Diversity Executive - November 2008 - (Page 28)

These layers are the different mixtures that get applied in pursuit of organizational objectives. This four-dimensional focus makes measurement more complex, but also richer, more meaningful and realistic. “Unless you have a clear deﬁnition of diversity and you can see it beyond race and gender, you may be stuck,” Hubbard said. “The reason why people have been somewhat disappointed with diversity is that they have focused primarily on just race and gender. They brought people to the organization that looked differently physically and expected that as a result of this mixture that magically something was going to happen, and that essentially those mixtures were going to translate into added value on the bottom line.” Numbers Don’t Tell the Full Story While quantifying the bottom-line impact in numbers is critical, it’s also important to fill out the story with powerful anecdotes. Ed Hubbard shared a couple of meaningful product stories to illustrate this point. When baby food manufacturer Gerber expanded its product offerings to African markets, it logically replaced the iconic picture of a white baby on its product label with the picture of a black baby, but it failed to account for a further cultural nuance. “In some parts of Africa, what is on the label of the jar is indicative of what’s inside the jar,” Hubbard said. “With putting a baby on the jar, that says that people from Africa eat ground-up baby. Gerber couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t sell this product.” Hubbard cited another example in which a cultural misunderstanding led to a direct cost. When Chevrolet began selling its Nova car model in Mexico, it failed to realize that “no va” translates into Spanish as “it doesn’t go” — a significant blunder for an automaker looking to convince Mexican consumers that the Chevy Nova is the vehicle for them. Clarifying the Connection Many factors lead to bottom-line impact, and the connection to diversity isn’t always clear. For example, buying behavior is inﬂuenced by many factors, and the assumption that consumers buy products from people who look like them may or may not be true, said Katherine Phillips, associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University. “There are other things people take into consideration when they decide whether they want to do business with a ﬁrm or not, including what their perspective is and their record around diversity and inclusion. But it’s not the only thing,” she said. In some cases, consumers actually will steer away from situations in which they feel a representative was chosen solely because the company thought it would gain minority business by doing so. “It’s a very complicated process, and there are a lot of steps between what people are doing on a daily basis in the ﬁrm and what the bottom line ends up looking like,” Phillips said. “In some companies, those steps in between are very messy and affected by lots of things. It takes time before you will see that kind of impact because there’s a lot of noise there, a lot of room for error and variance.” Bernardo Ferdman, professor at the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management at Alliant National University, currently is researching one area of variance: the connection between inclusion and performance. The experience of inclusion transcends the dimensions of diversity, he said, and offers a lens that sharpens the focus on people’s broader feelings, such as do they feel engaged with their work group, do they feel as if they’re treated fairly, and are they able to express themselves at work. Ferdman said it’s not simply asking if more diversity affects the bottom line, but rather how different ways of dealing with diversity affect results, how to improve results given the diversity that exists or how to improve results by getting different kinds of diversity. “We need to make the question more complex,” he said. “It’s not just does more diversity lead to more money — because that’s not a fair question and it doesn’t reﬂect reality very well. Sometimes that’s used as a way to sabotage any efforts at addressing all the other issues that diversity presents. “We have to unpack the simple question of, what’s the relationship of diversity and performance? We have to look at the process variables involved. We need to understand how people feel in the context of their group or their organization.” Using his own Workgroup Inclusion Scale, Ferdman is investigating the correlation of that feeling of inclusion to group or work-unit performance to test his hypothesis that the more people feel included, the better their work groups will perform. That’s like sitting a group of 20 strangers down at a table and calling them a team, Hubbard said. The team capability only comes from leadership around a shared purpose, values and processes. It’s the context that becomes important, and within that context are the layers of diversity that can be managed and measured for impact. “What we look at is being able to measure the differences and similarities in these collective mixtures and how they get utilized inside of the organization in operational process,” he said. 28 Diversity Executive | www.diversity-executive.com | November/December 2008 http://www.diversity-executive.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Diversity Executive - November 2008

Diversity Executive - November 2008 Editor’s Letter Contents Leadership Connections Guest Editorial Diversity Executive Online Middle Management Roadblock ‘Hidden Winds’ Hinder Progress The Domino Effect Supplier Partnerships Unlock Economic Opportunities Measuring Diversity Special Section: Who’s Who in Diversity and Inclusion Dimensions of Difference Overcoming Language Diff erences Business Intelligence: Combating Subtle Discrimination Case Study: Shifting Diversity Into Overdrive Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources Strategies

Diversity Executive - November 2008

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