10 Leadership Strategies for Sustainable Diversity

Posted by on February 20, 2011

[posted from Community Development Banking listserv]

Greetings from Stockholm, Sweden, for those of you might wonder what the job opportunities are for former VP’s of Community Development when they move to Europe.

I’ve recently released the first two of what will be a 6-handbook series on diversity from business/leadership/organizational development perspectives: 10 Leadership Strategies for Sustainable Diversity, and 10 Financial Arguments for Sustainable Diversity.

The series is a compilation of lessons learned over 20 years, ranging from the earliest days of our regulatory compliance work as the US banking industry was trying to figure out what the HECK was Congress thinking when they passed FIRREA in 1989, to having started community development departments at two California banks, to high-level consulting work at Deloitte & Touche from 1996-1999, to … Sweden … with the highest percentage of Iraqi refugees outside of the Middle East, a collective mindset that promotes equality (but it helps if you’re Swedish) and institutionalized discrimination so thick at times you can cut it with a knife. All in a quick-read format of 40 pages or less, inexpensive, available globally and even previewable online.

My target audience for these handbooks – and presumably yours – is operational managers, top leadership and even boards of directors. While US managers are in most instances lightyears ahead of other countries’ management in their understanding of diversity’s benefits and challenges, there are still many who aren’t – and those who are just learning. I didn’t have the US market in mind as I wrote this. But as one of the reviewers of my first book, 10 Leadership Strategies for Sustainable Diversity, put it:

“A great introduction to diversity. Simple and straightforward for both professionals and nonprofessionals, it is equally valuable in small offices as it is in major corporations. As an introduction to the issue of diversity in your organization, it’s a great primer!”

Randolph F. Lowe
Former Chairman, California Governor Schwarzenegger’s Committee on the Employment of Individuals with Disabilities, and
Senior Vice President, Corporate Employment and Diversity, Union Bank of California, San Francisco (retired)

(If you’re not familiar with Union Bank of California where Randy served 10 years after leaving the Department of Labor, it consistently landed among the top 5 of Fortune’s Best Companies for Minorities while that list existed.)

Interested in learning more? Or perhaps helping me get the word out? For more information on current and planned handbooks through summer 2011, see http://www.powerof10.eu. There you can click on a cover and learn more about each booklet, preview parts of the first two that have been published – and who knows, maybe you’ll even want to order one or both). Or visit my company website at http://www.bakerassociates.se for more information on my background and work here in Sweden.

Best regards from a snowy Stockholm,
Gary