The soul of organizations

The key for all organizations is not to reframe gender diversity as something else to do, but as a fundamental means of addressing all business priorities

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a very interesting day of reflection on the theme “Companies with Soul: rebuilding the values of organizations in times of crisis”, organized by the Women’s Observatory of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, with the collaboration of the Obra Social de La Caixa and the Catalan Institute of Women. The objective of the meeting was to analyze and deepen the values that companies must have to regain confidence and be successful in the long term, and to be the engine of a necessarily global and more competitive economy. My contribution focused on “Female Leadership and Innovation”, from the perspective that in the Age of Collaboration, gender diversity emerges as a fundamental axis in this transformation and as a strategic priority and fundamental means to address all business priorities. What should be obvious, when female talent represents more than 50% of the intellectual and emotional capital of the country, curiously is not yet among the strategic priorities of our companies.

As we have reflected in previous conversations, the soul of organizations is their values. The good news is precisely that the Social Web makes possible new organizations, adaptive, more agile, participatory, open, transparent, truly people-centered and ultimately more aligned with female talent. Another piece of good news, for women, is that we face adaptive challenges that are far beyond our capabilities, which require a new Adaptive Leadership that has nothing to do with position, imposition and power exercised arbitrarily. On the contrary, the leadership that companies with a soul require has to do with our ability to understand others, to connect emotionally, to persuade, to argue and to convince. These are female skills, predominant on the right side of our brain, hence gender diversity is today an imperative for innovation and a strategic priority for organizations. This was my presentation.