Living in the COVID World ... and Beyond #75: Leveraging Consumer Power

When I joined GE full-time in 1985, diversity was just beginning to be talked about in Corporate America.   In my blog #55, I recounted my experience with diversity initiatives and efforts at GE through the 1990’s.

When I joined IBM in 2004, one of the things I was excited about was to learn more about diversity initiatives.  IBM had the reputation of being a leader in the diversity space for decades.   Ted Childs was the charismatic and influential leader of IBM’s diversity work, and I worked alongside him for several years until his retirement.  Ted was considered a pioneer and icon amongst corporate diversity leaders.   And IBM had a myriad of initiatives that were robust, meaningful, and impactful relative to diversity.  In my role, which included executive staffing and succession planning for the company, we tracked numerical progress on executive diversity monthly and reported that out to the CEO and his leadership team.   Diversity was a regular point of focus and discussion at IBM amongst its most senior leaders.

So, it was with dismay and discouragement that I read the article by Jessica Guynn in USA Today on December 9th, 2025, These are the Companies That Rolled Back DEI Amid Trump Backlash.    Guynn writes:  “After decades of embracing DEI, IBM dissolved its diversity team, altered some of its initiatives and stopped linking executive compensation to workforce diversity goals.”

I understand the political environment and specifically for IBM the pressures associated with being a federal contractor.   But diversity and diversity initiatives had been a strength and value of the company.   What do leaders do when core values of an organization conflict with practicalities associated with the bottom line?   For too many leaders and organizations cited in Guynn’s article, the answer was to lay low, accommodate, and acquiesce.   

I salute companies that have retained their diversity initiatives and focus.  One example cited in Guynn’s article is Apple which encouraged “shareholders to reject an anti-DEI proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research. Over 97% of shareholders voted against the proposal that called on Apple to “cease DEI efforts.”  

We have a role we can play on this issue … we can vote our shares to the extent that we are stockholders, and we can vote with our purchasing power when choosing where to shop and what to buy.   There are more efforts nowadays to mobilize consumer power via boycotts.   The most prominent has been the Tesla Takedown campaign when Elon Musk took such a prominent role in Trump’s campaign and then in the Trump administration.      Tesla’s sales went down significantly and that also hurt Tesla’s stock price (and Musk’s wealth).   

One step we can all take is to pause and think about what we want to support and/or not support in choosing where to buy and what we buy on a week-to-week basis.

How can you leverage your consumer buying power, however small (many small actions add up to something much bigger), to exercise influence on what you want to see happen around you and in the world?