When it comes to handling the increasingly complex business environment we’re in, joint Pottinger CEO Cassandra Kelly has some advice for the world’s most powerful leaders in the lead up to the G20 Summit later this year.
“The only way we can navigate the complexity and seek the opportunity to prosper is to have the very best minds around the table,” she says. “Simply, those very best minds don’t exist in 50% of the population.”
Having worked in plenty of male dominated industries herself and founded a business which sees a diverse workforce as an essential key to its success, Kelly is adamant diversity is necessary across all our business, cultural and political institutions.
“That’s the only way we’re going to see economic prosperity in the future,” she says. “We can do a lot of things around the side, we can try and stimulate growth over here, and tweak and turn a dial over there, but at the end of the day if you don’t tackle diversity, even more broadly than gender, if we don’t truly have an inclusive workplace and political landscape, then we are, by definition, ex-cluding people.”
In a video interview with Women’s Agenda, the entrepreneur and one of only a handful of women to speak at the recent B20 Summit, also shares why she believes we need a ‘D20 Summit’ in order to capture thoughts and ideas on creating more inclusive businesses and institutions.
“For me, to have it as just a bullet point is inadequate,” she says. “If we truly believe, which myself and other commentators do, that diversity is the single greatest leaver we’ve got for economic prosperity across the world, then surely something as significant as this needs its own space, its own time.”
Kelly also notes in the video where her passion for diversity stems from, as well as how her own business seeks to contribute to worldwide change on gender issues by advocating for programs that support women and girls.
When she heard her mother and other women around her discussing diversity and equality as a young woman, she says she assumed, “naively”, that the world wanted change, and that change would therefore naturally occur.
Now she appreciates just how dire the statistics are, and notes Pottinger’s own resource on the issue, The Pottinger Index, which determines indices for measuring diversity-related goals. It’s ASX 200 Board Diversity Index finds that at the current rate of change, we have just a 12% chance of reaching a 50/50 gender split on ASX 200 boards by 2050.
“For me, the numbers simply don’t lie. The numbers have been there fore all of us to see,” she says. “Measurement allows you to keep it real and to look beyond and say, ‘We know the numbers are bad, so let’s focus the discussion on when do we want this to improve and how are we going to get there’.”
Kelly says she created her business with a view to provide excellent advice by employing great people from a diverse range of backgrounds. From day one she was also committed to using the company’s revenue for good, hiring those who supported the business’s philanthropic ambitions and making two distinct commitments. The first to bettering the lives of women and girls, and the second to supporting sustainability and action against climate change. Pottinger is a supporter of the G(irls) Summit, currently taking place in Sydney.
In the video, Kelly also discusses why she created The Glass Elevator, an initiative to help connect and inspire great female leadership talent.