In this post, I plan to explain the three world views of Machiavelli, Grotian, and Kant; how their world views can help you choose your diversity and inclusion management strategy; and how their world views can lead to a nice paycheck in your bank account.
What are the three world views you mention?
Machiavelli’s world view is that of a pessimist who believes power is crucial. Grotian’s world view is pragmatic and focuses on collaboration. Kant’s worldview is optimistic and sees legal principles as vital.
Why are Machiavelli’s, Grotian’s, and Kant’s world views relevant to managing diversity and inclusion?
The reason why Machiavelli, Grotian, and Kant are relevant to managing diversity and inclusion is because they each represent a way of seeing the field and provide distinct ways of managing it.
What are 3 ways of managing diversity and inclusion?
- If you asked Machiavelli how to manage diversity and inclusion in a business setting, he would say something along the lines of, “only focus and invest on diversity and inclusion if it helps achieve total domination, power, and success.” In the case that diversity and inclusion does help provide ultimate power and success (which it does), Machiavelli would do what it took to bring in the best diverse talent and he would make sure their inclusion was strategic. Machiavelli’s activities could include: poaching diverse talent from allies and competitors, weakening the competition, and poaching the best inclusion strategics and leaders to leverage the diverse talent to its limit. Machiavelli would not stop until he was #1 in diversity and inclusion because that would bring him power and success.
- If you asked Grotian how to manage diversity and inclusion in a business setting, he would say something along the lines of, “of course, let’s focus and invest on diversity and inclusion. The success of our world depends on the inclusion of diversity as a community.” Grotian would want to identify allies and co-opetition to learn the best practices of investing in diversity and inclusion. Grotian would then go to them and band an organization to individually and cohesively succeed together in a way that it would be beneficial to individuals, to allies, and to all. Grotian activities could include: creating a United Nations type collective that can both work, learn, and grow together. Grotian would be happiest when we could all sit at the table and state that we have achieved our mutual goal of including diversity and achieving individual and collective success.
- If you asked Kant how to manage diversity and inclusion in a business setting, he would say something along the lines of, “let’s make sure we honor all diversity and inclusion regulations, which means it’s a priority, and make some of our own internally - and then make sure we all follow them.” Kant would want to analyze the entire diversity and inclusion ecosystem and the business on a legal level, understand risk management, and write out cross business policies that help drive a business that is legally in-line with the government and that has proactively created complementary policies to help aid in the inclusion of diversity within the organization. Kant’s activities could include: doing research on the guidelines over diversity and inclusion, affirmative action, corporate social responsibility, and also writing policies.
What are 3 ways you can think about diversity and get paid?
You may be wondering, “that’s great, but how can this help me get paid?” Depending on your worldview here is how you can get paid:
- For those of you who have a Machiavellian worldview: Become the singular diversity and inclusion superpower at all costs; then strategize, and execute to extract the earnings. Part of the strategy is unilaterally finding what diverse group is worth including and leveraging for success. Knowing women are over half the population, that companies with the greatest gender diversity outperform their peers by 15%, and that women hold 70-80% of buying power, the Machiavellian approach would be to hire the top female talent in the world and then reap the financial rewards when gender diversity and inclusion is achieved - earn money from an increase of the women magic, innovation & productivity and savings in retention & absenteeism.
- For those of you who have a Grotian worldview: Join or create a collective of diversity and inclusion superpowers; then strategize, and execute for mutual success in leveraging diversity and inclusion for all involved parties: people, organizations, and companies. Women would be one diversity group considered, but every diverse group would be included in the Grotian plan. In the situation where success of diversity and inclusion is achieved, earn money from an increase of innovation & productivity and savings in retention & absenteeism.
- For those of you who have a Kant worldview: Obey government diversity and inclusion regulations and avoid fees; Make policies that prevent your business from losing money on diversity retention, promotion, and development; then, earn a bonus.
Bottom line is: diversity pays and you have options on how to get your paycheck. You can choose between the Machiavelli - get out of my way - approach; the Grotius - let’s do this together - approach; the Kant - let’s make sure our policies are in order - approach; and every other option in between.
About the author: Lolita Taub is a UN Women’s Empower Women Global Champion for Women’s Economic Empowerment. For her term, Taub has committed to raise awareness on the topic of diversity & inclusion through a special 6 post blog series.