Ian Dodds Consulting’s (IDC) Monthly Best Practice: Aug 2014

By Ian Dodds – The Inclusion Builder

The Power of Inclusion Website is launched: www.thepowerofinclusion.com

It is terrific to be able to announce to you that The Power of Inclusion (POI) website has now been launched. This has been made possible through the digital mastery of an excellent colleague, Rob Browton, who is also a member of the POI team. The purpose of the website is to give people who visit it insights into the enormous business benefits that leveraging the POI offers.

In fact, as regular readers will know, the benefits of diversity are only delivered in an inclusive culture. This is one where people feel:

• Their ideas and opinions are heard,

• They are respected and valued as individuals,

• They are able to perform to their full potential,

• They enjoy great teamwork.

The POI team's key differentiator, from its competitors, is its deep experience of the organisational development (OD) methodology and the behavioural change know-how necessary to build inclusive cultures. Without this experience and know-how, organisations cannot achieve the considerable business benefits that inclusive cultures offer.

As a leading member of the POI team, I have been helping organisations leverage The Power of Inclusion (POI) for over 30 years. I first did so in the early 1980s when I was instrumental in helping a failing chemicals factory in Huddersfield, in the North of England, transform itself from being one of the worst performers in ICI, then the largest chemicals company in the world, to being one of the best. Driving a POI transformation of this kind requires:

1. Long-term strategic effort.

2. Cutting-edge behavioural change methodology; an experience factor which differentiates the POI team from most of its diversity and inclusion competitors. For example, I am an elected member of The NTL Institute for Applied Behavioural Science, the leading body in the world on behavioural change knowhow and practice.

3. The ability to put into practice The Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem, Prof Scott E Page. This involves being able to enable teams to become interactively effective, which is one of the conditions for this theorem to work, and deliver excellence in creative, problem solving.

4. The ability to enable members of the leadership team to ‘pinpoint’ the behaviours they need to role model to drive inclusion and to be able to coach them to be exemplars of them. Prof Ed Schein has shown that leadership behaviour is the most important influence on behaviour throughout an organisation.

5. The knowhow to proof talent management systems, processes and practices to ensure that they are free from unconscious bias.

On the POI website you will find descriptions of three of our great tools, all underpinned by OD and behavioural change expertise that can help you build an inclusive culture:

1. A Maturity Framework and Diagnostic for Inclusion.

2. Our Developing Interactiveness Tool for building great, inclusive teams.

3. Our Creating a High Performance, Inclusive Culture tool

You can also watch our POI videos and read our blogs to gain insights into the business case for The Power of Inclusion and how to make it happen.

Please let us know if you want to discuss leveraging POI with us after visiting the website.

Dr Ian Dodds,

iandodds@iandoddsconsulting.com,

29 July 2014

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