And these aspects of fairness are what makes inclusion difficult.  Fairness is multiple  We tend to think that fairness is, or isn’t. There is only one way to look at it: something is fair or not.  Have you ever thought that what you see as fair is just not for other people?   It is easy to understand then that when…

Last week, I began asking people what their main challenge with diversity and inclusion was. I am still in the process of asking and gathering answers.  However, one thing appeared quite commonly right from the start. So, I decided to answer that now. I found some people actually struggling to get their head around what these terms…

Last week in my post I talked about how values were not enough to define the culture of your organisation.  Your culture is shown in the behaviours everybody in the organisation exhibit. It is behaviours and actions that transcend your culture.  So, you need to define these behaviours then? Right, easier said than done you…

We hear a lot about organisation culture. For good reasons: companies with a strongly defined and followed culture are just more successful at many levels: attracting and retaining the people they want, more and more loyal customers and so on.  So how do you build a well-defined and followed culture?  Many organisations have formulated a set of values….

This blog post has been co-authored by myself and Michael Broadley. See at the end of the post for contact details. Today’s fast paced knowledge economy places an ever-increasing requirement to support the creative and innovative potential of employees. In this context, a company which can tap into the diverse skills and experiences of its…

Yesterday I posted a quote on LinkedIn. It was about hidden diversity and mostly about cognitive diversity.  I got a lot of comments of people liking this topic so I decided to write a longer post about it today.  When we think about diversity, we think about race, gender, age and mostly characteristics we can see and identify. For sure, we…

We hear a lot about diversity and inclusion, how important it is to be an inclusive organisation.  Yes, inclusion will benefit a lot your organisation. When people belong, are heard, valued, feel every day they are an important part of the group, your organisation performs better, gets better results.  But sometimes, this concept of inclusion can be a bit hard to understand and…

This is the last aspect usually covered in where cultures differ. This one is about the relationship of a culture to its environment in general, to the world around it. There is a strong continuum here from having total control over things to recognising many things are out of our control. The three main parts…

We all have our boundaries, what we will agree to share with others or not for instance. It is normal to have boundaries and when we are not able to keep these boundaries, we feel stressed because we feel our space is invaded. But do you know that acceptable boundaries are mostly cultural? There are…

Each culture has a smallest unit of focus and identification. You may think that it has to be the individual. However, this is the way it is in only some cultures. Other cultures will have the group as this smallest unit. It is called being a more individualistic or collectivistic culture. In individualistic cultures, the…