(soothing music) - [Woman] Envista is pleased to support Working Capital.

Switch to empowered, switch to Envista.

Learn more at envistacu.com.

- [Advertiser] GO Topeka Entrepreneurial and Minority Business Development is proud to support Working Capital.

We share the vision to assist local entrepreneurs with growing their business.

- [Man] Additional funding is provided by the friends of KTWU.

- Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Working Capital, where we provide you with information and insightful discussions that can help you start, sustain and grow your business.

It's Black History Month and each year at this time, we try to celebrate this event by bringing practical business tips, black history and black entrepreneurs together in this show.

So stay tuned as we honor Black History Month, it's all about business and this is Working Capital.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to Working Capital, I'm Eugene Williams, your host.

2020 was a very interesting year, fraught with many health, economic, political, environmental and social issues.

When the year began, no one could have predicted the unusual occurrences that were to take place.

The intersection of the economic issues brought on by the pandemic and the social uprising caused by a number of police shootings in the black community, gave rise to a renewed effort and discussion of diversity in the workplace.

Let's take a look.

(soothing music) - [Rioters] Black lives matter.

Black lives matter.

Black lives matter.

Black lives matter.

Black lives matter.

- [News Anchor] And now dropped more than 500 points today as Wall Street posts its worst one-week sale-off since March.

- [Man news anchor] Hurricane Zeta slammed at the Gulf Coast, killing at least six.

- [Woman news anchor] The Silverado and the Blue Ridge fire grew rapidly overnight, forcing more evacuations in Irvine and other parts of Orange County.

(people rioting) Long lines, early ballots, new polls, all points to heavy voter turnout.

(upbeat music) - We're honored to have two professionals in the studio today to help us understand this renewed interest in diversity in the workplace and moreover, to discuss what it means for your business.

With me, are Cain Davis and Allan Gray, business professionals with expertise in the area of diversity and inclusion.

Welcome, Allan, welcome Cain.

(mumbling) - Thank you, good to be here.

- You know, this has been and I used the term renewed, interest.

I mean, it's not one of those things that has not been discussed for years and years and years and years, but for some reason over the last number of months, this has become a very hot topic, so to speak.

I'm gonna start with you Cain first and then come to you Allan.

And what I'd like to do is, let's see if we can define what diversity and inclusion actually means.

What do you think?

- I think diversity for a simple way, is to say that's the drip to drop and inclusion is the ingredients.

You can drop a bunch of people with different race, color, sex, in an organization, but when you start mixing them together and trying to figure out how operationally they're going to give you the things that you want to help accomplish your mission, that's the big test.

Anyone can hire people of diversity, but it's getting them to work together in a productive manner, where they are encouraging and helping each other to become successful in the working place.

- Wow, wow, pretty in depth, Allan?

- Well, I believe that diversity starts with the basic values, as where we value the individual, we value their experience, we value their background and we look beyond race and look at the value that the individual brings to the organization, their ideas and placing their ideas on par with the ideas of individuals who have, I'd say, been the majority, have been in positions of power.

- Talk about some of your experience in working with organizations and stuff and helping them to understand what it was that you just mentioned to me.

- Well, I think that first of all, organizations have tried to embrace diversity, to give full credit, but organizations have looked at diversity as assimilation, they've looked at diversity often as trying to bring, I call it just changing the color of the table cloths.

(laughing) It makes no matter if you have an organization and you bring in a person of color, a person of a different ethnicity, but you expect them to think, act and to perform in the same way that your existing culture.

So having an organization, means being willing to change that culture.

- Yeah, yeah, Cain you said something earlier which made me think about a term that I've used in having these discussions, either with staff members or with colleagues or with other companies and the term that comes in my mind is cohesion.

When you bring this diverse group together and you do kind of, or your expectation is what Allan was saying, that they might kind of be a part of the organization already exists, cohesion is a hard thing to create.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

- I think one of the biggest problem with not obtaining cohesion around the diversity issue is generally speaking, you will have a CEO and his or her executive team who may go hire individuals and they may have diversity training, but they are very rarely involved and/or understand what diversity and inclusion is.

So many of their staff members become educated and they start taking diversity very serious, but then at a company function, you get an executive leader who will stand up and do something just the opposite of what they're paying their employees to do.

- Wow.

- And so that kind of divides the cohesion and the minority staff quickly comes and says, well, man, if the top people are not supporting this, why are we going through this exercise?

- Wow, how do you explain that to the people at the top?

30 seconds, either one of you.

- Well, I think that diversity, I've seen it both ways.

I've seen where diversity starts from the middle and works its way up, that is generally pressure-oriented, individuals that have come into the organization believe they lack a voice.

And I've seen it the other way, where well-meaning CEOs of an organization attempt to bring diversity into an organization and there is an equal negative response from those at the middle management area.

And so it's a tricky proposition, but I believe that it's often better when the CEO endorses that, when the CEO sees that that is part of their mission, incorporates that into the mission and begins to see, again, back to value, sees the true value for the organization, both in terms of marketing and reaching their customer base.

- I wanna delve into that concept of value even more, but right now we'll take a break.

It is time for our first break.

When we come back, we'll continue our discussion with our experts on diversity and inclusion.

We'll be right back, you're watching Working Capital (upbeat music) Welcome back.

In honor of Black History Month, we welcome diversity and inclusion experts and we're talking about what this means for modern day business.

My next question is, why is corporate America so hot to embrace this topic?

Now, either one of you.

- I would think because it shows you the power of social justice.

And when people form, they actually can influence what happens, not just in communities, but in organizations.

But I think the biggest problem is, many people who are embracing this, especially at the executive level, really are not understanding one, what their role is and two, how to implement it, something that actually creates not just diversity but the inclusion aspect of it also.

- Now you're suggesting that there might just be a surface-level approach to this?

- There is a surface-level approach.

As someone who does consulting, I can tell you oftentimes, in the last few months, when you sit down with a CEO, they are really gung ho about diversity and consulting.

And then when you sit down and say, well, tell me what you want and explain to them what it looks like, many of them are not willing to do it.

And it's not just because of costs, as much as it is just culturally, it's different from a lot of the things they've been exposed to.

- Right, right, right.

Allan, you got a story I'm sure.

Can you tell me something?

- Well, I'm full of stories, but I think, I'll say this quickly, there was this farmer and the farmer had a big field and he loved that field, but the animals came into the field and he thought they were destroying his crop, so he put a scarecrow out into the field and the animals went away.

Then he realized that he needed those animals, those animals provided some joy to his day.

So he got rid of the scarecrow and he stood out there with his arms wide open to welcome the animals back into the field, but the animals didn't come back.

And then he quickly discovered that he was the scarecrow.

- Oh Gosh.

- And so the moral lesson behind that story, is that corporate America and organizations that are embracing diversity, believe that all they have to do is have a program in place, all they have to do is hire an HR person that has diversity training and they put a diversity program in place and they've done their job and everybody will fall into the fold.

But it goes beyond that because your employees have to see that true commitment to diversity and that can be a whole litany of areas.

And it has to go beyond just diversity as a means of increasing your market share, it has to go beyond diversity as a way of getting that award at the chamber of commerce dinner and you have to have true commitment.

- Yeah, yeah, you talk about market share and for a lot of CEOs and for a lot of folks that are in the C-suite, it really is about that bottom line thing.

Is diversity good for the bottom line?

- Well, I'd say, it absolutely is good for the bottom line.

When you look at how America is changing, the demographics as Cain mentioned, the new social format that we're existing within, people have power, people have the ability to make decisions on who they choose to be a customer for, where they choose to put their hard-earned earned dollars, where they choose to live, they have choices of what companies they wanna work for.

Today's individuals, particularly our young people, are deciding that, well, I may not wanna work for a corporation at all.

And so you have to put things in place that will incent communities, individuals to want to participate in the mission of their corporation.

Just because it's your mission, doesn't mean that it's everybody else's mission.

- In your business Cain, when you consult with some of these companies that you meet with, is one of the things that you talk with them about market share and the fact that diversity might be actually good for their company?

- Oh, absolutely and I can give you a couple of examples.

For example, if you have a small business and you were to hire someone who's bilingual, all of a sudden you have access to a population that you never had before.

I've seen in other industries where you would hire an African-American for example and that African-American now has some credibility when they go into the African-American neighborhood to try to sell your product, your services and that's just something that automatically brings that on board.

But let's look at the people who are not in these minority categories.

What I think is undermined so much in this industry is that if you are not a minority, the majority of the people in our workforce enjoy having diversity and that enjoyment of diversity means they will stay with your company longer, they will be more engaged longer and you will make a profit because you're not paying for advertising to hire people, you're not paying because someone filed a complaint against you, you're making all kinds of money, you just have to manage it in a way that's strategic and purposeful.

- Wow, wow, wow, that is great.

That's great, that'll take us right into the break.

It's time for another short break, stay tuned.

You are watching Working Capital.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

Allan and Cain have been sharing their thoughts about diversity and inclusion in business.

So this is Black History Month, Cain, I'm gonna direct this question to you, do you think that blacks and other ethnic groups, any group for that matter, are adequately represented in business?

- I do not believe so and the reason is very rooted into our exposure as young people.

I have two kids, both of them are in business, why?

Because from the very beginning, when we sat down and ate dinner, we were talking about business, their weekends was filled of doing business things.

And I'll never forget when my daughter went to college.

One of the first thing she did was call me and said, hey, dad, I think I see a business opportunity.

She's a black female, there was a rock band leaving town and guess what?

She decided she wanted to buy 'em.

Why, because she saw the business thing.

If you're not used to certain things, they kind of scare you.

And it is risky to be in business, but I think the more we're exposed and prepare our young people for business, we have to look at what are they getting education-wise?

In this world of technology, are they exposed enough to technology that if they decided they didn't wanna work for somebody, do they have the ability to go work for themselves?

And then of course, people are pooling their resources together.

We see in this country, the largest companies pool their resources and joint venture.

But we can't get individuals who are making $30,000 a year to see the need to pool their resources.

And those are some of the things that I think would help.

- Yeah, yeah.

I'm a small business, Allan, this whole diversity and inclusion thing scares me.

Is it a costly proposition for me to consider that?

- I think it costs more not to consider it.

And if you're going to be a successful business operator, a successful entrepreneur, you have to change with the times.

You have to educate yourself first and understand what diversity means, what inclusion means, what equity means and then draw the line between that, to your own bottom line and see the relationship.

And to concede that you are a stronger company that when you embrace diversity, then you are fighting against it because it's inevitable.

We're no longer seeking to sell our product to a very narrow margin of America.

- Now we've got two minutes left in this segment and so I wanna make sure I get a response from both of you on this.

Should a business that operates in whatever community that it operates in, should it have a workforce that reflects that community?

- I think that is possible.

You have to look at the demographics because if you live in a community where, for example, there are no native Americans in there, well, then it's gonna be hard to attract native Americans, why?

Because culturally, there's nothing there that when they get off of work, that's gonna attract them.

And then how much is the employee gonna do within the work environment to make them feel embraced, comfortable, to actually do what native Americans may do, whatever that is in a work environment?

So, yes, but you wanna look at your demographics and try to accommodate that as much as possible.

- You mentioned demographics also, Allan, your thoughts on that question?

- Well, I think that as demographics change, businesses have to change with those demographics, but it has to be transparent, it has to be an honest and sincere movement toward that.

I agree with Cain that your company should reflect those demographics and sometimes it takes an extra step, an extra measure to access those changing demographics and you can't give up just because you have one bad experience.

Well, we hired this individual and this individual, it didn't work out and so now we're gonna not include an entire race or an ethnic group or entire population 'cause of one experience.

- I wanna talk about some of your personal stories and we'll do that in the next segment after we take this break.

It's time for another break, there's a lot more to come, we'll be right back.

(upbeat music) Welcome back, we're continuing our discussion, defining diversity in the workplace.

When we left the last segment, I said I wanted to come back and talk with you about some personal experiences.

So I wanna start with you Cain, tell me about some things that you've experienced that kind of defines what this whole issue around diversity and inclusion might be about.

- I think one of the best experiences I've had was actually recruiting African-Americans to be lifeguards.

And we were told they couldn't find any African-Americans and this was the local city government, not here.

And so I consulted with them and said, I could help you do that if you really want to do it.

And so I went out and I did a couple of advertisements, got some individuals and I didn't care if they could swim because we could teach them what we needed to teach them.

And so during the winter months, we taught them everything they needed to do and I would meet with them every week, just to make sure that if they were having problems, communicating with the staff or if there were any issues.

In the summer, not only did they start, but they all finished, all five of these individuals, served as lifeguards throughout that city.

And two of them really couldn't swim, but they understood the techniques in which they needed to employ.

And again, that was an organization who said that they couldn't do it, but I think with guidance and really leadership, making a decision that they are willing to invest whatever it takes to do it, they can do it.

- And you have to be somewhat committed, right?

You have to be committed to that idea.

- Allan, you got a story?

- Years ago, I was having lunch with two insurance executives one day, they're in Johnson County and they said they were interested in diversity, expanding their workforce.

So I went back to my desk and I got a phone call from one of our volunteers for Alvin Ailey and she'll know who I'm talking about.

And she said that she was looking for a position and I just happened to have their business card on my desk.

I said, call these young men, see what you can do.

Well, she did and next thing, I got a phone call and she says, well, guess what?

I got hired.

I said, that's great, that's great.

And then I get another phone call a few months later, she says guess what?

I'm in their a management program, they're gonna fast track me.

I said, that's great, that's great.

A few months later, I get another phone call.

I've gotten through the management program, they're giving my own business now.

- [Eugene and Cain] Wow.

- And that said to me the type of commitment and putting skin in the game as a corporation to make that investment in that particular individual who went on to own their own company within the organization.

And I believe that's when we talk about real commitment, that's what it takes and it goes beyond just the lip service and diversity being a program that's internal to your company.

- We got two minutes.

Do you find that diverse candidates are extremely appreciative of the opportunities that might be presented to them?

Either one of you.

- I think just as much as anyone else, because you have a lot of very diverse and qualified individuals and oftentimes because of their lack of exposure, they are just not in the game.

But if someone is willing to give them a chance, it's just like the example I think Allan just gave, no one would have thought that this person with what she had, could actually become an owner and she became an owner because she had the opportunity, give them an opportunity.

- [Eugene] Yeah, your thoughts on it.

- I agree, provide the opportunity, provide the resources for success, provide the training for success and take that again, as an investment.

I've seen diversity programs or diversity efforts fail for the lack of support for their program or the individuals, be they the managers that are trying to implement diversity on a base level, or the individual that is put into a corporation that has a culture that challenges them in terms of what their personal life experiences have been and their training.

- Wow, great, great, great, great.

In as few words as possible, advice that you would give to the C-suite when looking for diverse candidates.

- Find someone who understands the subject matter and take their advice.

- [Eugene] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Allan?

- I agree, give support to whoever's in charge of your diversity and inclusion program, give them full support, have an open door to their ideas and suggestions and recommendations on how to make your company successful.

- Man, I really appreciate you gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.

- [Allan and Cain] Thank you.

- That's our show for now.

I really like to thank both of you for appearing on this Black History Month edition of Working Capital.

For those of you watching, I do hope that something was said that will be helpful to you in the way that you operate your business.

And as always, if you know of a unique business or unique management technique, we wanna hear from you, so give us a call or drop us an email.

We look forward to seeing you next time.

It's all about business and you've been watching, Working Capital.

(upbeat music) - [Woman] Envista is pleased to support Working Capital.

Switch to empowered, switch to Envista.

Learn more at envistacu.com.

- [Advertiser] GO Topeka Entrepreneurial and Minority Business Development is proud to support Working Capital.

We share the vision to assist local entrepreneurs with growing their business.

- [Man] Additional funding is provided by the friends of KTWU.

(upbeat music)