WEBVTT

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Whenever you bring up diversity,
people's hearts tend to sink a little bit.

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They're like, "Oh my God,
I'm going to have a lecture.

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I'm going to have to sit
through slides like this,

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with multicultural hands in the air,

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people of different races holding hands,
giving each other high fives,

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holding each other,

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maybe holding the world,
holding the globe up -

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When we talk about diversity,

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we tend to do so

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in a really unimaginative,
stock-standard kind of way.

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And that's because people
don't really want to talk about diversity.

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They don't want to talk
about diversity in the workplace.

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It's just a problem
that needs to be solved

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so that you can get on to other things.

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And that's an attitude
that I've kind of come across a lot

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during my working life

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because, I mean, I don't want
to boast or anything,

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but in technical terms, I'm a three-fer:

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I'm brown, I'm gay, I'm female.

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I'm three minorities for the price of one.

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(Laughter)

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So, you know, I'm the triple threat,

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but I'm also the triple opportunity

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because when companies hire me,
they get to tick three diversity boxes.

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(Laughter)

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They get three times the value,

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and they get someone to wheel out,
to show that they're not sexist,

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they're not homophobic,
they're not racist.

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Because everybody's worried
about that, obviously.

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The flip side of diversity
is discrimination,

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and diversity and discrimination
are huge issues at the moment,

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as our cities change,
as the demographics of our cities change,

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particularly now with the refugee crisis.

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But things are changing,
the face of our cities is changing,

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but what's not changing
is the face of power:

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the people on our TVs,

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the people in the big board rooms,
upper management.

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That's still exactly the same.

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We still have institutionalized sexism.

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Did you know that, in the US,

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there are more guys called John
that lead major companies

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than women leading major companies?

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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There are actually 17,
compared to 7 women.

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We also face institutionalized racism.

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I mean, it's well documented that
if you've got a foreign-sounding name,

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you have a harder time getting a job.

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There was a study done in Germany

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that found that if you have a name
that sounds German,

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you're 14% more likely
to be called for an interview

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than if you have a name
that sounds Turkish.

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And I mean, probably
a lot of you are thinking,

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"Fourteen percent? I thought it would be
a bit more than that, actually."

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This all really needs to change,

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and not just because
it's the right thing to do,

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but because it's
the profitable thing to do.

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There are so many studies that show

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that increasing diversity in a company
makes for a more successful company.

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For example, racially diverse teams
outperform non-diverse ones by 35%,

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according to Mackenzie,

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and teams where men and women are equal
earn 41% more revenue.

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So, here's the situation,
this is where we are:

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we know that the corporate
world needs to change,

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we know that there's
a business case for changing,

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and yet nothing is changing.

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How do we go from talking about diversity
to actually making it happen?

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This is something I've been
thinking about for a while,

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and earlier this year,
I had a kind of light-bulb moment,

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and I came up with a brilliant solution.

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So, I got a team together,

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and we started working
on building this new service,

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a service that would really
just change the diversity debate

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and really solve the diversity
problem once and for all.

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So, what is this
revolutionary new service?

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Well, it's called Rent-A-Minority.

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I like to think of it
as an Uber for diversity.

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(Laughter)

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Because the thing is -

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[Get ethics with our ethics.
We have a minority for every occasion.]

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Diversity is difficult.

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It takes time, it takes resources,

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it takes energy.

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Companies don't have that time,

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they need to be getting on
with what's really important.

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So, what we need is something
that's quick and easy:

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diversity on demand.

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So how does this work?

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Well, if you are a minority,
you can sign up on our website.

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We have a strict vetting procedure

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so that we ensure
we only get the best minorities.

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(Laughter)

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You can see some
of our minorities featured here.

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So -

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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A very popular category
is the ethnically ambiguous category

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because it's very, very versatile,

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it can be whatever
you want them to be, really.

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We've got a smiling Muslim women:

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"Doesn't support ISIS
or your money back";

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intellectual black guy -

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Really, we've got a minority
for every occasion.

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We work with clients to find
the right minority for your needs.

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And our clients are very, very happy.

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We've got a long testimonial section
you can check out on the website.

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[The best thing to happen to Indians
since British colonialism.]

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(Laughter)

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I'm glad to see that some people
got the joke here.

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(Laughter)

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Because it has been so successful,

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we are launching an ad campaign
a bit later this year in New York.

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So, there may be some of you here
who are still thinking,

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"Okay, what is going on?

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Why did TEDx invite
this crazy person to our conference?

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Is this a joke?"

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And I've had that question a lot.

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A lot, a lot of people
have asked me that question.

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So I even made a FAQ page
and put up the answer.

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And the answer is yes!

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(Laughter)

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It is a joke.

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But a lot of people
didn't realize it was a joke.

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You know, I had a thousand people
sign up to be minorities.

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(Laughter)

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I even received genuine business inquiries
from big companies, that I won't name,

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asking about the service.

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In fact, I think I could have made
a lot of money out of the company

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if I'd monetized it.

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It might be a missed opportunity.

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So, the reason some people
didn't realize it was a joke

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is because Rent-A-Minority
is very close, scarily close,

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to the way that a lot of companies
deal with the diversity question,

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a very superficial approach to diversity,

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that actually makes the whole issue worse,

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because there are
so many studies that show

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that people find diversity training,
enforced diversity training, awful.

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It makes a lot of white men
feel very resentful.

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It actually increases prejudice

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because a lot of people
suddenly think, you know,

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that if you're someone like me,

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you've suddenly got
an escalator to the top,

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everything's stacked up for you.

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The thing is it's really not

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because what we're not doing

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is we are not getting rid
of institutional inequality,

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we're not getting rid of the barriers

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that stop companies
from becoming more equal.

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All we're doing is
this very surface-level tokenism.

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That means that if you
are someone like me,

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every time you do have a success,

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people are very quick to attribute it
to tokenism or to diversity schemes,

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or, "You only got that
because you are a woman,"

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or, "Because you're brown."

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And I actually got
a lot of people writing in to me

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and saying how they've felt
that reflected their own experience.

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There's a section of the website now
with people's stories and anecdotes in it.

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And the thing is, you know, sometimes
people do get jobs because of tokenism.

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That doesn't help anyone.

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There was this one woman
who wrote in to me,

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and she said that she had recently taken
a role at a business consulting firm.

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It was previosuly occupied
by a smiley Asian woman,

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a very sort of ambiguously Asian woman.

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She left, they hired her.

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She was the only person
of color in the company,

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and it was clear that she'd just taken
that one slot of "ethnically ambiguous."

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Again, it doesn't help anyone.
It makes the situation so much worse.

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So, Rent-A-Minority was
a fake solution to a very real problem.

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What's the real solution?

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Well, I've got bad news
and I've got good news.

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The bad news is that
there is no quick solution,

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there's no silver bullet.

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It takes time; it takes effort.

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However, the good news is
that diversity is a serious issue,

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but we don't need to take it so seriously.

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One of the reasons I set up
Rent-A-Minority was because I think

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that one of the things holding us back
is that nobody talks about it

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because they don't want
to be seen as racist or sexist,

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they don't want to step on people's toes,

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that this sort of inability
to talk about it properly

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actually contributes to the problem.

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So, I think we shouldn't be afraid
to find humor in the situation,

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because as Mark Twain said,

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the human race has only one
really effective weapon,

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and that's laughter.

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The other good news is that all of us
can be doing small things

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that louder up to big changes.

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And by "all of us," I do mean all of us.

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Diversity isn't something that HR fixes.

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It's something that everyone
is responsible for

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and everybody should
be doing something about.

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So, what can you do?

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Well, if you're in HR
or you're responsible for recruiting,

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you might want to think about ways
that you can reduce your unconscious bias.

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In the 1970s,

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symphony orchestras were all white men,

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and they thought,
"Let's do something about this."

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So, they set up blind auditions

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where musicians actually
auditioned behind a screen,

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so you couldn't see if it was a woman
or the color of their skin.

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They found

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that it actually brought the number of
women getting accepted into orchestras up

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from between 25% to 46%,

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depending on the study.

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A company called GapJumpers

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has now started to take
this idea of blind auditions

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and apply it to the corporate world.

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So instead of looking through
people's CVs to find candidates,

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you can assign them
challenges anonymously.

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And what they found

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is that they've got 60% more minority
applicants selected for interviews

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as compared to CV screenings,

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and they've got 125% more women selected
compared to CV screenings.

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So suddenly, that question of,

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"Oh, we couldn't find the best candidate,
it's all about the best candidate,

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we just can't find them,"

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it's started to sound a bit false
because they are all out there.

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That is, unconscious bias
is getting in the way.

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Another thing everyone can do
is just say something.

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If nobody says anything, nothing changes.

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So, if you are in a room,
in a meeting, in a company,

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and it's all just the same sort of persons
sitting around the table,

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go and talk to your manager, you know.

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Talk about it, make a comment.

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You don't want to be
in a company that's like that.

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Another thing we can all be doing is just
finding ways to prove again and again

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that diversity is beneficial,
that is does have a positive effect,

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it's not just political correctness.

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That, by the way, isn't
the mathematical proof for diversity.

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I'm not sure there is one.

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But we can all be doing these experiments
and finding ways to prove it.

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For example, in London,
in the advertising industry,

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a group of five creative
directors got together

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and they initiated this thing called
The Great British Diversity Experiment.

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And what they did was they got 120 people
from different backgrounds,

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they put them in teams,
they got them to solve a live brief

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and they had researchers
ethnographically studying them

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to see how they interacted compared
to if it was a homogeneous group.

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And they found that, yes,
being in a diverse group -

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and this is common sense -

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it makes you more creative.

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Because you get so many more
different perspectives,

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you connect the dots in different ways.

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And they issued a report
at the end of this

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and they said, you know,
diversity is the new Darwinism.

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And this is absolutely right.

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The world is changing
whether you like it or not,

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and companies have
to evolve or go extinct.

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And tokenism is not evolving.

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Finally, what I'd really urge

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is that we just get rid
of the word "diversity" altogether

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because the thing about diversity

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is that it assumes
that there is a nucleus of normal:

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it's pro straight, white men called John.

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Everyone else is "diverse."

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That's so patently wrong.

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The world has changed so much
and will continue to,

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and diversity now is the new normal.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)