It was a pleasure to have you join Unbound Ideas and Howard Morgan for Dr. Roosevelt Thomas’s September 15 webinar, “Beyond Diversity.” Thank you for being part of the discussion and providing feedback on the event.

Dr. Thomas began his presentation with a provocative statement: “The field of diversity is at a cross-roads.” He outlined three paths that would likely be followed in the coming years: a) The status quo; b) abandoning the path of diversity; or c) the realm of pure diversity management. His presentation was an overview of where we have come from; why we are often stuck in place today; and where we need to go in order to benefit from the promise of diversity in terms of improved organizational performance. Along the way, Dr. Thomas shone light on many of the contentious issues that individuals, organizations and societies face.

In his work, Dr. Thomas defines diversity differently from most experts and practitioners. He refers to diversity, not in terms of race, gender or other particulars, but more broadly as the “Differences, similarities, tensions and complexities that can exist among the elements of a mixture.” This definition makes it more difficult to talk about the diversity of a group, but lends itself to a different level of understanding, and solutions that go “beyond” the status quo.

Historically, we’ve seen four different strategies for diversity. Starting in the 1960s, organizations were managing workforce “representation” in order to promote social justice and equality. The tools included affirmative action and civil rights legislation. Naturally, this kind of change increased tensions between social groups, so the subsequent strategy was about increasing harmony and reducing conflict through sensitivity training, political correctness and the valuing of differences.

Most organizations and much social dialogue remains stuck in the realm of these two strategies. However, by the 1980s, a new approach toward managing diverse talent led to an onus on making quality decisions in the midst of workforce differences, similarities and related tensions. Opponents on opposite sides of the debate feared that such an approach meant either abondoning civil rights programs or was just a new kind of affirmative action. Proponents, on the other hand, often found it difficult to make the business case.

Dr. Thomas made the case that organizations will ultimately move toward a universal capability for addressing strategic diversity of any kind, including the diversity of workforce, customers, product, and acquisitions.

The diversity strategy that an organization employs is guided or even limited by its diversity paradigm, of which Dr. Thomas named four. If an organization is in the mindset of needing to make amends for past wrongs, it will be concerned with managing workforce representation. If the “Golden Rule” is the concern, then managing workforce demographics becomes the focus. If the organization is interested in maximizing individual performance, then managing diverse talent is the strategy. And if the organization is focused on maximizing organizational performance then it will see the value in managing all strategic diversity mixtures at once.

Organizations often have a significant gap between their strategic aspirations and their operational reality in part because they fail to recognize, acknowledge and work on their current diversity paradigm. Dr. Thomas ended with the message that identifying your organizational paradigm is necessary to support and achieve your diversity management aspirations.

Howard Morgan fielded a lively Q&A session throughout the presentation. Over the coming months, we’ll post excerpts from that discussion on our site.

If you have not already done so, we encourage you to make use of the resources in the light blue box to the right. A copy of Dr. Thomas’s book, Building on the Promise of Diversity, will be mailed to each registered attendee shortly.

On behalf of Dr. Roosevelt Thomas and Howard Morgan, we thank you again for joining us, and look forward to the next occasion.

Warm Regards,
Unbound Ideas