Cheers,
-kh

Cheers,
-kh

Love the statement that diversity just “is” and great post on The Confusion about Inclusion. I think there is still a great deal of opportunity for organizations and communities to improve their approach to diversity and inclusion though and part of that is integrating a better understanding of human nature and social and relational dynamics.

Many of the “categories” that we use tend to mean nothing in the long run, but they can still influence our thinking and feeling in a lot of different ways.

While one may argue against existing laws, rules and regulations that suggest Affirmative Action or Diversity measures limit access to some while granting access to others, the underlying point in my opinion is to judge people on an individual basis relative to fair and consistent requirements instead of irrelevant/inconsistent requirements.

Ultimately our personal prejudice and bias hinder us from true growth and prosperity by creating walls of limitation based upon unsubstantiated mistruths and lies. It’s only when we have the courage to take the blinders off that we can see the truth.

Over the weekend one of my HR Groups shared a linked to a short film called The Butterfly Circus. It personally hit home for me when thinking about the limitations that our society places upon people (this happens at the indivdual level as well).

http://bit.ly/5mYptG

Perhaps the way of working toward that will come if we depersonalize “diversity” and just accept it as a fact of life. How can we argue for or against something that simply is. That’s insane. It is like arguing for or against Earth’s gravitational pull. We experience gravity. Period. The Wright brothers never disputed this fact. What they did was learn how to work with it and other existing forces in order to fly. Eventually we will have to do the same thing if we want evolve to a higher order of experiencing and creating through innovation.

I wrote a post on my company’s blog that paints an image of D&I as an inevitable part of business evolution. http://jcsicareerassist.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/ending-the-confusion-about-inclusion-diversity-2071/ . While I don’t really expect that people will willingly release their personal attachments to being right in order to allow for a more inclusive business world to emerge, I do believe that we are all heading this way even if we go kicking and screaming.

We can go circumstance by circumstance and see how alleged core competencies keep non-majority individuals in lesser roles . . . and this is not a purely American issue.

In any culture there are systemic biases that advantage those with “lucky genes” born to parents who live in a certain neighborhood and send their children to better skills affording them with access and ingrained social traits that advantage them as adults.

And no one can possibly figure out a system to create a completely even hand.

Here’s some data to back that up:
• From 1990 to 2013 Hispanics as a % of U.S. Consumer Market share will have doubled
• Hispanic buying power from 1990 through 2008 grew 349%, African American buying power in the same time frame grew 187%
• Median Age: Caucasian 40.6, African American 31.4, Hispanic 26.9

A lot of discussions on corporate diversity programs revolve around the most difficult to quantify benefits, and quickly turn into the “hire the best candidate” debate we see on almost every diversity discussion board.

Reality is the best candidate’s gravitate toward companies who position themselves to capitalize on these emerging markets without neglecting their existing markets.

I’d encourage those looking for more data to read “The Multicultural Economy 2008” published by Jeffrey M. Humphreys from the Selig Center for Economic Growth, Terry College of Business, at The Univer¬sity of Georgia. http://www.terry.uga.edu/selig/docs/executive_summary_2008.pdf

I’ve also posted a presentation that identifies why companies are challenged to hire top multi-cultural talent and creates a case for diversity hiring initiatives at the college/university level. Here’s the link if interested http://tinyurl.com/yj6cu6z

Thanks for the thoughtful diologue.

All the best,

Dave

Cheers,
KH

Once you have your seat, I believe you have to earn your share of the meal.

Also (if I understand you properly), I disagree with your definition of diversity, as it seems you are equating diversity with unity or assimilation. IMHO, diversity is not designed to make sure everybody goes into the Anglo-American “melting pot”, but rather that we all “get a seat at the dining table and a fair share of the meal.”

Hope Everybody had a Great Thanksgiving,

Keith “Makes a Decent Pumpkin Pie” Halperin

Let me address your comment about my statement… If you read carefully, I said “perceived” injustices, which is entirely different than actual injustice, i.e. slavery. I think it is unfortunate that you choose to take the whole sliding scale and boil it down to the extreme of something like slavery, or women’s voting rights, which are wrongs that were rightfully corrected. It is that kind of thought process that keeps people divided, and, as far as I understand it, the whole idea of diversity is the antethesis of that.

What business person does not get that? I’ll tell you. Bad ones. The kind that go out of business. Free markets kill off the diversity-starved.

The compliance industry emerges then as the elephant in the parlor that David George persuasively points to in his comments. Essays like yours that give scant attention to it mitigate their effectiveness by arousing a suspicion fair or not of “what does this guy want to sell me?”

A black (whoops) irony of the diversity industry is that it perversely and systematically excludes all of humanity outside of national borders. You in your section on demographics and Keith Halperin in his humorous litany of marginalized groups make no effort for example to point out workforces in places like Kenya or the Philippines.

Real champions of diversity are profit-maximizers that cast the candidate net out far beyond the false boundaries set by the compliance industry.

Glad you liked Wisdom of Crowds Elyse, you might also enjoy Crowdsourcing by Howe, makes some similar points and provides some good research and examples of companies really tapping into the value of diversity in their workforce and beyond.

Thanks for your sermonizing on my sermonizing Gregg, my experience with c-suite execs regarding diversity and inclusion has actually been quite different.

I think the response of “let’s just hire the best person” is interesting for a couple of reasons.
1- We talk about “hiring the best person” like it is a science…like we can measure “best person” like we can measure a pound of flour. We can’t. Despite all of our wonderful intentions, fancy metrics and shiny technology, we still do not always hire the “best person.” There is a lot of research that shows that we are better at hiring people that are like us than we are at hiring the “best person for the job.” I think that we start form an inaccurate place when we talk about it like it is an accurate and perfect science. Regardless of our intentions there are a whole lot of things that influence our evaluations of others and many of them have absolutely nothing to do with talent or ability.
2- If we care at all about actually building teams that can learn together and innovate together, then diversity is actually one of the indicators of talent. Especially when we look at cognitive diversity, there is a considerable amount of evidence that diverse teams can outperform teams with less diversity.

I actually just wrote a post about this last week: http://www.ourtimetoact.com/our-time-to-act/2009/11/19/talent-or-diversity.html

One other point I will throw in real quickly is that my post was not about compliance. I have my own issues with the how and why of compliance related to these issues. Beyond compliance I believe that there is some real business value here…diversity can be valuable to an organization.

Thomas- I think there are some good examples out there of ROI, but it kind of depends on what kind of investment you are talking about, because the actual efforts can be focused on a number of things (recruitment, retention, engagement, innovation, market share, etc.). Allstate is a great example (with huge numbers)of an organization that has capitalized on the shifts in demographics and buying power in consumers, I have worked with some organizations that have eliminated their disparities in retention (and increased retention across the board, inclusion benefits everyone)…and retention and engagement also lead to pretty big numbers. Dr. Edward Hubbard is a D&I ROI guru, he has some books that are full of business cases and case studies with detailed numbers. Diversity Inc magazine and Diversity Executive magazines also provide some of that info.

For what its worth.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.