Been working on a project with some diversity angles, and for that reason I’ve been looking for voices on the topic of diversity. Not the topic alone, but a voice that leads with diversity not as "the right thing to do", but the "smart thing to do from a business perspective". Something along the lines of "it makes business sense to be as diverse as our customer base is", or "we need to match the diversity of our customer base", because it’s obvious that’s a contributing factor in maximizing profitability…
Why the angle? First of all, I believe it. Second of all, talking about diversity as "the right thing to do" causes the eyes in any meeting to go glossy. It’s like giving someone a big meal, then turning the lights off and doing a presentation on the economics of bond prices. Rough.
For the best rundown available here, check out JLee’s post from a while back…
Me? I’ll keep searching. The source I’m looking for will be comfortable making fun of stereotypes, and won’t be afraid to laugh at anyone as a means to open up the dialog.
My leading candidate at this point? Two guys, formally dressed, seen in the video below. Their band consulting group is diverse, and they aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions leading into an engagement…
sat in on a webinar recently on diversity and inclusion initiatives… and i was really, really impressed with the work being done at sodexo by Rohini Anand, their SVP and Global Chief Diversity Officer. their last annual report on diversity here:
http://www.sodexousa.com/usen/Images/SodexoAnnualDiversity_tcm87-101198.pdf
There is an offensive quote on racial diversity of the Bad News Bears Baseball team (couldn’t find the YouTube).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074174/quotes
As an old EEO/AA/Diversity officer and consultant, I’ll give a different take.
Focusing on anything other than equal opportunity and diversity of intellect can be a big mistake. Arguing that diversity in race, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, etc. brings some special business advantage rests on a dubious assumption. Toyota is not very diverse and it does rather well. Plus, are you going to discriminate in order to achieve diversity? Will your representation goals become ceilings? Will you ever seek white guys to make the team more diverse? You can have group think with a racially diverse team just as with one that is not diverse.
There’s another argument to watch for: If you justify diversity on the basis that it is good for business, what will your view be if someone comes out with a credible study some day that shows it’s not good for business?
Equal opportunity to succeed or fail should be a core value. Seeking intellectual diversity should be a routine practice.
Wow Michael. That took some cajones to say. It’s an interesting issue in a country like ours, where skin color and/or sex and or whatev does not necessarily an indication of what kind of views one might have. Then you have to take into account background and what these different views might bring to the table. Not to bring up the whole generational thing again BUT I have noticed that in marketing and advertising, people in my age group (and to stereotype, people from the coasts and urban areas) tend to try and represent more diversity than actually exists within a target market and/or internal company working. Not to go off on a tangent but ever notice how Fidelity came out with ads featuring African american couples when they were getting hammered for funding Darfur genocide?
Okay that was off topic. What about intellectual diversity? By whose measure? Who gets to say where the bar is? i think that might be why the AA standards were implemented in the first place. I could be wrong. Just thinking it through in a REALLLLY long comment.
Maren,
One of the interesting ethical issues that arises in the wake of diversity expectations is whether the person is supposed to be representative, or act as a representative, of a particular group or can the person just give his or her own unbridled opinion?
Affirmative Action was not directly designed to achieve diversity. Its purpose was to strengthen Equal Employment Opportunity by ensuring that people who’d been excluded in the past had a chance to compete by being told about jobs, included in training programs, etc. Diversity has been a natural by-product but equal opportunity was the main goal.
You raise a very interesting question concerning how to measure intellectual diversity. That is a challenge but I don’t think it is impossible to sort out. I worry that some diversity programs create ceilings (“We have already reached our goal of Asian Americans, thank you.”) whereas if selection were strictly on a nondiscriminatory basis there may be more of one group than might be expected given the size of the population and yet all groups have had an equal chance to compete.
It is a fascinating topic and it deserves a lot of discussion from a variety of perspectives.