In this guest article for Global Custodian, Pat Sharman, managing director, UK at CACEIS explains why the right diversity matters.
For those that know me, you’ll be aware that I’m really passionate in my role leading on diversity, culture and protecting the environment. The more actively involved I get in talking about these important areas, the more I realise they are highly connected, and diversity is at the heart of this.
As an industry managing and controlling billions of dollars of assets, we have a huge collective responsibility to help address the big issues facing our society, such as climate change, but to do so means thinking differently. It means being open to diverse perspectives and ideas and moving away from the comfort our established norms.
Malcom Forbes, the American entrepreneur, once defined diversity as ‘the art of thinking independently together’. Today, attitudes around diversity are changing for the better. A work structure centred on diversity is both fairer and more equitable. Not only that, but by becoming more diverse we are able to make far better informed decisions. Indeed, in a complex, dynamic world we need a coalition of minds to make the right decisions – and this can only come about through cognitive diversity.
However, diversity also comes in many shapes and forms, and I believe we must look at the bigger picture if we truly want to address some of the biggest challenges of our times, such as climate risk and protecting the natural environment.
We only have to look at those organisations tasked with [...]
