Bogus Diversity Programs

The idea that the color of someone’s skin has anything to do with creating a “diverse” organization is, well . . . bigoted and racist. It’s a patronizing idea that could only emanate from guilty, pampered and clueless people who live in segregated suburbs, teach in pristine ivory towers, and generally see unicorns and rainbows everywhere. I find the idea to be offensive, but it is a core component of the catechism of official beliefs held by the Masters of the Universe in government, large corporations, and universities. This belief is so ingrained that few can see how abhorrent it really is.

Yes – I just called you a bigot and a racist – go find a Safe Space if you are feeling threatened.

Hiring for Cultural Fit

Your company’s diversity program isn’t really creating diversity in your workforce. Real diversity is about thoughts and ideas and doesn’t come from skin color or sexual orientation. Admit it – you don’t want real diversity in your organization. You are looking for cultural fit. You don’t want any of those people who challenge ideas and assumptions. And you definitely don’t want someone who will tell your CXO’s that their brilliant idea is they dumbest utterance ever spoken. In most cases, an ideal employee is a sycophant who will stroke the soft and fragile feathers of your mollycoddled executives and managers. The perfect employee keeps his mouth shut in order to keep his job.

To me, the idea of cultural fit is all about hiring people who will go along to get along. It is about hiring people who won’t challenge the status quo in your organization. Those people are easy to find and they come in all races, shapes, sizes, and sexual orientations. Their resumes all look exactly alike and your HR people are experts at identifying them in only 12 seconds. “This one’s different – chuck it in the garbage.”

A black and white issue?

Many organizations look at diversity as a binary issue. “We’re a diverse organization” can often be translated as: “Look, we have black people working here.” A slightly different translation is: “Look, we have white, black, yellow and brown people, all in the proper proportions working in harmony. Hakuna Matata!” A purple female veteran in a wheelchair gets quadruple bonus points for the EEO Report. Even better if she is a lesbian and don’t worry that she has no actual skills.

One company I worked for hired a brilliant Chinese woman with a Ph.D. in physics for a specific management position. She and I had lunch together often and we always had lively discussions. I was more than a little bit smitten with her because a great brain is the first thing I am attracted to in a woman. The only problem was that she was a terrible manager. Rather than fire her, or get her training in management skills, the company created a new position under her to do the real management work. I don’t know what the rationale of the executives was, but I have always suspected that she fulfilled some diversity quota that they thought they needed. Unfortunately, the executives weren’t fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Other employees just found it maddening and demoralizing. Most Americans really want to believe we live in a meritocracy and anything less is a bad deal for everyone.

Where are all the old people?

When I was in graduate school, I worked at a Fortune 500 company and asked some of my coworkers where all the old engineers were. They looked at me like I had 3 eyes and they squirmed uncomfortably until someone worked up courage to chime in. “There aren’t any,” – one sheepishly replied – “They burn out by 40 because they can’t handle the pressure.” They had all sorts of officially approved diversity in that company, but very little diversity of wisdom earned from decades of experience. Wisdom is much more difficult to measure than skin color.

There’s another reason why no one wants mature workers – they are highly resistant to brainwashing and bad ideas. They ask “why” too often. By the time you hit 40, you have zero tolerance for stupidity. That’s why the CIA won’t hire anyone over 35. It is also why Big 4 consulting firms like to recruit right out of college. You have to start the programming early.

Title VII

“Jeffrey. You don’t understand reality. We only do this so we won’t get sued! We are not really as ignorant and stupid as you think. We’re not really racists and bigots.” Hmmm. I suppose I am not a master of the universe because I am not smart enough to understand how Title VII really permits blatant preferences in hiring based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin” just so you won’t get sued.

Real diversity isn’t a black and white issue and it comes in many forms. While skin color is the least important, it is the most highly prized. However, if you are looking for the “right” kind of diversity – the kind where people have different ideas – stop looking at meaningless, superficial indicators. Just hire the most qualified person for the job!

For some excellent reading on this subject, take a look at Hard Truths About Race on Campus in the Wall Street Journal. Ilya Somin’s recent piece on racial preferences at the University of Texas is also excellent. To top it off, read what Walter Williams has to say about Stubborn Ignorance.

If you are really angry with me over my lack of enlightenment, or agree with me fully, send me an e-mail at jmorgan@e-volvellc.com. You can read my blog on IT Governance issues at http://blog.e-volvellc.com.

© Copyright Jeffrey Morgan, 2016

About the Author

How to Survive a Management Audit

How would you fare if auditors walked in the door tomorrow morning and started scrutinizing all your processes, policies and procedures? Here are descriptions of several types of audits and four tips for making your management audit less stressful.

This is a test. Which of the following are common occurrences during IT Management Audits?

1. Staff members quit.

2. Staff members break down in tears in front of the consultants.

3. Staff members fly into a screaming rage at the consultants.

4. Staff members lie to the consultants.

5. Staff members refuse to cooperate.

6. All of the above.

If you selected item 6, you get a gold star! There is no reason for any of these behaviors but they occur all too often, especially in organizations in which audits are not routine events. The consultants are there to identify problems and help improve operations. They wouldn’t have been hired if everything was peachy keen, but Information Technology management and staff members rarely see it from this perspective. Identifying the problem is the first step to recovery. All Information Technology organizations should be managed as if an audit is imminent. How would you fare if auditors walked in the door tomorrow morning?

Why are you being audited?

There are many reasons for conducting audits, but following are the four I encounter most often.

Regulatory compliance audits

In market sectors such as Financial, Behavioral Health, Medical, and Pharmaceutical, periodic audits are the norm and the guidelines are clear. In any given year, a Behavioral Health clinic in NY State, for instance may be required to undergo 4 separate audits including Medicaid, HIPAA, OMH (Office of Mental Health), and OASAS (Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services). In many of these cases, the auditors show up unannounced or on very short notice.

Compliance audits aren’t technically management audits, but the scores on such audits are certainly a direct reflection of management’s performance. Would your policies, practices, procedures, and documentation measure up to the scrutiny to which a Behavioral Health clinic is subjected?

Performance audits or ‘What’s wrong with our IT operation?’

Often, members of the IT management and staff think they are doing a spectacular job but the customers and executive management disagree vehemently. In the worst cases, end users are preparing their pitchforks and torches in case the audit doesn’t bring about some positive performance outcomes. These audits are tough; the IT staff is defensive and they all assume that the consultants are there to fire them. Sometimes, the hostility reaches levels that make me feel like Patrick Swayze’s character, Dalton in the 1989 movie Road House. I have been accused of cherry-picking information, interrogation, and cross examination and I have been screamed at in front of a large audience. The truth is, I am simply researching a complex problem and I will work diligently to provide answers to the people who are paying me to do so.

During these audits, employees sometimes resign even before the final report is released. This is unfortunate because poor performance is a reflection of management rather than staff. At other times, excellent employees leave because they have had their fill of ineffective management. Frustrations become bitter tears dripping on the conference room table, even from managers.

New management

Sometimes, incoming executives want an X-Ray of organizational performance and requesting an audit is an intelligent professional move. They want a clear distinction between the previous management’s practices and their own and they use the final report to establish a program of organizational change.

IT is too expensive

Occasionally, IT audits are conducted because executive management considers the IT operation too expensive. They want an independent audit and a strategic plan that shows all the viable options.

4 tips for a lower stress audit

If the auditors are coming next week, there probably isn’t much you can do to improve the outcome, but there is plenty you can do to make the process more comfortable for everyone involved.

Answer binary questions with binary answers

When questions requiring a Yes or No answer are met with lengthy explanations, it is a clear indication of a problem. When I ask if you have documentation of your daily security log validation, just say yes or no! If you don’t have the required documentation, no amount of explanation is going the help. Also, I am not really interested that you are going to begin implementing your security program next month. Good for you, but I only care about what your actual practices are at the time I ask.

Don’t lie, embellish, or bury information

I always walk into audits and assessments taking a neutral, objective stance and I appreciate clients who don’t try to pre-program me. I will selectively ask for evidence or documentation for every statement you make and false statements will certainly damage your credibility. When subjects provide evasive or ambiguous answers, my inner Columbo puts on his trench coat. Equivocation and rationalization drive me to keep searching until I get the answer. Just tell the truth.

Instruct your staff to cooperate politely

I recall one compliance audit where a staff member served up every document request with a plate full of anger and hostility. The odd thing about it was that all her ducks were in a row, which is pretty unusual. So, why the anger? Don’t unleash it on the consultants.

I remember several engagements where the IT staff tried to tell me that their IP addressing schemes and Visio diagrams were secret. Huh? As soon as I retrieved my jaw from the floor, I went over their heads and arranged for delivery of the requested information. These events created suspicion and hostility that weren’t required.

In two organizations I contracted with, staff members claimed their Security Policies were secret! How does that work? These sorts of behaviors are indicators of significant departmental and organizational problems.

Prepare documentation in advance

All documentation including policies, procedures, infrastructure documentation, logs, hardware and software inventories, PSA system reports, etc. should be readily available for the consultants. They will ask to see it. I generally ask for all this information before I go on site for the first time and I am always appalled by the number of organizations that have none of the documents that are generally accepted to be components of a solid Information Technology Governance program. Sometimes these data dumps include reams of irrelevant information in the hope that I won’t find the smoking gun.

Auditing for organizational culture

I include a frank assessment of departmental and organizational culture in my reports and it is sometimes less than flattering. Delivering this information to executives and managers generally creates a tense silence while they try to chew and swallow that particularly tough piece of meat. They rarely argue because they know it’s true, but few have dared to state the obvious out loud. A realistic and objective assessment of company culture is required to address the root causes of problems. Bad management, inefficiency, malfeasance and incompetence have often been enabled for years before an audit is finally initiated. Interdepartmental politics, turf wars, jealousy, meddling and backstabbing all contribute to the problems at hand and managers throughout the organization are responsible.

In many cases, executives and managers have worked in large, bureaucratic organizations for their entire careers and they can’t see the signs of broken company culture. They think bad behavior and dysfunction are the norm.

The final report

If the final report is not a testimonial of glowing praise for your IT operation, I urge you to sit back and reflect carefully before lashing out. The report is a mixture of data, facts, and input from your coworkers and end users. I always base part of my conclusions on both formal and informal interviews with end users and managers from every department in an organization. What ends up in the report is a reflection of what your colleagues really think about your operation. My career started with a four-year stint in army intelligence and I actually do cross examine and interrogate. The natural inclination of some IT Directors is to argue and pick apart every statement and conclusion in the report, but this is definitely the wrong approach.

A nearby local government entity with which I am familiar recently received a failing audit from a state regulatory agency. It wasn’t a first-time fail and the endemic problems have been simmering for decades. Several executives from this entity made statements to the press that the audit “was a gotcha audit. It’s all about paperwork and there is nothing real here. We’re providing excellent services.” Talk about denial! I believe they will come to regret those statements since the infractions were extremely serious and they will likely have to return millions of dollars to Medicaid. They may call a missing signature “a gotcha,” but Medicaid calls it fraud. Their culture is so broken that they really need a turnaround expert and complete replacement of the management, but they haven’t reached rock bottom yet, apparently.

In recovery

The correct response to a failing audit is to contemplate the report carefully and develop a proactive remediation plan immediately. Humility may save your job, but you can’t step off onto the recovery road until you admit you have a problem.

Ask for help. Operations that have been dysfunctional for years can’t be turned around overnight. Organizational culture may inhibit a turnaround and objective, external assistance may be required.

Listen to what your colleagues and objective auditors had to say and take it seriously. Don’t go swimmin’ in denial.

This article was originally published in CIO as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?

About the Author

---

Source: How to survive a management audit | CIO