Presentation at annual Diversity Challenge seminar. New paradigm requieres taking diversity work to the next level...

1. Diversity and other
parallel processes – soon
history (?)
Leili Falsafi

2. Who is most likely to be approved?
Who is most likely to be trusted with
power?
Who challenges the least?
Who‟s most like the others (you)?
Who do you want to be?

3. Why do organizations and businesses need
Diversity Challenge?
What real change needs to be made?
What‟s stopping us?
What’s the (real) problem?

4. What’s the context?
Is your organization making (leading or
following) the shift?

5. Paradigm shift
From To
1 Changed structures
1 New individuals in old
structures
2 New elements in old culture 2 Changed culture
3 Result orientation 3 Purpose orientation
4 Corporate responsibility 4 Conscious and systematic
contribution to sustainability
5 “Third wheels”-processes 5 Integrated interconnected
processes
1 Personality selection 6 Skill „matching‟
2 Changing individuals 7 Changings systems and
contexts
1 Industrialized society 8 Information society

6. Analysing organizations; culture
and structure
Decision Discourse
Action Culture & Tools
Structure
Formal/Infor
When? mal
Motives
Where?
Results
Sense of meaning
Individuals’ action are always situated.

7. Analyzing organizations; culture
and structure
 Patterns of action and practice in connection to explicit goals
and motives:
 Individual action; what do people do?
 Individual action in context; what makes people do what they do?
 Which decisions are made by individuals?
 What are the goals and more importantly the motives that define
the individual actions?
 Which tools are applied in the processes where individuals act?
 Which are the discourses?
 Which are the outcomes of the actions? – result and effect
 Which formal and informal structures can be identified in these
actions?
 Etc.
 Which are the system 1 and system 2 actions and
processes?

8. Two system approach to
judgement and thinking
Keith Stanovich & Richard West as applied by Daniel Khaneman
 System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with
little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control
 Highly context dependant
 Emotional
 Expert intuitions and actions
 World knowledge – detect abnormalities and handle
 System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental
activities that demand it, including complex
computations. The operations of system 2 are
often associated with the subjective experience of
agency, choice and concentration – exercising
self-control

9. Consequences of system 1
decisions and judgements
 System 1 is in charge when system 2 is busy or overloaded
 Using system 2 is a strain; requires more self-control
 System 1 generates overconfident judgements (Do you
usually trust your gut feeling?)
 Judgements based on interviews apply system 1.
“…conducting an interview is likely to diminish the accuracy
of a selection procedure…” (ibid. p.225)
 Whenever we can replace human judgement by a formula,
we should at least consider it (ibid. p 233).

10. What‟s stopping us is …
 On-the-surface change easier
 Obligation to, will to or need to change?
 Real change has a domino effect - easier to hook
on parallel processes
 Easier to ascribe the individual the responsibility -
the influence of the system over the individual
always stronger that the other way round.
 That it takes work to make changes in S1 and S2
processes
 Collective organizational systems (1 & 2) – new
paradigm

11. Changing recruitment and
development
 Despite efforts still mainly a social (irrational) selection
process
 The process where subjectivity is most likely to influence the
outcome
 A rigid process that unveils organizational cultural patterns
 The changes that have taken place are adjustments made to
and improvements of „old‟ methods, born and developed in
the industrial society – people and skills were more
homogenous; selection was made within the same „human
pool‟
 How can you use your company‟s need for DC to analyse
your recruitment and development process? Not against the
old paradigm but within the framework of a new one.

12. Diversity and other parallel
processes – soon history ?
What’s your answer?
Yes!
Yes, but…
 No time to focus on that right now
 You can‟t push things. Change takes time. You need to be
patient.
 Can‟t you see how much we’ve changed. 10 year ago…
 A new generation is coming. The winds are changing.
Just wait 10 more years.
 We can’t afford to do any changes now.
 We‟ve already changed so many things. We need to let
things settle. People are stressed and tired.
 We need to secure are results first.
 We can‟t do anything unless the politicians (others)
change first.

13. Thank you!
leili.falsafi@gmail.com
© L. Falsafi, 2013