Diversity Starts With Getting the Right Men in the Room

In this episode, we discuss Harcourt Blythe’s decision to launch its diversity strategy with an all-white, all-male panel and the considerable progress available from such a carefully selected starting point. Our guest, Charles Merriweather, Senior Equity Partner and Executive Sponsor for Inclusive Leadership, explains how the firm assembled a group with sufficiently similar experiences to have a productive conversation about difference. We explore the distinction between giving everyone a voice and ensuring that every voice belongs to somebody already authorised to speak, and ask what the panel learned from the people who were not on it.

We also discuss the firm’s response to criticism, the practical difficulties of finding diverse perspectives within an unchanged invitation list, and why listening sessions become much easier to manage once listening is treated as an attendance category. Charles describes a programme of consultation, sponsorship and future opportunities to contribute, subject to the existing committee’s assessment of readiness. By the end of the episode, the firm has reaffirmed its commitment to opening doors. The question of who holds the keys has been referred to the next panel.

Guest: Charles Merriweather, Senior Equity Partner and Executive Sponsor for Inclusive Leadership, Harcourt Blythe