Services

This interactive working session for senior management, conducted by Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr. and/or one of our senior consultants, connects the Strategic Diversity Management Process™ to the organization’s mission and bottom-line business objectives. Participants work in groups to apply the principles identified in the Executive Briefing or Process Orientation session to the specific needs, interests, and priorities of the organization.

Executives engage in an internal and an external Envrionmental Scan that enables leaders to see the clear connections between their ability to meet their challenges facing their organizations and the need to develop diversity management capability.

Executives create a picture of the organizational culture (from their perspective) through an Armchair Culture Audit. This is an abbreviated culture analysis to aid leadership in a look-see of culture-present to culture-future. Armchair audits are most commonly necessitated to aid an organization in gaining leadership buy-in and ownership, to envision prospective changes that might be necessary to develop and implement a successful and sustainable diversity initiative, and to consider what types of supports and hindrances might be at work in the culture, either real or perceived. It can also serve as a useful baseline should the organization wish to undertake a more comprehensive Culture Audit, comparing leader perceptions of culture against employee perceptions.

Following the Armchair Audit, executives take a first pass at indentifying the driving assumptions that underpin their belief about what makes the organization successful and how those assumptions manifest in organizational culture. They then develop an effective strategy to create the culture required to achieve their organizational aspirations.

The session:
 Establishes the goals and objectives for a corporate-wide diversity management strategy
Engages particpants in an analysis of the internal and external forces, including competitive advantages and neccesities, that determine changes required to meet business challenges
Engages participants in an “armchair” cultural audit process to gain an understanding of their views of organizational culture and its impact on the diversity management process
Identifies specific drivers (underlying assumptions) that frame the development and implementation of organizational systems, policies, practices and behaviors
Identifies the culture required for the diversity management strategy to be sustained
Ensures plans for the initiative are supported by the culture.

Enables the group to leverage the organization’s unique diversity management oppotunities.