We must be impatient for more diverse leadership, says Britain’s most influential black person
Ken Olisa, who in 2004 became the first British-born black man to serve on the board of a FTSE-100 company, has called on policymakers and large corporations to do more to redress the chronic lack of ethnic diversity on the boards of major UK companies.
Writing exclusively for Onliris , a platform for African thought leadership, Ken Olisa addresses the demographic changes the UK has undergone since his own father arrived in the UK from Nigeria in the late 1940s. Some 70 years later, whilst the talent pool had increased dramatically, he asserts that this is still not being reflected in the boardrooms of most major companies.
‘At the time, he [being a Nigerian man in London in the 1940s] was a rarity,’ he says of his father. ‘When I was growing up, I was one of the very few black people in Nottingham. Two generations on, this is no longer the case. The change within two generations of the inventory of potential leaders from diaspora communities in the UK is far greater than it’s ever been.’
While in previous decades, the pool of eligible ethnic minorities to fill top executive management and board positions was limited, Olisa notes that the pool was wider today than it has ever been. He argues that, the Powerlist – a list of the 100 most influential people of African and Caribbean heritage in the UK (a list that Olisa currently tops) – proves that people from diaspora communities can rise to the top, and yet the numbers that do are still relatively small. Olisa speaks of the need to be impatient for change as, although change is happening, it’s still not happening fast enough.
Olisa refers to recent incentives put in place that are proving instantly successful in bringing more women into the boardrooms of the UKs largest companies. Figures show that, in 2014, 39% of first-time FTSE 350 non-executive appointees were women, up from 28% in 2013 and 11% in 2007.
In a previous interview with The Sunday Times, Olisa had said: ‘Those women aren’t tokens. They are very talented people who for some reason just weren’t being shortlisted and put on to boards. Whoever made the intellectual change inside FTSE 100 companies to solve that problem needs to make that intellectual change again on ethnic diversity.’ Adding to that in his Onliris blog, he proposes that, whilst employers have an obligation to remove unconscious blockages that impede the rise of BAME talent, talent themselves have to ensure that they focus on doing extraordinarily well throughout their academic and professional careers to position themselves as suitable candidates for the roles that become available as more initiatives aimed to increase BAME representation in senior positions gain traction.
‘Future leaders need to display an impatience for change,’ he concluded. ‘It’s okay – even important – to be impatient, otherwise things won’t change’.
Ken Olisa, who is founder chairman of Restoration Partners, was recently appointed Lord Lieutenant of Greater London and also named as Britain’s most influential black person by the Powerlist. In his thought piece for Onliris he also calls for entrepreneurs to see it as their duty to give back to society, following the ‘do well, do good’ mantra that underpins his own life philosophy.
Read Ken Olisa’s blog entitled ‘Society needs entrepreneurs who will do well and then do good’ in full exclusively at www.onliris.com/blog.
