- Convenient diversity - Diversity is seen only as a social good with no performance benefit which means it's dropped when financial pressures increase
- Shallow diversity - Diversity is all about appearances which means you end up with a lot of different looking people who all think the same way
- Fake diversity - You have people with a lot of diverse perspectives but really only one perspective is ever acknowledged in interactions
- Alienating diversity - There is a lot of diversity but no common identity or values which means that many people don't have any sense of relatedness to others in the organisation
Agile, Lean, Kanban
Great post. Glad you set out to define the difficulties with diversity. Diversity became popular as a cause / ideology because it gave people with a perceived disadvantage a chance to participate on a more equal footing. Now it's less about inequality and more about differences. It's become an established practice, but without much thought as to it's value and its many uses.
ReplyDeleteEngaging and leveraging diversity is a skill for everyone in the organization, not just at the top. It's an important opportunity now that collaboration, de-siloing and stakeholder alignment are critical to organizational success. These priorities require new approaches because everyone has different goals, skills and opinions. They often come out sounding like roadblocks when they are simply rooted in diversity.
As ever, I see solution focus as a great framework / tool for leveraging diversity.
Again, thank for your 4 insights.