The rise and fall of DEI initiatives in recent years can be attributed at least partially to the challenge of finding the right balance between treating people as members of groups versus treating them as unique individuals.
In the 1990s and 2000s I did a lot of work with corporations in Japan to reduce misunderstandings, bias and harassment and create work environments where people who were generally sorted into different groups would feel more welcome to join in and contribute more to their colleagues and companies. The companies that implemented these initiatives were interested in managing legal risk, AND they were also interested in finding out how they could help employees with different experiences and strengths come together in ways that would spark creativity, efficiency and performance.
One of the challenges of doing effective DEI as well as cross-cultural consulting work is finding the right balance between thinking about people as members of groups with shared characteristics, needs and (explicit or implicit) status within society versus considering their needs as unique individuals with a broad range of traits, preferences and potentialities that have little or nothing to do with the group they are typically sorted into (by others or themselves).
There is abundant research showing that – irrespective of calls to treat each individual as an individual – human beings do in fact tend to both consciously and unconsciously divide themselves and others up into groups in various ways. There’s also plenty of evidence that there are consistent differences in how those who have been sorted into these groups get treated by others.
At the same time, it is also true that there is unlimited diversity within these groups since the basic categories tend to be laid out at least partially based on superficial differences. There’s even a line of research showing that each individual contains surprising diversity. We become different people in different contexts for various obvious and less obvious reasons. Even our (measurable) intelligence seems to rise and fall repeatedly over time for various reasons. As Walt Whitman put it we each contain multitudes.
There is always diversity within groups because each member of each group is also an individual with a unique set of genes and experiences. Moreover, there are always affinities to be found between people who on a superficial level seem to belong to different groups. Two people who are both huge fans of anime often find that they have a lot in common, even if they are of different genders or come from different cultural backgrounds. Elite athletes or salespeople from around the world often find it easy to understand each other because they share physical or mental attributes as well as experiences and stories.
About 20 years ago, I had the honor of working with Andrea Konuma and 小原 待子 to help the Japanese subsidiary of one of the world’s leading tech companies articulate and roll out their strategy for diversity and inclusion – particularly how they planned to make their workplace more welcoming for female employees so they could unleash their untapped potential.
In this initiative, rather than focusing on diversity as something that divides people, we focused on affinities that bring people together across their superficial differences. While the focus of the initiative was to make the workplace welcoming for female employees, our approach was focused on making the workplace welcoming for each individual employee, starting with women.
As we conducted interviews in the research on the experiences and preferences of the company’s female employees, one of the things that made the biggest impression on us was the remarkably progressive and pragmatic perspective many of the female employees had on this initiative. At a time when their colleagues in the USA were set on creating spaces and communities that separated them from their male colleagues, the women at this company insisted that they saw this as a dead end.
They told us they believed they would only be able to establish a workplace where women could contribute their best if they had the support of their male colleagues. They wanted to establish a workplace where men could also contribute their best. Some even said that many of their male colleagues probably wanted many of the same things that they wanted.
The two major themes that emerged from the interviews were a desire for more were agency and more connection. They wanted more flexible work arrangements that allowed them to make decisions for themselves about how to get great results at work WHILE ALSO living fulfilling private lives WHILE ALSO establishing a baseline of personal health and well-being. In addition, they wanted to build stronger connections with their colleagues so they could learn from and support each other in the process.
In keeping with their wishes, we kicked the initiative off with an event that involved both women and men. Moreover, when we rolled out various initiatives, we again involved both women and men.
It turned out their instincts were right on the mark. Many of the men who participated in the kick-off and subsequent initiatives told us that they did in fact wanted most of the same things that their female colleagues wanted.
Toward the end of the aughts, this company got significant recognition for this approach emphasizing affinity, agency and connection. They earned the #1 ranking in the Great Place to Work survey for Japan and were chosen for a major feature in the Nikkei Weekly, which is sort of like Japan’s BusinessWeek or Wall Street Journal.
Happily, in keeping with Heskett’s service-profit chain research, the company’s retention numbers, revenue and profits all also improved. According to Heskett, when employees are treated well, this tends to correlate with improvements in productivity and customer service. Improved productivity and customer service are in turn leading indicators correlated with higher sales, better margins and an increase in stock price.
Since 2023, the president of this company’s Japan subsidiary has been a woman.
Based on the interview below, it sounds like the female (and male) employees at our Japanese client were pioneers of a trend that may be about to spread across the world. While it is indeed important to take steps to address the clear gaps in treatment for people who are seen as fitting into specific trait-based groups, we may get even more bang for the buck by starting with affinities. Regardless of gender, culture, ethnicity, etc, for the most part, we all tend to want mostly the same things from our work experience. Research and experience say that we tend to all want:
– the AGENCY to make decisions for ourselves about our work and lives
– a clear sense that we are working toward something PURPOSEful
– evidence that we are GROWING (in a way that we want to grow)
– positive CONNECTIONS with people we care about
– evidence that our CONTRIBUTIONs are real and valued (including, of course, being rewarded with a legitimate living wage or more than a living wage)
– the sense that when we look back at the day, week or our whole career, we have been part of something MEANINGful.
This seems to be true for most men. It’s also true for most women. It’s true for most people who pay their bills by giving up 8-12 hours of their day as an employee who gets paid to contribute to the success of the organization that hired them.
© Dana Cogan, 2025, all rights reserved.