Diversity Was Supposed to Make Us Rich

I think a better title for this article isn't "Diversity Was Supposed to Make Us Rich," but "Once Again McKinzey is Peddling Bullshit."

I agree with many of the assertions... Diversity is the right thing to do. And it certainly seems you should hire the best people, regardless of skin colour, ethnicity and gender. And if you limited your CEO search to white males between the ages of 32 and 43 who played college football and who are 6 foot of higher and judged to be "hot" by modern standards and hoot out motivational slogans as if every developer was motivated the same way every salesperson was, you're going to limit yourself to an un-naturally small field from which to draw your candidates.

But... it's important to note that the promises of wealth for DEI hiring didn't come from academia, corporations, employees, organized labor or politicians. It came from a company that, while admittedly hiring bright people, tends to downplay the importance of business context and emphasize the importance of focusing only on those things which are measurable while ignoring Goodhart's Law (When a measure starts to become a target, it stops being a good measure.)

My experience with McKinsey consultants is they almost destroyed my business. Brilliantly smart, they used their intelligence to justify policies dependent on only those things they knew how to measure. If they couldn't figure out how to measure it, it didn't seem to matter. Fortunately, after their policies lost us our three premier customers and a nearly 60% loss of revenue. After ditching McKinsey and organizational repair, the company was able to recover, but not before selling the company at a discount and layoffs.

Please don't blame the concept of "Diversity" for McKinsey's idiocy.