Have you ever felt a bit skeptical about the talking on diversity in the workplace?
Have you ever scrolled past an article on diversity and thought: "Here we
have it, the same boring diversity mantra again". If yes, this video is for you
I am Federica Viero, a cultural diversity investigator and founder of
The Intercultural Lab. This video is about why many business leaders think
diversity is a no-go in their workplaces and what could possibly make them change
their mind. Because there's a lot of talking about workplace diversity
nowadays. It's been a very popular global topic in research and in the
media for decades now. Still, it's adoption by the corporate world has been
way less popular. Entire industries, boards, even teams are divided. There's
the diversity advocates on one side, thought leaders, inspiring CEOs, and they say: "Hey
do you realize how important diversity is for your business?" and on the other
side all those corporate decision makers, maybe you're one of them, who respond
"Uh-huh. Sure. Can I please get back to work now?
Got real challenges waiting for me out there. This divide is not only huge it's
also one of the least discussed. Because the talking of diversity itself is going
crescendo, but the story of what must have gone wrong with these stubborn
diversity opponents is not as appealing as some highly visible success stories
or some juicy Silicon Valley stories. You probably read about this recent
Google-related gender diversity affair, that's an example. Still I think it will
be worth putting more efforts towards understanding the gaps in this divided
community of corporate business leaders because a lot of them work in the
trenches of the corporate arena and haven't welcomed the diversity trend and
I don't believe that just because they have grown skeptical about diversity
they are all terrible, dull, insensitive micromanagers. So why this
skepticism? I think we have a bit of a tendency to preaching to the converted
to speaking to the ones who already bought our message. It feels more natural
somehow, while those who are not "converted" usually don't speak at all in
this debate, I mean why should they? It's not their conversation. The outcome
however it's a huge missed opportunity. Because here's the thing: if you do
believe that diversity is crucial to your success you have welcomed the idea
you are not the one who would need to hear about diversity the most. However we
often end up speaking to you first, for example we use a kind of "inspirational
quote" communication style which only can resonate with you if you are convinced
or we tell diversity success stories and say: "Other leaders should get inspired
from here and drive change". True, but how exactly are they supposed to go about it?
I think there is a need for clarifying and getting deeper into the business
fundamentals of diversity because they're not a given. We all love and I
love talking passion and why diversity so beneficial but the risk is to
disregard the how. We don't really focus on how real dimensions of diversity can
help address specific business concerns. Now, I would never dare saying that the
why is not important and that we should not start with it, still we can't assume
that everyone in the corporate world is prompted to instantly see the connection
between diversity and their very specific business success and simply own it.
We need to make this link ready to implement for the real employee, manager
or business leader in the trenches who is supposed to apply it in their world.
So how can we do that? I believe that when given more business context and
more practical examples of how the step-by-step process may look like, the
process of how diversity can help you bring your professional role to life
everyday and help you enhence fundamental
business processes in the direction of better results, then you will 1. be
listening 2. start playing with what's available and 3. eventually grab the
win, because there is a wind to grab. And the good news is these resources you
need to start moving in this direction are already available right now all
around you. Precious, leverageable assets you can
start agitating right away to boost competitive advantage, people
happiness and your influence throughout the process. OK,
what about getting practical with this now? Using a specific example? I would
like to pick a quite common corporate question, the transition to a new CRM
system - customer relationship management system - and consider the impact of
diversity on this process. Probably many of you have experienced a CRM transition in your company's so hopefully you can relate. The aspect of diversity I'm gonna
consider here is cultural diversity, one of the most pervasive in my opinion and
the dearest to my heart by the way. But before we get into the case, there is a
tiny but essential bit of stage setting I would do a stage setting now so that
next time - next week - we are ready to dive into our case of CRM transition. Pretty
much the only thing we need to set the stage is a minimalistic yet a very clear
way to look at any company - let's say your company - in a way that let us make sense
of the flow of recurring fundamental processes that keep your company alive,
operating and potentially profitable. We want to look at what shapes this
fundamental processes and how they drive the company's results through time, as
they happen and we will see how diversity comes in here. To keep it very
simple and business-oriented, the idea we can start from, in a super concentrated
nutshell, is that every single person in your team brings in a unique cultural
mix. It's a set of cultural dimensions shaped by personality, by national
culture of origin, and previous organizational cultures they experienced.
Every individual is contributing - or at least ready to contribute - their own
cultural input their own mix of dimensions. Hopefully, and most likely,
this inputs are not perfectly aligned. Most likely there is cultural diversity
in your team. So understanding the business basics of cultural diversity
really boils down to looking at how this cultural mixes shape an impact (because
they do) some fundamental organizational processes. It means how they impact
things that go on on a regular basis in your company. These processes are for
example - just to mention the most relevant ones - teamwork and yes: seeing
teamwork as a process is extremely helpful. And another one is the
decision-making process, be it collective or individual these are processes that
determine the long-term business success of your company and the long-term
well-being of the people too. Success unfolds along these processes it's through
teamwork and by making the right decision decisions -among other things -
that you set the right stepstones on the way to results. And workplace happiness
is created and nurtured along these processes as well, as they happen.
So to recap: individual culture mixes affect these fundamental processes - one
is teamwork - that affect success and happiness in your workplace. Ok, done! Once
we understand how the culture mixes shape teamwork - just to focus on this one
process - and how the success of a business unfolds and happens through
teamwork, once we get clear on this causality, then we can start addressing
how to touch it with purpose and what available assets we can leverage in this
suite in order to affect the bottom line. So here we have it: the absolutely
minimum thinking framework we need to start analyzing your real business situations
and see the impact of cultural diversity on the work you orcherstrate everyday
within your team. Next week, we will use it to jump into our CRM transition case
and see how you could bring value to the process by leveraging diversity. If you
found this video valuable please share it with a skeptical business leader you
care about. An article version of this video is also available, I will link to
it in the description. I hope to see you next week, until then let's embrace
working multiculturally!
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