Shownotes

The Elephant in the Room podcast is back this week with our guest Romeo Effs, Founder and CEO of Lumorus, a global consultancy focusing on addressing the disconnect, inequality and upheavals within society that stem from a lack of sustainable, forward-looking governance and leadership.

In this episode we speak about his name (Romeo), journey from Jamaica, a fairly successful international corporate career..........

• Experiencing racism in the UK
• His views on adapting like a chameleon (or Code-Switching) both as a survival tactic and as a strength
• The epiphany that prompted the setting up of Lumorus
• Why it is important to take an intersectional lens to address issues around equity and inclusion
• He shares his mantras for men of colour navigating the barriers in society & the workplace. 
• Role models and what drives him on this journey of change

We also spoke about the concept of 'bringing your whole self to work' currently bandied about as the panacea to all ills. Success of the concept usually rests upon the idea of psychological safety within teams and organisations.

To put a cat amongst the pigeons - should we not consider whether we really need to bring our whole self to work? Or only those parts that enable us to fulfil our potential and thrive? And what does that mean in reality. 

Romeo also believes that people of colour have been over-mentored, what they need now is sponsors - people who open the doors to roles, promotions, bonuses, prestige projects within the organisation.

If you want to know more listen here 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

Memorable passages from the podcast:

👉🏾 Right, So I'm Jamaican, I was born in Jamaica but I have mixed heritage. There is a mixture of Cuba, German and a mixture of yes, Irish, African going on. And so I spent most of my life growing up in Jamaica, my dad used to be an accountant. And my mom was an English literature teacher. So yeah, all my values and everything that I live by now was because of that childhood or growing up in Jamaica. Yeah.

👉🏾 So you're right. I did move mid-career. I moved to the UK when I was 35 and it just happened by chance because I came to the UK to study, to do my masters and the intention was to return to Jamaica. I had my businesses there, I was very involved in politics. I was on a trajectory to be either a member of parliament or being appointed an ambassador or a senator and given a ministry My political mentor at the time became prime minister, which I worked with him on in terms of the campaign. When I came to the UK, I went to a really, really great university Cass Business School, it's now called Bayes. And while there, I was able to have a tremendous network of individuals from all over the world. People from Bangladesh, from India, from Greece, from Africa, from the UK. But, I was able to meet a lot of these amazing individuals who were just kind of exposing me to other stuff that was happening in the world. And I created this quantitative method called the xxxxxxxxx test, which while doing my master's, which is a quantitative method of analysing risk in supply chain, financial risk.

👉🏾 And so while at the conference, my dissertation was sponsored by, I think the third-largest software manufacturing company in the UK called AG Barr PLC. So I moved to Scotland and lived there for about four months, doing this study this research on their supply chain and just being there and being able to see how they operated, being able to travel to their different locations across Europe and just seeing how things work.

👉🏾 I quickly realised that in Jamaica, I was a big fish in a small pond, but in the UK, I had the ability of growing into a whale because it was like an ocean. And so I then started exploring the notion of staying in this country. And then after I did my dissertation, the company AG Bar PLC then hired me for a year. And so I ended up staying. And quickly after I was headhunted into Accenture which was also another massive eye-opener because I was able to travel, work with the likes of Marks and Spencers, DHL, Ericsson, Nokia.

I was travelling, Africa, Europe, all across America and I learned a lot. And so for me, the whole notion was, why don't I just soak all of this up? Because when I got much older, I would be in a better position to contribute better to my country, Jamaica, if that's what I wanted, And to come back to your point in terms of what do I think attributed to that level of success that I've had here in the UK?

👉🏾 I would say it was definitely my Jamaican origin and roots and the way I was brought up by my mother and my grandmother. Because when I came to the UK, people had to point out what racism was to me because I thought people were just being rude and I would just pretty much kind of tell them off. Because I grew up in a country where everyone looked like me, the prime minister, the doctor, the xxxxxxxx, everyone looked like me. So for me it was like, why someone treating me different? Why am I different from someone else? Why am I so-called quote-unquote, exotic? Why am I ethnic? What is ethnic? Right? I had to learn all of this. And it wasn't until then I started asking, what is this racism? And I had to be taught what racism was. But my mother/grandmother they instilled ethics, a sense of integrity, a sense of morality. A sense of believing in myself and a sense of spirituality. , which I think is the basis of who I am and it taught me the whole notion of, you are the only person that can set limits for yourself, right? You are in control of your life. You are the painter that painting that masterpiece. And so you have control, no one else has control in terms of where you go or what you achieve. 

👉🏾 So that kind of drive was instilled in me that look, no one can set limits to you. And in Jamaica we have the saying, "down the road me a go". Meaning, I am heading in a certain direction. And when someone said "down the road, me a go" it simply means that if you're in my way, I'm going to either go over you, under you around you, whatever, but get out of my way, because that's the direction I'm heading in.

👉🏾 In certain circumstances, it can either be a strength or a survival technique. And you're right. I wrote about this in my book 'Enthusiasm Unchained.' And the reason I say that is because I remember working in corporate, I was not able to be my 100% authentic self. And companies keep saying, oh, you should bring your hundred per cent at work. But to be honest with you, if I bring my hundred per cent Jamaicanness at work, that is not going to work right? People are going to look at you strange, they're going to report you. All of the stereotypes that they have about Jamaicans or people from ethnic background, is going to come up. So it is not true, that people from an ethnic background can bring our a hundred percent to work.

We have to choose what we can bring into work. And what I found in the UK was that, yes I had to be a chameleon. When I'm home with my community, I behave in a certain way. When I leave to go to work, I behave in a certain way. When I was in corporate, they had this thing called dress down Friday. Dress down Friday was never applicable to me because, if I dress down, first and foremost, the minute I go and get on the tube, I'm being stereotyped right? Especially if I wore something like a hoodie or something, which I love, I love hoodies.. As a Black man, people just start looking at you strange right? White old women start clutching their purses and all of that because they just have this stereotype. So for me in corporate, it was a survival technique and this is what I say to a lot of ethnic minorities that I coach and mentor in corporate. If corporate UK is where you want to survive, if that's where you want to build a career and be successful, you have to understand that it's a game and you have to be able to learn how to play that game. And learning how to play that game is code-switching, which is another term, right? You have to learn how to fit in, how to build this executive presence, which is a term or a feeling which was developed by, white straight male, to be honest with you. And so you have to be able to understand what that is and be able to develop that in order for you to grow.

👉🏾 So yes, for me, it was an advantage because I learned that quite quickly. And also a survival technique. But yeah, being a chameleon and being able to switch is very important. I'll share a story with you, in my early career, this was when I was in consulting. I got called by someone from HR and got a complaint that people believe that I was being aggressive in the office with my language. And I was like, what? And they're saying, sometimes you're nice and calm, but then sometimes you raise your voice and you start speaking in a language that no one understands. And I got to realise that what was happening was that sometimes I was at work and I would get a call from an elderly relative back in Jamaica. Now I know my great grand Uncle or my great grand Aunt, don't understand the Queen's English right? And in my culture, if you try and speak to them, as we would say, you're speaky spoke, are you trying speaky spokey with them by speaking the Queen's English, they see that as being disrespectful.

👉🏾 So when I'm at work and they call me, I would go straight into my Jamaican dialect. And that was the issue, right? People thought I was being aggressive because I would switch right away and start speaking to my elder in my Jamaican dialect. And if you understand Jamaican, we can be very harsh in terms of the way how we pronounce our words. And then I had to start educating people around the whole notion that look, I can't call my elderly aunt or my elderly relative and start speaking the Queen's English because as far as they're concerned, I'm being disrespectful if I do that. Right. So that's how I have to be able to communicate with them. So those are some of the nuances that even though corporate UK wants to say, they want to be inclusive and they want diversity. They want diversity and inclusion on their terms, right? Not in the authentic true sense of what it needs to be. 

👉🏾 When I work with corporates, I tell them, I'm like, look, you guys need to stop telling people to bring their a hundred percent to work, because that is impossible.

If I was to bring my a hundred per cent, although I'm bald right now, I'd probably cornrow my hair or have it in locks. On my dress down days. Oh my God, like I would just turn up in some Jamaican outfit. I would bring my plantain, and rice peas and my jerk chicken in the office. So, it's not true for them to say that. And that goes for most people as well, actually. Unable to bring your a hundred percent to work.

👉🏾 So Lumorus started when I left corporate in 2014. And so it didn't start as Lumorus, it started out as something else. So when I left corporate, I really wanted to do something that I felt could make a difference. Because while I was in corporate, I started a number of networks for people from an ethnic background to help them to kind of progress because in most of the organisations that I work in, the UK, I was the only person of colour or the only Black person at that level.

👉🏾 And so I would seek out these other people from ethnic descent and I would coach them, I would mentor them. I would make sure that they have what they need. I would become their sponsors. I would be their voice in the room. And my last big corporate role was working for a company called Mitie Group PLC. And while I was at Mitie, I was their group director of supply chain and projects, Mitie is 85,000 people in the UK, there were about 3000 directors. I was the only Black director at the time. But of 85,000 people, 50% of them were from an ethnic background because, the company is one of the largest facilities management company, security firm, engineering, most of the people who work, you know this, are people from an ethnic background. So I designed a project to diversify the supply chain and started looking for suppliers from a diverse background. So woman-owned suppliers, ethnic owned suppliers, suppliers from an LGBT and disabled background. And I found it very hard to find them, and those who I found they didn't have the skills or the know-how in terms of dealing with a company of our size, because Mitie is listed company. And so I embarked on a one-year program in terms of training some of the suppliers in order for them to be able to do business with us.

👉🏾 And over that year, we trained I would say about 200, 250 of the suppliers and we incorporated about 120 or so of them in the Mitie supply chain. And won a number of awards across Europe for this work in supply chain diversity. I spoke at the house of Lords. I helped to write policy documents, that number 10 used, in terms of supply chain diversity.

When I left corporate, I wanted to kind of continue in that vein because I just had this inbuilt feeling that I needed to continue helping and using my knowledge and my skills to help people to gain the success that they need as well. Between 2014 and 2018, which is when the name Lumorus evolved. I did a number of things, one was when I left corporate I started a small private equity called Aspire group. And we were investing mainly in ethnic owned businesses. And I would bring my skills to these companies, help them to build their strategy, help them to get funding, help them to grow. Within 12 months I grew the business from 0 to 27 companies in the portfolio.

👉🏾 And I did that for about two years and then I had, an epiphany, in 2015 I suffered a brain aneurysm. So I lost sight, I lost mobility, I couldn't speak, all of that. I remember being in that hospital and the doctors kept saying to me, Mr. Effs you're suffering a brain aneurism. And I remember quite clearly just lying there and just saying, I'm like, God, listen, this is not a request right now, this is a command anywhere you have those healing angels, I don't care where they are. You need to send them right now because I have shit to do. Right. 

👉🏾 And I remember just lying in the hospital for eight weeks. I was in a room that had a window, but the window looked out on a wall. There was no television, no nothing. This was after I came out of intensive care and I just had a lot of time to think. And I remember, one night I was just there thinking, what is happening? Like, I lost my most prized job in 2013, my job title, like back when I was at my Mitie was the king of my being, it open doors for me right. And so after losing that job I got extremely depressed. Because I lost my mantel, I lost my crown. And I remember feeling the same way when I was going through this, with the aneurysm, because the aneurysm happened at a time when I just signed one of the biggest deals for the private equity firm to help distribute funding for a government program throughout the south of London.

👉🏾 But Lumorus didn't evolve until about a year or two after that. So, I had all of these three different things going. I had the boardroom secretariat, I had the strategy consulting. I had empire builders, which was dealing with the ethnic business and ethnic minorities, et cetera. And I still felt as if there wasn't that connection and I wasn't on the right path. And that realisation also came after the brain aneurysm, because I was just thinking that, if I had died, what would my legacy be? What would they say at my funeral? What were the things that they would talk about? 

👉🏾 And so we started out by writing the word legacy, framing it. And so the legacy then turned out to be this foundation, which I named after my mother and my grandmother called the IBRIE foundation. Which works a lot in developing countries, helping to develop the next leaders, using young people and especially focusing a lot on women initiatives. And then we said, how the hell do we fund that? And then that's where the business And so we kind of looked at the three entities that we were working on and we looked at the stuff that we were really good at and we pulled those out. And then we saw where they all fitted in the notion of governance, organisational health, and sustainable business practices. And so that's what we currently do at Lumorus. 

👉🏾 So we say IBRIE foundation is changing the face of leadership, one individual at a time, and Lumorus is changing the face of leadership, one institution at a time. So we work with companies around to make them more purpose-driven. We believe that companies should operate in a way that is good for both people. And when I'm talking about people, I'm talking about their employer population. And, their customers, the community that they work in, planet, around the environment and also the wider community and the wider world, justice issues, et cetera. And to be profitable as well but to be profitable in a way that is sustainable. Not only for them, but for the business as a whole. 

👉🏾 I strongly believe that we have an obligation for those of us who have kind of gone through some of the obstacles and paved the ways. We have an obligation to help those that are behind us right. We should leave trails so that people can understand and see, oh yes, okay this is how we kind of get there. I currently run a mentoring circle, which has about 30 people from around the world. I also do a youth shadow board where I have a group of young people that I take into the boardroom with me so that they can understand the whole notion of governance and how businesses work. Because, I strongly believe that boards are the custodians of the culture of an organisation. And the board sets the tone in how the organisation is governed and run and the impact that it has. And businesses are very powerful instruments in our society, right? They donate to political parties. They lobby to change policy. They have people that work in them that live in communities.

So if you can impact the people within the organisation in terms of the way, how they think and the stuff that they believe and inspire them to do good and to change and transform, they will take those new kinds of thinking into the community and there's a snowball effect.

👉🏾 Good question. `And especially on the back of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations last year. I had to seriously stop and reflect. Because, yes, Lumorus we do a lot of work in...