ABSTRACT
Navigating the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) characterizing the business world in the 21st century requires a new paradigm focused on an integrated bottom line – planet, people, and profit (PPP). Global trends include resource scarcity and growing inequities in income, wealth, education, and healthcare. Stakeholders are demanding that organizations address systemic barriers to promote justice and equity within organizations and across broader social systems. Transformational change requires leadership to analyze internal and external systems through a social and environmental justice lens.
Despite a growing focus on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, the imbalance of power remains within our institutions, organizations, and social systems. To move the needle, leaders can turn to Driving Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, which explains developing a North Star vision and creating a strategy to redesign organizational process and systems, as well as leveraging tools for data-driven decision-making. It presents a framework to build an inclusive organization as well as a model to engage and support senior and middle management beginning the process of capacity building and systemic change. By layering in AI and other technologies to support data-driven decision-making, the book guides leaders in navigating their organization’s journey along the maturity continuum to achieve their North Star vision of becoming a just and equitable organization. The book also helps managers to:
Assess ecosystems and organizational systems that justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion impact
- Take a deeper dive into transformational and operational components to gain insights on the deep systemic realignment of the North Star vision
- Identify and engage with diverse stakeholders to gain perspective and understand issues crucial for transformative change
- Leverage people-centered design to create a process promoting diversity of voices and to better align outcomes with shared organizational vision
- Use data to drive decision-making and reduce bias by removing intuition from the decision-making process
- Leverage the book's frameworks to drive collaborative systemic change
- Adapt insights highlighted in multiple interviews with DEI practitioners
- Benefit from lessons learned and best practices featured in the book's case studies
This book features a primer, which is a quick reference guide to key terms, concepts, and definitions. It helps to define justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and other key terms, such as unconscious bias, stereotypes, and microaggressions. It also features a toolkit, which includes checklists to help managers lead organizations to realize their own North Star vision.
