Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

Mary Schaefer and I found each other on…(wait for it)…Twitter. Where else do people find each other these days!!?? Mary and I orbit around some of the same ideas and hopes for the world of work. On her Twitter profile she describes herself as an “HR/OD Consultant, Fierce Idealist, Farmer’s Daughter,” who Tweets about “People at Work, Odd Bits on Pop Culture and Current Events” and Blogs about “Re-Imagining Work Relationships.” And that is like poetry to me. On her blog she talks about what “ReImagining Work Relationships” means and shares her manifesto on what she thinks OD, HR and leadership work could (and should) be about.

Since we talk the same language, we caught each other’s attention and I think that each of us hoped that the other was serious about this language. So we decided to talk on the phone and on our phone call we had no shortage of things to talk about. One of the things coming out of that phone call was the agreement that we should continue the interaction and we have decided to do that with some collaborative blog posts in a Q and A format.

This week, Mary sends some questions my way and I try to respond:

Mary: What is your vision for the ideal way diversity and inclusion work can impact the business world?

Joe: I believe that the world in general can be a much better place and I think that a big part of that will be changing our approach to and understanding of these issues of diversity and inclusion. I think that business is still the most powerful organizing force on the planet, so I have chosen to focus my efforts there. So, I think that not only can diversity and inclusion make organizations better at what they do, I think it can make them much more valuable and significant on a global scale…I think that business can actually save the world.

The really big foundational thing that has to happen though involves our default orientation on these issues. We have to develop a value orientation regarding diversity and inclusion rather than a reactive, compliance orientation. A big part of my work is helping organizations and communities come to see diversity and inclusion as great sources of value, rather than being seen as a challenge, an issue of compliance or only of interest for a small group of people.

There is really good research showing that diversity is a powerful ingredient for innovation and for better group problem solving and decision making. I would say that a couple of things we are desperately in need of is real innovation and better decision making, in business and elsewhere. This requires us to give up on some horribly flawed ideologies about the value of authority and expertise. By coming to appreciate the impact and value of diversity and inclusion, business can become better at actually solving problems, and help the rest of the world do the same.

Mary: How do you “do” D&I work differently than others?

Joe: There are a lot of very passionate and very experienced folks out there doing D&I work and I have learned very important things from many of them. I do try to make a unique contribution to this body of work and I would say that a few core components of my work are:

1. While I certainly focus on the dynamics related to the diversity of our social identities (race, age, ethnicity, orientation, gender, etc.) I also take a serious look at our experiential and cognitive diversity, which are important and increasingly critical to business outcomes. Diversity is a big word, and we need to stop having such small conversations about it. Diversity means difference and there are a lot of kinds of difference that are relevant to our relationships and to business.
2. I do a good job of breaking down the business case. I have seen a few people that are really good at this, but a lot of diversity practitioners tend to speak in generalities regarding the business case. Connecting the dots with great clarity on the business case is critical if we are going to get to that value orientation and if we are going to turn this into a truly collaborative and participatory body of work.
3. I know the science. There is a mountain of research in the fields of social psychology, social cognition and the new brain science on how we respond to and interpret the behaviors of those that we perceive to be different from us. Unfortunately not much of this insight has made it into business literature, but hopefully that is beginning to change. This research is very valuable to this work because it convincingly shows that we are not “color-blind” (or blind to gender or age or height, etc.) and that we all have some bias. And, as you have mentioned yourself, we should not want to be color blind. We want to be able to better benefit from the unique contributions that our employees have to make and that is a function of a great many things, including their race and their gender and their life experiences. “Color” is not the problem. It is the assumptions and labels and stereotypes that we often rely on regarding race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, etc. I happen to be a person that gets great pleasure from reading science journals and research summaries, so I have a lot of this stuff to plug into my work.
4. I work very hard at modeling my own message. I believe in the value of inclusion and I apply to that to my workshops and impact sessions. Sometimes, those of us in this field are only really inclusive to those that agree with our beliefs on diversity and inclusion and we unintentionally deliver a flawed and hypocritical message with our work. Inclusion is a dynamic and powerful way of operating, but it is not easy.

Mary: You mention culture a lot. How do you define it? Why so significant to D&I work? What do you mean by a “cultural conversation?”

Joe: I try to take an integral approach to my work, meaning I always try to consider the intentional, behavioral, social and cultural components of what it is that we are trying to do. I think that we really struggle with the cultural component in the organizational setting and that the greatest opportunity for improvement lies here Most organizations can do what they need to with their social systems (policies, procedures, plans, etc.), but culture is much less tangible. When I say culture I am talking about talking about the way people really behave and interact with one another….what their day-to-day decisions are based on, what assumptions are shared, what are the real priorities. Sometimes the culture of an organization matches up with the policies, procedures and plans, but there is generally some difference…and sometimes there is a great deal of difference. Culture is a really powerful force, yet we can also easily pretend that it does not exist…and a lot of organizations do just that. Healthy, aware organizations are able to have conversations about their culture and can tell you what their culture is like, the good and the bad. An organization that is unaware that it has a culture or that culture matters is in trouble, and will never able to really understand the challenges that it faces with things like leadership development, engagement, innovation, retention, etc.

Having real conversations about organizational culture can be challenging and requires some honesty and some courage, as we all contribute to culture in myriad ways. For this same reason, these conversations can be very empowering, because none of us will ever own the culture, but we can all take some real responsibility for it.

Mary: What role do you see HR (as a profession/org function) needs to play to create and support the ideal culture for the ideal impact of D&I in organizations?

Joe: I don’t know that this is one of my more popular thoughts, but I think that the time has come for HR and D&I to go their separate ways. I think that it is in the best interest of both functions if they exist in separate branches of the organizational chart. HR has enough on its plate right now, and D&I work too often suffers for that. HR has been a wonderful home for much D&I work, but both entities need to become more strategic, collaborative and innovative in nature and they need to work through this change away from each other and come to their own results.

There is obviously going to be a fair amount of collaboration and partnership between the two functions, but D&I work can no longer afford to live and die within the changing priorities of HR. In addition to that, more and more D&I work falls outside the traditional realm of HR work (vendor diversity, product development, community relations, etc.).

But regardless of where the actual D&I function lives, D&I work is generally not terribly effective or sustainable if there is not shared ownership across the organization. Putting a D&I practitioner or team in place and placing all the responsibility on them is usually a recipe for failure. D&I practitioners should act as process and topic experts, with real responsibility and accountability on business leaders, and progress and objectives should be based on mixed metrics, not just demographics.

I think that HR has a great deal of work to do regarding D&I, as I think they have gotten largely a free ride by simply housing the D&I effort. We have this assumption that HR folks just “get it” and I am here to tell you that this is not true. There are certainly some HR folks that are brilliant and passionate and wonderfully insightful on diversity and inclusion issues, but there are many that need a great deal of guidance and support. In most organizations, HR needs to be Target #1 for D&I work. If I was going in to an organization to build a program from scratch, the majority of my focus for the first year would be in working with HR and senior leaders…that is where the biggest challenges are currently…partially because of the fact that both of these groups believe so strongly that they “get it.”