RE: [atlarge-discuss] First Things First Re: [atlarge-discuss] Vittorio Bertola's candidation statement

["Jkhan" <Jkhan@MetroMgr.com>]

In moderately egalitarian culture - such as in the U.S., Japan, and most
European countries - consultation is usually appreciated but not
necessarily expected. participate environments are initiated by the
participate leader, not by subordinates. Ideal leaders are pragmatically
democratic. Moderate status differences and privileges for leaders are
acceptable. Rules and laws are expected to apply to superiors and
subordinates alike. Change normally must buy starts with top leaders,
but key people throughout the organization must by into the change if it
is to be effective and lasting.

The best approach to managing diversity is one that includes all persons
and excludes none. It provides a climate that supports all types of
employees. Its goal is to include all employees in the inner circle of
employees who are continuously learning to create continuous improvement
- in activities that contribute to the bottom-line success of the
organization.

While leaders of some companies still refer to their corporate culture
as a melting pot and the company as one big happy family, a new breed of
leaders is moving beyond the melting pot and legal approaches to an
inclusive multicultural approach. This approach builds on the best
affirmative action principle and a strong corporate culture, but it goes
further. Its leaders value diversity, and the develop corporate
strategies, systems, and action steps that reflect that core value.
These leaders are change agents who learn how to inspire others to
create the changes needed to build a productive, innovative, synergistic
workforce.

The Major Leadership Challenge and Opportunity:

Leaders with multicultural skills understand the many barriers facing
ethnic minorities and women in most American corporations and develop
strategies for dismantling them. The most important barriers are the
policies and practices that systematically restrict the opportunities
and rewards to nontraditional employees. Leaders who are most effective
in formulating better policies and practices understand not only the
external barriers that diverse workers face, but also some of their
typical life experiences and the resulting internal barriers. 

Some of the strongest barriers to the success of diverse employees are
structural blocks built by the culture and organization. Leaders with
multicultural awareness and skills can help in the struggle to break
down these barriers.

Changing Incompatible Organizational Systems

The most lasting and workable changes in the firm's systems and
practices flow naturally from a commitment to corporate cultural change.
One reason AA programs have had such difficulty is that leaders rarely
built then upon commitment to corporate culture change. Once this
commitment is made by a critical mass of employees/users,changing
systems and practices becomes relatively easy.

Ending Historical Exclusion

Nontraditional employees have traditionally been kept out of the inner
circle. The American culture has traditionally sent the message the
Euro-Anglo men take the lead role in all arenas of power. Studies
indicate that a key barrier is their reluctance to share power in all
arenas of power and privilege and their natural tendency to associate
with people like themselves. savvy leaders know it's time to break this
cycle by giving everyone an equal chance.

Raising the Comfort Levels of Euro-Anglo Men

An effective multicultural approach respects the concerns of all,
including Euro-Anglo men. it focuses on the leadership benefits of
gaining multicultural skills in order to meet diverse employees halfway
in cultural understanding and collaboration. Diversity training is
essential.

Resistance to change results in backlash. In fact, backlash has become
so prevalent that it now is the primary barrier to the diversity efforts
of many major companies. When downsizing cuts job opportunities, people
become especially resentful and fearful  and more likely to resent any
competition from diverse employees. 

People tend to be most accepting and comfortable with others who are
most like them. Virtually all the emotions that block good will toward
others spring from fear, and fear in turn often springs from the
unknown, from ignorance. Studying cultural differences makes people
knowledgeable, diminishes their fear of the unknown, and increases their
comfort level with diverse others. Learning about stereotypes and
prejudice can help also, but the instructional approach must be
respectful, not blaming. It must address such concerns as reverse
discrimination, lowered standards and quality, erosion of income and job
security, and loss of a traditional way of life.

Removing Networking Barriers

For all nontraditional groups a major barrier is the inability to create
and manage networks. Individuals often cannot get information they need
about industry trends and where the company is headed, nor handle
company politics adequately. Understanding the organizational culture
and the barriers it may have erected can be even more important than
formal degrees, according to several surveys. In fact, courses and
degrees may be less relevant to success in the executive suite than they
once were because most omit these soft skills.

Breaking the Glass Ceiling

The U.S. Department of labor reports that 30 percent of corporate middle
management is made up of women, African Americans, and Latino Americans.
These groups made up less than 5 percent of senior management in 1990,
even though they're about 65 percent of the work force. a major
consulting firm surveyed nearly 1400 senior executives, and only 29 were
women and 13 were people of color, meaning 97 percent were Euro-Anglo
males (U.S. Department of Labor).

Universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, which are typically
considered feeder institutions for high-paying management jobs, refused
to admit women as undergraduates until the 1970s. Lack of education
became a widely accepted explanation for the slow movement of
nontraditional employees into and throughout management. It's still used
today despite the fact that their educational achievement has soared.
It's been more than 30 years since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act. it's been more than 20 years since women and minorities entered
leadership-oriented programs in significant numbers. Even if it takes 15
to 20 years to develop a general manager, more minorities and women
should logically be reaching the middle- and top-level jobs. Clearly, a
lack of qualified candidates is not the only explanation for
under-representation.

Leadership Opportunity: Creating an Inclusive Multicultural Approach

The multicultural approach is a diversity-within-unity approach. Unity
is provided through a strong corporate culture that focuses on the best
niche for the organization to fill and on the purpose of the
organization, as well as on valuing diversity. Diversity is provided for
through a strong emphasis on appreciating each individual-respecting the
uniqueness of every employee, including their values, lifestyles, and
cultural heritage.

Leaders encourage the organization to adapt in ways that support all
types of employees, and help all employees become oriented to the
organization, a two-way street. Corporate leaders make certain the
organization's values and norms accommodate a wide range of workers.
Leaders make sure everyone has a chance to build multicultural skills
and to continually update and refine them.

The multicultural approach aims to support and empower all employees
because leaders pay attention to this issue at the individual,
interpersonal, and organizational levels. Leaders develop strategies to
bring all employees into the e "Inner Circle" and remove barriers to
inclusion. The multicultural approach is also about making sure the
system and practices of the organization support employee empowerment
through natural involvement, so that stop-and-go types of AA  programs
are unnecessary. it's a comprehensive managerial process for developing
an environment that works for all employees. Empowering the total
workforce is achieved through such strategies as pushing decision making
down to lower levels, organizing self-managing work teams, provide
adequate education, and supporting career development.

This type of diversity management is not about Euro-Anglo males managing
women and minorities, nor is it about focusing on women and minorities
focusing on women and minorities to the exclusion of Euro-Anglo men.
it's about all, it an inclusive approach that focuses on understanding
individuals, and valuing each person's diversity profile. The focus is
on the individual, with an understanding of each individual's
background, against a mosaic society. This approach views diverse
employees as persons who can enrich the work team or organization, who
can interact with others to create innovative sparks, entrepreneurial
genius, and total-quality performance.

Creating a Valuing-diversity Culture

Valuing diversity is, first of all, a bottom-line issue because it's the
first step in getting all employees contributing to bottom-line success.
That's because valuing diversity is at the heart of such issues as
conflict resolution, negotiation, employee relationships, employee
empowerment, leadership effectiveness, continuous learning, continuous
improvement, productivity, total quality management, synergistic teams,
and trust building. Given the potential payoffs, companies cannot afford
to be satisfied with outdated corporate cultures that exclude many
potential contributors.

Changing the corporate culture is most effective, of course, when top
management makes a commitment to shifting the culture in ways that
accommodate, motivate, and empower all employees. The ultimate goal is
for everyone to grow and develop, to be effective and productive, to
interact to create a synergy that spark innovation and commitment. But
anywhere in the organization can have an influence toward change.
Wherever you are on your career path, you can accept a leadership role
in this kind of change. 

The most powerful change starts in the basic cultural elements:

.   new values that build respect for all kinds of persons and that
build trust - a high value for diversity

.   new stories about new kinds of heroines and heroes that become the
basis for new myths and legends

.   new kinds of rituals, ways of doing things, and ways of interacting
with each other

.   new values of ceremonies that recognize people for their actions and
attitudes that value diversity

.   new kinds of symbols and slogans that touch people and communicate a
valuing diversity worldview

Culture change is the basis for all other organizational change. Lasting
change must come from inside the organization. Role modeling and
persuasion are the best methods, while coercion doesn't really work at
all. When key leaders in all areas and at all levels become committed to
change, this critical mass will bring along most other employees.

Tolerance or appreciation?

The concept of appreciation is at the core of valuing diversity. For
years Americans have been struggling toward tolerance for divers people
and groups in our society, and many have not yet achieved a feeling of
tolerance. Yet mere tolerance falls short of what people must feel
toward one another if they are to work together in innovative,
productive teams. The type of cooperation and collaboration that creates
synergy is based on mutual respect and appreciation.


Freedom to be authentic

Every person and every human culture needs to express who they are. The
strong desire of many former communist countries and ethnic groups to
claim a separate culture reflects this universal need. When groups unite
to achieve certain common purposes, they can greatly increase their
power. But when they can't find ways to accommodate cultural differences
and blend them into a group strength, they lose their joint power. At
the corporate level such groups may simply lose the opportunity to
achieve greater goals, but as the societal level, the may deteriorate in
anarchy and bloodshed, as happened in Los Angeles riots and Bosnia.

Whether in national culture or a corporate culture, people are more
productive and enthusiastic when they have freedom to express their own
values and determine their own lifestyle. Inclusion applied through
commerce and civil law will be both beneficial to business and society.
The most effective organizations learn how to combine and balance the
drive for individual freedom and achievement with the drive for
belongingness and group affiliation. And they focus on building and
maintaining trust, the essential ingredient.

James Khan (Global Citizen, currently residing in the U.S.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Vittorio Bertola [mailto:vb@vitaminic.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 4:10 PM
To: j.oppenheimer@att.net
Cc: atlarge-discuss@lists.fitug.de
Subject: Re: [atlarge-discuss] First Things First Re: [atlarge-discuss]
Vittorio Bertola's candidation statement

On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 16:15:55 +0000, you wrote:

>I do wonder if some peoples' interest in "geographic 
>diversity" in this forum at this point and time, is a 
>way of sabotaging this board, ie creating a potentially 
>less effective board in the name of political 
>correctness.  

Well, I refuse to believe that intelligence, honesty or skills are
concentrated in any single country of the world. You seem to think
that the US candidates in this election are as a whole more
intelligent, more honest and more skillful than the non-US ones - and
I really, with all due respect for everyone, do not agree.

If what you mean instead is that having non-US people in the panel
could raise the importance of issues such as internationalization or
translation in other languages, and lower other ones that are more
important to an American point of view... well, you cannot build an
organization that wants to represent the global Internet community,
and then run it only from an American point of view. You seem to
complain about the fact that a panel more geographically diverse could
have more different opinions in it and thus require more time to take
actions - but that's exactly what democracy is about. Democracy is by
nature slower than dictatorship, but you cannot fight ICANN's lack of
democracy and representativeness by opposing another lack of democracy
and representativeness, even if it was more effective in the short
term (and I don't think so).
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a]
bertola.eu.org]<------
----------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/
<--------------------------

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