Diversity: the capitalization of marginalized talent

(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

I was recently watching Malcolm Gladwell's poptech! 2008 presentation, which centered on James Flynn's study of "capitalization," or the rate at which a community leverages (so to speak) the potential of its members. Simply put, capitalization is a metric of the rate at which members of the community with potential actually use it.

Gladwell then applied this capitalization to Canadian junior hockey leagues and found that such leagues operate at about a 50% capitalization, despite the major significance of hockey in Canadian life. More instructive is the reason why the leagues operate at a 50% rate, which is, at least in part, because they have a cutoff date (Jan. 1) that is more advantageous to hockey players born in the first half of the year. Players born earlier are larger, a significant advantage among younger children. What starts out as a speculative advantage in terms of size or strength then becomes concrete when the players sele enter more competitive leagues, receive better coaching, and other advantages.

Gladwell's point is that the children selected are not necessarily better at first, but that the cutoff date makes it appear so. And this ultimately results in a lower capitalization rate for hockey players in Canada. His remedy? Harness the talent of players born in the second half of the year by creating a second league with a cutoff date midway through the year. I’ll leave the merits of the parallel league idea for another column.

Think of it: organizations constantly try to predict those who they believe will be successful leaders: business executives, partners at law firms, or tenured professors--and often these organizations try to do it in the early stages of employees' careers. And aren't their reasons often arbitrary? "He just has 'it'," they say, or "she has executive presence," or "I just know that this person will be successful here." But such rationales are often quite vague (as one would expect in the early stages of an employee's career)—so much so that even those targeted to be successful cannot articulate the precise reasons they have been chosen.

Aren’t these scenarios likely to be instances in which a perceived advantage materializes into one that is more tangible? Does anyone doubt that an employee who receives increased mentoring, visibility and opportunities to hone their craft will probably be better at their job than another employee who has not had access to those advantages?

Now, how many of these early candidates for success, do you suppose, are people from marginalized groups? My guess: very few. David Thomas' research on people of color in the corporate world found that they were generally identified as organizational leaders significantly later than their white counterparts. It would also not be surprising to find that women were identified later than men, given the inherent biases in the workplace. For that matter, any aspect of identity that prevents a person from being considered “the norm” is probably some form of an impediment to the net capitalization of that group’s talent in any arena: business, professional services, education, government, or non-profits. Sort of like being born in December and wanting to play hockey—you can try.

It’s hard to be surprised that companies are missing out on so much talent, because they, like the Canadian junior hockey leagues, have created a self-fulfilling prophecy of success that contains inherent biases.