“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” — Confucius
As a young man in the midst of a terrible recession and with a business failure behind me, a quick look at my future career felt pretty dismal back in the early 1990s. Local companies wanted you to come in at the bottom and work your way up. By pure good fortune, I ended up working with a foreign company who thought very differently when compared to almost every local employer, and who threw me in the deep end without hesitation. I learnt how to swim pretty quickly, and my reward was an even deeper pool, and so on.
I absolutely loved it.
For me, this was a mind blowing experience. Instead of having to earn a track record to get to go to the next level, I was judged on my potential and my results.
I learnt this was called a ‘meritocracy’. As a working class catholic with no degree it was intoxicating. I worked very hard and reaped the rewards. Anyone could get ahead if only they worked hard enough. My boss and her boss were both women. We had the first female head of a tradomg desk in the City. The diversity of my colleagues in the US was remarkable, even for someone working in a global city like London.
I was utterly smitten with the idea of meritocracy, and I flourished.
I look back and realize that this worked for me because I was someone my employers could see the potential in. They had a long track record of over-working hungry and ambitious young men, kicking out those who did not succeed (who often learnt from their errors) and richly rewarding those who did get the job done. And together we all benefited mightily.
But what if there were others who had the potential but it was not spotted? We can all imagine how an introvert (something nobody has ever labeled me) might not be seen, but what if you were breaking stereotypes? Like you didn’t wear a tie to work, or let your hair touch your collar, or even — shock, horror! — a woman applying for an engineering role? How comfortably would potential be recognized in you then?
Without attributing intent to our judgments, it’s simply much easier to see potential and good stuff in someone who is a member of a group you understand, admire and relate to. For me this is the military: if you are a current or former member of the military, I will immediately feel like I get you. My father was an air force pilot, and I dearly wanted to be one but took a different path. It doesn’t matter what your age, color, orientation is, I don’t see that, I see your uniform, your service, your experience. You’re in before I’ve even got to know you.
As anyone has worked in any large organization, there are good and bad, competent and incompetent, hard working and lazy types, and the military is no different. So my affection for that group is based on my own perceptions and not reality.
As for the groups I don’t know, I’ve never met a Viking. If I did, I don’t really know how I would react. But I know for certain I wouldn’t be making many positive assumptions. The language would be a barrier. I’d be on edge in case he attacked me. With so many unknowns my defenses would be primed and I would be very wary of this awful stranger. I’d never to get know about his children, what his own father was like and what was it about Scandinavia that made him get in an open boat and cross the North Sea? Maybe even, I’d for once become the introvert.
I use this ridiculous example of a Viking to avoid selecting any current day group. It’s simply an illustration of how, if we don’t spend any time getting to know people who are not exactly like us, well it can be difficult at first to really get to know them. And conversely, it’s easy to think you know who someone is when you are comfortable with them.
Today, 25 years later, we are coming to terms with the real world impact of one group not really knowing the other group. Aside from any moral, societal or political issues, this quite plainly creates inefficiencies and opportunity costs on both sides.
Imagine if we could see the potential in anyone, regardless of their group? Imagine if we could more accurately judge the value of anyone, any employer, any human interaction? We’d all be richer and better off. Fewer Hail Mary hires who fail to make the grade. More candidates. More cohesion. More success. More wealth.
This idea is uncannily similar to the founding principles of the word ‘meritocracy’. So why do we need a new word?
The word ‘merit’ is very similar to the worth ‘dignity’. Both mean the inherent value of something. However, merit is ‘awarded’ by someone else. This idea has merit. That course of action is meritable. It’s passive, and judged externally.
Dignity however, is inherent. <Something about the Romans> It’s the worth of a person, and the privileges that arise. And, crucially, the individual earns it. It’s not awarded externally.
If we are all to get on, and if businesses are to master accurate assessment and deployment of its human capital, we must make the transition from merit to dignity. We must aspire to the higher standard of being able to see the worth everywhere it is, not just where it’s easy to recognize. Sticking with merit — our personal view of worth — we remain stuck in an older way of thinking, where there is only one ‘good’ way of doing something (hint: it’s the way I do it). Getting comfortable with other ways of thinking and doing isn’t politically correct, it dramatically expands the solution of space for any issue, increases the pool of suitable applicants and drives a culture of excellence within your organizaiton.
Which is why we need a new term. Meritocracy worked in the 20th century. The world was a simpler place and one group got to define what was good. Now we need to move forward in the 21st century with a similar idea, but one that works for everyone, not just white guys.
Which is why we need Dignitocracy. Become ferocious in our quest to accurate assess human potential and its results. Recognize we all have perfectly human biases and work to reduce their impact on our decisions. And build better, more resilient and more capable organizations.
After all, we still need to win if we’re going to run a business. Giving high potential folks a path to success isn’t a social service, it’s just plain, good, old fashioned business.
