In Kaplan and Donavan’s book, The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off, they advocate for the practice of considering diversity in all of the daily decisions a person makes. The authors discuss the struggles of an individual who consistently demonstrates good intentions in the workplace, but ultimately causes harm to coworkers. This article shares a story about a woman named Kim who operates as a Senior Manager at a company. This excerpt from the previously mentioned book highlights Kim’s daily obstacles and how she works around them. However, her actions are not sufficient enough. The reading presents examples of Kim’s unconscious bias and harmful actions. This piece of writing uses Kim’s experiences to advocate for change within the workplace for minority groups (women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+). This article has the potential to spark change within because of the realistic and powerful story told. It explores different concepts of workplace privilege and calls for change. These authors have identified detrimental patterns in the culture of careers, and it is clear that they hope to spark change through their writing as they promote awareness for diversity and inclusion
Month: June 2021
Kaplan and Donovan Summary
The issues concerning diversity and the lack of inclusion in the workplace have largely gone unnoticed or unaddressed. Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan bring awareness to this problem in their book The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off;Specifically in chapter three they discuss the ways in which executives might unconsciously create biased and unequal workplaces and how companies should recognize these occurrences. Kaplan and Donovan provide examples of these accidental prejudices, such as intent and impact, unconscious bias, insider-outsider dynamics, and levels of systems. These are all things that hinder diversity and inclusion and through recognition of the aforementioned barriers, the workplace can begin to adjust and correct the wrong behavior.
Kaplan and Donovan show these biases in action through an in-depth example of a day in the life of an executive Kim in a company. Throughout the day, Kim countlessly shows that while she might have good intentions, she contributes heavily to creating a workplace in which she does not respect people who differ from her ideas of a hard worker: from evidence, an outgoing assertive male. The sort of behavior that she exhibited was not inclusive and clearly necessary for assistance to create a safe space for all the workers in the company, especially minorities.
Kaplan and Donovan Summary
Mark Kaplan (a principal for The Dagoba Group) and Mason Donovan (Managing Partner at The Dagoba Group, a diversity and inclusion consultancy that specializes in leadership development, unconscious bias and inclusion dynamics) write a compelling article on the intent– impact mismatch. They suggest that while organizations may have good intentions in their development of policies, these policies may have unexpected results. There are many different approaches to inclusion and diversity within organizations reflected by various methodologies. Kaplan and Donovan while exploring the daily routine of a female executive, discovered multiple instances during the day in which the concept of intent versus impact shows up. The article offers examples of situations that “Kim” finds herself in throughout a given day. While the intent of the organization may be to create an expeditious circumstance in which to perform her duties, the impact is that she is isolated from other employees, lacks critical feedback to all employees (including diverse employees) and projects an atmosphere of elitism.
This intent- impact difference reminds me of when a supervisor instituted a new policy at my work. This policy was under the pretext of improving the company culture, but the employees got the sense it was a surveillance situation. The impact was an increase in mistrust and decrease in morale versus intent of enhancement of efficiency. This is a cautionary tale as outlined by Kaplan and Donovan, for all organizations to carefully consider that good intentions can meet a bad impact and potentially cause unintentional consequences.
Kaplan and Donovan Summary
In Chapter 3 of The Inclusion Dividend, authors Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan take a close look at the workday of a typical senior manager to discuss diversity and inclusion concepts and highlight key moments when changes to behavior can make a positive impact. With 20 years as consultants in leadership development, diversity and inclusion, and organizational change, the authors have witnessed the challenges to progress that can occur from mismatched intent and impact, unconscious bias, insider-outsider dynamics, and a failure to consider the different levels of systems in an organization. They argue that a typical manager’s day is so full of deadlines and distractions that important actions related to diversity and inclusion “can be easily lost in the noise of the daily office grind” (Kaplan and Donovan 1). The authors also claim that the leadership courses or webinars managers occasionally take are not enough. In other words, it is difficult if not impossible for the typical manager to invest the time that is really needed each day to make a difference. By using many examples, Kaplan and Donovan also show how the shortcuts managers take, such as when a manager gives everyone a stellar performance review, can harm diversity and inclusion efforts. In the end, the authors offer practical solutions for cutting through the “noise” to make diversity and inclusion a daily priority.
Discussion Questions wk 6/21
- For my assignment I’ve been looking for all types of materials that I can find, I haven’t limited it to just one type (at least not yet). I’ve found 1 experiment, and 2 articles that discuss the topic like Austin and Pissano did. As of right now I’m leaning more towards my topic being Neurodiversity just because I’d like to learn a lot more about it because I wasn’t aware of this term before this course. I also think that it’s very important to realize that neurologically diverse people are just as capable as everyone else. I think it would be very beneficial if I can come across an article that was written in the point of view of someone who is neurologically diverse as well as their coworkers just so we can see a first hand account of how it is in the workplace. So far I’ve used google scholar and i’ve been watching a few youtube videos to find information.
- In discussions of challenges that may arise when hiring neurodiverse employees, Austin and Pissano state that many people they have interviewed believe that there should be an emphasis on on the need to be sensitive to their stress. Similarly, Kaplan and Donovan contribute that it is very important to take time to find positive solutions because “a mismanaged event may not lead to a bigger crisis but rather to an unintended impact.
I think I did better on this They say /I say than the first time. I chose to use two they says so that I could connect both articles. Although Austin and Pissano is about Neurodiversity, I think the quote that I chose from the Intent and impact section of Kaplan and Donovan definitely applies the same because if the situation is not handled correctly it can make matters worse.
K&D summary
The Kaplan and Donovan article explored several inclusion concepts as well as detailed explanations of each so that the readers can be left with a deeper understanding of the different components of inclusion. The article is written for the Dagoba group which is an organization that aims to educate leaders on ways to implement and encourage inclusion in their organizations. While reading, one part that stuck out to me was when the authors were discussing Intent and Impact and wrote “Intent Frequently does not equal impact…in order to move the company forward though, leaders intentions have to create a desired impact.” This immediately reminded me current events because Ikea, a Scandinavian furniture chain has been facing a lot of backlash for its “Juneteenth Menu” by it’s Black employees because this action was deeply offensive. This is a prime example of intent not matching impact because Ikea may have thought that it would be a nice gesture, but the impact it had was not what was intended. This article shows how much we deal with issues of inclusion on a day to day basis while also communicating the importance of taking the time to educate yourself and try to apply these concepts in order to foster a more inclusive environment.
Discussion Questions Week 3
Response to #1
The reading in this unit that stood out to me the most was the Austin and Pisano article about neurodiversity. As a result, I would like to focus on neurodiversity in the workplace. The Austin and Pisano article focused a lot on the benefits of neurodiverse individuals, along with how to get them into specific industries which could use their skillsets. However, I would like to focus on areas or industries where there is already an underrepresentation in the industry, the struggles that they have with adding neurodiverse individuals, and see if there is any room for change. In order to have the most success in finding an article which interests me, I plan on using google, as well as the SU library database using key words to narrow down my search. I plan on using the filter features on the SU database, as I believe that this will help me narrow down the results and find something that is relevant towards our class. Some of the filters I plan on using to have an article that is credible and relevant in today is to have the filter set for articles published in the past five years, as well as journal articles. After I have found an article that meets these criteria, I plan on googling the author to make sure that they are respected individuals within that field. The experts I believe that would be relevant would be people in academia, or people in the corporate world who have experience dealing with neurodiverse individuals. So far, I have had success using these techniques to find articles which would be relevant and interesting to research more on.
Response to #2
In their article, Austin and Pisano highlight the fact that people with neurodiverse conditions are not taken full advantage of due to conventional recruitment tactics. In addition, they state some of the benefits associated with neurodiverse individuals, along with ways to get them involved in the workplace. Although Austin and Pisano do not say so directly, they acknowledge that accommodations for neurodiverse individuals often involve extreme amounts of effort and change within the organization. In their recent work, Kaplan and Donovan have found that having good intentions does not always mean that there will be a positive impact. Kaplan and Donovan argue that to have a positive impact on diverse individuals there must be constant changes taking place in the organization in order to accommodate and help diverse individuals grow. This is similar to Austin and Pisano as they both illustrate that in order to accommodate diverse individuals, many things have to change in the workplace. Along with this, both articles stated the fact that it is often difficult for people who do not have the same background as diverse individuals to help them grow, as they do not understand where they are coming from, or their personal needs.
Discussion Questions Week 3
1.
I would like to look more into diversity among neurological disorders and different occasions and people who participate and are affected by it. As someone who has ADD and has needed a little extra help in school to do the best possible work that I can, I find the topic as a whole very interesting. I understand that that is not as extreme as what Austin and Pisano discussed in their article, but I am able to relate to somewhat of what they were saying. I also think that this is a kind of diversity that is overlooked and there needs to be a larger focus on it. I think that the experts to talk about this would be people who study neurological disorders and people who work on recruiting and hiring people to work for a company. They can both discuss the different sides to the hiring process and working with the company that will provide helpful and important information.
2.
While Kaplan and Donovan ague that while people may have the right intentions when it comes to diversity and/or inclusion, it is not more or less important than following through and allowing actions to match up with ideas. Austin and Pisano agree that diversity and inclusion need to take place but are less focused on the intentions and more focused on the outcome.
I had a hard time coming up with a statement because both articles discuss similar ideas that I agree with. That being said it was not easy to come up with a way that they “disagreed” or had “contradicting” ideas. However, after thinking about both articles and looking them back over I noticed that the idea of intentions behind the actions differed just a little bit. While I definitely think that like Kaplan and Donovan discussed that the intensions are important, I do think that in the end at least we are getting somewhere and are treating people like they should be treated, as equals.
Kaplan and Donovan Summary
In the article Kaplan and Donovan cover very important and sometimes overseen issues that take place in a workspace. They do so by explaining the typical day of “Kim” who is a woman who works with a handful of different people. They walk through her day and then talk about what actions of hers needs attention because they are things that affect co-workers in ways Kim might not have seen.
They discuss impact vs. intension which is the overreaching theme of Kims actions. While her intension of her words and actions might be positive and most likely are, some people will see it differently and possibly feel offended. They also discuss ways that companies may tell their workers that they are different without saying the words and how that needs to stop being over looked. Between unconscious bias, insider-outsider dynamics and levels as systems are concepts that make some workers feel inferior to their co-workers.
The authors point is that diversity and inclusion is important and these concepts that companies use are doing the opposite of inclusion. These are things that need to be looked over and figured out how they can be eliminated all together so that everyone in the workplace feels comfortable and equal.
Kaplan And Donovan Summary
To some, unpacking the nuances of how to implement Diversity and Inclusion in everyday workplace interactions may seem like a daunting task. In the article The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan, we find a helpful and insightful exploration of four inclusion concepts and examples of how to apply them at work. The authors’ analysis includes discussion on intent and impact, unconscious bias, insider-outsider dynamics and levels of systems.
Kaplan and Donovan employ a clever technique to immediately engage readers. They tell a relatable story about female executive, Kim’s day at work. Throughout the piece, the authors point to her interactions with co-workers as “case studies” on how not to manage common workplace scenarios vis-a-vis the lens of inclusion. The authors provide a thoughtful, yet no-nonsense approach in breaking down the actions that led to the executive’s missteps, as well as what alternative measures, through implementation of the four concepts, would have been better.
Those that are new to D & I often focus on the benefits of diversity in an organization but not how important the role inclusion plays. The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off reminds us that how we manage the impact of our biases is a vital skill that must be learned and developed.