Books and their Covers
More than 20 years ago, I was retained by a large, conservative, family-owned Consumer Products manufacturer to recruit a new Vice President of Marketing for their largest division. It was a plum assignment for young consultant and I was as proud of winning it as I was nervous about executing it successfully. My client, the company’s garrulous, ego-led Chief Marketing Officer had given me a list of adjectives as long as my arm against which the candidate slate would have to be assessed, reminding me emphatically as we prepared to finish the briefing session that he wanted “both the skill sets described and the right fit [emphasis mine] with the company’s culture and existing team”.
My colleagues and I diligently went to market with the opportunity, developed a slate of seemingly top-tier executives from leading Consumer Products companies, and hit the road to begin interviewing. Among the candidates I was most excited to meet was a high-flying Marketing Director from Procter & Gamble, then as now arguably one of the best training grounds in marketing. The candidate - - let’s call him Rick - - looked perfect on paper: big businesses, plenty of financial achievement, rapid promotions throughout his career, and a reputation for being driven and confident. As we waited for him to arrive for our interview, having met a great many “Proctoids” over the years, I formed a mental picture of Rick - - well-educated, well-spoken, well-heeled.
As it turns out, Rick was all of those things but when he first walked through the door and (I admit sheepishly) for a good while after, my colleagues and I could barely hear the highly impressive and relevant things that Rick was saying. All we could think about and all we could focus on was the 8 inches of pony tail that were hanging down Rick’s back.
In today’s more permissive environment, long hair on a man is a less unusual thing than it was then, but even now it is a grooming decision with consequences. Once we recovered ourselves and began to listen to Rick, we realized that for him, the pony tail was a way of standing out from the sea of well-educated, well-spoken, well-heeled colleagues that surrounded him at P&G. “Many have warned me about the perils of non-conformity at P&G,” said Rick, “But I have found that while my pony tail is routinely a matter of discussion when I attend a meeting with my superiors, they quite quickly decide that it marks me as a maverick, an innovator, and a risk-taker.”
In today’s business environment, the opportunity for non-conformity in matters of personal grooming as well as attire is far wider than it was when I first met Rick. “Business casual” is the dress code of most companies, even those in the Fortune or FTSE 100. Bankers have (mostly) abandoned their white shirts and Hermes ties. More and more management consultants have grown beards. Sandals and backpacks seem as common in the office as high heels and designer bags. The corporate “uniform” is a vanishing species and individual executives are left to decide for themselves which outer appearance they will present to their colleagues, clients/customers, and the world.
Such a decision is both more difficult and more important than it might appear at first blush. For all the apparent abandonment of “rules” around grooming and attire, the reality is that we all continue to make judgements, at least initially, on the basis of the external presentation of the person in front of us. We all know the adage, “don’t judge a book by its cover”, and yet we all continue to do just that on most occasions, automatically classifying other people on the basis of how they look, or what they weigh, or how they speak, or what they wear, or how they are groomed. In this world of automatic judgements, says The Economist (September 27, 2014, “The Look of a Leader”), “The typical chief executive is more than six feet tall, has a deep voice, a good posture, a touch of grey in his thick, lustrous hair, and, for his age, a fit body”, while “overweight people - - women especially - - are judged incapable of controlling themselves, let alone others.”
Even in matters as esoteric as clothing, these automatic judgements also have a tendency to influence the views we form of each other. Although the late Steve Jobs may have done wonders for the black turtleneck, and while most companies have in fact eliminated their requirement for suits, skirts and the like, hiring managers and other decision-makers still form opinions, reach conclusions, and make decisions all while being influenced by the cues provided by attire, comportment, accent, and the like. As human beings, we gravitate toward the familiar, the recognized, and those “like us”. Carlos Ghosn, the legendary, simultaneous CEO of both Nissan and Renault, explains it this way, “Reality is perceived through differences and differences are at the heart of diversity. But despite this, we like commonality: people who look like us, think like us, speak like us. We learn from diversity, but we are comforted by commonality.”
I am not focusing here on the “big” aspects of diversity - - gender, race, nationality, etc. - - but on the more subtle elements. For in addition to creating a workplace inclusive of people of every stripe and origin, we ought also to be aiming for a diversity of thought in our organizations. As Selena Rezvani writes, “In some industries that are known for being insular – think law or high-tech companies – seeking out talent with different thinking and problem solving backgrounds is critical….Diverse thinkers help guard against ‘groupthink’, that is, too much blind agreement internally” (Forbes, February 3, 2015, “Five Trends in Diversity”). Put another way, if we all think alike, approach problems in the same way, and reason the same conclusions, it seems likely that the “flash of insight” required for a breakthrough is unlikely to occur.
As Oscar Wilde once wrote, “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.” Sadly, learning how to disengage these “automatic” judgements of ours is not easy, as they are often rooted in stereotypes we have been seeing and having reinforced all our lives. But if we begin to take Mr. Ghosn’s premise to heart and, when we encounter those “not like us”, teach ourselves to recognize the situation as an opportunity for learning (and simultaneously if we recognize that the encounter may, in some ways, pull us out of our comfort zones), we will have made an important start.
Heather Bussing, the well-known employment attorney, put it this way (HR Examiner, March 5, 2012, “Hiring for Diversity”), “The traditional approach to [hiring for diversity] has been to presume that you should treat everyone equally and exactly the same…….[but] equal does not mean the same. 3+4 = 2+5. Both sides of this equation equal 7. Each piece of the equation is made up of positive, whole, numbers. But 3 is not 5.” Instead of developing a complex set of policies or rules, says Bussing, simply “look at each candidate as a person. Hire for skills, yes, but focus as well on personality, attitude, curiosity, sense of humor and creativity.”
Bussing’s point is a profound one. If we still our inward judgmental voices when we encounter someone new and instead prepare to learn something from the “stranger” opposite us, we will almost certainly discover aspects of his/her true personality, attitude and values that our knee-jerk judgements would have precluded us from seeing. In this way, we not only open ourselves to learning a great deal more than we would have in an environment made up only of clones of ourselves but we also create the possibility for our organizations to do so. With a more diverse, “colorful” workforce, we are almost certain to obtain better, richer thinking, divergent perspectives on problem-solving, and ultimately more powerful outcomes.
Despite our initial reservations about Rick and his ponytail, my team and I were ultimately persuaded by his evident passion, ability, and achievements. Without ever speaking to it directly, Rick helped us see that his pony tail - - however much it made him stand out at P&G - - was simply a reflection of the innovative, unusual, slightly off-beat personality within. Beating back our own first instincts, we did present Rick to our conservative client (who liked the candidate but was worried sick about the pony tail) and championed his candidacy with a partiality and an energy we normally sought to avoid. Rick’s self-awareness and his willingness to stand apart from the crowd on occasion had won us over. The pony tail came to symbolize for us Rick’s most attractive qualities and, ultimately they were what won him the VP Marketing role with our client, pony tail and all.
Years later, I confess that I was initially disappointed when I heard that Rick had cut if off. When I emailed Rick to ask him why he had done it, he replied with a scanned headline from a glossy men’s magazine: “This Season’s Hot Trend: Pony Tails for Men.” I immediately understood.
Chris van Someren