Diversity and Shared Vision

I am writing this from Prague, Czech Republic, the nation rescued from totalitarian rule by the poet Vaclav Havel and his colleagues in the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989. It is a landlocked country in Central Europe bordered by Poland, Germany, Austria, and its former “other half” in the old Czechoslovakia, Slovakia. This is a historic town and place of culture, though I haven’t had time to do my tourism. I will, though, once I’m done with my primary purpose of coming here. I intend to see the Old Town, River Vlatara, Jewish Ghetto, Lesser Quarter, the Iconic Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, and ride on the classic tram. I intend to also see the legacies of communism and the Cold War – the former communist police headquarters, a real nuclear bunker, and the biggest statue of Lenin. After the Velvet Revolution, the old Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved on January 1, 1993 into independent Czech and Slovak Republics. The Czech have benefitted from democracy, enterprise and independence – Czech is the first former COMECON (the pro-Soviet Council for Economic Assistance grouping of Socialist and Eastern bloc countries) nation to become a developed country with the highest human development in Central and Eastern Europe and ranked as the third most peaceful country in Europe. But back to my reason for being in Prague! I am attending the 32nd Annual Conference of the Strategic Management Society (SMS). I arrived in Prague Saturday morning and the conference commenced with a welcome cocktail that evening. Sessions commenced 8am on Sunday (!) and I’m taking time out midway into Monday to write this, but what has most caught my attention was not any of the academic presentations but the speech given this afternoon by Carlos Ghosn, the winner of the SMS Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s conference. Ghosn is the chairman and chief executive of Nissan Motor Co. Ltd, chairman and chief executive officer of Renault, and head of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, an unprecedented case of a single individual heading two separate companies with combined annual global sales of 7.2 million vehicles. I was fascinated not just by Carlos Ghosn’s business profile and achievements, but by his background – Ghosn by his own words was an embodiment of global diversity. He was born in Brazil of Lebanese origin; studied in France and is essentially a French citizen; and he again unusually became CEO of a Japanese company, Nissan! I will leave out the very important business and strategy issues Ghosn raised in his speech, but let me talk about the part of his speech which relates to this article. In commencing his speech, Ghosn reminded us of his multi-national background, his birth in Brazil and return to Lebanon, and contrasted Brazil in which he learnt about harmony in diversity and Lebanon where he noticed that diversity involved significant risk and conflict. In spite of this potential for risk and conflict, Ghosn celebrated diversity (race, ethnic, gender, age) and endorsed it particularly in the context of the firm, but also in the national and global contexts. At the end of his really powerful and thought-provoking speech, I asked Carlos Ghosn a question that perhaps would naturally occur to a Nigerian worried about the problems of ethnicity, religion and perpetual conflict in Nigeria, and remembering that I was visiting a country that had found peace and development only after shrinking into its ethnic and cultural authenticity – “What factors, in your view, accounted for the harmonious diversity in Brazil contrasted with Lebanon in which diversity was a source of war and crisis? And what lessons can we learn from this contrast in the corporate and national contexts?” The award winner’s response drew on his experience in the Nissan-Renault Alliance, an alliance, we must remember, of culturally, ethnically and nationally divergent Japanese and French/European businesses. He noted that at the inception of the relationship when a vision and project was yet to be defined, the collaboration looked sub-optimal as both partners focused on each others’ negatives. The French managers complained about Japanese attitudes and vice versa. However, once the leadership created a compelling vision and inaugurated a tough project, both sides focused on the goal, and indeed leveraged each other’s strengths and unique perspectives. The Japanese took planning, strategy, systematic thinking from the Europeans; the French took execution and commitment from the Japanese; and both sides benefitted from each other, creating synergistic outcomes. He warned – “Don’t ever promote diversity where there is no vision and project!” That is the problem with Nigeria. We have assembled very diverse ethnicities and religions into a country but we have not defined a shared vision of what the essence is, where we are going and how we would live together. There is no shared vision; and there is no shared project. The outcome is a dysfunctional state in which each individual takes care of himself and his family; each ethnic group distrusts the other; communities war against their neighbours; and people kill others in the name of religion. If we refuse to agree to a common purpose and project, this situation will get worse, not better!