It's Time to Reach for the High-Hanging Fruit

Dr. Ralph Shrader

The Diversity Awards Dinner is — and I mean this quite sincerely — my favorite Booz Allen occasion. How many of you here tonight have been at previous diversity awards dinners?

Well, whether this is your first, or fifth, I'm sure you can feel what I'm talking about. This is a very special night that captures the passion, values, and accomplishment of our Booz Allen family. Yet as much as I love this event, and leave it deeply moved and immensely proud — I also walk away with regrets.

Why? Because, I so wish that this passion, spirit, and accomplishment could be shared and spread far beyond this room. We represent the converted — and we desperately need to reach those beyond — our colleagues who are still too pre-occupied or skeptical to see the power, potential, and yes, the practicality of embracing a diverse workplace.

And I know that you are reaching well beyond this room. Each of you here tonight represents a much larger team that earned this recognition. And, a much larger group is benefiting from your exceptional efforts.

You have reached — you are reaching — well beyond the near-at-hand. Which brings me to this crystal apple, which I see as a symbol of your impact and accomplishments. You — the winners and nominees of Booz Allen's 2004 Diversity Awards — have achieved what I believe is the challenge for our firm, and for all organizations striving to be better, and do better.

The challenge is this: It's time to reach for the high-hanging fruit.

I'd like to take a few minutes tonight to talk about this — and to enlist your help in getting more colleagues to climb higher with you. Diversity efforts, like other important strategic initiatives in companies, typically begin with a focus on programs and activities that can be readily implemented and yield visible results. In corporate buzzword-speak, we call these quick wins, "the low-hanging fruit."

And, please understand, there's nothing wrong with going after the low-hanging fruit. Showing results early is important. If good things happen, they're just as good whether getting there was easy or hard.

But, we've been there and done that. And, there's so much more left to do. As I see it, the challenge for diversity in the 21st century is to reach for the high-hanging fruit — to address the difficult and complex issues that stand in the way of our true goal of a richly diverse, high-performing organization.

To reach for the high-hanging fruit, we need to consider and adopt fundamental changes. We need to get beyond the hurdles and roadblocks, and we need to reverse inevitable set-backs.

Last year, I spoke about the need to go beyond good intentions and to focus on outcomes. I described the new Board Diversity Initiative as an ambitious program focused on outcomes. Today, a year into that program, I believe we truly are going beyond good intentions. We've made real progress and are holding individuals and teams accountable as never before.

Here are just a few examples. In the past year:

• 55 business units have developed detailed diversity plans for their teams — plans that cover everything from recruiting, to mentoring, to advancement, to training...



• We've truly moved diversity from being [the senior leaders of our Diversity Team] Patrick or Ann or Mike's issue to diversity being the responsibility of every manager and team...



• Through our focus on recruiting and an innovative outreach effort called, "Project Access," the Worldwide Technology Business has increased the number of minority principals from 11 to 20...



• In our commercial business, which has always presented a special challenge because of the demanding travel and fast pace of assignments, we have created 5 People Action Teams or PATs. These PATs are focusing initially on work-life balance in the United States and advancement of women in Europe.

The programs are specific and they have teeth. We can look at the Board Diversity Initiative as akin to a field guide to help us and others reach for the high-hanging fruit.

But, a structured program can only go so far — we need something else to capture hearts and minds. We need to be able to inspire our colleagues, and give them confidence that, together, we can go after important, hard goals like diversity — and succeed. I'd like to share some thoughts on how we can do that. It builds on ideas I introduced back in January at a diversity reception here at the Ritz for senior staff in the Washington area. On that occasion, I said we needed to do two things — to have urgency for action, and patience for results. Tonight, I'd like to add a third thing: we need to have an unswerving belief and commitment to our goal.

Let me briefly talk about each of these things — and why I believe they are important guideposts for us in reaching for the high-hanging fruit. First, we need an urgency for action. All major goals — in our lives and in our organizational evolution — require continual, urgent pursuit.

Big, important things like trying to master a sport, move up the ladder at work, lose weight, or build a strong relationship with our family — are things we need to keep after, day after day. None of these things comes easy. We can't grab the low-hanging fruit and run off with our prize.

In his best-selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly-Effective People, Steven Covey distinguishes between the urgent and the important. He makes the point that we typically devote too much time and attention to the urgent things in our life at the expense of the more important things.

I'd like to modify Covey's premise a bit. I believe we need to make the important things — like diversity — urgent.

Second, we need to have patience for results. That might at first sound contradictory to the first point about urgency. But, I see them as very compatible. Real change and progress takes time. Avoiding chocolate today won't melt off the pounds tomorrow, and winning an important new task order won't instantly translate into a promotion.

Likewise, mentoring a woman or person of color won't immediately lead to improved retention and advancement — nor noticeably improve our firm's overall diversity profile.

But, it's vital that we stay the course and keep up the intensity. In this hyper-impatient age, patience is truly a virtue — and essential to reaching the high-hanging fruit.

The third, and last, key is to have unswerving belief and commitment to the goal. We really need to understand, articulate, and share with each other (and especially with our colleagues not in this room), our concrete vision of a truly diverse culture. And then, we need to have utmost faith that we can get there.

In the book, Good to Great, the author Jim Collins talks about interviewing Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Stockdale explained that the POWs who fared the worst were the optimists. The pessimists didn't do so great either. It was the realists who truly were able to prevail.

So, why were the optimists so ill-equipped? According to Stockdale, those who naively believed "we'll be out by Christmas," were devastated when Christmas came and went — and they were still not free.

Based on this, Collins formulated what he called "the Stockdale Paradox," which states, "Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties ... AND, at the same time ... confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

I believe the Stockdale paradox — which I'm condensing as "unswerving belief and commitment to the goal" is a key for us in achieving a truly diverse organization.

To build on that point, I'd like to close my remarks by showing a slide that aptly illustrates our challenge.

This is from a recent presentation by Vice President John Jones about Booz Allen's change management work for clients. John calls it the "roller coaster" slide. The point is this: Conventional wisdom says that successful programs keep heading upwards with positive momentum and steady gains.

But, our work in change management shows the opposite is true. Going after major change — and diversity is a major change program — means recognizing there will be set-backs on the road to success. I believe this is where we are right now — past the big hill on the roller coaster. We've made real progress — and achieved real results. But, we're not there yet. In fact, sometimes we might even find ourselves heading down away from the summit.

The point I want to leave you with is this — we must not get discouraged. We must recognize that the low-hanging fruit is gone — but that's a good thing. It means we have accomplished a lot. At the same time, we need to recognize we're going to stumble on our way toward the top right corner — that's where the high-hanging fruit is.

So, how can you help us get there? For starters, you already are. You — Lucy [Stribley], Nate [Copeland], the Colorado Springs office, all of the winners and nominees [of the 2004 Booz Allen Hamilton Diversity Awards] ... are making a visible difference showing us sustained results and real outcomes. We need your help — to articulate a vision and refine our programs at Booz Allen so we can get to the high-hanging fruit. I urge you to continue to lead with your spirit and passion — your "absolute faith" — in our diverse organization. Don't let us "lose the faith" if we find ourselves slipping downward ... or find our progress too slow. Help us see the way forward — up to the higher branches and the greatest payoff.

There's a proverb that says, "There are two ways you can reach the top of a tree. You can climb ... or you can sit on an acorn and wait."

Thank you for climbing — and congratulations!