I consistently see organizations with unnecessary barriers slowing their D&I efforts down or blocking them altogether. Want to move forward? Here are six opportunities to consider. I will unpack each of these further in following posts:
With a fresh voice and a fresh perspective, Joe Gerstandt helps organizations truly understand and benefit from diversity, inclusion and innovation. Joe works with Fortune 500 corporations, small non-profits and everything in between, and believes we can no longer afford taking a 20th century approach to these increasingly critical 21st century issues. Check out Joe's work here, read his blog, follow him on Twitter, and connect with him on LinkedIn.
I consistently see organizations with unnecessary barriers slowing their D&I efforts down or blocking them altogether. Want to move forward? Here are six opportunities to consider. I will unpack each of these further in following posts:
Maybe you have had an experience similar to this…
You are a fair employer. You try to look at all candidates equally and don’t discriminate based on demographics. You care about talent. But like it or not, stereotypes and unintentional bias impact our thought process and decisions in complex ways — ways we don’t even realize.
Some of the folks that I get the most resistance from when talking about bias are recruiters and hiring managers. They love to say things like “bigotry is stupid and bad business,” and “I just want to hire the best person for the job,” and “I don’t care about race.”
I do not have a lot of heroes, but one of them is Bayard Rustin. A really visionary and courageous guy. I wish that his story, his work, his life were more well known. A true pioneer…there should be monuments.
One of the books that I find myself recommending a lot is Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie. It is a wonderfully written book touching on organizational culture, authenticity, courage, creativity, expression and other related issues. One of the stories in the book has always stuck with me, since the first time I read it.
(The third in a series.)
You have probably heard the phrase:
“A person’s eyes are the window to their soul.”
I have another version:
“How an organization makes decisions is a window into its culture.”
How does your organization make decisions? How do you deal with disagreement?
“We simply decide without thinking much about the decision process.”
-Jim Nightingale
The fourth post in a series.
Your organizational chart matters. A little.
In a lot of ways it does not. Ideas, information, trust, influence, opportunity and other resources move through networks of relationships without necessarily adhering to what the org chart says. Social network analysis tools now allow us to make the invisible visible so that we can be more deliberate in our approach to networks. There are a couple of big opportunities here:
This report, generated by Institute For The Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute:
We are pretty good at knowing what our point of view is (and we are pretty good at thinking highly of our point of view). We are also good at knowing when someone disagrees with our delightful point of view. We are not quite so good at understanding why they disagree with us.
It's not enough for an HR professional to get the basics right. Becoming a strategic business partner in your organization is also about knowing the right people and being able to establish and manage key relationships. The most effective HR leaders understand the importance of alliances in influencing behavior and overcoming resistance. Could you use more influence?
What will you do?
With 20 slides and 5 minutes, Joe Gerstandt brings a new clarity to what diversity is, why it matters and how it shows up in our work and our relationships with others.
As a loud and proud advocate for diversity and inclusion, I am supposed to be all about harmony right? Well, I am not. Harmony scares me.
At the core of the definition of harmony is:
a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts; congruity