What Executives Want And How They Get It: Changing Over From Aa To Diversity Management 101

Karen remembers the diversity management class she took back in graduate school

. The basic ideas sounded practical and the professor kept everyone's attention with his case studies about this new business practice.

Now her boss of two years, at the regional bank, is suggesting Karen may be asked to oversee a transition team to move the bank from affirmative action and valuing differences to a focus on managing diversity.

He tells her that bank board members, the CEO and several key executives are seriously concerned about this project, after two key new-hires recently left their positions. It was expensive to recruit them and there had been high hopes these two college superstars would easily move through the bank's executive training program.

"So, do you know why Miss Morales and Mr. Diego left?" Karen asks.

"Well, I did hear they were speaking Spanish together at lunch and someone came up and complained that they didn't care about their co-workers if they didn't speak English at work," her boss says.

"Oh, brother," Karen says, shaking her head. "Why didn't that person ask for Spanish lessons and take advantage of their ability to speak several languages?

"Yes, I do believe it is time for some change around here."

Karen's boss continues. "I guess they both got new jobs over at the ABC bank. Anyway, the change committee wants to meet next week. Tim Brown told me we need to show diversity at our bank, that we want our customers to know this is an important issue for us, that we culturally reflect the communities we serve," her boss says.

"How can we do this if we cannot keep our new employees comfortable?"

("Oh, there is so much that we need to be thinking about involving diversity besides how to recruit and keep minorities, but I am just going to keep listening and see what I can gather," Karen thinks to herself while her boss continues on about his conversation with the vice president of human resources.)

The complexities of managing diversity challenge are not surprising and challenge any business. Karen, with her specialized training, knows how hard this can be in any organization; she has already helped move employees away from using traditional bank accounting methods into new, high tech directions and understands why she would be a good choice for this project, if it gets final approval.

Like most professionals tasked with such a large project, Karen does not have much practical experience but knows that she is not alone, since managing change and moving to diversity management is so new to most organizations.

Taking her bank through a transition from affirmative action and valuing difference to diversity management will required education and time since the later approach involves a "way of life" change a real change of the corporation's roots.

"It's going to be like changing a person's personality," she explains to her boss. "And that never comes easy."

"Do we need a psychologist or someone to, uh, hold therapy sessions?"

Karen laughs, and tells him that a shrink would probably help out a lot, along with an anthropologist and sociologist, and maybe a lawyer. Perhaps her old business professor would be available, too, she chuckles.

"Our first issue is that most of our managers have limited knowledge of culture roots, let alone experience with changing them. We are going to need to find out if our board members are realists are they going to fully understand the time, effort, commitment, and risk involved?"

Karen's boss answers that from what he knows, the board members and executives pressing for change appear to recognize the competitive and strategic urgency driving the need for this change. They may not recognize the time factor or complexity.

"I know they have the skills to encourage buy-in from the rest of the board once they understand what is involved," he tells Karen. "But we really are going to have to lay out these important facts, right from the start, about time and complexity."

"Well, then. It looks like we will be having a very interesting meeting with this group next week. And I am up to the challenge. In fact, this is going to be quite an exciting project," she adds.

That night, even before dinner, Karen gets out her books, class notes and tells her husband some serious change is about to take place at work and she'll be staying up late at night, at least for a while.

"Sounds like you are going to be busy. Will I have to do more cooking? Cleaning? Ironing" he laughs.

"Oh, I think we can go out more than usual. Get some extra help, too. How's that sound?

"Real good to me, Karen! How about tonight?"

by: Susan Klopfer

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