Susana Rinderle, president of Susana Rinderle Consulting, offers her perspective on our diversity progress in a piece in Diversity Executive called “Diversity is Not Dead, But We Have Been Doing It Wrong”. Her titles are always provocative, drawing the reader in to see what she has to say.
I would agree that “we have been doing it wrong” but not for the reasons that Rinderle asserts. I think that most fortune 500 companies are beyond compliance and are not doing diversity because it looks good on paper. I think they do understand the business case and that diversity leads to better performance as, Scott Page and many others have pointed out. I do agree with Rinderle, however, that for the most part we have not found solid ways to measure the return on investment from greater innovation and productivity that diversity can provide. Standout companies like Sodexo (# 1 on DiversityInc’s Top 50 list for two years in a row), actually does conduct robust analytics to show the return on investment from diversity and inclusion. The Winters Group works with a number of clients where we are performing operational and predictive analytics to show the bottom line results from diversity and inclusion. For example, one predictive measure is how much it will cost the company if their current attrition rates continue.
Rinderle goes on to say that diverse groups only outperform when there is inclusiveness. I agree but where her argument falls short is that she does not tell us how to achieve inclusiveness, other than a suggestion of unconscious bias training. Such training, while useful, is really just a start.
I believe that inclusiveness happens when you have culturally competent leaders and followers. Becoming more interculturally competent is not an easy journey because becoming competent in anything is not necessarily easy. It takes intention, ongoing learning and practice. Much of the training for diversity is based on a one-time event rather than an ongoing developmental model. For example, if one wants to become competent in accounting, he/she would not take just one course and they would not start with advanced accounting.
Additionally most diversity training is not developmental, meaning that it does not take into account the learner’s current level of competence. The Winters Group uses the Intercultural Development Inventory® to first assess where individuals and organizations are relative to their worldview towards difference. This provides a baseline for the most appropriate interventions.
The Winters Group works with many clients who are not compliance focused, who understand the benefits that can be gained from diversity and inclusion, and are investing the time and effort in the right kind of education that leads to cultural competence.
So I would say that diversity is clearly not dead, but it may be stuck because organizations are not seeing the need to go beyond awareness to competence.
