Expand Beyond Your Current Culture: Diversity and Inclusion for CEOs and Leadership

Business leaders must make diversity a foundation of their company culture in order to successfully be inclusive, advises Short, CEO of a diversity consulting company, in this diffuse work. Short’s plan is meant to create a “We & Us” culture in which employees are “noticed and heard and respected,” as opposed to a “They & Them” arrangement in which some are “left out of conversations and decision-making.” The model is based on four pillars: diversity, inclusion, equity, and “authentic company culture.” Short encourages companies to view diversity and inclusion as more than just a trend and recommends, for example, seeking “board members who have a diversity of thought” and “promoting a team approach rather than an individual approach to work.” Short’s ideas for how to implement the four pillars often lack specificity, as when, for instance, she notes that “computer programs introduce all kinds of bias into the hiring process” but doesn’t offer any suggestions of what to do about it. Some of her explanations similarly fall short, as when she describes unconscious bias as “thinking that you just don’t like something but you’re not sure why.” The result comes across more as an introduction to what constitutes workplace bias than a guide for countering it. (Jan.)