A recent Huffington Post article concludes that there’s mounting evidence that companies with diverse boards of directors are more likely to perform better than companies with no diversity.
“A recent analysis by Credit Suisse of the performance of 2,360 companies around the world over a six-year period found that women add value to corporate decision making. As the analysis described it, the majority group improves its own performance in response to minority involvement — in this case, a male dominated board adding women who are independent and accomplished in their own right. It’s all about the mix.”
The result is a better outcome in a more diverse environment. In fact, the outcome is likely to be greater than the sum of its parts. It’s not only what the women and people of color bring to the table, it is also the fact that they’re at the table that improves the Board’s output. Now, there’s a win-win!
Our brains want to make sense of the world around us. We interpret what’s happening around us through a lens filtered through our personal experiences, values and awareness. This humorous, yet poignant video helps us appreciate how easy it is to fall into diversity stereotyping. Simple lesson – never judge a book by its cover. In 2 minutes, you can test yourself about your diversity lens.
Todays’ team leaders feel constant pressure to innovate and position their products, services, teams and themselves more creatively than ever before. However, in our highly diverse workplaces, cultural and diversity intelligence are critical to success. Diversity extends beyond race or ethnicity, religion, culture or newcomer status to include factors such as geography, language, politics, gender, beliefs, economic status, abilities, skills and interests. A diverse workplace reflects our communities.
Leaders who develop, motivate and empower people to achieve extraordinary results aren’t acting randomly. By aligning diversity intelligence with leadership values, strategies and communication practices to ensure a truly collaborative, inclusive and engaging work culture environment, we can inspire our high performance teams to manage the change that is inevitable with innovation in the 21st century.
“The folks who think business ethics are an oxymoron are probably saying “I told you so,” right about now. …German auto maker Volkswagen AG admits that it rigged as many as 11 million diesel vehicles to fudge emission tests, apparently turning a blind eye to the environmental and health effects.
For all the talk about corporate responsibility, integrity and putting customers first, some companies are still willing to roll the ethical dice when profits are on the line. It’s bad enough that executives at Turing and Volkswagen apparently saw nothing wrong with behaviour that most reasonable people find abhorrent. They also betrayed their own corporate values.”
Do you think the world is waking up to the importance of ethics and appreciating that ethics and profits are closely intertwined?
