Want great long term returns? Invest in being Diverse by Design — Tom McCallum

A few days ago I wrote “ Are you willing to accept lower profits to be anti-fragile? “, noting:

Resilience is to have minimal impact at times of “disorder”, whereas an anti-fragile organisation actively benefits from times of disorder….in order to be anti-fragile, one must first accept that this can eat into the idea of “profit maximisation” at a level beyond even being resilient, but perhaps it is time in our world of grey and black swans to look at optimising shareholder returns over the longer-term rather than maximising them over the short term?

I am putting this in the language of shareholder returns as this does remain the primary driver for business, albeit increasingly short term and short termist in nature by many key measures. By those measures, we often hear of how corporations are focussed more now on diversity, yet very often we also hear of it as a cost of “doing the right thing”, not as an investment.

This is also short termist and short-sighted, as rethinking your organisation as designed at all levels to embrace and encourage diversity is not a cost but an investment in your future, in building an anti-fragile business ready to actively benefit from times of disorder.