One of the Best Diversity Leaders in the Field: Take Five with Merck CDO Deborah Dagit

Back in the 1980s, managers repeatedly told Deborah Dagit, now a VP and Chief Diversity Officer at Merck, that she could neither help lead companies nor represent them due to her disability.  They had no idea how wrong they were. In job after job she brought about transformative change and proved herself to be a leader.  Prior to joining Merck, Deb founded and managed Bridge-to-Jobs, a job placement organization through which she placed 400 people with disabilities into permanent employment. Deb is also past chair of the Conference Board’s Workforce Council on Diversity and serves on the board of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network. She joined Merck in 2001 where she initiated and led the Diversity Worldwide Business Strategy Team, made up of 26 executive leaders from all divisions who developed breakthrough strategies for diversity implementation. Deb and I have served together on various diversity councils and conference design committees and she is a valued friend who is a fabulous listener full of wisdom.  It’s one of the reasons I end up quoting her throughout my book, “The Inclusion Paradox.” Recently Deb and I had dinner in Manhattan and over seafood platters she graciously agreed to follow up our conversation with a Take Five interview.

Take 1: It is commonly said that without a committed CEO, not much diversity and inclusion work can get done.  Corporate diversity pioneer Ted Childs has remarked that in about three decades of diversity work, he only met three CEO’s who really got what it meant to be fully committed to it: former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner; Obama’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen; and your CEO, Richard T. Clark. What is it about your CEO that stands out in helping you accomplish diversity and inclusion goals at Merck?

DD: Dick Clark does not exhort diversity and inclusion principles, he lives them.  Shortly after he became CEO he designated the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., commemoration as an additional Merck holiday in the U.S., making it a national day of service for all employees to consider giving back to their communities. He also asked me as the diversity leader to rethink our approach to our diversity strategy and recommend ways we could enhance our programs to make them more global, customer-focused, and aligned with our business imperatives. As a result we formed 10 Global Constituency Groups, that collectively represent all dimensions of our global workforce and marketplace. These teams have delivered and begun to help implement innovative solutions for accelerating leadership development, enhancing inclusion, better addressing the needs of customers, and engaging in strategic alliances with key external stakeholders.

Dick is visible and approachable with all employees and is regularly seen in our cafeterias, hallways and offices. When conducting Employee Business Briefings he encourages candor and thanks employees who courageously ask tough questions or challenge the status quo. He regularly hosts breakfast meetings with a random sample of 30 employees at a time to give them a chance to talk about whatever is on their minds. Dick has been an engaged sponsor of our Employee Resource Groups, and comes to meetings to thank employees for their contributions to enriching our culture, help us to recruit great talent, and provide innovative solutions for our customers. Dick’s leadership team is one of the most diverse of any Fortune 500 company: currently reporting to the CEO are three women, four African Americans, one Asian, one Native American, one Hispanic, and five White men. He drives accountability for diversity and inclusion through the personal objectives each of his team members has each year. For Dick, “diversity” and “inclusion” are not buzz words. They are priorities regardless of where he is at or who he is with.

Take 2: In the last few years you have been broadening your global reach as a diversity and inclusion leader. What are two important lessons you’ve learned about what’s required for an organization to succeed when they go global?

Get very good at global inclusion practices. Building trust and making sure all voices are heard in other countries requires knowledge–knowledge of time zones, holidays, languages, and the etiquette of  e-mail, telephone conversations, webcasts, and videoconferences. To have a truly global strategy and approach, you must have a global team, and with the business conditions we are currently all operating in, travel will not always be possible. So you need to become exceptional at leading globally through different media.

While it is imperative that you avoid even the perception of exporting U.S. norms and values about diversity and inclusion, I don’t believe in shying away from addressing universal truths. No matter where you are in the world,  some of  same challenges  may exist if you are LGBT, have a disability, are female, have darker skin color, are part of a faith or age demographic that is in the minority. If you succumb to believing that because you are from the U.S. you must be overly cautious in addressing these common concerns, you will fail to make progress and not be seen as a credible or useful resource to the business or the people who are struggling for and deserving of equality and respect.

Take 3: What do you believe is the greatest challenge CDOs face in terms of their own readiness to lead in a complex global and cost-managed environment?

Understanding of both the emerging trends in Human Resources practices (for example, talent management, workforce planning, market-based compensation, etc) and the business acumen in your industry segment needed to drive revenue, customer satisfaction, reputation, and investor opportunities.

Take 4: Among your many accomplishments over the years, you have led the way in addressing disability issues.  What do you believe the diversity and inclusion movement needs to come to terms with at this point in order to address disability more effectively?

Decide to address disability inclusion and make it measurable like other dimensions of diversity. This is not a philanthropic issue, it is not a medical challenge, it is a social justice/civil rights need and business opportunity.Define the opportunity for your industry.  Get beyond just acknowledging the buying power of consumers with disabilities. Understand the barriers to disability inclusion. If your organization is weak in sourcing candidates for the types of jobs you typically have, develop relationships with social networking sites, universities, and targeted recruitment organizations. If you lack appropriate management training, provide “just-in-time” resources at each stage of the employment lifecycle:  recruiting, interviewing, accommodating, managing performance . . . Cornell University has developed a terrific approach to this that is very cost effective.

Making your business accessible to and respectful of people with disabilities needs to affect the design of your lobby, your websites, and your products and services. Avoid “motivational” speakers on disability. Rather, address this topic like other dimensions of difference – with the intent to get results in order to drive business outcomes, retain talent, enhance productivity/engagement and reflect your marketplace.

Take 5: As CDO at Merck and a popular speaker on diversity issues, you have touched many lives. How have your own particular experiences as a woman and as a person with a disability helped you make a unique contribution?

The only way I can make my life work as someone who is 4′ tall and has had mobility challenges since birth is to be hyperaware of what is going on around me. The physical environment, the people, the logistics of getting from point A to B . . . I am very attuned to everything from the height of a curb or slickness of a floor, to the nuances of facial expressions and vocal tones. As a diversity leader this has given me a rich tapestry of information and insights into the world around me, and helped me to navigate situations, people and cultures with great sensitivity and appreciation for the subtle cues. My life experiences have required that I be agile, resourceful, and good at setting others at ease and gaining their support. I know that I must always be prepared to offer focused, practical and innovative insights and ideas that are useful enough to overcome concerns that people may have, given their limited opportunities to interact with someone who looks like me. I think these are attributes that any CDO needs to function in a global multicultural business environment.

If you want to hear Deb in action, check out this speech she gave at the City Club of Cleveland.

 Print This Post   Email This Post