The Chicken and the Egg

Last week I was doing some catch up reading on some back issues of HR Reporter when an article caught my eye and almost immediately it caused me to ask myself a question that I have been pondering since. The article was on the link between a good business culture and real business success. It reported that companies who were perceived, by outsiders to have the best culture were the most successful in Canada.

My question though was which of those come first? The article was at the very least trying to imply that culture comes first, that creating a positive, business culture is one of the things that leads to success. I think there is something to that but in reality I'm not sure that you can breed a positive culture without having success first.

We'd all like to think that while the culture of a business could be separated from the level of success, or lack thereof, that a business has, the reality is it cannot. When times are good employees are going to reflect this and so will the general business atmosphere and culture meanwhile when times are bad the inverse is equally true. Everybody would prefer to work for a “winner” and nobody wants to work in an environment where they are worried about the future, the viability of the company and their job security.

At the same time though it's important to recognize that cultures are not fixed forever. If your business is going through a downturn you are not “doomed” to a downward spiral of negative environment producing poor results. Every business will have its ups and downs and businesses do adapt and change all the time.

Now applying this to the diversity space, how does a company become diverse? Do you start by adding diverse candidates or do you need to incorporate diversity into your business culture first?

No real question here that you need diverse candidates, without making hires that reflect your commitment to diversity your plans are hollow but... if your business culture doesn't embrace diversity will top diverse talents stay with your organization?

Which all leads to the question of how you are supposed to incorporate diversity into a culture if you don't have any (or much) diversity yet. As my colleague John wrote earlier in the week organizations that are successful with diversity know that both a top-down and bottom-up strategy is needed and I think the same applies here. If you want a diverse culture you need to bring in diverse candidates of course, but you can't overlook making sure your culture reflects the diversity of where you really want to go.