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

Ug.

I am not a patient person, and that is why I often have a love / hate relationship with the body(s) of work that I am connected to. Most of what I do lands somewhere in the Diversity & Inclusion / Human Resources / Management / Learning & Development / Leadership & Organizational Development space or spaces. There are some wonderful people in these spaces and there is some wonderful work being done.

There is also not a lot of forward movement.

I speak at a lot of Diversity & Inclusion conferences and a lot of Human Resources conferences. It seems to me that these events should be some of the most dynamic, experimental and innovative events that I attend, but they are actually the most formal, reserved, traditional and predictable. D&I and HR professionals are some of the slowest in adopting and integrating social technology…even though their work is inherently social. Someone sent me a report of “emerging trends” related to Diversity and Inclusion work and there was nothing in the report that we were not talking about a decade ago.

I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it. I want to do something about it.

I am going to do some additional writing on this, but I am also developing a new workshop on Next Practices. I am going to deliver this workshop in Omaha on June 19^th and will then start taking it to other places this fall / next spring. If you would like me to bring it to your city or your organization, let me know.

I will probably end up focusing on 5-6 specific issues, but some of the Next Practices I am considering for this workshop:

1. LANGUAGE & LOGIC: It sounds far too basic, but based on my experience this is very much a Next Practice. I continue to find organizations that lack clarity, consistency and coherence in their foundational language and logic…they build a big, serious business case but cannot concisely explain what diversity is or what inclusion is. Big and Common Fail.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA / SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY: Social Technology is so incredibly applicable to D&I work it should have been invented by D&I folks, but it is difficult to find D&I folks anywhere talking about putting this stuff to work.
3. COGNITIVE DIVERSITY: Most organizations are still needing to integrate diversity of thought into their D&I efforts. Thanks to the work of Scott Page and others we have wonderful science to help us do this.
4. INNOVATION: There is very general conversation about linking diversity and innovation, but when pressed most H.R. folks and D&I folks struggle to convincingly connect the dots.
5. NEW SCIENCE: There is a mountain of research and insight from neuroscience, behavioral economics, social psychology and adjacent fields that is incredibly applicable to this work and can help us continue to evolve the D&I paradigm and the way D&I efforts are perceived.
6. DECISION MAKING: Decision making may be the most overlooked opportunity for competitive advantage, and something we can address directly with D&I work.
7. CONFLICT MANAGEMENT: Another overlooked opportunity and something that should sit at the core of D&I work is largely completely missing from the conversation.
8. SOCIAL PROCESS METHODOLOGY: D&I folks should be the ones introducing Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, Open Space and other disruptive social methodologies, but that is rarely the case. This is a way to provide value to our organization and advance our work at the same time.
9.  SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS (SNA) / ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORK ANALYSIS (ONA): I am probably excited as much about this as anything…I continue to find organizations where there are clear differences in the size and kinds of networks that people are connected to…differences that often show up along lines of race/ethnicity and gender. Wonderful and powerful new tools are coming to market that make it really easy for us to study and analyze these networks.
10. EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE DESIGN: This probably deserves a workshop of its own, but I believe there is some powerful potential to learn from and adopt experience design practices and methodologies. Bringing an “employee experience” mindset into D&I work and other organizational and management practices could have significant implications for D&I work.
11. AUTHENTICITY: At the very core of Diversity and Inclusion work should be inclusion, employees being true to who they are, bringing their whole selves to work…but it is missing for some reason. We do not talk about authenticity and I think that authenticity helps us shift the conversation and helps people better understand how and why D&I work is relevant to them.
12. MANEUVER WARFARE: Far too much of the D&I conversation is focused on dealing with a boss that does not get it or peers that are resistant. I do not think that we should spend anymore time on business cases or overcoming resistance…we need to start going around those people. They can catch up later, lets not let them determine the pace of progress.

Anything missing?

Be good to each other.