Skip to main content

Diversity thoughts...

Diversity is a buzzword these days. Anybody and their uncle are after diversity. If you can talk about diversity, rest assured that you will have an audience that will eat out of your hands.

Last week, I met an interesting person who argued that diversity the way we see it  - especially from a gender perspective often just involves making a woman compete in a race where the rules are set by men. His point was that while we talk diversity, we often want the woman to be more like men - driving hard deadlines, setting tasks etc etc. The larger discussion was about masculinity and femininity and perhaps even larger around the 'left' and 'right' brain.

And that begets the question - what exactly is diversity. Is it just hiring a few women into the workplace - which is the easiest thing to do - especially when you want to show numbers.

But (and this has been my view for a while), is that diversity really resulting in thought diversity? And I dont mean you hire sociopaths and misogynists for thought diversity. Thought diversity means hiring people who have sharper strengths as opposed to rounded strengths. And then some. But the question I have in my mind - are we hiring for thought diversity (and this may or not may result from cultural diversity and educational diversity and diversity of experiences) as opposed to plain gender diversity.

So, are the creative people in the team given space to be creative and the process oriented people given the space to be comfortable in their processes and yet being accountable to the same high standard - just an example.

Caution: Developing thought


Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

And the unconference happened

 Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost. And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.  I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).  To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Ju...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why does elearning exist?

 Elearning is one of those niches that does not deserve to exist. Yes, it was a novelty 20 years ago, but not now. It cannot exist. But somehow it does. Disclaimer: I used to head a content team once upon a time. And I used to ask those whom I hired - tell me the last thing you learnt from an e-learning. The answer is - pretty much nothing (and this is a good decade ago).  Why?  If you want to learn a recipe, you go to Youtube, or Reels or something like that. If you are terribly old fashioned - as in, you read - then you go to a website and read the recipe and make it.  Most other things you learn by doing or learning on the job or asking an expert.  If you have to learn something in depth, then there are other ways.  So, where does e-learning fit in all this? E-learning is one of those products that the customer hates, but has no choice, because someone has decided it is the best way. For instance, you have to learn a new CRM or some other product - you w...
Post a Comment
Read more