Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Johnny,

Johnny C. Taylor: That’s my name.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: I am feeling so privileged that you’re here and chatting with us, and I can’t wait to dig in. So the first question I want to ask, alrighty, what is your why?

Johnny C. Taylor: Wow, that’s a whole bunch of whys in my life. But I guess if the primary why for me is, and this may sound a little hokey, but it’s impact and specifically the type of impact is I want people to live their best lives. That’s really it. Like trying to figure out how to help people figure out their why, and then essentially remove barriers, enable uplift, do whatever we need to do to ensure that people live their best lives. And what you believe to be your best life is not for me to decide, nor judge. It just is. Right? So that really at my core is so how do you figure out your why? And then how can we help you realize that? Why? Does that make

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Sense? Totally. And what is SHRM’s why? How does that fit in with the purpose of the organization that you now lead?

Johnny C. Taylor: So it’s funny that you mentioned that when first, when I joined SHRM, late December of 2017, but in earnest in January of 2018, we asked ourselves that question. So we had a mission, we had a vision statement, the stuff that everyone does, and sitting down with my executive team, we started to probe, what do we do? And they started wordsmithing missions and visions, and that is a painful process. It’s so painful. It’s just like, ugh, never, right? You can noodle this forever. And then I asked a question to the team, I said, why do we exist? What’s our purpose? Forget the long words and fancy words. Let’s just come up with it. And we said very simply, to elevate HR. That is absolutely the purpose of SHRM, but I need to break that down a little bit for you because it’s not only the HR profession. (02:00): Obviously we’re SHRM the world’s largest HR profession plan, right? But also elevating HR professionals practice like becoming better at what we do, the way doctors and lawyers and everyone does, right? Is elevating our practice. But the third way that I think about elevating HR is in business, elevating people, actually making business people understand the importance of human capital, that we have human capital and we have financial capital. And when you mix the two, you unleash amazing powers. So when we say elevate HR, SHRM’s purpose is that simple. Elevating the HR professional so that they practice great HR, elevating the HR profession so that the best and brightest people want to be a part of this profession. And then elevating people in business so that businesses truly understand the value of their talent.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: I love that, and I think that that is true for a lot of the people that listen and who follow the work that culture leaders do. They care about the intersection of people and profit and where those two things both thrive. I like that, right? Because the narrative out there is that it’s people or profit. You have to pick, and if you pick people, you’re going to suffer on profits. And if you pick profits, you’re going to suffer on people. That’s a false narrative. Absolutely. We have to be comfortable in the gray area where the two meet, and I see that as my role. And it sounds like you see that as your role.

Johnny C. Taylor: Absolutely. In fact, in a knowledge-based economy, it’s the only way it works. Because as great as machines are, at the end of the day, human beings, the creativity, the innovation, that passion for making a difference comes from human beings. Machines enable it, technology enables it, but human beings are the source of and the beneficiary of what you’re describing as people and profit make us all happy. Again, you asked me at the beginning of this talk, why do I do it? I just want you to really figure out what your why is and then to make it happen.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So are you a CEO or are you an HR guru?

Johnny C. Taylor: That’s a great question. Oh, let me see. So I’ve never been a guru much of anything. So I think I’m a CEO who has a, let me be clear. I know I’m a CEO. My primary job and focus is to ensure that this business delivers on its purpose and that requires that we make money so that we can hire people and give people opportunities and ultimately make the world of work for all. So that’s what I do, and that’s a CEO job. I have a CHRO, and each of my executive team members are essentially mini CHROs because as we know, people work for their managers. They don’t really work for a company. A company is a concept, it’s a construct, but they work for their managers. So all of us are junior CHROs. I’m not a CHRO guru or an HR guru. I’m a CEO.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: But you’re also asked to speak on and thought lead in the HR space. And so I think that offers you a unique perspective, perhaps on where the CEO and the CHRO come together and where they don’t. How has that helped you navigate conversations that you have with CHROs and CEOs in the broader business world?

Johnny C. Taylor: So I’m fortunate. I’ve been a CEO now for 16 years. I started when I was 12, by the way. So I’ve literally led organizations as the CEO for 16 years. I’m blessed. Prior to that though, I was a CHRO, publicly traded companies, large divisions of publicly traded companies at Paramount Blockbuster, and then I became a Fortune 500 CHRO at a company called IEC headquartered in New York Home Shopping Network, Lending Tree, Match.com. Those were Ticketmaster. Those were our operating divisions. My point is, I have a unique vantage. I know what the CHRO job is, didn’t do it long enough to be a guru at it, but I truly understand what that job is. I’ve also, for actually now more time than I was a CHRO, I’ve been a CEO. So I actually understand that as well. And it’s a unique position to be, and where you actually have walked in both shoes. You haven’t just talked about what a CHRO does and what the HR profession does. You’ve lived it. And similarly, you don’t just talk about it from the CHR standpoint, what the CEO wants, because I live it every day. I’m that guy. I sit in the seat where I’m like, I actually need my HR professional. I need the people broadly calling HR. I need that to work right for us to achieve our business goals.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: It’s very rare for the CHRO to move into the CEO role, more rare than the CFO and the COO. And I mean,

Johnny C. Taylor: Absolutely.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Why did you make that transition or how did you make that transition?

Johnny C. Taylor: Luck. Luck, fate. God, probably some combination of it all. To be totally transparent, I was a lawyer, right? So people forget. I wasn’t even an HR person first. I was a lawyer professionally first and was dragged into the HR profession by business people who said, I really like the way you think. You’re not just waiting for the next hourly assignment to be paid. You’re actually trying to prevent problems. More importantly, you’re trying to help us grow our business. So I was very fortunate early in my career for another CEO, well-known billionaire, CEO, to say, let’s pull you out of the legal department and let’s start you on a career of HR. And that was an amazing scary moment for me because no one’s, I remember telling the story of my grandmother who’s now no longer with us, but I told her I was going to leave my job as the deputy Jerome counsel of a company to go be the head of HR. (07:53): She had a meltdown. She thought that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard in her life. Why would you leave a real profession to go be in personnel? That was literally the words that she used because of course, that was her construct of, it wasn’t even HR back in the day, it was personnel. So fast forward, someone saw that I actually understood even then the connection between people and profit, and I was asked to join the HR function I did, and then ultimately having mastered the business side and the people side, they gave me the opportunity for which I’m forever blessed and honored to have been given the opportunity to lead an organization and a profession. So it’s not just my business that I run every day. What’s unique about being the CEO of a nonprofit trade association, it’s your sort of leading for the entire profession, not just the four walls of your business. So I have a business to run, and then I’ve got to ensure that all of business values broadly HR.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: And so I think that’s a great transition to what’s happening now. You made the announcement. The announcement, right? The announcement that SHRM is moving from DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion to inclusion and diversity. Yes. So how did that go? Let’s start there.

Johnny C. Taylor: Lemme tell you. So let’s just say 10 days of hell, right?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yeah. It was 10 days ago, 10

Johnny C. Taylor: Days or so ago. And I am invigorated by it, and I really am now partly is I’m just that person who likes challenges. But what I realized and our research, and I know you’ve talked to Dr. Alonzo and our chief knowledge officer and our head of HR and others, the data, and we talk about this a lot in HR, like listen to the data, listen to insights, look at the market research. It told us very clearly that the E was creating a lot of division divisiveness, disagreement, incivility, because partially people didn’t have a common agreement about what the E was. How do you even define the E? Some people believe it means equal outcomes, others said equal opportunity. Some say it’s the E is about people who’ve historically been underrepresented in opportunities and jobs, et cetera. And others say, no, the E is for equality, it’s for everyone and it’s contextual. (10:24): So there was just a lot of confusion to start with. Secondly, it was the source of division. I’m a unifier. SHRM’s job. We’re not going to have everyone agree on anything, but we can’t have us all disagreeing and fighting. So our effort to say, let’s agree on what we can agree on, and that was the struggle. If the E was dividing us, but there was general agreement around the I being the inclusion, the D being the diversity, then let’s focus on what we agree on and we can get the other elements of civility and accessibility and all of that belonging. You can get all of that including equity. But let’s focus on where we know we have some common agreement and common definition. So if that was the purpose of it, it’s been rough. I’d be less than honest now, but anything really worth solving is going to be rough. (11:16): If this were easy, someone else would’ve solved for this. I’m old enough now to be able to talk about it. We went from diversity initially to diversity and inclusion, then went to diversity, inclusion and equity. Then we added an A for accessibility. Then recently they’ve added the B for belonging. We’ve been trying to figure this out. Business and HR practitioners and people who are DEI practitioners have been trying to solve this for 30 years. Yet the data would suggest to you that arguably the results are mixed. They’re mixed at best. So here’s the deal, like any other business situation or business imperative, and you talked about am I a CEO or I’m a CHRO first, I’m a CEO. CEOs oftentimes decide this is a problem we’re trying to solve for, we invest in it, and we have a period of time during which we determine does the market respond to it? (12:07): And if the market doesn’t, by definition, you adjust the product or the service or you get out of the business. We at SHRM, were at a really interesting point, 30 or so years into this work, we had two choices. Get out of the DE and INDD space, just get out of it altogether because it’s a vexing issue that we can’t sort throw in the towel or say, let’s reset. Let’s revisit, rethink our approach and let’s figure out how we can make meaningful progress. That’s what we chose the fork in the road. We decided to go the path of not abandoning inclusion and diversity. It’s really important work, but focusing on those things that we think will help move this conversation further. We are a country that is as diverse as we’ve ever been, yet we’re as divided as we’ve ever been, so at once. And so for all of us who naively believed 30 years ago that if we just got the D right, the diversity and it would be solved, we ended up with an incredibly far more diverse workforce than we’ve ever had. Yet we have division. So that didn’t quite work. So we said, we’ve got it. Not only do you need the diversity, but then you need each of these people to be included and to feel included, to be seen, heard, valued. And that’s why we said, let’s lead with inclusion. And you don’t need inclusion if you don’t have a diverse workforce because kind of everybody’s the same and everyone feels included naturally. Our goal is to have a diverse workforce along with everyone realizing that they matter, and that’s what inclusion is about.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So what do you say to the people who feel that SHRM has abandoned equity and doesn’t care about people and that you’ve sold out to big corps?

Johnny C. Taylor: Right. So the first thing we say is explicit. In our announcement, we said we have a steadfast commitment, continuing commitment to equity. And I tried to describe this someone and the story kind of worked. And so maybe this analogy, metaphor, whatever you call it, worked. I said, let’s say I like apple pie. I’m an apple pie, and I do. I’m a sugar guy. I like sweet, sweet, sweet. So there you go. You asked me to describe it. I say, I want a piece of apple pie. I don’t say I need flour, salt, sugar, apples, cinnamon. All of those things aren’t described. They’re ingredients to a great apple pie, but I don’t have to call out every one of the ingredients. Let’s just call it what it is, apple pie. Everyone gets it. There’s a common sort of understanding. And then the ingredients don’t go away. (14:42): Equity doesn’t go away. Belonging didn’t go away. Accessibility didn’t go away. It’s just that we’re going to call this what it’s mostly about, which is inclusion and diversity. We’re not abandoning anything, and we’re clearly not doing it on behalf of big corporate because big corporate is struggling with this and wants us to find a solution to it. Actually, in some ways, this is a weird kind of thing. Big corporate has said, Johnny, SHRM, Jim, Alex, we’ve been at this for 30 years plus put a lot of money into it, time and treasure, and it’s still not giving us the results. We have data, as you no doubt know, that says 69% or so of employees, not big corporate employees say the diversity results are mixed at best. So if 70% of the people tell you that your results are mixed at best and you keep doing the same thing, how can you expect a different result? It’s like the definition of lunacy. So this is not in response to be corporate, it’s not in response to some politically motivated groups. It’s not in response to anything. But the data and the insights that we are getting from our employee population, generally, they’re saying make it better.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yeah, I mean obviously news that has happened in the last two years where you see DEI is dying a slow and sometimes quick death. Yes. People have now been very comfortable announcing that they’re abandoning DEI initiatives, John Deere Tractor Supply. I don’t know that Microsoft made an

Johnny C. Taylor: Official CN no, whatever, go down the list.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: But everyone is saying, nevermind, that’s not driving results. We’re giving up. And I see that as problematic to driving results in that area. Now, the reason I think that’s happening is because when DEI is an initiative or a project, it’s a short-lived thing that goes away as soon as it’s socially acceptable to go away, it has to be lived and breathed in part culture. Culture

Johnny C. Taylor: You got that’s Thats right.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So we agree on that. And I think culture, we at Culture Partners believe that culture is how people think and act. So how do you get people to think and act around these concepts of inclusion and diversity? How do I actually make that activated in my organization?

Johnny C. Taylor: So what’s funny is the first thing you have to do is, and I know some might not want to hear this, but if we’re trying to get positive thinking and action toward this topic, and we know that the E doesn’t yield positively positivity universally, then the first thing you do is talk about those things that will get and motivate the masses to rally around something. And so that’s number one. And so this is more than just language, but words do matter, right? And that’s something we’ve had to say to people. Words matter. If your name is Jane, and I call you Jill, no matter what I say after Jill, you’re not listening to because it’s offputting. So if the words matter, which I think, and we at SHRM believe words matter, then let’s focus on the words where we have common agreement and general commitment to.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: But what’s interesting is I think that’s what your detractors are saying too. Of course that words matter and you’re giving up on a word that is deeply important, deeply in their hearts, yes

Johnny C. Taylor: If we were giving up on it, but those detractors, but words

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Matter, you took

Johnny C. Taylor: Out know what we said was leading with I and D. That’s really funny, right? It’d be a different thing. And we had the opportunity, as you pointed out, several corporations have walked away from it, period. And in fact, certain groups have given us not so nice feedback that they didn’t think we should just eliminate the E. They thought we should get out of the business altogether. And that takes a certain amount of frankly resolve, which our board of directors, our senior team, our employees, our profession has said, no, this work matters. So we’re not getting out of the business, but we’re also not going to keep doing the same thing that we’ve done for 30 years and expect things to be better.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: And I’m curious if you can give us some insight into what’s happening behind closed doors in the rooms of power. You’re meeting with CEOs that we all read about in the news. That’s right. What are the real conversations?

Johnny C. Taylor: The real conversation with every CEO I’ve spoken with, and I’ve great fortune to meet with the Fortune 100, so we’re not, but from Fortune 100 all the way down, they say we’re committed to this work, but we’re really frustrated because like anything else, we’ve given you the resources, we’ve given you time, and it still seems not to be yielding the results that we want. Somehow HR, this ain’t working and we want you to fix it. So behind closed doors, there’s not this big movement to eliminate this.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: No one’s paying you to remove the E from DEI. Not

Johnny C. Taylor: At all. They couldn’t pay me enough to deal with this hassle, by the way. I mean because it’s been really aggressive. What they’re saying is we actually are committed to this. We understand that we are a diverse society that will be increasingly more diverse over time. We understand that. Therefore, if you have a diverse workforce, people have to feel included. So this benefits us. There’s no benefit to us at all by saying we’re only going to be one kind of person. In fact, I was talking with the CEO of a big company now, and I won’t call him out, but he said, I actually understand finally. And he said, I wasn’t on this bandwagon a long time ago, that having diverse experiences, people with different backgrounds, et cetera in a room makes better decisions. Sometimes we make a better decision. More importantly, sometimes we decide not to do something because that voice in the room that historically had not been in the room could have helped us avoid a mistake like, don’t waste money on this product because the market’s not going to respond, et cetera. (20:31): So they actually understand their commitment to diversity in short is deeper than a moral one. I think there are a lot of them who actually feel that morally this is important, but they also say, it’s actually smart business. This is going to make us better as a business. So I’ve not had to sell diversity to anyone in a long time. And that is encouraging. It really is encouraging that business is committed to this. There is, however, just being totally transparent when you get into the details of the whole conversation around equity, the conversation even around accessibility, the conversation around belonging. And so I want to talk, if I could just spend a few seconds telling you about that. So as we know it’s gone, D-E-I-A-B, or at least that’s where we stand right now, generally speaking. So you talk to ’em and they say, yep, diversity makes sense.   Got it. For all the reasons that you described, we make better decisions when we have different types of people around the room helping weigh in on the decision, better product, better services, inclusion. Got it. If you’re going to have diversity, then the people better feel included or otherwise, there’s no point in have a whole bunch of diversity. They say the A, not sure. I think the A Americans of Disabilities Act and all those things, they cover accessibility. We make sure that people don’t have that. It’s not impossible for people who are differently able to do their job. Okay, fine, whatever. You can’t argue with it, but I don’t quite see the need for it. Then you get to the B belonging. Many of those CEOs, since you ask, would say to you, ah, feels a little erpi, feels a little kumbaya. I don’t know if it’s my job to make an employee feel like they belong. I don’t want to exclude them. So thus, inclusion’s important, but not, but whatever. Fine feels good. It’s HR talk, whatever. That’s literally what they say to me. It feels good. It HR talk, it says Gen Z, right? Totally. You get that right? But when you say the E, that’s where everything breaks down. People are either pro E or anti E, and what we find is 70, so per 70% or so are anti E, and they’re just like, I’m not anti E. The concept of equity. We understand that equity undergirds this all. We’re just not sure if at the end of the day, the focus on it doesn’t distract us from achieving the I and the D explicitly. So it’s a nuanced point. We’re committed to it, but can you do it in the context of an inclusive workplace as opposed to calling it out? Since it’s such a tough term, some people are going to immediately shut down just at the mentioning of it. (23:06): And so if that’s the case, and if you’re genuinely committed to this work, Johnny, SHRM, HR practitioners, are you willing to sort of die on the sword for the E when we’re saying we’re going to get the E, but we’re going to focus on the I and the D where there’s agreement. I got to tell you a funny story shortly after this was announced. I remember that day. Well, I got a call from a member and it was an email, and I call members who will write me, as long as it’s respectful, we’ll get back to civility later. But if it’s like, listen, I’m concerned. So I said, okay, let’s talk about it. Called her, and I said, I jumped into my speech. Let me just tell you about the E. She said, I don’t care anything about the E. I’m calling you. I don’t understand why you dropped the

 Johnny C. Taylor: Shocked. I literally was like, what? Okay, you threw me a curve ball. She was from the disability community, and she felt that we have just finally gotten progress, made progress on conversations like neurodiversity being a different dimension of diversity, not just race, gender, national origin, the civil rights categories. But she says, and here we go. We fought to get the A in here, and then you dropped the A. So I spent the conversation not talking about the absence of the E, but the absence of the A. And it became clear to me that every one of these people and any one of your listening audience or people who are looking in, everyone feels passionate about one of those letters. And by not highlighting the A, not highlighting the B, we’re not saying it doesn’t matter. What we’re saying is this, get the where we have common agreement and we are going to ensure that the workplaces are accessible. (24:42): We’re going to ensure that people feel like they belong, and we’re going to make sure that people are treated equitably, but we’ve got to focus on the I and the D to get there. To get there. So it’s not going backwards. No, no, no. Yeah. It’s one of those things. And maybe, listen, I get it. If you’re really passionate about something, I get it. But I would ask that people would stand back and say, what are they trying to achieve? Assume good intent. And that’s really the message here is assume good intent. There’s nothing in this for SHRM, but heart break and heartache by tackling this issue. The easiest thing would be just to let people talk about it, and I do want to share this with you. We could say, yeah, we’re seeing it die. Some famous CEO, as you know, made that statement, DEI must DIE. (25:34): We saw that statement. Now I think this person is an absolute outlier, but this is the sort of conversation that’s beginning to happen. And the best sort of analog to this would be what we saw with ESG. For anyone who thinks DEI, you persist, you continue to argue and fight over it that you’re going to win this battle. Lemme just tell you, there’s a perfect example. Three years ago, four years ago, everyone was talking about ESG. It was being led by a corporate executive, a billionaire, Larry Fink. He has BlackRock, and the company owns the whole world. And he said, ESG matters. And that term became so divisive that Larry Fink billionaire guy said, I’m not going to use it anymore. I’m still committed to our environment. I’m still committed to sustainability. I’m still committed to good governance, but if that term makes us unable to move this work forward, I am willing to step away from it. That’s where I think, and this was just, it started right at about the time as DEI, and look what happened. No one, if you go back and look at annual reports of the Fortune 500, you can’t find that phrase anymore. No one’s talking about it anymore. And the question is, is this where we want this to end up? If you willing to lay on the nomenclature and ultimately lose the battle?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So you’re saving it,

Johnny C. Taylor: Literally trying our best to save it. That’s the thing is, and I wish that could come across to people, is this entire initiative is about, we can see the trend lines not just of corporations, but amongst employee groups. We see that this thing is quickly falling out of favor, and what we’re trying to do is save the work. I’m not here to save DEI or D-E-I-A-B or DEI don’t care about the letters. We’re trying to save the work, and the work is about diverse workforces so that everyone has to dig the opportunity to enjoy work, the dignity of work, and to make sure that when they’re doing it, that they feel included. If we achieve that, then HR has nailed it, businesses won, employees have won, and we’ll get the A. All of that will be included in the process. The only way you achieve an inclusive workforce, but it’s about the work, not the acronym.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: You seem so convicted. I’m wondering what it’s been like emotionally to, I know that you were prepared for some pushback, but how has it been to be the face of antiquity,

Johnny C. Taylor: Especially as a black man, right?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Right. I mean, that’s the next question. Let’s talk about it, right? Let’s get into it.

Johnny C. Taylor: Yeah. So I would say sometimes, and I really have gotten comfortable with this, sometimes you have to be willing to take the hit for the progress. So I know where this is going. I’ve had to draw on over the last 10 days, a lot of the works of, for example, Martin Luther King, at the time that Martin Luther King was assassinated, he was not particularly popular. In fact, he was very unpopular, even in the African-American community because there was a debate about do you fight force? Do you meet force with force? And he said, let’s take a peaceful approach. And there were a significant number of people in my community who said, it’s a really bad idea to let people put dogs on you and water hoses on you, and for you to remain peaceful. It was not popular at the time. Fast forward, he’s got a place on the National Mall. (29:18): Fast forward, our community is far better off than I think we would’ve been if we had met force with force because we were in the minority. So I draw on examples like that to say, this is a long game. We’re 30 years into the DEI work, and it’s not exactly working. And that’s not to take anything away from people who’ve their lives into this, but if we really, really were honest about what our goal was, if you looked back 30 years ago and say, where would you think you’d be in 2024? We don’t think we’d be here. So that gives me motivation to say, it’s painful to hear people not disagree because I expected disagreement, so I should break that down. Disagreement isn’t the problem. The problem is the incivility, the vitriol, the assuming that you come at this from a bad place. (30:12): Given my personal body of work, as I said, obviously I’m an African-American, but more importantly, I left my very, very successful corporate career to go run the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, an organization that’s committed to supporting the country’s historically black colleges and universities. I did for seven and a half years, raised over a hundred million dollars. And guess what? I didn’t attend an HBCU, so this wasn’t about some commitment giving back to a group of schools who helped me. That wasn’t it. I knew how important that was. And there were several times throughout that journey that people challenged and said, I’m not sure that I know where you’re coming from, but I’ve never been met with this kind of vitriol, which means people are very passionate about it, and I’m actually okay, so anyone watching listening, I’m not mad at you. I get it. You feel strongly enough about it to actually get yourself upset about it and to say mean things. I’m disappointed, but I’m not upset about it because I think give us two or three years, they’re going to see, look back and say, gosh, that was a really good idea. That was a really good idea. It was painful at the time. I didn’t get it. But that’s wonderful about sort of strategy right in the beginning. No one knows what you’re talking about. Next stages, people think you’re nuts. And then there’s a point that will come when everyone will say, oh, yeah, that makes sense. We’ll get there.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: I applaud the bravery that it takes to take a bold step forward into a new reality. It’s about adaptability and being as effective as possible

Johnny C. Taylor: As possible. That’s really, I’m glad you caught that nuance. I don’t know. The reality is our data tells us human beings frankly don’t embrace difference just by nature. I mean anthropologically, we work in clans, we’re tribal, so anything from the outside gives us angst and pause. So I get it. But this idea that it has to be perfect, that we have to have the perfect answer and we have to have it right away, that’s not the way progress is made in society. Society is incremental progress. And it starts with someone having a bold purpose, which is something we talk about at SHRM a lot, a point of view informed by data and then writing it out a little bit tomorrow. This is, I didn’t expect to answer your question everyone, to say, oh, that’s great. SHRM’s doing it. I knew there’d be naysayers again, was surprised at the level of incivility. (32:41): But let’s talk about incivility in that context. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised because we have gotten to a point as a society, which not enough to disagree with you. I’ve actually got to dislike you. You have to be wrong, and I have to be right. And it’s not enough for you to just be wrong. You’re bad. This goes on and it’s really, we’re in a bad place. And so we at SHRM have started the 1 million civil conversations. It should have been 10 million or a hundred million because it’s more than just telling people to be civil. We’ve got to show them how to be civil. So to tell you, very honestly, what bothered me more through these last 10 days was not that people disagreed. It was, and to be fair, it’s a small number. So we focus on the small number, but the things that they would say online about me, about SHRM, about my family, I mean, it was really personal. (33:34): Why can’t we just disagree better? Right? How about that? Just you disagree. I’m not asking you to change your mind. And I’m not at this point ready to change our minds. We’ve used the data to make this decision, but the notion that we have to hold each other in contempt when we don’t agree is a problem. And as I’ve said to one of the people who spoke to me in some really negative terms, I said, listen, you’ve got to look at the man or the woman in the mirror and ask yourself, what kind of behavior are you modeling?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: There are also people who are speaking up in a civil way, a ton of, I’m listening to them, I see their perspectives and I understand. I personally, my reaction was, what a strategic move. That’s right. What a great way to advance this mission that speaks to all parties, to the people who are responding in a civil way, but who disagree, what would you say to them?

Johnny C. Taylor: Just give us a little time. Give us a little

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Time. Give us a

Johnny C. Taylor: Little time. You’re going to see this play out. You’re going to see SHRM be a leader, SHRM, and the HR profession, be a leader in this work. And my big dream is five, 10 years from now, literally people say, ah, I got it. That would be the biggest sort of compliment to me. And I’ve had similar situations happen in my life before where there were naysayers, professional life. That is, we go down a path of saying, just stick with me. I’ll give you one. I dunno if you’re interested, but I was at Thurgood Marshall College Fund and we decided to take a significant gift, eight figure, eight figure gift from Charles Koch. And at that time, he was being vilified. I mean, you couldn’t say the Koch brothers and not receive. And so we accepted a donation from him to do really good work to increase the, first of all the conversation dialogue, but also to increase diversity in workforces, to create opportunities for HBCU to get jobs with companies that had never ever recruited from them before. Why

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Did he give you that donation?

Johnny C. Taylor: I pitched it to him. I said, this is good for America. This isn’t just good for black America. This is good for America. And he bought in and he did it. And guess what? There was a chorus of people. I can’t believe you would take money from him. He’s this, he’s he’s anti, he’s fossil fuel. I mean, there were no shortage of people who just thought this was the absolute worst thing. And I would say to them, very similar to right now, guys, remember the goal was to educate more African-American students. Remember that point, right? And a lot of those kids are dropping out because they don’t have the financial resources to finish school. And he’s giving us the financial resources to help them finish school. Remember that You’ve lost sight of the goal. Fast forward. I just promise you it was now a week ago, one of the graduates of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund program came to see me. He’s working at an NIH lab in Washington DC. He has his PhD, he’s doing lung cancer research. And he shared with me, he said, I was only able to complete this degree because of that donation that you secured. I just

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Got goosebumps.

Johnny C. Taylor: I did too. I’m not exaggerating. I mean out of the blue, this literally happened last week. So just

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Sit tight right on time for you to get re-motivated a new battle. So you’re used to being the face of

Johnny C. Taylor: And taking these things on, but if you know where this could land, I’ll get and SHRM will be recognized for. It’s frankly what people then say was earth shattering or brand new? It was pioneering efforts. So that’s what I’d say to the people who are respectful and civil. Give us time to play this out. Something else I said though was we could be wrong. And you have to have the ability to have enough humility to say, the data tells us this. We’re going to go down this path informed by this data, and if we’re wrong, we’re going to pivot again.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: And you know how you’re going to find out if you’re wrong, people trying it.

Johnny C. Taylor: That’s right. It’s the only, right now, we can only speculate that the IND focus won’t work. I’d like to think that everyone hopes it works. You have to be really careful with people say, well, I hope it doesn’t work. Well, why would you not want it to work? You just want to be right then. So this goes back to that fundamental problem of I want to be right. I don’t care if what I right. I’m like, okay, well then fine. You’re right. So that’s the other thing. I think one other point that I really wanted to make in this conversation is continue using DEI. That’s the term you want to use. This isn’t SHRM saying you have to do anything. We’re saying what we’re going to do. Our thesis, our belief is that the best way to get the change that we wanted to see progress is to focus on the I and D. It’ll be really interesting for others to do it a different way. And we’re going to know over time who is right.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: And you’re going to be doing research. So what’s

Johnny C. Taylor: Next? Tons of data. So Dr. Lonzo, our chief data and insights officer has been charged with literally, and we’ve been studying this since 2018, by the way, we didn’t just wake up and decide to do this. I’m sure you’ve heard, but we’ve been studying it and we’re going to continue, just think of it as some big longitudinal study to see over time, are we able to influence people’s hearts and their minds? That’s what this is really about. Yes. If we can get workers to buy into, as you talk about the culture, if it begins to literally become less a program and more just a way that we operate, the

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Way

Johnny C. Taylor: People think and act the way people think and act, I was going, you got me to

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Get results

Johnny C. Taylor: To get results, then we’ll be right. But we could be wrong. And that’s where I can really say, we are not so full of ourselves to believe that we’ve got this all figured out, but we think we have a really good, we’re going to take a big shot at this. But I’m hopeful that, well, I know this too shall pass. Like I said, I’ve seen in my career, people tackle it and say, I know this too shall pass. And I’m hoping that on the back end of this, and I hope it takes less than three years, we’re going to be collecting the data, talking to employees every month as we do every quarter, gathering the data to see, and we’ll be able to see if the sentiments have changed and if people are more accepting of this work and if corporations are more diverse and if they’re reporting better engagement, less turnover, like the business results. If we can do that, it’ll be great for people, great for business people in profit, as you say. And if things will be beautiful, that’s our dream. And I hope to turn to nightmare, but right now it feels like it. But it’s all good. It’s all good.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Well, thank you for taking the shots and for being the face of bold change. Thank you. In the interest of results and transformation, I mean, this is adaptability and action folks,

Johnny C. Taylor: But human beings don’t like that, that they talk about change, but change is more than a word, right?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yes. And change is more than from A to B. That’s right. It used to be A to B, now it’s A to B, to C to D to A, B2C, and back to E, and then to Z, and then to three and four. That’s right.

Johnny C. Taylor: You can make it. Yeah, right. Then you put numbers in there, it comes out everything and yellow.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: No, totally right. I have one last question, which is my favorite question. Oh, what is something that you don’t get asked about very often in these types of interviews that you do that you wish you were asked more often?

Johnny C. Taylor: Are you ever afraid?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Are you ever afraid?

Johnny C. Taylor: I get the opportunity to talk with CEOs a lot, and they all will tell you, we’re human beings like anyone else. If you are wrong, you could be fired. If you are wrong on these sorts of big social issues, you could have backlash in a way. I mean, I think about Budweiser and the decision that CEO made in the name of actually, I believe trying to do the right thing, which to make their brand more inclusive. Your heart can be right, your intentions can be right, but the business could be severely impacted when you do it. So every one of these decisions you are constantly balancing. At the end of the day, might this be the one risk too many back I grew up, there was this guy called Evil Knievel, right?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: You remember that?

Johnny C. Taylor: Yeah. And so evil Knievel would get on the motorcycles and get on his motorcycle and he’d jump over five cars and then he’d add another one and six cars and then’s one time when you put one car too many and you end up dead or

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Very,

Johnny C. Taylor: Very broken up. And so that’s one of the questions I don’t get. Like how do you decide as a, first of all, are you fearful when you make these decisions? The safe approach is to take the least controversial, just live it out, work another 10 years, retire, dah, dah, dah. All is good. And so that’s the question is are you actually afraid? And I will tell you, Jessica, there are times when you get heart palpitations. You’re like, uh-oh, suppose I’m wrong. What if I damage my company’s germs reputation in its brand in a profound way? Again, I constantly reflect back on Budweiser, it was the number one producer or beer product in America forever. And now it’s number three. It didn’t just drop one, it didn’t just drop two, it dropped to number three. And that CEO took a bold move and has to live with it. So yes, that’s the question is as a CEO, are you ever afraid? I think about sports coaches when you decide, do I play for the tie or do I play for the win? Do I take a three point shot in the basketball game to win? Or do I just tie live to see another day so that we get some overtime play? You have to make those decisions when you make these sorts of big issues. So that’s what people don’t ask me. Are you afraid of it?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yeah. And

Johnny C. Taylor: There’s a reason I don’t ask

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Because I don’t want to answer yes. But I got to tell you, yes, not because I’m afraid of losing my job. I’m afraid because there’s a lot, there are a lot of people counting us on us to get this right. And so if we’re wrong and actually this work goes further backwards, then the responsibility of that is overwhelming. It really is. Because we can’t keep doing this. There is a point where DEI could die. There will be a point where business literally says, I’m over it. We couldn’t figure it out. So we’re done with it. And so our hope is that this is right, because if not, this could be that seventh car in Evil Knieval’s jump. That was one too many. And again, I’m not worried about my career. I’ve been fortunately and blessed, I’m not going to miss any meals for the rest of my life for sure, and probably could stand doing a one or two anyway. But I do worry that if we don’t get this right, that my kid who’s 14 now is going to be having this conversation 30 years from now, my grandkids could be having this conversation. 38 women could be in the workplace, still not being paid equitably, still not being treated to equal opportunity for promotions. And the people with disabilities, African-Americans like this could all be bad. And so that’s what I’m afraid of. But it’s not having a job, guys. It’s not that serious. You can’t sit in these jobs and be worried about your job, right?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Well, sitting here across from you in this room, my heart feels that your heart is committed to this

Johnny C. Taylor: And

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: That you are coming from the right place and you’re doing it in the most strategic and forward thinking way possible. And that you want to bring the world along for the ride for the better. So thank you for taking that risk and living with that fear.

Johnny C. Taylor: Well, thank you for telling. Help us tell this story because yeah, it’s a really important story for people to understand. And I hope five years from now, hopefully sooner, but no later than five years from now, we’re sitting here saying, you remember when we were sitting down talking about it, and now look at where we are. That’s what I’m really, that’s my passion. It’s not about being right. It’s about doing the right thing and the right thing, yielding great business results and great people results.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So I’ll send you a calendar invite for five years from today.

Johnny C. Taylor: I love it. I love, I’ll

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Here it.

Johnny C. Taylor: I love. Absolutely.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Thank you.

Johnny C. Taylor: Thank you.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Johnny.

Johnny C. Taylor: Thank you.