When it comes to diversity slowly, slowly does not work

There’s an old proverb which is much loved in the business community, which goes like this:

Question: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time.

Nearly all of us have heard it before and it is normally applied to when we are facing a large overwhelming task.

I have been to several meetings, and sat on several panels, about media diversity and I have heard senior media executives saying words to the effect of; “I know progress is slow, but we just need to be patient, we are getting there slowly”. They might not be explicitly using the elephant analogy but that seems to be their approach.

However my experience at both the BBC and CGTN (China’s state broadcaster) has led me to the conclusion that when it comes to certain tasks eating an elephant one bite at a time is not always the best strategy. And when it comes to diversity it can actually do more harm than good.

To understand why, we need to think about this metaphorical elephant in a bit more detail.

DEAD ELEPHANTS START TO ROT

The first problem if you try and eat an elephant slowly one bite at a time is that the elephant starts to rot and smell.

If you think of that in a diversity context increasing diversity numbers slowly does not make for a happy workforce. An organization’s diversity announcements often create expectations. When these expectations are not fulfilled in a timely fashion the majority of diverse talent, both inside and outside the organization, can become disillusioned and disgruntled.

Team morale falling? Low retention rates of diverse staff?

That is the smell of an elephant going off.

DIVERSITY FATIGUE

Another problem of eating your elephant so slowly is people get sick and tired of eating elephant. Even the tastiest meals can get boring.

When it comes to the issue of diversity, getting bored of eating the elephant is a very real problem and is called “diversity fatigue”. There has been some excellent academic work on the issue of how those tasked with delivering change - from HR personnel to team leaders -  simply burn out. The research points to the problem that despite the best of intentions a lot of diversity initiatives run into the ground as people become disillusioned and tired.

The real problem with taking it “slowly, slowly” is that most people lose interest and end up quitting, or they find themselves concentrating on other tasks where they can achieve tangible results.

THE ELEPHANT IS ACTUALLY GROWING

The other problem is that when it comes to diversity the metaphorical elephant actually isn’t dead but is growing and is growing faster than we are eating it! (Sorry I have really stretched this elephant metaphor).

To illustrate my point I am going to use BBC figures – not because I am singling out the BBC - but because they publish the best statistics for any media organization and I suspect they are indicative of the industry as a whole.

For BBC Studios – the department that makes programmes - the rate of increase in Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people (BAME) has been roughly 0.1% year-on-year - over the last few years. When it comes to BAME people in positions of leadership in the last four years this has increased from 8.81 percent in 2016 to 9.48 percent in 2019 (excluding World Service figures which Ofcom does).

At the same time according to the 2001 UK census BAME made up just 8 percent of the population. By 2011 the UK census recorded that 13 percent of the population coming from a BAME background. And now some projections think that by 2051 the BAME population will be over 20 percent.    

This effectively means that as we slowly eat our elephant one bite at a time the problem is in fact getting worse.

CAN WE SOLVE DIVERSITY ALL IN ONE GO?

My experience at the BBC and at CGTN has shown me that there are some issues where large amounts of resources need to dedicated to the problem at the start if we are going to have any chance of success.

In 2007 I was fortunate enough to be involved in the BBC’s big push to increase its out of London productions. The BBC did not exactly solve its regional diversity problem in one go but it set very high targets that it met in a relatively short time frame. And most importantly it put a large amount of resources behind the task.

In 2016 I was key to CGTN moving from a television news approach to a digital first strategy. Again we did not try and do this gradually, slowly increasing the amount of news we produced for our website. Instead we took a completely different approach to how we did our jobs and resources were put behind the task to make it work.

Neither CGTN’s digital approach nor the BBC’s regional diversity goals would have been met if they had taken an “eat the elephant one bite at a time approach”.

Culturally everyone in the organization needed to see some big tangible successes at the beginning to have confidence in the change.

LET’S TAKE A LARGE BITE!

I do not believe that we can solve all of television’s diversity problems tomorrow. But I do believe that we cannot afford to take a slowly, slowly approach.

Instead what I am suggesting is that we focus our efforts on a few specific issues and put the resources behind it so we can achieve real substantive change. For example this might involve concentrating on disability in two or three specific genres. Or focusing on the number of women in key specific roles – such as directing positions. Or focusing on the number of commissions of BAME-led indies.

People need to see real big successes to believe that change is possible.

Someone pass me an elephant leg, please.

(For the record I do not advocate eating endangered species and no elephants were harmed in the writing of this article)