The tech sector has a people problem. Indicators signal significant concerns inside many of these organizations, particularly for the women and racialized persons who beat the odds to make it through the door. Given the clear innovation and business value of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), a lack of commitment and proficiency to make the most of a broad mix of talent is not good news for tech leaders, employees, customers, or investors.
Read Moreimportant successes, current practices are insufficient. Progressive leaders know we need new ways of thinking and working to deliver on D&I’s full potential. To fulfill the D&I business case, we must design transformative strategies to elevate meaningful results.
Read MoreThe evolution of the field of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) has been bumpy. Recognizable successes are balanced with notable setbacks, best practices are compared with less than best results, and progress is weighed against stakeholders’ unfulfilled needs. Questioning the value of D&I, some organizations are reducing resources and demoting D&I leadership to lower levels.
Read MoreMisguided strategies, outmoded approaches, limited expectations, and anemic organizational support put D&I efforts at risk. They also limit the potential of D&I to effectively contribute solutions to business challenges and achieve meaningful impacts.
Read MoreDiversity and Inclusion (D&I) specialists are often expected to provide the business case for their work. Although not all D&I results are easily quantified, D&I professionals do not object to being relevant to the mission of their organizations or to leveraging D&I as an enabler of business strategy. Most agree that all elements of the business, including D&I, must deliver results to help achieve the collective goals of the organization.
Read MoreMeasuring D&I’s ROI helps leaders demonstrate the impact of their work by comparing the cost of a solution to its monetary payback, and demand for this metric continues to grow. A challenge in our field, though, is the limited investment often devoted to D&I initiatives. In order to achieve a return, there must first be an investment in qualified leaders and resources required to execute their work to create value.
Read MoreA call for patience on matters of inclusion is antithetical to how we operate other elements of our businesses and other institutions. When there is a problem with safety, quality, or revenue, we do not accept that we must be patient while we take a few generations to effect change. Business leaders and their customers, investors, employees, and regulators simply would not accept that.
Read MoreIn the face of increasingly complex problems and progressively compelling opportunities, your D&I goals and objectives are not going away. But when problems are not being fully resolved and opportunities are not being entirely fulfilled, we have a responsibility to challenge our prevailing assumptions, accepted wisdom, conventional competencies, and traditional practices. Whether as a thought experiment or an actual revolution in your D&I strategy, banning your current approaches can spark innovations.
Read MoreIncreasingly, D&I specialists are challenged to foster healthy dialogue on tough issues in response to turbulent D&I conflicts around the world. Many find it difficult to discuss tension-filled D&I topics. Given these challenges, constructive dialogue is essential to gaining understanding, building relationships, addressing problems, and seizing opportunities to create positive change in how we live and work together.
Read MoreWe know we need innovation to realize substantially better results with Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), but how do we go about creating fresh ideas capable of generating new value? This is no easy endeavor. While many assert that they value diverse thinking to generate vitally important innovations for their businesses, most are paradoxically biased against creativity.
Read MoreIncreasingly, forward-thinking organizations recognize the vital importance of effective, integrated Diversity and Inclusion strategies in propelling product and service innovations. These organizations, however, often overlook another aspect of the relationship between D&I and innovation: the importance of engaging innovative approaches to ensure stronger diversity and inclusion.
Read MoreAs organizations seek new avenues for growth amidst dynamic economic, demographic, technological and social change, both innovation and Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) are essential. Even more, D&I and innovation can be reciprocally interdependent when each is used to catalyze better outcomes in the other. Those improved outcomes at the intersection of innovation and D&I can help businesses grow.
Read MoreAs Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) leaders scan the landscape for ways to enhance the value created through D&I, how can they be more inclusive of broader sources of insight? Many corporate leaders learn primarily by surveying practices engaged at other corporations. Some examine an even more limited slice by benchmarking only with direct competitors in their own industry or within their own region.
Read MoreIn my D&I work partnering with and developing corporate, academic, and NGO D&I leaders around the globe, I see the critical importance of 3 additional competencies: Design, Systems Thinking, and Execution.
Read MoreWhile helping an executive team initiate succession planning, I asked the group to identify the leadership competencies they would use to select top talent for future roles in senior leadership. Almost immediately, this team agreed that self-confidence was paramount. When I asked them to describe self-confidence, this group of North American, white, male executives said that they knew self-confidence when they saw it, and they were certain it was critical for the future leadership of their global organization.
Read MoreTo make sense of D&I progress, we have our own D&I “vital signs.” Some of these have become standardized across our professional community. Common measures, such as the representation of marginalized populations within our employee populations lend insights into progress to be celebrated and gaps to be addressed. They also provide benchmarks that help us see how we compare to others. However, such “vital signs” alone do not tell us whether or not our organizations are healthy when it comes to D&I.
Read MoreUp to 75% of acquisitions fail to meet their strategic objectives. Often, these transactions unintentionally destroy rather than create the value sought. We know that managing diverse company cultures and initiating inclusive cultural change is a key factor associated with successful acquisitions. However, in managing complex cultural integration challenges, the Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) is often underutilized.
Read MoreThink about the most extraordinary contribution that diversity and inclusion (D&I) has made to your organization and its success. Now, imagine a future in which your organization identifies critical D&I levers that improve strategic business outcomes.
Read MoreD&I metrics have evolved to include increasingly better ways to measure D&I outcomes and their impact on valued business results. Along the way, we also have developed better ways to count demographics, comparing mainstream and marginalized representation trends across time and at all levels in an organization. But even as our scorecards have grown increasingly elaborate, we still aren’t telling the whole story.
Read MoreBeing an effective Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) professional entails having the ability to continually influence individuals at all levels in an organization. Linked to other competencies, such as business acumen and political savoir faire, the ability to affectively influence others often requires sophisticated strategies.
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