Dr. Seuss Had A Great Idea For Helping To Differentiate Mvd, Aa And Eeo

What happens when the boss's boss demands diversity excellence and doesn't remember to provide necessary training

? "Hank," a new supervisor at the XYZ Company has been charged with making excellence through diversity occur ASAP so that his boss can look good. But where's the training? (Or the diversity plan?)

Unfortunately, Hank's boss provides no further explanation and Hank is left alone and confused.

Hank is not alone. Over half of U.S. companies have little or no diversity plans in place, even though diversity is considered an important topic in today's global economy. To achieve diversity excellence, what should Hank's boss focus on and why?

For many supervisors and even executives, the term diversity still raises controversy, confusion, and tension when first introduced. What does diversity actually mean? Is it the same as affirmative action? Equal employment opportunity?

When others like Hank and his boss think of diversity, without proper diversity management education they often fall into thinking about ethnicity and race, and then gender; but diversity is broader than these other terms.

Dimensions of diversity include, but are not limited to: age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, military experience, religious beliefs, parental status, and work experience (Loden and Rosener 1991, 18-19).

How these dimensions affect performance, motivation, success, and interactions with others becomes part of measuring an organization's success in becoming excellent through diversity. Institutional structures and practices that have presented barriers to some dimensions of diversity should be examined, challenged, and removed in the process.

Hank's boss's bosses were probably thinking about this when they came up with the idea of excellence via diversity. Most likely, no one in the XYZ Company thought about including any education for moving their workforce in this direction. Obviously the XYZ Company has not come up with a formal plan (and I would guess has probably has not initiated a diversity audit).

If I were trying to help Hank and his boss understand how to achieve and sustain diversity, I would explain they must first clearly understand that managing and valuing diversity (MVD) is very different from equal employment opportunity and affirmative action.

When consulting with such businesses that are just beginning to value and manage diversity, I often draw on one of my favorite Sesame Street sayings -- How is one thing not like the other things -- to distinguish between MVD, EEO and AA. When these distinctions are not understood, this becomes one more barrier to change.

Quite simply, MVD allows for voluntary change while AA and EEO require obligatory change. This is because AA and EEO are legal processes that have the force of the law behind them.

AA and EEO involve individuals who belong to legally protected groups and who are further affected by others such as human resources or the judiciary. MVD involves not only those groups but is even more inclusive and includes members of many social and cultural groups, even those members of the dominant group (usually white males).

Here's another difference: MVD appeals to the broadening and more representative market and workforce. In turn, AA and EEO appeal specifically to those who value related legislation and goals.

Here is still another way to understand how "one thing" is not like "the other things": The focus of MVD is on an organization's economic performance. A workforce that is successfully diversified helps its company to respond to today's global markets. If managed well, this workforce is more flexible in areas such as problem solving.

On the other hand, AA and EEO focus on achievement of individuals in a legally protected class, making their focus far more specific and defined.

Finally, the purpose of AA is to ensure past discrimination is remedied and to prohibit future discrimination of legally targeted, protected groups. EEO's purpose is to set and meet AA goals. MVD goals have no legal basis but are set by organizations entirely for their benefit. Meeting AA and EEO goals is clearly critical to a company's legal operations and their purposes are quite different.

Today's organizations and businesses, no matter their size or customer base, must learn to manage and value diversity to survive in today's markets that operate between so many diverse groups of people.

Starting this journey begins quite simply with learning the difference between AA, EEO and MVD and then taking proactive steps to create and sustain an organizational climate in which the dynamics that harm performance are minimized and the potential to enhance performance is maximized. MVD is all about enhancing organizational performance by using every member's abilities and by leveraging diversity as an organizational resource.

Will Hank and his boss succeed in attaining diversity excellence? The answer is quite possibly yes, IF both are provided proper and ongoing MVD education and resources, starting, of course, with an understanding of "...how one thing is not like the other things."

by: Susan Klopfer

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