Carlos Ghosn, President & CEO, Renault/Nissan - Building Gender Balanced Business

By Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

Speaking at the Women’s Forum in Deauville this year, Carlos Ghosn, President and CEO of Renault and Nissan, admitted that we can have “a long talk about what is right versus what is good.” But that in the end, diversity will simply become a normal, accepted element of doing business.

Ever the inspiring and very natural speaker on diversity, Ghosn knows that he can’t push diversity as fast as most of his audience at the Women’s Forum conference in Deauville in October would like.

He asked, “How much time will it take? How much talent will be wasted? And how much can we accept?” As for the last question he said that there is no limit to how much we can accept. He added that diversity is “an asset for any corporation. Why? “There are 100 reasons,” he insisted, but he prioritised three:

1. “Diversity brings better innovation. There is no better way to think out of the box. Put together cross-functional, highly diverse teams and put them in front of problems that you cannot solve and you’ll be amazed at the answers they come up with.”
2. “Customer Satisfaction. How can we pretend to serve our customers if we are not as diverse as they are? We know, in our company, that women prefer saleswomen (even men prefer saleswomen). How can we claim to respond when we have mostly salesmen?”
3. “Employee Motivation. How can you motivate people in your company without diversity at all levels? If I’m a woman and I can’t see any women in top jobs or on the Executive Committee, why would I give my all to the company? Motivation is absolutely fundamental. People want to see who they are reflected at the top, and see that they can make it too.”

For more information on RENAULT’s approach, see Mona Sepehri on Cross-Functional Teams