When I was nominated for this award thingy they asked me if I’d like to write a blog, yes I said – why wouldn’t I? Millions of eyes reading my words and all that attention I’ll get, it’s a no brainer I thought. And what better a subject to talk about than that equality thing, that’s a real hot topic. And so I put my thinking cap on, and dusted down the thinking pipe. Then I had to reach for my bigger thinking cap, this was going to require bigger thinking, make it witty, Brian, you’ll lose them if it isn’t witty.
I even thought about using lyrics from various Tears for Fears songs, why? I don’t know, but I knew I was onto something.(Everybody wants to rule the world… but no one should have to). 4 drafts later, I gave up on that idea.
And whilst I pondered, and thought, and mused, about this complicated blog post, which of course needed to be highly articulate to do this subject any justice, my own company beat me to it, in one, simple, defining action.
They made the toilets Gender neutral.
That’s it, no drama, no hugely complicated project, no fanfare, they just decided to allow men and women to do tinkle and plop in the same cubicles (though not at the same time, we aren’t barbarian’s you know!)
And the Twitter world reacted! You can imagine the tweets (or go look them up) but they were what you would expect; some for, some against, some complaining about men’s hygiene, some complaining about ladies hygiene. Somebody even defined this very moment as evidence of the world going mad! Even the press got hold of it (I’m not naming the papers, though.)
But here’s the thing, a simple change can make a big difference, yet sometimes we ignore these little things in search of the big ticket item.
I sincerely hope this is just the beginning and equality transcends to all areas of business, including cyber security – and not just where we tinkle.
Equality. Simple.
By Brian Brackenborough – CISO Supremo – Media Winner
