Diversity dollars

BELTWAY DIARY: Walking through the doors that wonderful smell of fresh coffee wafts around me. I rush toward the lift resisting the temptation to grab the obligatory latte and head up to reception. I am in Starbucks headquarters and I am in heaven. Google has nothing on this place!

From the moment I step inside the pulsing centre of this coffee empire, I cannot help but be impressed. The enormous office has the bright and airy interior of a New York warehouse loft with winding staircases linking floors. Comfy couches are nestled in cosy spaces, kitchen areas filled with every imaginable coffee and gorgeous pastries on various shelves around the building.

The atmosphere is warm, friendly and relaxed as its chief executive Howard Shultz chats among his team - his extraordinarily diverse team.

In the two hours I spend in Starbucks it is apparent that diversity is not about coffee flavours, but about skills, people and abilities. And when I say diversity, I mean it in the broadest sense of the word.

As I move through the building I am aware of a myriad of accents, skin colours and disabilities. Men, women, young, old, flamboyant, reserved, glamorous, casual - this is a place I want to work!

Diversity has confused me since my arrival in the US - in different places it means different things. There is no universal yardstick. At the annual diversity conferences run by the Conference Board in New York the multiplicity of diversity was probed with case studies from Campbell's Soup, IBM, PepsiCo and Dow.

Yet academics view it differently. Walter Benn Michael's highly-publicised book The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality defines diversity in the parameters of race.

At a series of discussions on diversity in philanthropy at the Council of Foundations' annual meeting in Seattle, diversity centred on gender and race. Sitting there I itched to ask - but what about sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, economic background? Before I knew it, my hand shot up in the air and when I asked how disability was defined in the US, a ripple of laughter murmured through the room.

Mortified, face burning, I cursed myself for being such an eejit. But when the answer came I realised they had not been laughing at me, they were laughing with me. I had asked the one question no one is able to answer. Exactly how do we define diversity?

There seems no answer except that businesses love diversity because it is beginning to impact the balance sheet. In the US the diversity industry is worth $10 billion - training, magazines, awards, I could go on! But the profit and hype have an audience. There is a reason that diversity is gaining traction. Whether people got into this business because it was an opportunity to look good, they are now in an industry which will define the most successful organisations of the future.

When I asked Starbucks how and why it believes in diversity the answer is simple. It had to. With up to 400 positions a day to fill, the search for talent made it necessary. As the US ages, and replacement levels plummet, 10 million jobs will not be filled in five years time if business does not look outside its traditional recruitment pools. During meetings with Microsoft and Google, I hear the same story.

Finally, necessity is the mother of invention. Diversity makes business sense. As ecosystems need diversity to thrive so does business. But it is the business of diversity that has begun to turn this tide - there's nothing like a healthy bottom line to make a point.

eisenhower@theaislingfoundation.org