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

I have the privilege of presenting to the Diversity Roundtable of Central Indiana this week and will cover a lot of stuff in this workshop, but the key theme is “making the case” for diversity.  Unfortunately there are a lot of people wandering around the business world claiming that there is no business case or that the business case is not clear.  I do not know how someone can actually believe that without either a) having a personal orientation contrary to diversity and inclusion, or b) having no understanding of human nature, group dynamics, and how people create value in todays economy.  Diversity and inclusion have always been important for our organizations and our communities, but the real business value of is more pronounced today than it has ever been.

I think that before an individual or a group can start actually making a business case, there needs to be an understanding of the underlying value…what is it that you can actually do with diversity and inclusion.  This is not a comprehensive list, but these are some of the leading factors making diversity and inclusion so business critical today:

1. New competitive advantage: for more and more organizations, industries and even communities the greatest opportunity for competitive advantage is creativity and innovation.  While we seem to have bought into the idea of the lone, eccentric genius as playing the leading role in innovation, there is tremendous research saying that innovation happens at intersections…it happens when difference collides.  Different cultures, different organizations, different professions…intersections.  Diversity is a key ingredient for innovation.  The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson is a good read on this topic.
2. Generational transition: There is no shortage of writing, thinking, talking and experting being done regarding this issue.  There has always been different generations in the workforce and there always will be…part of what makes it different today is the numbers.  Regardless of which generations are in the workforce and regardless of what we think we know about each generation, we are approaching an unprecedented generational transition.  This needs to be fully understood before we start worrying about what we know about this generation or that generation.  There is soon going to be a lot of volatility in leadership and organizational cultures as many baby boomer leaders with many years of experience and expertise will begin exiting the traditional workforce.  Organizations that succesfully navigate this transition will have a grasp on this transition, the differences and commonalities of the generations involved and the flexibility required.  There is a lot of stuff that has been written about generational diversity, one of the people I am a fan of is Jamie Notter…you could start with his book.
3. New workforce: The demographics of the workforce are changing and will continue to change.  There are estimates that by the end of 2008, 70% of new entrants into the workforce were women and People of Color.  So if you are an organization that is not good at attracting, engaging and retaining women and People of Color, you are going to be competing for a shrinking portion of the available talent.  The workforce is also changing in other ways with more employees today having dependent children and/or dependent parents at home.
4. New consumers: The same demographic trends that are moving through the workforce are moving through the overall buying population.  Racial and ethnic minority populations are currently experiencing much larger increases in buying power than the overall population. Just as more organizations (and communities) are going to need to be able to attract, engage and retain more diversity in their workforce they are going to have to be able to do the same regarding customers. 
5. Better problem solving / decision making: Under the right circumstances, groups that have greater diversity (especially cognitive diversity) are better equipped to solve complex problems and come to better decisions.  We could use some better decisions it would seem.  Great reading on this is The Difference by Scott Page, anything else by Scott Page and The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.
6. Human nature: We are biased. We should deal with it and stop working so hard to deny it.  Even those of us with the most shiny, happy intentions are biased and those biases find a way to influence our thinking and decision making on a regular basis.  If we truly want to hire the best people and promote the best people we need to be committed to reducing the impact of these biases.  Check out the Implicit Association Test sometime.

 Be good to each other.