Action not talk is the only worthwhile response to #BlackLivesMatter

For the last 10 days everyone’s social media feeds have been filled with proclamations of solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

While largely well-intentioned, I’ve so far been reluctant to participate in what I’m worried has become a surfeit of virtue signalling and performative allyship.

But I understand that Clarity’s community — my colleagues, our clients, our partners, our friends — quite rightly want to know how the company I lead is planning to respond.

When it comes to diversity, at Clarity we’ve always strived to work in an ethical, inclusive way. However I now realise that the bar was set too low. Way too low.

And I regret the fact that I failed to recognise and respond to this sooner.

As with any failure, I will learn from it and use it to improve myself and my company.

We need to work together as a business, and with those who can support us, to understand what it is that we can do to effect positive, meaningful change.

The first step in this process is the creation of a working group with a clear goal: for Clarity to establish a new industry standard for diversity and inclusion practices and policies. The bar needs raising — significantly.

We will innovate and take bold action to drive sustainable change. We won’t get complacent or self-congratulatory when progress is made. We’ll keep iterating and optimising with a resolute long-term commitment to continuous ongoing improvement. We’ll publicly share our ideas, plans, successes and failings in the interests of transparency and accountability.

In this way, I hope we can contribute to the wider industry’s attempts to take a much-needed quantum leap forward in all matters equality.

The #BlackLivesMatter movement isn’t a reaction to an isolated tragedy. It’s a response to systemic inequities that will take vast resources and many decades to rebalance.

It’s therefore incumbent on us all — as individuals and as organisations — to stop talking and start acting. The growing momentum of the #BlackLivesMatter movement provides a unique opportunity to create a decisive and irreversible societal change for the better, and I am determined that Clarity will play its own small part.