Diana Mirakaj-Finnerty’s Post

The biggest change we will see in DEI for 2024 - we will observe which leaders & organizations were genuinely committed to ensuring their talent feels respected, valued and heard — and who was performing. For innovative organizations supported by results driven, high-peforming & diverse teams with a broad client audiences — DE&I efforts aren’t going anywhere. “I’m going to start by telling you that I’m a full-throated, red-blooded, patriotic, unwoke, capitalist CEO,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon 💡 The bank, which this week recorded its most profitable year ever with $50 billion in net income—and is approaching a market value of $500 billion—isn’t retreating from its diversity efforts despite the “ridiculous ESG, DEI groups coming at us,” Dimon said. JPMorgan’s DEI approach mimics that of any other line of business, requiring that its leads are fanatic about the details, facts, and analysis, Dimon said. “Your heart can be in the right place, but if you don’t really think about the execution stuff, you’re gonna fail.” https://lnkd.in/gg59k6vb #Diversity #Equity #Inclusion #inclusionFACTOR #WalkingTheTalk #InclusiveLeadership

Leadership is where you stand when it's time to to the right thing.

Interesting interview, Daniel Smith, MBA. Thanks for sharing. Basically, CEO Dimon is doing what I’d call “DEI curb-cutting,” building on the brilliant concept created by Angela Glover Blackwell. By applying cutting edge DEI hiring and promotion principles to all employees, maybe JPMorgan Chase & Co. is promoting more equal opportunity for its entire workforce, including Black people. Perhaps its DEI approach is actually also advancing its employee retention and profitability too. Worth an independent case study to identify potential best practices that can be applied more broadly in this time of attacks on DEI. Important to make the case for how DEI can benefit all especially in a competitive, global economy. However, in this anti-fact world with its growing racism and sexism, evidence-based, inclusive diversity models may still fall on deaf ears.

DEI is a business imperative.

OH SNAP! They are just saying all the quiet parts out loud. Good thing we are too. My, my...where do I start? 1. WORDS. It's clear who uses anti-woke and patriotic. It's not BLM. These terms have been used by the far right/MAGA/GOP. Yes this man believes he is that much better and more deserving than people who are "woke." "Woke" means progressive people who question wealth inequality and antifa and all the radical left people...because of course the truth would be his undoing. This rhetoric is straight wht $upremaci$t and raci$t, just so we're clear. 2. This party's policy approach to equitable finance is abysmal. They deeply believe in the bootstrap mentality (proven to be a myth). HE RUNS A BIG BANK. 3. MONEY. He "earned it." Not everyone did and he may or may not benevolently give it to those “in need.” It's why the BRT changing the purpose of a corporation was always B.S. 4. This is the same guy who wrote the CEO letter in the 2021 and 2022 ESG Reports. “We are also making progress in implementing our $30 billion commitment to help close the racial wealth gap. Financing affordable places for people to live, expanding access to services through local community branches, and supporting Minority Depository Institutions and Community Development Financial Institutions are a few examples of how we’re putting this commitment to work. Because racial equity, like climate, requires a coordinated government response, we are advocating for policies that diversify the appraisal industry, help Americans with no credit file gain access to credit and provide access to affordable small business loans." “Finally, we can only run a strong company and tackle these challenges if we have exemplary people. I am so proud of how hard our employees have worked through these tough times and the continued steps we’ve taken to cultivate a diverse and inclusive workplace and support our customers and communities. There is no doubt we – both as a company and society – have a long way to go." 5. 2022 Racial Equity Commitment Audit Report, (released Nov 2022 on 2021 Numbers).  "The firm is committed to doing its part to help close the racial wealth gap and drive inclusive growth. This work will continue well beyond the initial five-year commitment. JPMorgan Chase is tracking investments and initiatives with the goal of having long-term impact and will continue to share updates along the way. The firm believes the REC is focused on the right economic drivers and it continues to learn and adapt as the work progresses." I am curious what this means for the 2023 report, that should have been released in November on the 2022 numbers. In summation... Sweet goddess on earth, if a CEO was a colonizer... He is the case study of everything wrong with corporate leadership. It's kind of amazing that with the power these guys have, and the MOUNTAINS of money...THEY ARE SCARED. I guess Dimon didn't like Katie Porter schooling him on budgets in front of the world?

I highly recommend this New York Magazine article, which asks a simple question: is David Solomon too big a jerk to run Goldman Sachs? It’s packed with hilarious lines from beginning to end. I had not fully appreciated the extent of Solomon’s DJ ambitions, for example! But it’s also an incredible case study on bad leadership, and how hard it is to change culture without bigger forces than you chewing you up and spitting you out: “Morale has sunk to the lowest level in recent memory, in tandem with a sense that the bank inspires less envy among its rivals and less esteem among its fee-paying clients and governments around the world. “I don’t feel like the place is really Goldman Sachs,” says one of the former partners, whose ex-colleagues now call him daily to complain. “Goldman had that sort of magical cachet of being the smartest guys in the room, and it doesn’t feel that way anymore.” In finance, words like cachet can be euphemisms for compensation. “If you are a Master of the Universe,” one former executive told me, “the only proof that you are a Master of the Universe is how much money you get paid.” And last year, pay sagged around the firm. The bank dispensed $2.5 billion less in compensation and benefits than it had the year before, even though the head count had gone up 10 percent. “They’re still the highest-paid people on Wall Street — that stuff’s true — but it doesn’t feel good to have a down year,” says Tony Fratto, the bank’s spokesperson. The rancor leaves Solomon in a precarious state. Both outcomes seem impossible: that he could continue to lead a team that so thoroughly despises him, or that what is supposedly the most ruthless outfit in capitalism would really oust its boss over hurt feelings. “If you try and change the company too fast and too bluntly, it’s gonna break or you’re gonna break,” says an executive who left the bank recently. “Organ rejection.”” 👇👇👇 https://lnkd.in/eRkVA2TY #leadership #culture

Jamie Dimon “recalled JPMorgan’s HR department bragging some years ago about the firm’s #diversity progress, but fusing all underrepresented groups. (Think: women, Blacks, LGBTQ, Muslims.) He responded, ‘Don’t lump it together. Come back and show me the numbers by VPs, EDs [executive directors], MDs [managing directors], and hiring and retention.’ They did. Women? Excellent. Hispanic? Excellent. LGBT? Excellent. Asian American? Excellent. Black? Average. ‘That’s not J.P. Morgan. We don’t want to be average.’” Excerpts from Ruth Umoh’s article in Fortune article linked in Daniel Smith, MBA’s post below. Mentioned in above article: The Female Quotient World Economic Forum “Women make up 53% of the entry-level banking workforce but less than 1/3 at the SVP and C-suite levels. Notably, nearly 1 in 4 employees at the entry level is a woman of color, though this falls to 1 in 20 at the C-suite level—on par with both the financial-services and cross-industry average.” Excerpt & data in McKinsey & Company report by Kweilin Ellingrud Alexis Krivkovich Marie-Claude Nadeau Jill Zucker Linked here: https://lnkd.in/e9a6v42g “There are over 16,218 investment #banking analysts currently employed in the United States. 24.7% of all investment banking analysts are women, while 75.3% are men. The most common ethnicity of investment banking analysts is White (68.0%), followed by Asian (14.1%), Hispanic or Latino (7.7%) and Black or African American (5.6%). In 2022, women #investmentbanking analysts earned 91% of what men earned.” #data and excerpts from Zippia linked here: https://lnkd.in/e7GMn-yS “How Dealers Made a Dent in Wall Street’s Lack of Diversity” article by Paul Davies in Bloomberg here: https://lnkd.in/eTNPfExT #ownership #entrepreneurship #investing #wealthmanagement #mergersandacquisitions #bonds #assetmanagement #materiality #pipeline #career #diversity #equity #inclusion #leadership #money #mindset #cultureofmoney h/t Daniel for the tag!

Last Tuesday, Stephen Morris and Harriet Agnew of the Financial Times asked: Can Barclays move beyond scandal and stagnation? (https://lnkd.in/evJiPUQg).   Eight years since Antony Jenkins’s departure, Barclays is still struggling: shares have lost half their worth; a former CEO found to have misled regulators over his relationship with a convicted sex offender; a paperwork blunder that led to hundreds of millions of pounds in fines. The bank currently languishes near the bottom of the global rankings with a market capitalisation of £20bn. JPMorgan Chase, the US bank Barclays wants to emulate, is worth $425bn. White-collar crimes have destroyed huge amounts of #shareholder value at Barclays in recent years. However, ineffective #regulations and #compliance aren’t to blame for misconduct at Barclays. Weak #leadership and flawed #cultures are. All too many leaders still fail to continually stress the importance of organisational #integrity. They either underinvest in compliance systems or have a check-the-box mentality toward #riskmanagement and delegate the responsibility to lawyers and accountants. Red flags go unheeded. When #crimes are detected, they’re dealt with quietly and unequally. In contrast, other business leaders, many operating in higher-risk environments than Barclays, set high standards and practice what they preach. They don’t just install strong compliance systems; they support training programmes and performance-feedback and whistle-blowing systems; they create an environment where it’s psychologically safe to speak up when something seems wrong; and engage their industry peers to fight corruption together. In large companies, like Barclays, mistakes will be made. The world is a messy place, and humans are imperfect. By creating a culture that encourages employees to act #ethically and #legally, senior executives at Barclays can minimise the likelihood that a #scandal will hit their bank and increase their ability to bounce back from any illicit actions that do occur. To set the right tone, leaders have to model high standards in both their professional and personal lives.   If executives at Barclays want to fix the problem, they need to take ownership of it - starting by broadcasting the message that the scandal hurts everyone. What else should they do? Punish violators consistently and publicly, #recruit leaders (not friends from previous jobs) with #integrity, limit opportunities for unethical decision making and champion #transparency throughout their bank.  

Over six years ago, The Maturity Institute was sponsored by Federated Hermes to carry out what is now a publicly available study of the Organisational Maturity of the banking sector. We mainly chose to examine the worst-performing banks in terms of misconduct (as identified by The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)). Our data was then tested by Cambridge Judge Business School, who found the following: "...the benefits to shareholders and stakeholders are not mutually exclusive; in other words, the value to business, shareholders, stakeholders and society are aligned. A company can maximize profits and create wealth for shareholders mainly by establishing a mature institution that enhances wellbeing for all legitimate stakeholders, as well as create positive externalities to the environment and wider society." You might guess that Barclays did not come out well in our study so I am not surprised by this FT piece. None of the banks who were featured in the work were inclined to find out more about their own Maturity although some others did ask us for help. Interestingly, the options that the FT and Barclays advisors appear to be considering as a fix to their current problems are what you might typically expect; but they do not include fixing the human system. This is despite identifying very human scandals, being "accident prone" and failing to drive efficiency. My point here is that fixing the health of an organization in human terms matters hugely to value and risk but improving both management systems and corporate culture is not easy. Being prepared to carry out a whole system diagnosis of governance, culture, and human capital management and then acting on the findings is a big commitment. In the words of Florence Brocklesby, the founder of a very successful and highly mature law firm: "It’s not something that is easy to achieve, nor something that can be done quickly, which is one reason I am quite so happy to have scored well on it. Each of the elements that go into making up the [OMINDEX] ranking are things that take time and consistency and don't necessarily grab the headlines on a day-to-day basis." #ESG #corporateculture #risk #leadership