Is your company mired in the culture wars? Stop fighting

THE US election daily reminds us that we live in hyper-politicised times. Not only do people from different political tribes refuse to have anything to do with each other, but politics also invades every nook and cranny of daily life. As so often, America’s bad habits are spreading to the world: Political operatives increasingly think in terms of harnessing “negative partisanship” (aka “loathing along party lines”) rather than solving collective problems.

What should organisations do about such powerful political passions? Over the course of the past decade – and particularly after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 – organisations decided that they had no choice but to join the fray. Organisations of every variety and in every corner of the world condemned Floyd’s murder. Senior British civil servants proclaimed their commitment to LGBTQ with lanyards and flags. Universities adopted official positions on oppressions of every stripe. Corporate reports began to devote more and more pages to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

The result has been problematic. Companies have become embroiled in fights that they cannot win. Activist-employees have agitated for increasingly radical policies. Universities have alienated their donors. And DEI initiatives have often backfired – or “morphed into a set of rules and prohibitions that divided, not included, and that shamed and shut down people with non-aligned views and values” as Diversity by Design, a pro-diversity group, argues in Flying Flags and Ticking Boxes. As a result, a growing number of institutions are reversing themselves and running away from politics and all it entails. The phrase of the moment is “institutional neutrality”.