The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

22 MAY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL International Studies, and in universities. In none of these posi- tions did my portfolio explicitly include respon- sibility for promoting diversity. Yet the challenge of managing and making the best of diverse per- spectives regularly arose. Sometimes the challenge was balancing the different perspec- tives of, say, State and Defense, or private and public experts, or people of different nationalities and backgrounds. One experience that stands out as especially relevant was the 18-month “listening tour” I undertook as dean of the Uni- versity of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Commu- nication and Journalism. During it, I met with chief executive, operating and com- munications officers at both top Fortune 100 companies and entre- preneurial startups. I asked each to describe their top-priority talent needs for the coming decades. The Talent Imperative I learned three big things from these varied conversations. First, senior execu- tives see recruitment and retention as perhaps their single most pressing challenge. Second, they are desperately seeking diverse talent, broadly defined. Third, such talented individuals can only be effectively deployed inside an organization whose culture views them as essential and empowers them to operate against the organizational grain where necessary. In Silicon Valley firms especially, successful leaders told me they deliber- ately sought talent that could be disruptive. These leaders talked about getting and keeping high-quality talent with an intensity and urgency that surprised me. “I go to bed each night really worried that IBM won’t be able to find the talent it needs to develop new markets for the ser- vices and goods it sells,” John Iwata, IBM’s brilliant chief marketing officer and chief communications officer, told me. He is not alone. Accord- ing to an article in the Harvard Business Review , only 15 percent of senior executives in North America and Asia believe they have adequate talent pipelines. A Pricewater- houseCoopers study found that talent shortages have already damaged many companies’ capacity to develop products and markets. Forward-looking senior executives are not seeking yester- day’s talent. “Don’t send me your usual graduates,” said the CEO of a large stra- tegic public relations company. He wanted people with extraor- dinary experiences, unusual perspectives on tough problems and culturally var- ied backgrounds. He wanted people whose experiences let them connect the dots in new ways, who can think “360 degrees,” outside of the prover- bial box. “We either innovate or we die” was the mantra I heard repeatedly. Here, though, is the catch. If the State Department wants to recruit individuals possessing innovative talent and a diversity of perspectives and experiences and help them succeed, it must embed them in an innovative, generative organizational culture. In the end, culture trumps everything else. If the insti- tutional culture does not welcome new talent, then strategies of diversity, innovation and inclusion will fail. Understanding Double Diversity “Double diversity” is a concept I developed to capture the In May 2006, the U.S. Post Office issued the “Distinguished American Diplomats” stamps commemorating six accomplished diplomats, including Francis E. Willis, the first female FSO to become an ambassador and Clifton R. Wharton Sr., the first African-American FSO in the State Department. If the institutional culture does not welcome new talent, then strategies of diversity, innovation and inclusion will fail.