The Foreign Service Journal, November 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2020 13 K udos to the Journal for dedicat- ing the September issue to diversity, inclusion and engage- ment. Individually and collec- tively, the articles highlight that whatever progress the State Department has made, it still has further to go. Sadly, and ironically, the Foreign Ser- vice does reflect America, an America of systemic racial disparities in oppor- tunities and outcomes. To use only one metric, the website Black Demograph- ics points out that whereas 34 percent of whites have bachelor’s degrees, the figure for Blacks is 24 percent; according to Department of Education statistics, Hispanics, though catching up to Blacks, still trail a bit behind. The gap is even wider in advanced degrees between whites and minori- ties (other than Asians), resulting in an uneven playing field in the competitive war for talent in both the private and public sectors. The Foreign Service has yet to make itself the go-to career choice for minori- ties. Overhauling and resourcing the advertising, recruitment and social media platforms, when combined with sustained senior political commitment, would boost the visibility and attractiveness of an FS career for potential candidates. More broadly, the department needs to work harder and think more creatively No Quick Fixes BY ALEX KARAGIANNIS Alex Karagiannis retired from the Foreign Service in November 2017 with the rank of Minister Counselor. His last assignment was as senior adviser to the Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources. to change the trajectory for minori- ties. Unlike the recruitment challenges, where the Foreign Service faces many competitors and is one of many possible options for candidates, the depart- ment’s internal operations regarding diversity, inclusion and engagement are directly under its control. Painful to say, however, there are no quick fixes here. Numerous academic and consul- tancy studies point out that most orga- nizations’ leadership development and diversity programs fail; too many are ill- designed and poorly executed. Worse, even many detailed analytic studies of State have not generated specific action- able suggestions that would yield both near-term results and enduring long- term success. For all its rigor, neither the Govern- ment Accountability Office report on State’s diversity record nor, apparently, a separate Deloitte study (still under wraps) makes practical recommenda- tions that would appreciably change diversity numbers or engagement scores (see my LinkedIn post, “Review- ing GAO Study on State Department Diversity: Greater Clarity Needed,” bit.ly/reviewing-GAO-study) . Repeated calls for midlevel entry programs, for example, do not account for the reality that potential candidate pools are over- whelmingly non-minority. Of the Journal articles, some sugges- tions are spot on; others either miss the mark or create more complexity without addressing fundamental issues. For example: • Extending Time-in-Service (TIS) by three years could perpetuate cur- • Recruitment campaigns feel illogical when we have long lists on the register of people ready to fill our jobs. Like Bunche, I remain focused on the consequences. A results-focused, evi- dence-driven diversity package challenges the virtuous ideas above: • Blinding processes for EERs, eliminat- ing names and using “they” for gender are hard to do, but better than diversity training. • Converting the Y-tour diversity coor- dinator jobs at powerful regional bureaus into full-time jobs is a better approach than relying on EAGs, volunteer minor- ity groups whose extra work helps senior officials pretend to consult minorities, or a 14th precept, which only encourages cre- ative writing by those seeking promotion. •The FSOT (written test) has test-retest validity, but it is unlikely to be valid as a predictor of job performance. Let’s study the correlations with career track rankings in employee PARs (performance ability reports) to find out. •The FSOA is coachable and does not test how you get along with foreigners. Could an assessment center help fix this? • Deliberately targeted recruitment would let us find people who are high on conscientiousness (get the papers done) and high on emotional stability (be ready for expeditionary work), rather than just being high on proactivity (signing up for FSOT and FSOA tests). Virtue ethics—the praise for our internal intentions and character—per- vades our culture. Bunche achieved the unthinkable at an amazing pace by valuing one result, the liquidation of colonialism, as his North Star. By contrast, our comic book heroes battle those whose nature is bad. I hope that we at the State Depart- ment will accept another pathway to living meritocratically, the path of results and evidence. n