Something Jat said to me this week has stayed with me.

He described an organisation that had invested real time and money in bringing more diverse leaders into senior commercial roles. On paper, it looked like progress. In practice, several of those people left quickly. Not because they lacked capability. Because the environment they entered had not changed sufficiently to allow them to succeed.

I have heard versions of that story before. This time it landed differently.

Partly because we are further into the work now. Partly because the more work we do, the less convinced I am that the hardest question is simply who should get the role.

That question still matters. But another one sits behind it. What is this organisation actually asking a person to walk into? I do not mean the values slide or the version of the culture described in a board interview. I mean the lived environment. What gets rewarded when pressure rises. How decisions really get made. Whether sponsorship holds when someone different joins the room. Whether the business has the patience and honesty to help a new leader land well.

Those things are harder to measure. They are also less flattering, because they turn the lens back on the organisation.

I started inBeta thinking the biggest gap sat in how companies identify and define leadership talent. I still believe that matters. But I think we underestimated something important. A business can make a fairer, better-evidenced hire and still get a poor outcome if the context around the role is wrong.

That is not especially satisfying to admit when you are trying to build a company around solving the problem. It is also closer to the truth.

Read the DiversityQ article →