The Diversity Blog

Published in Insurance Insight, January 31 2013

The biggest enemy of diversity is ‘anti-diversity’ – anything that stomps over things diverse and intending to homogenize them or conversely anything coming in the way of something attempting to diversify. Over the last couple of weeks, I picked two stories both defying this hypothesis. One in a heroic sense and the other in a mysterious way!

The glass ceiling game:

The heroic one comes from the HBR Blog Network, titled “How Female Leaders Should Handle Double Standards”. It is about how women are perceived – how they dress, talk, their “executive presence,” capacity to “fill a room,” leadership style and public image – has been the object of vast, well-intentioned efforts to get more women to the top. Voice coaches, image consultants, public speaking instructors and branding experts have filled the growing demand for these services.

The premise, goes on the blog, is that women have not been socialized to compete successfully in the world of men, and so they must be taught the skills of their male counterparts have acquired naturally. But, at the same time, they must “tone it down” or risk being labeled as having sharp elbows. The crux of the matter is that women are evaluated against a “masculine” standard of leadership that leave them limited options and distracts attention from the task at hand.

While women are likely no more susceptible than men to such diversions, subtle (and not so subtle) cultural biases can easily turn women’s attention inward as they try to reconcile conflicting messages about how to behave as leaders. What to do then, in a world when image and perceptions matter, and gender stereotypes remain firmly entrenched? Three prescriptions, in the blog, from three women leaders (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/02/how_female_leaders_should_handle_double_standards.html):

• “We should just focus on what we have to do” says Lubna Olyan, the Saudi CEO of Olyan Financing. She believes, “women shouldn’t be distracted by things that take away from what we are trying to accomplish.”
• “The story is never what she says, as much as we want it to be. The story is always how she looked when she said it”, say the members of Hillary Clinton’s press corps. What does Clinton have to say? She does not fight it anymore; she focuses on getting the job done.
• IMF Chief, Christine Lagarde says be yourself. “Dare the difference”. But do so skillfully. Don’t just let it hang out; and never confuse “being authentic” with “fatal flaws” such as treating people poorly.

So while you work towards breaking the glass ceiling do not give up your originality. Being yourself is diversity too.

The Most Misunderstood Industry (TMMI):

Why is insurance TMMI, consistently across the world? That there is little room for diversity, in the ways it is perceived, remains a mystery. Two professors at Wharton, Howard Kunreuther and Mark Pauly together with Urban Institute researcher Stacey McMorrow,­­­ analyze the theme in Knowledge@Wharton Today. The focus of their study is USA, world’s most developed and penetrated insurance market. Yet their findings do not seem to be any different for the rest of the world. It makes an interesting read (http://knowledgetoday.wharton.upenn.edu/2013/02/insurance-the-most-misunderstood-industry/).

An extraordinarily useful tool to manage risk:

• Yet broadly misunderstood by consumers, insurance executives and regulators
• Many do not voluntarily buy coverage against potentially risky & serious losses
• Insurance firms also behave strangely after they suffer a severe loss
• State regulators often constrain insurance premiums because they are concerned that insurance will not be affordable
• Affordable Care Act (ACA) health reform legislation requires sellers of individual and small group insurance to sell coverage to all comers at premiums that do not take into account the buyer’s medical risk

Why do consumers, insurance firms and regulators behave as they do?

• Tendency for those at risk to assume that disaster losses or major health related expenses will not happen to them. Given this view, they feel no need to purchase insurance protection. Only after suffering a loss will consumers voluntarily buy insurance. After a disaster, insurers may decide to restrict coverage, and state regulators are likely to prevent private insurers from charging premiums that reflect the actual risk
• Behaviour of this kind defeats the three principal purposes of insurance: to provide information via premiums as to how serious your risk is; to provide motivation for undertaking financial protection against an event that could produce a significant loss but has a low probability of occurrence; and to offer incentives in the form of premium reductions to reward people who invest in risk-reducing measures
• Incentives, rules and institutions that encourage a constructive role for insurance will ultimately improve individual and social welfare. Several recent pieces of legislation have set the tone for appropriately dealing with risk. Dealing with Terrorism via the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA); Biggert-Waters Act proposes major reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The ACA requires insurers to offer insurance to all US residents who do not currently have coverage through either their job or a public plan.

What can be done to make insurance a better policy tool and to avoid adverse side effects of the well-intentioned programs already in place?

• One way to convince people, prescribe the authors, of the long-term benefits of insurance is to stretch the time horizon over which the event can occur. Studies have shown that people are much more likely to buy insurance or invest in protective measures if an event, such as a hurricane, that has a one in 100 chance of occurring next year is presented as having a greater than one in five chance of happening at least once in next 25 years. And if the disaster does not happen – well, the truth is that the best return on an insurance policy is no return at all. One should celebrate not having a major loss!
• Insurers should construct worst-case scenarios for rare events. They can then determine a premium that reflects their best estimate of their expected future risks factoring in the uncertainty of the events happening. Insurers could also consider offering multi-year policies if state regulators allow them price coverage that reflects risk over that period. A multi-year insurance policy with risk-based premiums coupled with a multi-year home-improvement loan to pay for risk reducing measure may enable policy holders to reduce their overall costs.

Having diagnosed what keeps us into being the most misunderstood industry, the authors demystify our current state and also suggest prescriptions for overcoming this woe. Maybe anti-diverse at the outset but if each market and geography could discover its own remedies; we may soon be a reinvented entity.

My comment on “Still a man’s world” by Sara Mosavi:

Hi! We need to go beyond a pure statistical analysis or judgement on the  state of diversity to some softer sides as well.

The stories ought to also cover:

What made the successful women leaders get where they are? Family support,  culture, environment, challenges et al. Each one could be an amazingly  insightful story, rather than just a statistic.

Likewise, those who really deserved it and never made it – was it the glass  ceiling or their choices or a combination of both? Life again need not be judged  on a pure SUCCESS = POSITION but success at what price?

There will be several exceptional stories of bright and talented women who  chose successful work life balance over a successful career and not so  successful personal life. Equally applies to men.

It will be fascinating to hear the life story of Ms Nooyi. To what extent did  her living in the US rather than the native country facilitate realisation of  fuller potential? The positive roles of husbands/ partners in ensuring that the  wives/ partners realise their full potential would be great too. Perhaps this  could also become a role model for many a men.

So let us get over a pure left brain approach to a more balanced one, thereby  engaging the right side of the brain as well. And look for ways to make it all  happen. Not just a statistical reality but a functional metamorphosis of our  society.

Published as a Chartered Insurance Institute Think Piece in November 2012

Indian born lady in the driving seat@F1

The announcement of Dehra Dun born Monisha Kaltenborn’s elevation as the Sauber team Principal, close to the Indian F1 event, is bound to evoke tremendous interest. In a sport presently dominated by men, this is indeed a welcome break. And why not when you are F1’s first ever woman team principal. All eyes now on who will succeed the F1 key man Bernie Eccelstone. Could it be his daughter? A lady and of Indian origin indeed constitutes wonderful form of diversity and deserves all the media glare that it has rightfully received. “It is a lot of responsibility because if you mess it up it is even worse than if a man were to do that”, Monisha was recently quoted on the BBC Sports.

Triumph of human spirit

However, there is something else that has an interesting linkage with the F1, which also deserves to be recognized and celebrated. It is a story of triumph of human spirit. The hero is Alex Zanardi. “While he was never able to reach the heights of success in F1 – Zanardi never made the podium in 44 races – he is a champion Paralympian”.

“In 2001 the ex-Formula One driver was at death’s door, lucky to survive a horrific accident that left him with only 30% of his blood supply. He lost both his legs – amputated at the knee – after being pulled from a wreckage of his car at a race in Germany”.

“Having failed to make a career in F1 after four difficult seasons, he turned to the US CART series where he twice won the drivers’ title for Chip Ganassi’s team”.

“That earned him a return to the elite division of motorsport in 1999 with the Williams team, but again he struggled”.

“Drifting back to open-wheel cars, fate came calling at the Euro Speedway Lausitz on September15, 2001. He had worked his way up from the rear of the field to lead the race with 13 laps to go before the life – changing  crash”.

“Given the severity of his injuries, the doctors at the scene of the accident said Zanardi should never have survived”.

Zanardi not only survived but discovered hand cycling. It all culminated with him winning a gold medal in his adopted sport at Britain’s Brands Hatch circuit at the recent Paralympics, aged 45 years! Some form of diversity whilst tackling adversity!

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/06/sport/paralympics-zanardi-london-2012/index.html?iid

If the Kinect brings your living room alive in a social and accessible way, a passage through Glacier Bay is more than a live journey through geography. it’s a journey through time. in roughly the 65 miles that you traverse, begining in modern age and finishing in the ice age. you travel north from forested lower bay to the rocky, icy upper bay. You pass through hundreds of bold changes and subtle transitions where plants and animals pioneer new ground and surprise even the most seasoned observers of nature.
A bear crosses a glacier. A moose swims an inlet. A seedling spuce emerges from granite, reaching for the sky. Life is tough and tenacious here. No wonder Glacier Bay holds powerful stories, and attracts scientists, preservationists, and travellers from around the world.

Wildness: Remote, Dynamic, and Intact
And so we arrive in Glacier Bay, a land reborn, a world returning to life, a living lesson in resilience. If ever we needed a place to intrigue and inspire us, to help us see all that’s possible in nature and ourselves, this is it. Glacier Bay is a homeland, a natural lab, a wilderness, a national park, a United Nations biosphere reserve, and a world heritage site. Not a bad resume for a young land, a new sea. Just 250 years ago, Glacier Bay was all glacier and no bay. A massive river of ice, roughly 100 miles long and thousands of feet deep, occupied the entire bay.
Today, that glacier is gone, having retreated north. Fewer than a dozen smaller tidewater glaciers remain. Impressive in themselves, sequestered at the heads of their inlets in the upper bay, they flow from tall coastal mountains to the sea, and calve great shards of ice that bejewel cold waters with diamond like bergs. They are witnesses to change, these rivers of ice. They invite us to slow down and breathe deeply of the cool ice age air, and to imagine, if only for a day, the way things used to be.
Source: National Park Service, US Department of the Interior