Building on the Promise of Diversity

Diversity is the reality of America today. Whether you let diversity be a drain on your organization or a dynamic contributor to your mission, vision, and strategy is both a choice and a challenge. Building on the Promise of Diversity gives you the insights and skills you need to navigate through simmering tensions — and find creative solutions for achieving cohesiveness, connectedness, and common goals.

Building on the Promise of Diversity is R. Roosevelt Thomas's impassioned wake-up call to bring diversity management to a wholly new level — beyond finger-pointing and well-meaning "initiatives" and toward the shared goal of building robust organizations and thriving communities. This original, thoughtful, yet action-oriented book will help leaders in any setting — business, religious, educational, governmental, community groups, and more — break out of the status quo and reinvigorate the can-do spirit of making things better.

The book includes a deeply felt analysis of the sometimes tangled intersections between diversity management and the Civil Rights Movement and affirmative action agendas . . . a personal narrative that charts Thomas's own evolution in diversity thinking . . . and a roadmap for mastering the powerful craft of Strategic Diversity Management™, a structured process that helps you: * Realize why multiple activities and good intentions are not enough for achieving sustainable progress. * Recast the meaning of diversity as more than just race and gender, but as any set of differences, similarities, and tensions — such as workplace functions, product lines, acquisitions and mergers, customers and markets, blended families, community diversity, and more.* Accept that a realistic goal is not to eliminate diversity tension but to use it as a catalyst to address key issues. * Recognize diversity mixtures, analyze them accurately, and make quality decisions in the midst of differences, similarities, and tensions.* Build an essential set of diversity skills and develop your "diversity maturity" — the wisdom, judgment, and experience to use those skills effectively.* Reflect on the ways you might be "diversity challenged" yourself.