A Saudi revolution in convoluted times

Collaboration and Communication

“It’s a good time to be a woman in Saudi Arabia,” said the CEO of a bank over dinner at Riyadh’s fashionable Cipriani restaurant. She – for it was a she – is not alone in thinking that. In fact, the most senior role in the Saudi diplomatic service, Ambassador to Washington, is held by Princess Reema Al Saud, another foreign educated female in her 40s.

A policy including transport subsidies, childcare support and employer incentives for hiring women has resulted in the proportion of Saudi women in work doubling in only four years to 33 percent, exceeding the 27 percent average for the Middle East and North Africa, notes the IMF.

The role of women is not the only change in a country undergoing a seismic shift into a technologically-driven, innovative land. Demography, purpose and funds are the three foundations upon which Mohammed Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 is being built.

Demographic Dividend

Two thirds of Saudi Arabia’s 36m population is under 35 years old. With a fertility rate of 2.3 per woman, the young will continue dominating, although the birth rate has fallen substantially over the last years and that fall will likely accelerate as women take up more working roles. This is one reason for the Crown Prince, known as MBS, to pursue his framework for development at a brisk pace – one look at archenemy Iran provides another.

Iran’s population numbers a heftier 86m, but it has a similar age profile: 60% of its people are under 30. However, without a modernising agenda chock-a-block with opportunities for the young, and with no steady sources of income due to sanctions, its rulers, if they survive, will continue facing riots and revolts – like that sparked in September by the death of a young woman, probably due to religious police brutality.

Purposeful Activity

The second leg of the Saudi development stool is purpose. Vision 2030 envisages the country weaning itself off its dependence on oil revenues and diversifying its economy into sectors including science and technology.

The aims for the tourism sector are among the most ambitious – doubling the number of UNESCO world heritage sites, establishing the largest Islamic museum in the world, and promoting cultural and entertainment activities. This has a couple of advantages. Tourism employs large numbers of people, most likely the young, from both skilled and unskilled backgrounds, while also encouraging an openness to the world that will be hard to row back on.

One of the chosen areas for tourist development is in the northwest, around the town and oasis of AlUla, a stop-off on the historical Incense Road. Old shops are being restored, and local women in full hijab and increasingly more liberal outfits are given the task of running them with the rent and stock subsidised by the state. Cool cafés and restaurants abound, staffed by a mix of foreigners and Saudis, many of the latter on a steep learning curve.

On our recent visit, the tour guide showing us the nearby Nabatean tombs at Hegra – like Petra in Jordan but without the crowds – was a historian whose mother was a Bedouin and father a local. The Royal Commission AlUla (RCA) sends 500 students abroad annually for degrees, mainly to the US, a practice that the central government had been applying for years, resulting in a skilled, English-speaking youth. One of our Uber drivers in Riyadh, between jobs as a town planner, had studied at university in Texas on a full scholarship.

The cleverness of Vision 2030 for youth is that it not only hands them a purpose – pride in their country’s history and beauty, and it in its rapid modernisation – but it also provides entertainment. An example is Boulevard Riyadh City, a 900,000 square metre outdoor area of shops, laser shows, and concerts, built only three years ago and constantly increasing in size and offerings. A couple of weeks ago a female DJ in black leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt was busy spinning and boogieing to what sounded to our untrained ears like Saudi house music.

The biggest boost to tourism will come from the lifting of the ban on alcohol, rumoured to be happening within the next two years. This will probably apply to tourist areas only, rather like Dubai and Qatar.

Expats make up around 38% of the population, ranging from the most menial jobs to the highly paid consultants from firms like McKinsey and Bain, who are making eye-watering amounts from their work.

Oil Funds

And Saudi Arabia has the money to pay them. The third leg of its development stool are the vast amounts flowing into its coffers due to the energy crisis. Saudi Arabia is making about $1 billion a day from oil exports, according to Bloomberg, marking a 123% increase year on year. The IMF estimates the country will be one of the world’s fastest growing economies this year, with GDP growing at 7.6%.

This is evident everywhere you look, whether in Riyadh or Jeddah, the second largest city on the coast, or AlUla. A plethora of architecturally stunning new buildings spring up continually and the air of excitement is palpable. This year’s annual FII conference, nicknamed Davos in the Desert, was the largest ever, with over 7,000 delegates from all over the world.

What could go wrong?

In a world awash in recession and inflation, Saudi Arabia stands out as the promised land, where vast funds are being applied to create a “vibrant society, a thriving economy and an ambitious nation.” What could be more symbolic than its football team beating World Cup favourites Argentina only a few days ago?

There is, however, one caveat to the fairy tale. “It all depends on one man,” noted a Saudi top executive.

Vision 2030, launched in 2016, was developed with the input of the Council of Economic & Development Affairs, and constant feedback from business, but MBS is key to its implementation. He took power away from the Council of Senior Scholars, the supreme religious body; from the Mutawa, the religious police; from the Saudi financial and political elite, many of whom are part of the royal family, with a well-publicised kidnap of around 500 of the country’s elite, held hostage in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Those actions should ensure that the 37-year old Crown Prince will be appointed King by the Royal Court when his father dies.

That ruthlessness was also apparent in the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, with the CIA ascribing blame to the Saudi ruler. Public opprobrium followed, but was short-lived – most evidently when this summer, vociferous critic Joe Biden travelled to Saudi Arabia to fist-pump with MBS and plead for higher oil production; most recently with rival Turkey gratefully accepting a purported $5bn transfer to its central bank reserves.

Saudi coffee, delicious as it is, is unrecognisable as coffee to Western palates. Saffron, cardamom, ginger, and other spices, add an entirely different dimension. So it is proving with Saudi Arabia’s revolution. An awe-inspiring local creation, but one that won’t suit all palates.

Why the Benefits of Age Diversity Need to be Shouted from the Rooftops

Speech delivered on Champion Age Diversity Day

Age has been in the news.

In the UK, we just celebrated the Platinum Jubilee of our queen, now 96-years old, and still delivering value in the workplace. In her case, that happens to be the balcony on Buckingham Palace.

In the US we have the oldest man to be sworn in as President at age 78. At age 29, Joe Biden was one of the youngest people ever elected to the United States Senate. He may be domestically unpopular - hugely unpopular – but I am not alone in being grateful that an experienced statesman is in charge during the biggest crisis to face the West since the Cold War.

And on a June weekend, we saw a critically injured 36-year-old beat a 23-year-old at Roland Garros to walk away with his 14th French Open win, and thus be called the GREATEST OF ALL TIME, the best tennis player of his generation: Rafael Nadal, with two grand slams more than his closest opponents.

Yet we live in a world that worships youth. That dismisses the middle aged and the old. A world where if you are over 50, its going to be a nightmare trying to find a new job. And chances are, if you are employed, with stagflation, recession, whatever is coming, your employer is more likely to dismiss you if you are over 50, than if you are younger.

AGE DISCRIMINATION EXISTS AND ITS THRIVING

If I say to you, youth and innovation, youth and entrepreneurship, you won’t bat an eyelid.

If I say to you, an older worker and innovation, older worker and entrepreneurship…well, it doesn’t exactly slip off the tongue, does it?

In fact, I have my own story of age discrimination. In a bid to cut back on the household bills, I thought I would go grey, give up those boring visits to the hairdresser – boring and expensive – every six weeks. I bought a grey wig, to see what I would look like. Let me show you, as I showed my family.

(At this point in the speech, Karina put on a grey wig)

I admit it is a cheap, nasty wig. But what was even more horrific was my 21-year old son’s reaction: “Mama, you are supposed to be at the forefront of social change in the City, of Diversity and Inclusion. If you let yourself go grey, you won’t have any credibility.”

Let me repeat that:’ you won’t have any credibility. ‘

The conclusion is that if you are older, you don’t look like an agent of change, you don’t look like an entrepreneur, you don’t look like an innovator.

WHAT IS THE REALITY?

Let me give you 3 doses of reality.

First. The average age of a successful start-up founder is 45, according to a 2020 research study by Economica. Note the word ‘successful’.

Let me quote: ‘Among those who have started a firm, older entrepreneurs have a substantially higher success rate. Our evidence points to entrepreneurial performance rising sharply with age before cresting in the late fifties. If you were faced with two entrepreneurs and knew nothing about them besides their age, you would do better, on average, betting on the older one.’

Second dose of reality. The future of work. There is a lot of talk about automation taking away jobs from human beings. And about the older generation not being digital natives. We are digital immigrants. All true.

However, according to a study by The Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics, brains and heart win in the future of work.

Jobs that require abstract thinking, people engagement and soft skills are less likely to be automated, according to research. The authors also find that combining ‘heart’ with ‘brains’ will future-proof your job further. ‘Heart’ relates to jobs that involve soft skills and are high people engagement.

Now – and what I am going to say ain’t no research study – if I look at my peer group, we don’t need to prove ourselves anymore. We’re comfortable with our faults, with our qualities. We’ve either made it or we haven’t. We don’t take things as personally. We enjoy laughing at our own absurdities.

In a multigenerational workspace, that lack of ego, that lack of the need for struggle, can be very helpful.

Third dose of reality.

We have a vast, skills shortage in the Western world. Labour markets are in flux from the pandemic fallout and technological upheaval. Up to a billion people will need reskilling and life-long training by 2030, according to the OECD. We need more carers; we need more marketing executives; we need more quantum scientists.

And in parallel, on the plus side, we have a healthier population of people over 50, over 60, over 70, some of whom want to work longer, some of whom must, due to financial necessity, and many of whom will reinvent themselves.

As a microcosm of my third ‘dose of reality’, let me give you an example I have become very familiar with. The world of quantum computing. I won’t bore you with the details of how a finance and politics journalist has reinvented herself as a quantum guru – quantum involves geniuses with double PhDs, molecular simulation and Star Trek scenarios. Way out of my comfort zone.

In this ecosphere, the CEO of Google’s quantum spin out SandboxAQ, recently said, “The number one concern we have going forward is the skills gap. When people ask me, “what keeps me up at night?” – that’s what keeps me up at night – the lack of a talent pipeline in quantum and also lack of diversity in that pipeline.”

SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY

What’s Jack Hidary’s solution? Work with universities to increase the pipeline. But also work with what he calls the “existing adult working population”. While at Google, they trained numerous staff in various quantum and other advanced math courses; they trained customers; they upskilled engineers and scientists that were already- ALREADY – in the workforce.

THAT’s the biggest opportunity. THAT’s the key to the skills shortage. Upskill, training, reinvention in any shape.

In Top Gun Maverick, the much-publicised blockbuster, ageing star Tom Cruise is dismissed by a younger protagonist with the words, “The future is coming, and you’re not in it”. Who can doubt that he, at 58 years old, saves the day?!

Not only are we, the older generation, the future. WE are the key. WE are the opportunity. WE are the solution.

This is the keynote speech delivered by Karina Robinson, Co-Director of The Inclusion Initiative, on Champion Age Diversity Day, as part of a panel on Valuing Age Diversity in the Workplace.

It was sponsored by The Age Diversity Forum and Hansuke Consultants.

Quantum Matters – Quantum Culture

Not just another brick in the wall  

“You think you are the messiahs!” cries out Lily, the super-hero of BBC series Devs, to the bosses in charge of the secretive quantum unit.

That slur can just as easily be applied to the Big Tech chiefs, who started out with missions encapsulated in Google’s motto “Do no evil,” yet proceeded to abuse their monopolistic powers, promote addictive behaviours and allow hate speech to flourish.

Can a different culture be created in the newly emerging quantum ecosphere?

This matters to the world. The Quantum Computing market is forecast to be worth $50bn by 2030, only nine years away. The pace of funds into the sector has already accelerated. Data platform The Quantum Insider (TQI) notes that total disclosed capital flows into the sector were $1.9bn in the first half of 2021, compared to $1bn in all of 2020.

And quantum computing’s capacity to change the world for good can best be harnessed through a diverse workforce working in an inclusive culture that supports stakeholder capitalism.

The key challenge – a decent culture – also matters to quantum companies themselves for three reasons: innovation, recruitment and funding.

Innovation

Similar to all nascent sectors, innovation is key to the development of profitable companies producing jobs and goods.

More inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their field, according to a Deloitte report. Gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform their peers, while ethnically diverse ones are 35% more likely, according to a McKinsey report.

Even without citing hosts of corroborating studies, common sense dictates that the wider the range of opinions, the more chances of new ideas arising. The most productive meetings for transformative ideas are often those where disagreements flourish. The flame of innovation is often created out of friction; group think is the result of bonhomie.

Given that human beings have around 188 cognitive biases, ranging from the self-explanatory Familiarity Bias to the Just World Hypothesis, recruiting in one’s own image is difficult to resist. It behoves quantum company CEOs and their colleagues to diversify the mix, adding to the mainly white and male university PhDs and tech executives in order to bolster innovation.

Recruitment

There is a global war for talent in many sectors. Goldman Sachs, an erstwhile golden destination, is seeing some problems in recruitment. And those it does recruit are now surprisingly vocal. Young bankers complained to senior management about their workload earlier this year, a story avidly picked up by the media.

The UK’s mission to attract the best global talent is not helped by its expensive, time-consuming new immigration regime. One well known quantum start-up was forced to set up two subsidiaries in Continental Europe due to Brexit. On the plus side, the company was pleasantly surprised by the response to a recruitment ad there. Unfortunately, this stood in sharp contrast to its UK job advertisement, which received far fewer responses.

Employees and future employees are empowered, and they are demanding workplace cultures that align with their values. Over 85% of Gen Z believe companies should stand for more than just making a profit. Note that at Apple there was a successful petition to dismiss a well-known new hire with a sexist reputation, as well as a public letter demanding flexible return-to-work policies.

And yet, basic prejudice persists. A female student working on her quantum PhD at an Oxbridge university was asked by her professor: “How do you expect to progress if you keep smiling all the time?!”

Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) is doing all the right things and reaping the fruits: over 40% of its job applicants are women. One of its latest ads used these phrases: “We aspire to thrive…thanks to your diversity of thoughts and background…We are building quantum computers to enable life changing discoveries.” The company, led by Ilana Wisby, anonymises all the CVs it receives, posts roles on diversity-focused job boards (LBGT+, black engineers and others) and celebrates its new arrivals with photos on social media that highlight its diverse workforce.

Although helpful, a female CEO is not essential to enable a wider recruitment strategy. Cambridge-based Riverlane, for instance, headed by Steve Brierley, lists its first two values as being “supportive” and “collaborative” and posts a friendly group image of its relatively diverse company.

Denise Ruffner and Andre König of Women in Quantum (WIQ) and OneQuantum are the two major protagonists of the move to shake up the look of the industry and widen access. Their fast-growing mentoring schemes, online recruitment fairs and the setting up of free-to-use country chapters – from Zimbabwe to Nepal to Argentina – are inspiring a new generation.

TQD has been highlighting the issue, while The City Quantum Summit in November will host a special panel on the subject.

To create an inclusive culture, the Good Finance Framework is a good place to start. Designed by The Inclusion Initiative’s Director, Associate Professor Grace Lordan at the London School of Economics*, its 10 steps will also help boost staff loyalty and enthusiasm. This is crucial when quantum companies are competing for the best talent against other industries, as well as between themselves.

What is relevant for talent, is just as relevant for funding.

Funding

Political guru Frank Lunz predicts that how you treat your employees will be the single most important issue for companies over the coming years – above sustainability and shareholder returns.

It is an issue institutional investors are grappling with as part of their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria.  Regulation will drive it. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this year approved a proposal from Nasdaq, the stock market for tech, requiring its listed companies to publish, comply or explain on board diversity. They must have “two diverse directors, one identifying as female and another as an underrepresented minority or LBGTQ+.”

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has proposals out for consultation on how it can accelerate the pace of meaningful change on Diversity & Inclusion, noting that it is relevant for risk management, good conduct, healthy working cultures and innovation (my italics).

The writing is on the wall: whether public or private, investors are going to be leading a push for the right cultures. Getting ahead of the game is the best bet for any quantum company.

Build back better is a much over-used phrase. But it encapsulates the desire to avoid the mistakes of the past. In the case of the quantum ecosphere, steering clear of Big Tech’s grave errors to create a better world, both within quantum companies and through quantum computing, is key.

*To note, the author is Co-Director of LSE’s The Inclusion Initiative for the City.

The City Quantum Summit at the Mansion House on November 10th is hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of London and Redcliffe Advisory, and supported by the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) with TQD as media partner. Diversity and Inclusion is at its core. Register here

Artificial Intelligence and bookcases

Creating inclusion through AI

Humans host over 140 cognitive biases. These range from excessive reliance on the printed or digital word to confirmation bias – the tendency to recall information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. How, labouring under such a bias burden, can companies overcome the human factor to create a more inclusive and diverse world?

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, and the advances that have been made in the corporate world, it is worth noting that not everyone believes that we are prone to prejudices (the brain’s use of shortcuts to help us deal with days filled with stimulation and choices). Only last month at a town hall virtual meeting of KPMG UK staff, Bill Michael said that discrimination caused by unconscious bias was “complete and utter crap.” The consulting firm’s Chairman has since resigned.

Mary Beard, the iconic Cambridge professor, writes that centuries of conditioning means that “our mental, cultural template for a powerful person remains resolutely male.” She uses the example of closing one’s eyes to conjure up the image of a professor. It is not just that most of us see a man, so does she: “the cultural stereotype is so strong that…it is still hard for me to imagine me, or someone like me, in my role.”

Margaret Thatcher, she notes, took voice training as she rose to power to lower her pitch by an octave and thus give her the (male) authority that her advisors felt she lacked when speaking in a high pitched, female voice.

To counter such cultural hard-wiring, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is key. It is, however, programmed by humans and prone to other biases as well, based on the data input and to what one might call algorithmic quirks. In June 2020 Amazon was forced by public opinion to ban the police from using its controversial facial recognition technology which was prone to racial bias in its surveillance technology.

Recruitment algorithms have been criticised for biases in favour of white, male candidates, given that the data set fed to them consists of successful candidates from the past. Even more subtle factors can influence the result. A Munich company’s algorithm was proven to favour candidates who had a bookcase behind them, helping them score more highly for “conscientiousness” and “agreeableness” and lower for “neuroticism,” according to a German public broadcaster’s analysis of the recruitment tool.

Yet it is not all bad news.

“We are in the early days of AI applications,” notes Richard Nesbitt, the former CEO of the Toronto Stock Exchange, speaking at a recent roundtable organised by the LSE’s The Inclusion Initiative (TII). “They will become more relevant and useful as they improve.”

Technological advances, including in Natural Language Processing via quantum, in essence the first step in true ‘Machine Intelligence’, is one way. Another is through more evidence of when AI works – negative examples always tend to dominate the news.

“A study of the academic literature on AI gives us evidence that it can improve efficiency in the hiring process, and likely also make better hiring decisions in terms of job performance and diversity of hires, depending on the type of AI,” says Paris Will, Researcher in Behavioural Science at TII.

One such type of AI is produced by MeVitae, an Oxford-based start-up which partners with Microsoft and Oracle, among others. Its algorithms anonymise CVs and cover letters by automatically removing over 15 key personal identifiers (such as gender, age, social economic background) directly from applicant resumes. This enables the human recruiter to focus on important matters like skills and capabilities.

“We have mapped out that 60% of the 140 human cognitive biases come into play during the screening process for candidates i.e. the moment someone sees a CV/cover letter,” says Riham Sattii, the clinical neuroscientist Co-founder and CEO of MeVitae,

AI can also be useful in tracking the words used in job descriptions and how they influence interviews and hiring.

Speaking on the TII panel, Deborah Lorenzen, Head of Enterprise Data Governance at State Street, points out that from existing evidence we can probably guess that using words like “battle” and “driven” will lead to more men applying for a job. “What is most surprising to many though is that using the word ‘manage’ is also more likely to attract male candidates to your job description.”

“Most hiring managers would probably shake their heads at that since we are so used to the word. AI can help us understand which of the things we are sure we know which don’t turn out to be true when you have data,” she concludes.

Despite this rather promising outlook, AI hiring is perceived more negatively on almost every outcome in comparison to human hiring.

Yet given that the financial and professional services industry has among the worst numbers for diversity in business, a reassessment of AI applications is due. A recent UK survey found that between 25% to 50% of senior managers in the global City came from independent or grammar schools, and almost 90% from higher socio-economic backgrounds.

The push for change is coming from many sources, including respected bodies like McKinsey, whose studies show that companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity are 33% more likely to have industry-leading profitability. Regulators and governments are another source. In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has linked diversity to its campaign on firms’ culture. It has reiterated that non-financial misconduct – meaning culture - remains a key factor in its supervision.

Meanwhile, the UK Government has launched a drive to increase the number of people from poorer backgrounds in senior positions in financial and professional firms, while the German government in January signed a bill to boost the number of females on its corporate Boards.

Creating a more inclusive corporate world, with more sustained profitability and innovation, will take many years and much effort. Artificial Intelligence has an important role to play, with the caveat that it must be used in conjunction with the human factor. In Satti’s words: “Technology is designed to enhance the way we live and work, not replace it.”

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 Along with Associate Professor Grace Lordan, I am Director of The Inclusion Initiative at the LSE, which uses behavioural science and data to create inclusive company cultures. Feel free to sign up to our monthly newsletter which details events and research.

Letter to Hugh

The Inclusion Initiative & a better world

Darling Hugh,

You saved me from isolation and irrelevance when we met at The Hotchkiss School in 1981. A bit of eurotrash from Madrid, raised in Dictator Franco’s traditional Spain, I was lost amid all the preppies in that Connecticut boarding school. You offered me your beautiful (like all of you) hand in friendship and I survived my oddity, with the help of our escape once a term for wild nights at Studio 54 in New York.

What I never realised till recently is how deeply you affected my life, all the way up to the present day. I thought the personal motivation for being a Diversity & Inclusion campaigner came from being a woman and an immigrant in the City. You, in fact were the springboard. Although I had guessed, it took a year for you to tell me you were gay, out of fear that I would turn away in disgust as others had. Your East Coast establishment upbringing did not help.

Only now am I aware that the horror of realising how cruelly you had been hurt and excluded has led me through the years to this week in 2020, with the launch of The Inclusion Initiative (TII) at the London School of Economics. The research centre, which I co-founded, will bring behavioural science and data together to create more inclusive cultures in the City for sustainable profits.

We are already working on a four-year project with Women in Banking and Finance, The Wisdom Council, and a number of firms ranging from BlackRock to Barclays, to evaluate the causes of gender difference in progression and then trial and evaluate solutions. And we are in talks with a number of financial and professional services companies on partnering in projects from making venture-funding more open to BAME entrepreneurs, to disrupting how new work projects are assigned and how employees are rewarded, to better measuring the link between culture and risk.

Words or acronyms like ‘data’ and ‘LGBT+’ seem so cold, and if I wrote about another project to use ‘AI’ to promote inclusion in the workplace, these terms would be meaningless to you. ‘Profitability’, however, would be a familiar word. The aim of The Inclusion Initiative is, ultimately, to create more inclusive workplaces in order to boost the bottom line, a point amply demonstrated in studies from McKinsey and others.

In a business sector dependent on innovation and collaboration, diverse voices need to be heard. The mark of a good meeting is not necessarily one filled with bonhomie and agreement, while the mark of a good Chair is to create the psychological safety to allow all present to speak up. Behavioural science teaches us that discomfort is often the prelude to learning. Discomfort was the least of my feelings as I sashayed into the school cafeteria in a pretty dress on the first Sunday in the school year, to find America’s young elite dressed for brunch in the oldest sweatshirts and jeans they could muster. Sunday best had a rather different definition in Connecticut than in the Madrid of that era.

There is a world of difference in LGBT+ rights in the developed world and in business compared to the early 1980s. The City now has its own Pride in the City organisation to promote Diversity & Inclusion. Yet only last year an openly gay candidate to be Lord Mayor of the City of London was asked in his interview process how he would prevent the role being “hijacked” by the gay community, while the US Labor Department proposed a rule cancelling an executive order banning anti-LGBT+ discrimination among federal contractors.

I last saw you, Hugh, in New York in 1988. You told me you were HIV positive and I asked what that was; its ravaging effects in the gay community had yet to be felt and chronicled in Europe, and you were ablaze with apparent health and on your way to being a successful painter. Over the next years you chronicled the AIDS era in figurative, bleak works which you described as having that ‘soft glow of brutality’ characteristic of American painters like Edward Hopper.

I called in 1995 to say I was coming over to New York again. But you had died at 32 years old of AIDS-related complications. I wish you could have lived on to find a partner, and to walk down the street hand in hand, to entertain at home and to call him your husband. The jargon of inclusion should not hide the fact that we are creating a better world.

Karina Robinson is Co-Director of The Inclusion Initiative at the LSE along with Associate Professor Grace Lordan. Hugh Auchincloss Steer’s work hangs in the Whitney Collection of American Art.

The City’s New Face

Marrying public and private ethics

Does it matter what the chattering classes are talking about? From the 1970s, column inches and speeches were dominated by Chicago economist Milton Friedman and the principle that companies should focus on shareholder returns and forget about suppliers, customers and community – they would benefit tangentially. This was famously encapsulated by legendary American CEO Al Dunlap´s 1990s outburst: “The most ridiculous term heard in boardrooms today is stakeholders. How much did they pay for their stake?”

Shareholder primacy and the Washington Consensus on economic growth had their time in the sun. Today, a couple of years after the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum, we see an avalanche of books with titles like “Democracy and Prosperity – the Reinvention of Capitalism in a Turbulent Century” and articles in the mainstream press headlined “Populists have a point, the system has to change.”

At the end of last month Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, quoted Aristotle on the need for a personal sense of purpose to be linked to a social purpose. Speaking in the heart of the City at the annual World Traders’ Tacitus lecture she called for the financial sector to develop “broader social responsibility.”

She noted that Fintech is producing cheaper and more accessible products to drive an inclusion revolution; that a higher share of women on boards is correlated to more financial stability and sustainable growth; that the younger generations prefer to invest in financial instruments with social impact.

Today, achieving social cohesion in our societies is key. The widening of the net of financial and societal gains of the last forty years is essential to underpin democracy and sensible government.

How should the corporate and financial sector react? Here are four suggestions for companies already on this journey, and for those who are being left behind.

1. Add a dollop of emotion to any policy changes. Making the world a better place is no longer the monopoly of charitable bodies and starry-eyed university students. Company actions need to be marketed emotionally as well as financially, not least because so many experts have been found wanting and ‘facts’ are under attack from the echo
   chamber of news.
   

2. The audience is both internal and external. Millennials and Generation Z – those who are working for your company, those you want to be working for your company. Politicians – who after the financial crisis dare not mention the financial sector as a source of growth or responsible capitalism. Investors – often cited as a barrier to change, because of their short time horizons. They are altering as well, ranging from Black Rock Chief Executive Larry Fink’s 2018 letter to CEOs calling on them to make positive contributions to society, to a family office that handed nearly a billion dollars to a Swiss private bank with the proviso that the bank itself must have a sustainable culture or the money would be withdrawn.

3. Be ahead of the curve by making clear that the costs involved in becoming sustainable are investments in growth opportunities. And that change cannot be immediate. Unilever is a much-cited and much-deserved, case in point. The consumer goods company proudly notes that on average it pays 27% corporate tax worldwide. It is very open about its shortcomings. For example, they overcame the innate contradiction in producing Vaseline, an extract of crude oil, by setting up a health initiative to send the crucial product plus health kits to disaster zones.
   

4. Diversity & Inclusion may sound like politically correct balderdash. Not true. Inclusion means creating an atmosphere where all can thrive and be themselves. This includes Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME), older workers and the white middle-aged men who form the backbone of the City and are wondering where they belong in this new world. Don’t leave them out.
   

5. Measure the impact of changes in diverse ways, such as lowering company risk, increasing well-being (an OECD-approved policy), helping achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and boosting employee loyalty. Stakeholders will all have a specific measure that engages them more than others.

To reach middle age and find yourself and your peers veering leftwards politically is a shock, not least because of that well-known phrase about a young person who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart; an old person who is a socialist hasn’t got a head. But this isn’t socialism. It doesn’t mean voting for Jeremy Corbyn in the UK or Bernie Sanders in the US. It doesn’t mean throwing profits and return on equity out the window.

It does mean marrying private and public ethics. The divide in the moral codes between home and business is over. In the words of Christine Lagarde, the financial industry can be economically rewarding and ethically right.