August 18th, 2008
on being clueless (part I)
Diversity and inclusion as two of the most misunderstood issues critical to organizational effectiveness and survival.
Is your organization or your team clued in, or clueless regarding diversity and inclusion? What about your community, school or congregation? What about you?
We can’t know everything right? In fact we could read and study and explore for our entire lives and still know only a fraction of everything that there is “to know.” Not only can we not ever know everything as individual beings, functioning as a part of a group can make it even more difficult to “learn” and realize the difference between the things that we know, the things that we think we know and the stuff we don’t.
Having worked inside of several types of organizations and now as an external consultant I see that it is not at all uncommon for organizations to be somewhat clueless regarding issues of human and social capital. It is even more common for organizations to be clueless regarding diversity and inclusion issues, even many of the organizations that make a lot of noise about their “commitment to diversity.”
Times have changed. Being clueless about issues of diversity and inclusion (whether you are a team, organization, neighborhood, community, industry, institution or individual) is going to cost you. This cluelessness is becoming more and more costly with each day.
If you do not understand diversity and inclusion, you cannot understand innovation, and innovation is rapidly becoming the new competitive advantage.
If you do not understand diversity and inclusion, you are getting ready to enter the new war for talent with one hand tied behind your back.
If you do not understand diversity and inclusion, you are going to be ill-equipped to navigate the impending generational transition.
If you do not understand diversity and inclusion, you are missing out on a powerful opportunity to authentically connect to emerging markets.
If you do not understand diversity and inclusion, you really do not understand the human condition, organizational behavior, Maslows hierarchy, adult development, group dynamics (and more) which means that regardless of how effective, efficient or successful you are today it is a fraction of what is possible as you are hemorrhaging human potential. Shame on you.
I have found myself talking (lamenting, ranting and raving) more and more recently about organizations (and professions) being a little bit on the clueless side of things with these issues. Right smack dab in the middle of one of those rants, someone asked me “how do you know?” I immediately started rattling off some of what I saw as indicators of cluelessness, but I thought that this was worth some further exploration and a blog post. So…for your guidance, annoyance and amusement…here are some leading indicators of cluelessness…and I am sure there are some things I am forgetting here, but this is a place to start. There is going to be four parts to this and I will get Part II posted later this week.
Your organization might be clueless if…
- There is no infrastructure. Does your organizations commitment to and love of diversity consist of an ethnic food fair during holiday season? If so, your organization is clueless. Not only do these events offer limited value in most organizations, they can actually be harmful if not surrounded by other program components (training, accountability, definitions, shared responsibility, etc.), as they can make a critical business issue appear to be mostly about exotic snacks. If your organization does not have an infrastructure in place to support diversity and inclusion efforts across the organization it is not serious about these issues and most likely clueless.
- Confused about business case. Do people in your organization express great confusion or skepticism regarding the Business Case for Diversity? This is another good sign that they are clueless. The business cases (all of them) for diversity and inclusion are strong. While I do not expect managers and leaders to know every detail of all of these business cases, it is unacceptable that so many current and emerging leaders just have no real concept of what diversity and inclusion mean in the business context and what value is attached to that. Apparently business school and management / leadership training programs are clueless as well. Shame on them also. The next time a manager in your organization acts confused about the business case for diversity ask them about the business case for; conference rooms, happiness, coffee, offices, business cards, executive parking spaces, e-mail, putting your CEOs picture in every ad…just for kicks.
- Lack of shared responsibility. One of the most common mistakes made by organizations starting to take diversity and inclusion seriously is this. They hire a diversity practitioner (diversity director, manager, consultant, VP) and they are the only person that is evaluated on the progress of diversity and inclusion work. Responsibility for this work must be diffused, as it is still far to easy and far too common for line managers, senior leaders and even HR, OD and Talent folks to shrug off diversity and inclusion because it “belongs to” someone else. This clueless act in itself has doomed many of the folks that were the first diversity practitioner in their organization. You end up with one person having all the responsibility for what happens, but almost none of the power to make those things happen.