subject: Seeking Diversity? Changing Traditional Management Styles Requires Cultural Awareness [print this page] Several questions must be considered before a company can switch from traditional management styles to competently managing diversity. They include:
What basic assumptions drive your organization what makes life tick at your place of business? What fundamental understandings do people quickly learn that help them fit in and work in acceptable ways, and how are these assumptions passed on to employees?
The assumptions that drive life in corporations are different from values and traditions, which are usually made clear in some way.
The idea of "Spaghetti Wednesdays" was carefully explained to me when I once applied for an internship in a large Cincinnati company. To this day, I still believe that anyone admitting they hated spaghetti would not have gotten the job!
Behaviors like rolling up your shirt sleeves for a morning coffee break or staying late at work to show your loyalty or even faithfully eating spaghetti on Spaghetti Day are different from more deep-seated assumptions held by organizations.
Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., considered the father of change management philosophy, suggests to understand culture, think of an organization as a tree. The roots are the actual culture and are invisible or below the surface. "But they give rise to the trunk branches, and leaves the visible parts of the tree. Nothing can take place in the branches and be sustained naturally unless it is congruent with the roots," he writes (Thomas, 1997).
I once knew a co-worker who was fired from a multinational pharmaceutical corporation. He didn't understand why this happened until someone finally took him aside and explained he wore loafers with tassles. Poor guy. When he told me this story, it would obvious he still felt hurt. Of course, there was a deep-seated arrogance in the company based on social class, and the shoes apparently indicated he didn't fit the culture test.
Unlike my hearing about "Spaghetti Wednesday," when I applied for the job, "Jim" was expected to "catch on" to what others who succeeded at this company somehow knew.
At another company, where I once did some corporate training, anyone important was wearing a Seico watch and using multiple ways to let it be known (almost flashing it in my face as I walked down the hall). So I decided after the first day on site that purchasing a Seico watch would be a good idea.
What are some underlying assumptions that allow one organization to build and sustain a diversified workplace while another company gets lost in resistance?
One deep assumption for resisting companies could be that "all of this diversity stuff" will simply disappear as politics change. In this circumstance, it is obvious diversity will remain a "fair weather" item until managers realize that managing diversity is critical to the company's sustained growth and viability.
This needed change of assumptions can happen when there is an underlying reognition that diversity nurtures unique opportunities for the organization that people who are "different" from the status quo may actually have something new to offer that will help the company reach new markets.
Or that unique people have new and different ideas of value to bring to the organization, perhaps a different way of identifying problems that could add to problem solving success.
Until then, a manager in a traditionally managed organization might go to a conference or read something about diversity management that sounds good, get excited and try to change the current business culture.
But no matter how hard she or he tries, it will be impossible to motivate others to see a diversity project all of the way through. The resistance will eventually halt change until the culture shifts.
As Thomas writes, studying the tree of culture has much to teach us...(it's all in the roots!)
