Fareed Zakaria’s Inclusion Solution

“It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it’s pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it.” ― Alice Walker

As a diversity and inclusion practitioner for 28 years now, it sometimes gets frustrating as I go from organization to organization advocating for inclusion and cultural competence as the path to sustained success.  I wonder sometimes if the effort is futile because it seems so obvious to me that the solution to many of our organizational and societal woes is to leverage the inherent diversity that naturally exists in ways that unleash more creativity, engagement and untapped potential.  I lament that it does not seem as obvious to others as it does to me and those of us who do this work.  I continue to see evidence of polarization in the government, our educational systems and corporations….an “us and them” mentality where we compete rather than collaborate to share resources.

Maybe, though, at a meta level we really do get it.

I have always enjoyed Fareed Zakaria’s commentary.  He is one of the top 100 global thought leaders, former editor at Newsweek and currently editor at large at Time Magazine, as well as a CNN commentator.  I was at Duke University’s Commencement in May where he delivered the commencement address and I just watched on the Harvard Gazette’s website pretty much the same speech that he delivered for Harvard’s graduation.

Contrary to the negative messages that we are bombarded with in the popular press today, Zakaria lays out a message of progress, pride and hope that is quite frankly refreshing and should give us all renewed confidence in our future.  In summary Zakaria told the graduates of Duke and Harvard the following….

1. We are living in the most peaceful time in human history.  There is no major strife among the richest countries of the world. We are in political stability from a historical perspective. The number of people who have died in war and terrorism is down 50% from the last decade and 99% since WWII.
2. There is a single global economy.  Countries around the world are thriving, even with the “slow” economic times. In 1980 60 countries were growing at 4% per year. In 2007 the number had doubled and today, even with economic woes, the number is 80. In the current decade, the global economy will grow 10-20 percent faster than the last decade. In the last 50 years world poverty has been reduced more than it was in the past 500 years combined.
3. We gain 5 years of life expectancy every day!  One-third of babies born in the developed world will live to be 100 as a result of rising standards of living.
4. The cell phone has more computing power than the Apollo spaceship that went to the moon.
5. Over the past 50 years there has been a four- fold increase for men and seven- fold increase for women in the number college graduates. Increasing economic participation of women is mandatory for the world economy to continue to grow.
6. The US is the only country that is “demographically vibrant”.  We add 3 million people per year, mostly immigrants who love this country and work hard to make a positive contribution.  Our diversity is a strength and competitive advantage.

Zakaria says that while we are living in an “astonishing age of progress” he is not suggesting that we become complacent.  He points out that each of the challenges that we face as a planet …economic crises…terrorism…environmental issues, has been met with coordinated actions of countries to resolve the problems. It is because we can put aside our “petty differences”, and leverage our diverse skills, talents and resources that we come to solutions that make us all better off. “It is through thousands of individual actions that we collectively solve our problems”.

The solution really is “inclusion”…coming together for the common good of the planet.  Zakaria shows us the positive outcomes when we do!