All lives matter the same – My experiences with diversity

As already explained in one of my earlier posts, I have grown up in a small village in the middle of nowhere in the forests close to the city of Kaiserslautern in Germany during the “cold war” years in the early sixties. The only really exciting diversion for children of my age in the small, mainly agricultural, villages during these times there were the quite frequent encounters with US soldiers, which had been stationed all around our area and which we as children were looking up wherever and whenever we could find them during their military exercises in the forests. Many of these soldiers were black men, many others were white men. I do not recall the remembrance of any bad or harmful  situation during all these for both parties involved always entertaining and friendly encounters. And these were the times shortly before massive contingents of GI`s were sent to Vietnam, many of them from the US airbase Ramstein, not really far away from where my home village was. In general all these young soldiers, no matter their color or social background, treated us children very nicely and they obviously had plenty of fun when playing and making jokes with us. And we children have learned tremendously from this contact with them. I am personally convinced, that my strong early interest in learning English, my affection to Rock`n Roll music and my firm desire, to travel the world as soon as possible, have been originally created there. 

My next experiences with people from other countries and parts of the world arose when my familly moved to the nearby city of Mannheim, where I went to secondary school. Actually it was my six years older sister who during her studies of medicine at the famous German university in the very romantic and beautiful city of Heidelberg lived together with lots of young people from allover the world in a students dormitory and made me get to know personally with many of her young international friends.

The most important of all of these new international contacts for me became undoubtedly Trinder, a physics student from India. He spent lots of evenings and weekends with my familly in our apartment in Mannheim, where my mother cooked typical German dishes and Trinder told my sister, my mother, my brother and me stories about far away India. I was deeply impressed by his big turban and he was definitely the first Sikh, which I met in my life. By the way, not too many years later Trinder quit his physics studies in Germany, married his indian wife and moved to the US, where he became the owner of two gas stations and grew a quite big and happy familly. No matter the great distance, my familly never lost contact with him and he always wrote us thankful and longing letters. 

Several years later, during my highschool times, I gained the opportunity to meet with lots of  students from different international provenances. Maybe my memories have become selective over the long years since then or because of my own later-on own trajectory in this particular world region, but I remember mainly young people from Latin American countries, with whom I had closer contact during those years at the University of Karlsruhe (today: KIT – Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). Anyhow all these friendships with students from Brazil, Costa Rica and Peru, which I concretely remember, enriched my knowledge about other peoples cultures and countries and stimulated my already firmly existing desire, to make own international life and work experience as soon as possible after the conclusion of my academic studies.

The company, where I made thoroughly experience and friendship with many foreign (seen from a German standpoint) people and for which I travelled a lot to other european countries, was Henkel. Anyhow Henkel  during this time was one of the most internationally active, experienced and in general worldwide successfully acting German companies. Decades before the term diversity has become popular, Henkel practiced an extremely open and progressive policy with regards to it`s employees and internal career opportunities. When I still had my office at our HQ in Düsseldorf, it was very common to see and meet colleagues from allover the world during meetings, at lunchtime in the canteens and in general at all departments in different functions. Düsseldorf was our HQ, but there was no doubt, that all colleagues outside Germany and Europe were fully integrated, accepted and highly esteemed contributors to our company`s growth and success. This was a very important learning for me, which gave me a secure basis for my later-on change into the world of quite different and much smaller companies and the challenges, to set up there – in the subsidiaries, for which I became responsible – similiar business cultures and structures.

Since I took over general management responsabilities for different companies at different places in Spain, Mexico and Brazil from January 2000 on, I have become quite experienced to set up nice and successful management teams, in which I always have been the one and only German. I almost never had – and if, only during limited periods – other Germans together with me in the companies, where I was responsible. It never was a question for me, that I had to integrate myself immediately into the local teams and cultures and that my highest responsability was, to establish a “best of both” culture for all of us and amongst us in our company. To be true – this has somehow become my speciality over the years and this actually is what since longer mostly stimulates and drives me. The permanent immersion into a – for me as German – different culture and environment has become my new “normal” and I can really openly admit, that I have become emotionally dependent on that and would never again like to miss it. 

My intensive international and intercultural experience already made in Latin America during the long years of my work in Mexico and Brazil, including my many travels to the whole Latin American region, has been enormously boosted when I got started – upon invitation by our CEO – on supporting my colleagues in Australia and South Africa two years ago within our freshly founded “Vulkan Southern Hemisphere Initiative” with the further development of their companies and businesses. And when quite soon afterwards the decision had been taken, to extend my activities with regards to the development of our industrial business allover subsaharian Africa (49 countries as per our Vulkan internal counting), this gave me an enormous additional impulse. Africa as a continent and the African people and their cultures in the so many different African countries in general have, right from my first contacts and experiences with them on, incredibly impressed and excited me. 

What turns out as a final consequence and deep learning of my above mentioned long and intensive experiences with people of all types of origins, cultures, languages, religions, genders, sexual preferences and colors, is that all lives clearly matter the same. There exists not the least reason for disrepect or any kind of discrimination of any people in the world just because of such distinctive attributes. 

Three years ago, when I started to participate together with my colleagues Josias Leal, Development & Engineering Director, and Marcel Moraes, Development Manager, in public events about new trends, technologies and cultural tendencies, one company, which is located in Campinas, quite close to our own factory in Itatiba, called repeatedly our attention and one day we contacted it and became invited for a visit. I can honestly tell You, that Josias, Marcel and I left CI&T`s  (https://br.ciandt.com/) global headquarters in Campinas, Sao Paulo, after our first fours hours visit there with our mouths wide open.

CI&T is incredibly advanced in its own structural and strategic development, has already fully accomplished it`s own digital transformation and is growing very successfully year by year helping it`s many mainly very big customers – amongst others – in achieving similiar progress, since a few years now also internationally. The definit highlight of our first visit there was for me the personal meeting and totally relaxed and open experience exchange discussion with Cesar Gon (You can find his profile in linkedin), founder & CEO of CI&T, a tremendously experienced brazilian entrepreneur and great cultural and business developper with an immensely open mind. One of the key philosophies and strategies of CI&T is the full and all-around implementation of the concept of diversity within their company and this has undoubtedly prooven as a fundamental success factor for CI&T.

Above a picture from one of our visits to CI&T, in this case together with my colleagues Marcel Moraes, Development Manager and  Ferdinand Senske, VP Operations of Vulkan do Brasil and several of our friendly hosts at CI&T. 

Diversity in a company and at workplaces is closely tied with discrimination and means to exclude completely bias and discriminatory practices towards people who have specific characteristics. Some examples of diversity in the workplace along with ways to tackle discrimination are hiring women, establish gender diversity allover the company including fighting gender inequality in leadership roles, dealing with age and gender discrimination, fostering an age inclusive workplace, building the case for disability inclusion, considering candidates with a non-traditional background, removing unconscious bias from the hiring process.

To practice diversity means to understand that each individual is unique, and to recognize our individual differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. To built a diverse company means that You don`t discriminate against protected characteristics and that You are an equal opportunity employer. This will help You to built up Your employer brand and keep employees happy, satisfied and productive. Diverse companies reflect societies and demographics more accurately, speak to a broader market and get more creative and profitable.

For sure our company is supporting and promoting all this and at our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, we have been working very actively on all these subjects during the last years and we will do more in this sence for the future, because to create sustainable success for a company does no longer just depend on good products and competitive prizes and lead times. Modern global business requires modern business cultures and high responsabilities recognition towards the society as well. 

 This were basically the insights and personal and professional experiences, which I wanted to share with You today and I am very curious now to receive Your own experiences with respect to diversity and it`s implementation in Your own companies and life. Hope to see You here again tomorrow morning. Take care.