Stephen Frost provides a brilliant, if somewhat long and repetitive, the case for a new approach to diversity and inclusion (D&I). Stop creating a separate, expensive, and often annoying parallel organizational process. Instead, weave diversity and inclusion into your business plan so it aligns with and supports your business objectives. Instead of compliance and policing quotas, use evidence to convince your colleagues that diversity and inclusion are the correct values to carry out and the best course for your business.

1. The Inclusion Imperative
How Real Inclusion Creates Better Business and Builds Better Societies
Stephen Frost | Kogan Page © 2014
About the Author
Diversity consultant and Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Stephen Frost is past head
of Diversity and Inclusion for the London Olympic Games.
Stephen Frost provides a brilliant, if somewhat long and repetitive, case for a new
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2. approach to diversity and inclusion ﴾D&I﴿. Drawing on his experience leading the
Diversity and Inclusion team of the “London Organising Committee of the Olympic
and Paralympic Games” ﴾LOCOG﴿, he implores you to stop forcing diversity upon
your workplace. Stop creating a separate, expensive and often annoying parallel
organizational process. Instead, weave diversity and inclusion into your business
plan so it aligns with and supports your business objectives. Instead of compliance
and policing quotas, use evidence to convince your colleagues that diversity and
inclusion are the right values to carry out and the best course for your business.
The 2012 London Olympics were the most diverse and inclusive in history; the
congruence of those two factors is not a coincidence. getAbstract recommends this
inside account of how the London Committee developed its proven, flexible
methodology to any leader seeking concrete, immediate applicable ideas and
tactics for diversity and inclusion.
Take-Aways

Workforce diversity – by race, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, and other
factors – is increasing in most nations and regions.
 Diversity just happens – often with little or no effort – in most organizations.

“Inclusion” can be challenging, but usually results in heightened creativity, better
decision‐ making and a more resilient organization.

When women, gays or people of color must act like straight white men to get ahead,
their psyches and performance suffer.
 “Diversity 101” emphasizes compliance and enforcement. It doesn’t work.

Diversity programs at the “Inclusion 2.0” level promote mandatory training, mentoring
and integration, but they aren’t sustainable.
 “Inclusion 3.0” aligns to business results; it asks for participation, but doesn’t require it.
 Leaders join Inclusion 3.0 willingly for business and ethical reasons.
 Inclusion 3.0 emphasizes differences in perspective, not sameness.

Don’t separate diversity and inlclusion ﴾D&I﴿ from mainstream business operations –
integrate it so it adds value, but not cost, distraction or aggravation.

3. Summary
Diversity And Inclusion (D&I)
Welcome to “Diversity 101” and “Diversity 2.0” – the elementary levels. Diversity 101
emphasizes compliance and enforcement. It doesn’t work. Diversity programs at
the “Inclusion 2.0” level promote mandatory training, mentoring and integration,
but they aren’t sustainable.
“Every four years, more countries than are members of the United Nations assemble
in a global city to compete on the sporting field.”
What if diversity could help you achieve your business goals and provide a
competitive advantage? What if doing the right thing could be the best thing for
your business? Welcome to “Inclusion 3.0,” in which you don’t have to do anything,
and no one makes you fulfill quotas or forces you into training. You work with a
D&I team that tells you very little while asking questions and listening a lot. This
team learns about your business goals, comes to understand them, and aligns its
diversity strategy and initiatives to help you achieve them. Diversity 101 and 2.0
represent net costs to organizations. Inclusion 3.0 emphasizes the bottom line and
convincingly claims to create societal and shareholder value.
The 2012 London Olympic Games
London won the right to stage the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, in part
because it promised openness – an event for everyone, as reflected in the motto
“Everyone’s 2012.” Few expert observers expected London to prevail. Paris, which
offered a slick, more technically impressive approach, seemed a lock. When
London’s Olympic planners learned they had won, their elation gave way to
dismay. How could London follow Beijing, with its unlimited budget and million‐
person workforce? How could it live up to its promises and not embarrass the
nation?

4. nation?
With only a few years to stage the world’s largest, most complex event, many
advocated a pure focus on execution, without the distraction of nice‐to‐haves –
such as diversity goals.
Stephen Frost, the new “Head of Diversity and Inclusion” for the London 2012
Games, had limited authority and little time. All previous Olympic diversity
programs operated separately from the real business of staging the Games. No
Olympic management had included D&I teams. Previously, diversity folks
suggested quotas to the people responsible for creating an excellent event. Due to
resistance and entrenched attitudes, the Olympics themselves, while showcasing
diversity, featured a mostly homogeneous leadership.
Compliance and enforcement are the easiest buttons to push in diversity and
inclusion. The simple way to meet the 2012 Games’ D&I commitments would have
been to place a handful of disabled workers in staff and volunteer positions,
sprinkling gay and lesbian workers throughout, including women in leadership
positions, and making the Games accessible to people with a variety of disabilities.
With all the pressure to build venues, hire tens of thousands of people, manage
suppliers, deal with the media, sell tickets and stay within budget, why complicate
matters by fulfilling a grand vision of diversity and inclusion?
“It is the largest peacetime event in the world and the most
complex to organize.”
“We didn’t have an ‘equalities’ agenda, we had one agenda,
a business mission…to stage the best Games we could.”

5. The answer is simple: because diversity and inclusion is a lever – a tool to use in
meeting all of a firm’s other objectives. D&I helps relieve pressure on other
demands and plays a vital role in making organizations the best they can be – that
is what D&I accomplished for the London 2012 Olympics.
London could leave a true “legacy” by using the Olympics to become a better place
for more of its citizens, and by giving the Olympic and Paralympic movement a
new standard for inclusion. Diversity and inclusion could be a powerful tool for
making London’s event the most welcoming ever, despite its relatively small
budget, democratic constraints that did not exist in China, and a catastrophic
international financial crisis that made execution much more difficult.
“We learned that anyone can lead, with or without authority
and this empowered almost everyone to maximize their
contribution to the overall mission of the Games.”
“Diversity and inclusion are leadership issues because they
do not have universal acceptance: they are leadership issues
because while diversity is a reality, inclusion remains a
choice.”
A Culture Of Diversity And Inclusion
Real inclusion brings struggle and demands persistence. When you open that door,
be prepared to face the difficulty of hearing different ideas and opinions, and to
make room for a broad range of thinking in decisions and execution. Working with
like‐minded people means faster, less‐ contentious decision making – a more

6. like‐minded people means faster, less‐ contentious decision making – a more
comfortable arena for most people. Working with diverse opinions and exercising
broad inclusiveness strengthens decision making and actions, and usually enables
you to accomplish organizational goals faster.
Avoid thinking that after you’ve trained all your managers about diversity, you can
check off a box and watch diversity happen. Or that once you’ve provided mentors
to, for example, promising women leaders, they will ascend to the executive ranks
and bring diversity to the boardroom.
Diversity 101 and 2.0 fail, largely because they keep D&I separate – positioning it as
a program, not as a solution. Avoid using quotas and training hours as gauges;
devise metrics that track D&I’s impact on business performance. Don’t equate
diversity with talent. You cannot assume that the more diverse your workforce, the
more talented it is; no such correlation exists.
Conduct fewer training sessions, offer fewer lectures, and abolish quotas and other
diversity enforcement. Abandon the idea that D&I means someone wins and
someone loses – a “zero‐ sum game.” Don’t hire or promote less‐qualified people;
“Why would demographic diversity per se be a proxy for
talent diversity? People’s talents are not, as far as I am
aware, perfectly correlated to their ethnicity or sexual
orientation.”
“Quotas are in many ways a rearguard action, a crude,
insensitive intervention and another barrier to the free flow
of talent.”

7. create new opportunities for diverse candidates based on their skill and talent. Ask
your colleagues about D&I: Let them air their objections and concerns about
diversity, and even express their curiosity, to get the issue out in the open. When
you confront tough cases, ask them why they won’t support diversity and
inclusion.
Listen to their responses and address their concerns. Win converts one by one and,
rather than policing their results, use peer pressure to keep people on path. Track
leaders’ progress and share it for all to see.
In the pressure cauldron of the London 2012 Games, powerful leaders questioned
any effort at accessibility that went above and beyond requirements. By arguing
that every ramp, every extra wheelchair space and every automatic door creates a
win‐win for everyone – from harried parents pushing strollers to the older
spectator with knee trouble – Frost’s D&I team convinced skeptics that inclusion
“expands the pie” without making winners or losers. Ultimately, everyone’s goal for
the Games was to make them excellent. Few reasonable people would define
excellence
as anything that excluded large parts of the population. Convince your colleagues
in your organization of the imperative for inclusion by connecting it to your firm’s
higher purpose.
“It is easy to be diverse, without being inclusive…It is easy to
be inclusive without being diverse.”
“Diversity and inclusion were a central part of the bid.
London had made a virtue of this, promising to make London
a Games for everyone and it contrasted markedly with the
French presentation, which showcased technical excellence
and one white man speaking after the next.”

8. Build a culture of diversity and inclusion by avoiding the role of “auditor.” Consult,
listen, engage and build trust by demonstrating inclusion’s real value. Talk to other
leaders about what D&I can do for them. Help them see the issue from the point of
view of a diverse member of society. For example, the LOCOG D&I team showed
photos from Beijing – one from the perspective of a typical fan and another
through the eyes of a wheelchair user. Both had premium seats, but the first fan
got a perfect view of the action while plants and a protruding sill blocked the
disabled fan’s line of sight.
The Beijing planners had good intentions, but inclusiveness “doesn’t just happen.”
It requires thoughtfulness from everyone, not just the D&I team. Diversity and
inclusion must be embedded in the actions of everyone who executes a business.
Let your colleagues join the effort for their own reasons, whether driven by the lure
of another advantage or because they believe it is the ethical thing to do.
and one white man speaking after the next.”
“A key test for us was whether a family on welfare support,
without any current job, could afford to go to the London
Olympic and Paralympic Games. They could and they did.”
Costs And Returns
In the US alone, employers spend $64 billion annually to replace people who quit
their jobs due to “unfairness and discrimination.” That figure grows exponentially
when you add the costs of employee disengagement. If you can’t be yourself at
work, your productivity will suffer – when women, gays or people of color must act
like straight white men to get ahead, their psyches and performances suffer. The

9. hiring firm gains window dressing, but loses the diversity of ideas that
accompanies “real inclusion.” Don’t hire for how well a candidate might fit in;
instead, select the opposite, someone likely to offer a different opinion, shake
things up and reduce “groupthink.”
The return on investment in Inclusion 3.0 includes fielding a workforce that relates
better to your customer base, broadens your range of potential talent, creates
positive “conflict,” results in firmer decisions, and builds your organization’s
reputation for ethical business.
Your success depends on stakeholders outside of your organization, not only those
within. For example, your supply chains represent enormous risk and opportunity.
Suppliers were a major factor in the London effort, and no D&I initiative could
have much impact without their cooperation. The D&I team asked internal leaders
to voluntarily sign a “Leadership Pledge” affirming their commitment to D&I hiring,
procurement and staging the Games – notably, in accessibility. Ultimately, 96%
signed the pledge, including internal members of the team and supplier
organizations, politicians, and other key stakeholders within and without the
LOCOG. Such commitments empower everyone, not just leaders, with authority to
guide D&I efforts and to hold their peers accountable.
“Diversity is not a universal panacea, it is problematic.”
Tactics And Tools
LOCOG D&I implemented a range of tools that have direct relevance to D&I
initiatives in any large organization:
Add “access now” – Avoid policing, but offer advantages to target groups.
In London, the D&I team “guaranteed interviews” to any disabled person or

10. any “person with long‐term health ” The team took flak for providing this
advantage, but pointed out that it guaranteed only interviews, not jobs.
Interviewees had to qualify; the guarantee attracted many who might have
regarded the Games’ claims as only more talk about inclusion with no
concomitant action.
“Talent pools” – The D&I team tracked groups of talented people to keep
valuable diverse candidates under If they didn’t make the top of the hiring
list for one position, they might meet the needs for another job. When
you’re hiring, don’t throw out the names of your runners‐up and start all
over with the next cycle. Keep your diverse candidates in an online pool that
everyone in the organization can access. Market them throughout the
organization. To keep them engaged, communicate with them regularly
about job openings.
“Action on inclusion” – Like the rest of the organization, the D&I committee
was based at London’s Canary Diverse candidates, largely concentrated in
poorer East London, weren’t likely to travel there, so D&I went to them. By
attending events, staging job fairs, advertising in ethnic publications, and
being present in local neighborhoods where diverse candidates lived and
worked, the D&I team attracted many candidates it would otherwise have
missed.
“Attitude over age”– The Olympic and Paralympic Games radiate youth and
vitality; that sends an unintentional message of exclusion to older people
who might wish to participate. LOCOG created advertising and events aimed
at engaging older workers as staff members, suppliers and Concerts
involving older people onstage and partnerships with older‐ worker
employment networks ensured inclusion of older workers.
Better hiring processes – Using strategies that included group interviews
﴾to diminish bias﴿, better‐worded job descriptions, one‐on‐one coaching and
early applications for the disabled, D&I led a comprehensive program that
reached and welcomed diverse candidates and prepared them for successful
The program encompassed contractors and their hires as well. D&I provided
all “reasonable accommodations” ﴾food, accessibility and venues for
religious observance﴿ to encourage people to apply for and serve in staff
and volunteer positions.

11. The success of the London 2012 Games proved that implementing D&I makes
sense. Inclusion brought the costs of the event down – saving, according to Frost,
“$150 million” in procurement costs alone. It accelerated deliverables across the
board, attracted a widely diverse spectator base, and employed by far the most
diverse staff, volunteer and supplier roster in Olympic history – without ever
compromising on quality of talent.
London leaves a legacy for the city and the world: Its success included everyone.
“Even the most well‐designed diversity program will fail to
shift the trajectory of the organization if it remains removed
from where the real profit and loss incentives or other
strategic levers…actually lie.”
“If you want to change the world…you should start with your
own organization.”
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