Progress Made Real 2030 is our global commitment to ourselves, our partners, and our customers. It is how we will create a positive and lasting social impact on humankind and the planet through 2030.
Written by: Amit Midha, President, Asia Pacific & Japan and Global Digital Cities, Dell Technologies
The pandemic has fundamentally changed the business landscape, and it is unlikely we are going back to the way things were. It is my hope that the changes we see will make us more humane and better connected with each other. Leadership styles are adapting to be more people-first. Leaders are even more patient, nurturing, and purposeful in creating connections with their team members. I believe ethical and authentic leadership is critical in this uncertain time.
My job as a leader is to understand the vision of ethical leadership and to make it a reality through our commitments driven by day-to-day actions, be it by holding others and ourselves to high standards of integrity, stemming biases in our hiring processes, or using sustainable materials.
Dell’s Commitment to Ethical Leadership
In the words of Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, “Long-term success means creating value across a broad set of stakeholders, including the broader society, our local communities, customers, partners, team members, and investors. Foundational to that is an uncompromising commitment to acting ethically and with integrity.” For organizations that are here to stay, acting ethically is non-negotiable. I am proud that our commitment and the work we have done to demonstrate this have been recognized—in 2021, Ethisphere named Dell as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for the ninth year in a row.
Progress Made Real 2030 is our global commitment to ourselves, our partners, and our customers. It is how we will create a positive and lasting social impact on humankind and the planet through 2030. We pledge to use our reach, technology, and people to drive human progress. With this commitment, we will work towards reusing or recycling an equivalent product for every product a customer buys, by 2030. One hundred percent of our packaging will be made from recycled or renewable materials. More than half of our product content will also come from such materials. Fifty percent of our global workforce and 40 percent of our global leaders will be women, and we will advance health, education, and economic opportunities to deliver enduring results for one billion people.
Making Ethical Leadership a Way of Life and Business
I am inspired by the stories I hear and the work we do to bring this commitment to life. One area I am particularly passionate about is ensuring diversity and inclusion (D&I) in our teams and specifically meeting our moon-shot goal to have 50 percent women in our workforce. Our hiring managers need to look at this with intention and purpose. What are their barriers to achieving this? There is no simple answer. Complex socioeconomic factors are at play, linked to education and culture. Collectively, we must look at overcoming those barriers
Part of the solution is also about looking to engage the next generation of the workforce and helping shape their future. We have programs such as MentorConnect, which helps to create these important links. Our people managers are also required to manage their unconscious bias through a program called Many Advocating Real Change (MARC) that can help leaders change their mindset and be a catalyst for more change.
Our work with the Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef and the University of Queensland (UQ) is another great instance of how people and technology can come together to create real, tangible, and lasting outcomes. Scientists and managers needed up-to-date insights on reef states to better target their resources, and together, we created a
solution that enables real-time data collection as part of their Great Reef Census project.
Setting the Tone at the Top
As leaders, it is our responsibility to inspire and instil a mindset that challenge the status quo. These are the ingredients we need in the world now: more humanity, ambitious global goals, and public commitment. Including the power of technology and change at the organizational level, I believe this recipe will turn that vision into reality. I look forward to being part of this change.
About the Expert:
Amit Midha, President, Asia Pacific & Japan and Global Digital Cities. Amit is a global strategic business leader with significant Asia experience. Amit has built and transformed businesses in various roles in China, US, India, and Singapore. He is well versed in multiple cultures and has established strong global relationships. He is a technologist at heart with deep expertise in Datacenter, Enterprise Software, Edge, and Data Science. Amit is responsible for Dell’s growth in the Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) region, overseeing a multi-billion dollar business spanning 40+ countries with a multicultural workforce. Amit is passionately focused on developing strong talent and technology leadership to support the digital transformation journey for Dell’s customers and partners. Amit also leads Dell Technologies’ Digital Cities business globally, driving the transformation of cities and engagement with governments and corporations.
