Leadership in Action: Leveraging Diversity: It Takes a System

Conclusion

At a recent diversity conference at CCL, virtually all the participants—researchers and experts in the field of diversity as well as business leaders—agreed that most organizations value diversity. However, the participants also agreed that because of competing priorities, lack of time to devote to the issue, confusion about how to deal with diversity, and misguided approaches to diversity training, most organizations do not take full advantage of their diversity. Because of this, creative energy suffers, and creativity is critical to success in a competitive business environment.

Thus one of the major challenges that leaders and organizations face is to undergo long-term, systemic change that establishes functional diversity: respecting, ...