'm she care deeply about it and so i want to say things like you know we we are is a really specific difference between recruiting someone by going to the right schools where they're with diverse talent is paying as much money as you can to take them away from somebody else is going to pay more money and i can we crew the town that's actually not that hard i can go get them and companies i say don't know whether ad they're just they've got the head of the same or absolutely so we can go get them and we can go recruit them into the organization terrific but if we don't have the culture of the organization that receives them enable them coaches them makes them feel welcome challenges them all those other things that we have to do with all employees we've got most of race gender and color and cre have to go good it doesn't have to let them know you're here but your reputation is going to help as well in prison it's it precedes the show the recruiting process sure you're going to be that organization where people say that's where you want to go and we have metrics for that where we have companies that are listed as the best the versity companies to work for him again jane jane companies like that always make it to the top of the list there's a reason for that because they're doing things to make themselves a trying to but should use mention you want to attract them and bring them in and you don't want to focus on retaining them no i want to focus on developing them and challenging and i focus on developing them and challenging them and promoting them when appropriate  then they're going to step right not all but i'm going to increase my retention by being the type of organization and so i just wanted the leaders that i was speaking to to focus on the right element of their strategy don't just focus on their recruiting element of the strategy you really that's useless unless you have a really good attractive magnets and bring the men and one keep don't focus on on retaining them by giving them more money because again that's  only going to keep them for a short period time until somebody else is more money you have to challenge them develop them or we're not particularly millennium we know they want to come in and they want to feel useful and value you know nurture groom th i think most people these days particularly with social media and all kinds of other things we do are where the versity as an issue where do we understand some of the dynamics that go with it what we need to be driving is inclusion  it's not just good enough to drive the awareness that i have black and white engage in lesbian and straight great that's good education and how do i include those and how do i learn to get the best out of those  forth one is don't promote diversity what you mean don't promote diversity no i don't want to get promoted because i'm a puerto rican or not you know nobody wants to get promoted because of that version of them i want a level playing field but i want an equal opportunity to equal opportunity to demonstrate performance results and metrics and then i want to be competing equally for those opportunities so your get is not that we are not ma sure that it is happening it's not that we are not you know look at the metrics and make sure that african americans and women and you know as an agency and so forth are getting promoted to the same rate because you have to still make sure temping absolutely don't promote based on some courses promote based on some it must be this because we don't have one of those create the level playing where you really have been clear on what you month when as mom and gay lesbian i am all for those and nobody likes a party more than me but it's not about the court right it's not about just the celebration it's not just about the grea food in the music and the and the diversity of the culture it's beautiful to experience that and that's a great thing to do but you really have to respect the mercy not just celebrate you really need to respect that if you just celebrated but you right that's what i've been in so i was number five number six and i'm reading a little bit on my right cheek list here you don't measure diversity numbers right you don't just measure how many african americans we have how many hispanics that we have how many women wouldn't it be easy trail easy to measure are we do re better financial as an organization and maybe not just financial but are we getting better recruiting are we getting better retention how we get abetting are we getting better at all  diversity of course but every reader of the organization ought to be a champion of diversity not the v p of h r and so every time there's a presentation on diversity if it's a v p richards getting up and putting on the slide deck that very same point that you're making was made that diversity is something that every individual has a responsibility for just as you talk about the spirit and letter they didn't say this but this is what it came to mind to me you know we talk about the spirit in the letter of the law in terms of how to you know be ethical i'm sure j n j had that with the credo sure you know every every it's not that it's not already there most organizations particularly the larger ones the respective long you know the big multinationals yeah they they they have diversity on the radar the question is are we truly living ye we're not we shouldn't be going back particularly when our economy is global and you know we have better access and better technology and better  different countries and time zones and all of that in that kind of leads the my number eight by my number eight is it's not about having a diverse workforce that's actually not that difficult particularly if you if you think about how the kind of individuals are coming into the workforce now right the younger generation has come into the workforce now they're very diverse there are common in every respect because of the nature of our country has evolved it's  tell us because we only have a few minutes second ok if so what is your number eight so the number eight is about having to diversity at all levels of the organization it's not good at the airport out of employees and you know we have a lot of diversity it would not represented at the very senior or really the most i think it gets a little smiles for my colleagues and that is the versity is not exclusive to whites because every time we talk about diversity the white man feels excluded yes they've not been a part of that process and they must be because white is a color absolutely so so diversity is not exclusive of white it's inclusive truly of all yeah attempt that's perfect thank you i'm glad we were able to squeeze those in because we're out of time what's past i know it was very fast and you know it's always a pleasure to have you on the show and i thank you for sharing your thoughts you're truly a fought leader and diversity and inclusion and i thank our listeners for tuning in to new beginnings with karen de