Inclusion Unlocked

10Cultural Connectedness

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

Chief Seattle

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, Ronan Dunne, Non‐Executive Director at Marks & Spencer and the then CEO of Verizon Consumer Group, was responsible for 90,000 of the communication giant's customers in the US. His adopted behaviors suggest that he was engaging in cultural connectedness:

When I went to the US I was acutely conscious that my limited experience resulted in me having an insufficient understanding of the reality of African Americans. When George Floyd's murder happened, and the Black Lives Matter movement gathered momentum rather than post on social media [as many CEOs were doing at the time to express solidarity] and potentially come across as a trite, well‐meaning White guy saying “Isn't this terrible.” I chose to do something different. Instead, I sought out respected content originating from the Black community, read their concerns, and carefully reposted. It bettered my own understanding, but that way I was also able to distribute content into communities which might otherwise not have been exposed to it.

Dunne realized he did not have a nuanced understanding of the lived experience of Black Americans. He committed to learning from his own sources within the Black community, and then amplifying what he learned within his network. Dunne ...