I: Inclusion

The second world war ended early because of inclusion Democracy is a fragile thing, it is so easy to slip into simplistic solutions to massive problems without thinking about the unintended consequences, just turn on the telly…… Nevertheless over many centuries of hard thinking humanity has settled on systems and processes which try and give voice to the people.

‘Oh no it hasn’t’ I hear you say, that’s just the western perspective! And maybe you’re a bit right, but even citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless of ethnic background, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education level, property status or length of residence (with a limited choice of 1 in terms of the party they stand for I appreciate….).

Now just reflect on that list again; regardless of race, sex, job, family, god(s), school, house or (and this one surprised me as well), length of residence. That’s inclusive, isn’t it?

I’m writing this about 50 metres away from one of Bletchley Park’s ‘sub stations’ it’s in an old, thatched cottage – lots of wires and dials remain. In many ways it is a fragment of an early ‘internet’ whereby of the central hub was bombed the satellites could carry on the code breaking work during the second world war.

So what has this got to do with inclusion you may well ask?

The extraordinary success of breaking the unbreakable Enigma Code that happened in Bletchley Park, led by famous names like Alan Turing, came about, in my opinion, because the team was inclusive. People were selected regardless of race, sex, job, family, god(s), school, house and so on. The code breakers were not of one discipline, they were engineers, mathematicians, linguists, classicists, historians, chess champions and, of the close to 9000 staff by 1944, 75% of them were women.

This is why inclusion is so important.

And that is why the anti DE&I rhetoric of the present US administration is so wrong headed. Democracy needs to represent the people, and if the people are half men and half women (actually it a biological quirk but the actual ratio is 105 boys to 100 girls – as the boys are more accident prone……so the thinking goes, anyway I digress….) that’s fine. Take this ratio approach to people of different races, religions, sexualities and so on and ideally that should be reflected across a country – in the politicians, in the work place and so on.

Meeting Canary makes no judgements, it’s only a tool for quantifying the way people interact, but this ‘quant’ can help companies to address inclusion to see if their company is playing a fair hand with regards to the make-up of the people that work for them.

And if they are, it stands to reason that they can crack their own code better than if all decisions and progress are made by one dominant group?