Improving Profitability and Managing Reputation Through Diversity, Inclusion, and Intercultural Expertise

We frequently hear questions similar to these:

• Can diversity and inclusion (D&I) really help grow a business?
• What does it take to get my CEO really engaged in our D&I work?
• Why have diversity and inclusion become a business imperative?
• Is diversity a core business strategy?
• What are the advantages of diversity and inclusion in the workplace or multiculturalism?
• How do I manage a multicultural workforce?
• Can inclusion reduce team conflict?
• Are diversity and inclusion really any different than Affirmative Action?

The answers to these questions are clear.

Business is about setting objectives and achieving results to meet the needs of customers, employees, and shareholders. This holds regardless whether:

• Your organization's market is local, national, or global.
• Your industry is "old economy" or "new economy."
• Your organization is a manufacturer or a service provider.

This also applies to the public sector, associations, and not-for-profits with different measures of success. Virtually all organizations achieve results through their employees.

D&I practitioners must think, plan, speak, and act from their CEO's perspective while using their CEO's language. D&I initiatives must be designed starting from and staying aligned with the CEO's key business objectives.

As the figure below illustrates, in this era of global business and connectivity sustained business success typically requires the right mix of productivity, innovation, creativity, agility, and safety – The PICAS Factors©. This demands:

• A world-class workforce with the right experience, skills, market knowledge, and perspectives. This is about "who we are" or "diversity" in ways that are specific to your organization.
• A world-class workplace that actively builds communication, teamwork, and customer focus. This is about "how we work together" or "inclusion and intercultural expertise", again in ways that are specific to your organization.

Anything less leaves superior business results to chance and, in today's business environment, is an unnecessary risk with a high cost.

World-class workforces and workplaces do not just happen. They must be designed. Current trends clearly indicate ever-increasing workforce and customer cultural diversity. This holds true whether your customers are consumers or decision makers in other businesses.

All employees and especially key executives and leaders must excel at communicating and working well with, and understanding the needs of, colleagues and customers from increasingly-diverse cultural backgrounds. This is the very definition of outstanding intercultural competence / expertise. Yet, research and experience highlight that we all significantly over-estimate our level of intercultural expertise. Business success is about moving beyond inclusion to building intercultural expertise.

Why then do so many diversity and inclusion strategies falter? To succeed, they must:

• Align with key business strategies and plans.
• Define and measure progress in ways that the CEO agrees are essential to the business.
• Have the full active support and engagement of the CEO and senior executive team.
• Take account of the organization’s readiness and capacity for cultural change.
• Develop organizational competence and effectiveness to enable achieving The PICAS Factors.

Business-Aligned D&I planning is about applying a workforce and workplace "lens" to your key business objectives, to create the workforce and workplace that will grow your organization and help ensure your sustained business success.

The figure below illustrates the complete Business-Aligned® D&I strategic planning cycle, which we apply in all our work. To be effective, all D&I work must begin from key business objectives and an assessment to determine the required business-related outcomes. This is as important for designing a complete D&I strategy as for determining the intended learning outcomes of diversity training. Assessments may involve simple conversation or more-extensive data collection and analysis.

We design the solution best suited to your situation based on the assessment.

Ongoing tracking monitors progress. Periodic results assessments analyze this progress and any changes in relevant internal and external business and environmental factors.

Adaptations ensure that the D&I work stays aligned with changing business conditions.

Your feedback during all stages helps ensure that implementation goes smoothly and delivers the meaningful business results you need.

Click here for a narrated introduction to Business-Aligned® diversity and inclusion strategic planning and related resources.

As an MDB Group client, you will receive the full attention of our highly-experienced principals, who are personally engaged in all our client work. We use practical, proven D&I methodologies and technologies. Combined with practical advice and insight, we will help your organization establish or reinvigorate a diversity and inclusion plan that yields meaningful business results. You will realize the full advantages of diversity and inclusion in the workplace by effectively managing your workforce and workplace.

We seek and value a collegial and collaborative relationship with our clients. We are highly flexible, and we listen to and value all the people with whom we work. We also recognize that we are retained to share and provide our expertise. In our relationship we keep you fully informed, participate in whatever way you prefer, and always seek input and feedback.
 

Related links

These links will show you more about how MDB Group might assist you in creating or updating a Business-Aligned diversity and inclusion strategy that will improve your profitability and help achieve your key business objectives:

Next steps

Please call us so that together we can start planning your future business growth.

Read and download an overview about MDB Group and our perspective about Business-Aligned® diversity in PDF format.

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