Meet Mac Alonge, founder and CEO of The Equal Group
I’m Mac Alonge, CEO of The Equal Group. I started off working in the energy and utilities sector. My background is in regulatory economics, so I spent 10 years working as a regulatory consultant. Over the years, I worked with and for some of the largest public and private sector organisations including the UK and Scottish Government, KPMG, National Grid and Scottish Power amongst others.
When I started out in the sector, I immediately noticed the lack of diversity, but thought that it was something that would change over time, but after a decade I thought that things weren't necessarily changing in a meaningful way. That's when I started having conversations about diversity with senior leaders across the sector. From these conversations I wanted to know two main things, firstly, whether leaders recognised the lack of diversity, and secondly, what they felt could or should be done about it.
Every leader I spoke to recognise the issues, but none of them knew what to do about it. There was a slight sense of not wanting to say or do the wrong thing, so the common approach was to "wait and see". After a decade of the "wait and see" approach, I knew that something more significant was needed in order to make significant and sustainable change. That is when The Equal Group was birthed, with the remit to make it easy for company leaders to do the right thing, in a way that is robust and meaningful. To do this we leverage data and use technology to embed a data driven approach to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
What’s the most common problem your customers approach you with?
Companies commonly get in touch after they've received some form of negative reaction to something they've said or done. Corporate responses to the Black Lives Matter movement, for example, brought about a lot of criticism from staff and customers about the performative nature of some of the statements and social media posts being published. A lot of companies reached out as they felt they needed to be doing something more meaningful in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion.
Outside of the reactive stuff, a lot of companies get in touch because they have tried the annual unconscious bias training route and now want to do something more meaningful on equality, diversity and inclusion, but aren't sure what to do or how to make it happen. We also see that these companies don't have a means to measure the success or failure of anything that they do in this area. We find that very few companies are tracking and monitoring their equality, diversity and inclusion data (both qualitative and quantitative) in any meaningful way, and that's where we can add the most value.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
Interestingly enough, we've not had to try to have to set ourselves apart. Our approach is very unique and innovative in an industry where a lot of the companies look and feel the same. Our data first approach is something that sets us apart as well as the fact that we pride ourselves in understanding what the needs of the organisations that we work with are, targeting those needs and measuring the changes that we make over time.
We also take a broad and intersectional approach to equality, diversity and inclusion, whereas a lot of other companies specialise in gender, LGBTQ+ or ethnicity. We understand that issues in this space are often intersectional - discrimination, exclusion and systemic barriers don't occur in a linear fashion. If you happen to be a Black, disabled, female from the LGBTQ+ community chances are you are excluded on several fronts and this can severely restrict your opportunities to feel a sense of equality and inclusion in contrast to perhaps a White, able bodied, heterosexual male.
With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?
It’s a weird one – I think the entrepreneurial journey is often glamourised and seen in the Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos mould, however the journey can be fundamentally different from those stories. I think there are a number of elements of entrepreneurship that will allow companies or individuals to be successful, which are resilience, perseverance and innovation. A lack of resources or a difficult business terrain often requires you to be innovative.
Innovation for us comes in the form of the products and services that we deliver to our clients – from a product point of view we focus on developing tech platforms for organisations to track and monitor the progress that they are making in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion. We provide clients the opportunity to understand the full spectrum of protected characteristics for +80% of their workforce, as well as insights about how specific demographics feel, whilst maintaining employee anonymity. Our services are focused on being able to pinpoint the exact needs of our clients, design bespoke interventions and be able to demonstrate the impact of our interventions over time.
In the context of our business, innovation is fundamental to what we do and has become second nature. The equality, diversity and inclusion space is an area where there has not been too much innovation for a long time. When we came into this space two and a half years ago we had plans to innovate in every area of how organisations operate from an equality, diversity and inclusion perspective, but feedback from in-house EDI leads was that there was still a lot of education to do in the market, as companies didn’t have the understanding or infrastructure to leverage what we were building. So in essence we’ve had to take a step back and focus more on educating the market and building a level of understanding about the importance of qualitative and quantitative intersectional data analysis as a starting point to improve equality, diversity and inclusion. It’s been an interesting journey as we’ve had to work a lot closer with clients and sectors than we had previously anticipated – the by-product of this is that we are able to innovate a lot quicker and more effectively serve our existing and future clients.
What are your thoughts on failure?
Failure is an inevitable part of life – when you think back to childhood and growing up you literally fail at everything, walking, riding a bike, reading and writing, tying your shoelaces – we learn from a young age that success is on the other side of failure, so we keep trying and eventually walking, riding a bike and other things become second nature. That’s how life works, you try, you fail, you try some more and you succeed. Business is no different, but as a society we’ve developed an aversion to failure for some reason we tend to avoid it at all costs. I’ve personally worked hard to understand more about my perceptions of failure. My view now is that failure doesn’t define a person, it’s something that can happen in any context, but what defines us is how we deal with those instances of failure.
As a Liverpool Football Club fan, many would have looked at the 2018/2019 season as a failure as we failed to secure the Premier League title, but we took the positives of the campaign and worked on our weaknesses to emphatically win the title in 2019/2020. The same logic can be applied to our own lives, we have to be persistent in our pursuit of success and understand the long-term – the highs of success always dwarf the lows of failure, but to get to the highs, we may have to experience some lows! Great things lie on the other side of failure.
As a business owner, do you know when to walk away from a sale?
This is something that I’m getting better at. Initially it was hard, as you always want to feel that you can add value to all clients, regardless of their situation and whilst that might be true in 90% of the cases, you have to be mindful that working with clients where there is no fit or alignment will be detrimental to both parties in the long-run. The more we work with clients the easier it is to find the clients that are a perfect fit for us, so it’s about looking for the indicators early on, as you can usually tell quite early how a client relationship will evolve.
If you could be in a room with 4 entrepreneurs, who would they be and why?
Dead or alive? I’ll pick 2 dead and 2 alive. First pick would be Madame CJ Walker, I watched her biopic on Netflix recently and that sparked a bit of an interest in me in terms of the way she went about building her empire, the difficulties she faced and some of her strategic successes. Second pick would be Henry Ford – from what I’ve learned about him, innovation is at the heart of his mindset, as well as taking a very systemic approach to things. Third would be Jay-Z – I’m a fan of his music and think he is a very astute business man who probably doesn’t get the respect and acknowledgement that he deserves. Finally, Cher Wang, co-founder of HTC. I’m fascinated with innovation and I always try and learn about entrepreneurship in different contexts.
How did you conquer those moments of doubt that so often affect entrepreneurs or stop many with great ideas – what pushes you through?
I think I have a deep sense of legacy and purpose. My goal is to create a legacy for the next generation, equality, diversity and inclusion is a barrier preventing us from innovating and solving some of the more fundamental human problems, such as global warming and poverty. As a society, we need to do better and that is something that drives me constantly. I think moments of doubt are natural, especially when you think concepts such as equality, diversity and inclusion should be common sense, but unfortunately aren’t.
Is word of mouth working to your advantage?
Definitely. We pride ourselves in delivering for our clients and taking a very personal approach. We take a thorough approach to equality, diversity and inclusion, which means that it can take a while for companies to see the benefits, as oppose to a feel good 2 hour training session that you experience and forget about within one day – we are invested in long-term results. We are also concentrating on sectoral change, so word of mouth isn't necessarily instant. Feedback from clients has been excellent so far and we are learning to be bold in shouting about how good we are.
What are your responsibilities as a business owner?
The short answer to this question is everything! But I see my role more as looking after the short term as well as the long term. It is important to balance both. A lot of that is about the management of resources, ensuring that we have sufficient resources to meet our current obligations, whilst ensuring we have a firm foundation for the next few years.
What do you think gives a brand longevity?
It think longevity is created by brands that can ensure that their product or service is essential both in today’s world and tomorrow’s world. It’s obviously difficult to predict the future, so we have to imagine a few versions of the future and explore how our products or services fit into this future – essentially brands need to evolve in order to survive.
