Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a Waste of Time

You can measure employee productivity with the labour productivity equation: total output / total input. DEI aims to maximise this by engaging all available resources appropriately.

Labour productivity is primarily driven by investment in capital, technological progress, and human capital development.

Labour productivity measures output per labour hour — for convenience, people are not fungible and become “units of productivity”.

Countries have different productivity measures driven by historical development by the government and others in education and on-the-job training.

Productivity Fallacy

Management is overhead that’s charged with maximising productivity and profitability.

I found the conventional view that people had a fixed level of productivity was incorrect when five people replaced me, customising line printers for EMEA customers, when I left my job at Dataproducts Corporation. This started my journey from engineer to manager as I decided never to become “too expert” at anything that would trap me in a job.

I used this example recently when asked what it takes to become a manager I replied, “Professional laziness”.

Management, according to Mary Parker Follet, is the art of getting things through people — although why we quote a person who died ninety years ago is a mystery to me.

In Gateway Computers, I had teams doing the same engineering task in the USA, Ireland, Malaysia, Japan, and Australia, and labour productivity was 5x different globally.

So, “units of productivity” are dynamic and can be changed dramatically — my initial role was to make my labour productivity thirty times better in Ireland than in the USA. After doing that, I was requested to rinse and repeat in Asia.

Productivity Impact

I used the term “good enough” engineering to drive software quality and productivity by ensuring all functions across the business collaborate effectively. I applied Product Life Cycle Management as the framework to drive global productivity. This saved hundreds of millions of dollars over time.

Implicitly or explicitly, I demanded that 10% of the savings be used for team development. This ensured accelerated productivity by reducing resistance to change by people impacted by automation and process change.

This is and was my approach to maximising the productivity of my teams.

It wasn't called Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) then — but that's what it was.

Software Engineering and IT are regarded by Senior managers in the same way as Human Resources — a necessary evil but not productive in the same manner as a conventional capital investment in infrastructure.

Together with HR, my team was always in the “out-group”.

To reduce resistance from traditional management, I needed to hide productivity due to DEI behind technology and process change — a pragmatic application of my organisation’s behaviour training.

I never stopped doing things my way because productivity improvement gave me insurance against failure.

Why is DEI considered a “waste of time”?

DEI can be a bit like “Time Management” or “Quality Management” in that the processes and practices often become an end in themselves rather than a means to an end.

DEI resistance is exacerbated by being considered insultingly, to be “Woke”, despite the fact that woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”.

This is not surprising as most programs are driven by HR and aim to maximise the inclusion of minority groups by eliminating perceived prejudice — thereby making the best use of available human capital.

Unfortunately, it can become an end in itself and is often perceived to be a barrier to productivity. CFOs, when looking to reduce costs, eliminate costs that do not produce direct value; hence, DEI teams are first up against the wall when retrenchment happens.

Managers because they are distracted by the busyness of business have no capacity to integrate DEI into their responsibilities.

This could be prevented if DEI was seen to add measurable value and be integral to maximising productivity.

How Can DEI be used to maximise productivity?

You get what you reward is empirically proven, as is the 80:20 rule, which has become a management heuristic to excuse poor behaviour and low productivity.

This article assumes you have already prioritised what you plan to do to drive productivity, so here are a few interventions that will enable you to achieve your objectives.

The first thing is to stop doing what is unproductive and wasteful. Last night I had this discussion about a team where 20 of the 100 staff did 80% of the work — the Pareto Principle again. Managers were frustrated as 100% of their time was spent trying to motivate unproductive staff who had been rewarded for doing nothing for years.

The solution is to have them manage themselves out of the business or into the business by becoming part of the productive group. The term “topgrading” is perceived to be pejorative but I believe this is appropriate as unproductive people don't come to work with the aim of being unproductive but do so because they have been given permission to be so.

Managers are already frustrated by a top-down approach of driving accountability which fails so I recommend they start with a one-hour exercise for every employee including themselves, of identifying every working hour in the past week as either productive, unproductive, or no work allocated.

Then everyone's results are shared — the 20% who are deemed productive rapidly call out their unproductive peers who perceive themselves to be productive — an example of the Dunning Kruger effect in action.

Any of you who have used a self-appraisal performance tool will have noted the same — the result after peer correction and appropriate management intervention is a Normal Curve of productivity.

Hence instead of the manager attempting to move the mountain of 80% unproductive staff, there is help from the 20% who will insist everyone’s performance is reported accurately. Typically 50% of the unproductive group drink the Kool-aid and become more productive and of the remainder, half will leave voluntarily and the rest can be subject to due process. Regardless productivity doubles and management effort halves — thereby doubling management productivity.

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

But that's not DEI surely?

Yes, it is.

DEI aims to maximise productivity by including in the productive pool of resources those who felt they were excluded. It takes management time and effort to tailor roles to match competence and capabilities. If managers are busy managing the unmanageable this cannot happen.

Often DEI fails due to tokenism due to management capacity — topgrading eliminates the capacity problem and drives bottom-line value and productivity.

The train is rolling down the tracks.

Now that you have the capacity to manage your team you can progress to roll out other appropriate DEI interventions. Managers become leaders and trust and respect become mutual.

I know this works because my teams have made my successes possible. Because of incredible productivity gains, I have been protected when I screwed up — insurance.