Conversely, What Are We Not Seeing?

You know those corporate controversies that immediately makes you think: how did nobody spot that?

Last week, Converse found itself there after removing an advert featuring K-pop star Karina, following criticism that the image evoked racist imagery. Converse backtracked and apologised, said it understood why the image was deeply upsetting and removed it from its channels, but beyond that, very little is publicly known about how the work was created, reviewed or approved.

There is already a temptation to reconstruct the entire story from the outside, deciding who must have been decision-making, what they must have thought and how the image could possibly have made it through. The truth is that nobody outside the organisation knows the full story, and maybe that's the more useful place to start.

What happens inside organisations when too many people see the world in similar ways?

Teams inevitably develop shared language, shared references and shared knowns, particularly when people have worked together for a long time. By the time a campaign launches, everyone involved understands what it was intended to communicate because they have seen the briefs, the references and the thinking behind it, while the public arrives without any of that context and just sees what is in front of them.

Having a diverse group of people does very little if the culture around them makes disagreement uncomfortable, inconvenient or professionally risky.

This is where insight from Lola Bakare, one of The Unmistakables’ Culture Makers, becomes useful. Her response to the Converse controversy focuses on psychological safety, cultural awareness and the importance of creating environments where people can challenge work before the audience does it for you.

That becomes particularly relevant against the wider backdrop of organisations reducing investment in specialist DEI and culture functions. Converse is owned by Nike, which has undergone significant restructuring in recent years, including reductions affecting diversity-focused roles, although there is no public evidence linking any specific organisational change to this particular campaign and it would be irresponsible to suggest otherwise.

The broader business question remains important because DEI investment is often asked to justify itself through ROI, increased sales, stronger innovation or better productivity. Those questions are understandable, but they can miss the point of work that is partly preventative.

Cybersecurity is not valuable only when it generates revenue, legal teams are not judged on sales growth and companies do not buy insurance because they expect it to make them money. Much of their value lies in reducing the likelihood or impact of something going badly wrong.

Cultural intelligence should sometimes be viewed in the same way.

That does not mean every organisation needs a DEI team signing off every advert, nor should employees from underrepresented groups become cultural spell-checkers for everybody else. It means organisations need enough difference, expertise and psychological safety in their systems for assumptions to be interrupted before they become external problems.

We may never know the entire story of what happened at Converse, but that might be beside the point, because the more useful lesson is what happens when organisations become too comfortable with their own perspective.

Conversely, maybe the real cost of inclusion work is easiest to see when it is no longer there.