INdivisible: RADICALLY RETHINKING INCLUSION FOR SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS RESULTS

by Alison Maitland, Rebekah Steele

INdivisible shows how organizations can bridge the gap between the promise and practice of inclusion. Challenging today’s piecemeal approaches, it provides a comprehensive framework to achieve visible impact for business, society, and sustainability. It shows how everyone – senior leaders, middle managers and individuals – plays a part.Disruptive global challenges and shifting workforce expectations make it more important than ever to get inclusion right. Organizations need to draw on the skills, strengths and perspectives of the widest possible mix of people to find creative solutions and adapt to these changes. When inclusion flourishes, it galvanizes the whole working attracting talent, fueling innovation, cultivating positive internal and external relationships, raising performance, and preparing organizations for the challenges ahead.Yet many companies struggle to achieve these desired business outcomes. Uncertain what inclusion really looks like, what action to take, or how to measure progress and impact, they too often focus on isolated initiatives.New thinking is needed to close the gap. In this powerful book, Alison Maitland and Rebekah Steele provide an effective way forward. They show why inclusion is indivisible from the way organizations operate and the results they achieve. They give solid facts supporting the business case and step-by-step guidance to make inclusion happen. Inclusion has to be more than an afterthought, more than a few questions in an employee engagement survey, more than offering people a sense of belonging, more than focusing only on single-identity marginalized groups, and more than an end in itself. Addressing the limitations of current initiatives, the book shows that an integrated strategy is needed to fully understand, measure and take action on inclusion.Drawing on their unique Inclusion IMPACT® approach, Maitland and Steele present a clear picture of what inclusiveness looks like, compelling case studies, and practical, immediate actions for senior leaders, middle managers and individuals to take.The book contains a whole-system strategic framework, novel measures and scorecards to demonstrate progress and the difference it makes, innovative ideas to design inclusion into the work environment, and a vision of cross-industry collaboration contributing to sustainability and to a more cohesive and caring society. Enhanced with powerful illustrations by J. Rodes Gardner, this ground-breaking book shows how to harness ‘the power of everyone’. It is for all who want to create more human and successful organizations – for the leader with the formal title, and the leader inside each individual.

197 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2020

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t think I was the target audience for this book. Inclusion here is linked to too many political causes and ideals, which ironically excluded me (and in the US I would expect excludes close to 50% of the population). Here’s one example in the first chapter and overview:

“Preserving our planet and tackling climate change is the biggest challenge humans have faced. Inclusion plays an important part in addressing this”

When I think about inclusion, differing opinions that exist in the world on such topics as the “climate emergency”, or on various political agendas, cause big issues for what inclusion means in practice, and when too many political takes are attached with inclusion, as here, it makes it hard to understand what is actually being sold.

Inclusion without qualifiers is generally what is sold as the ideal here, but obviously we need qualifiers. If I think of inclusion practices as a means to creating an ultimate idea bucket that can be plucked from, then for example, obviously terrible, non inclusive, racist ideas should be blocked from that bucket. Basically everyone except the racist can agree with that. Moving beyond the blatantly obvious, one can imagine a spectrum of ideas ranging from obviously terrible to politically grey and every leader/company will have ideas positioned differently on that spectrum and qualifiers entering the picture at different points in the spectrum. For example, the authors here felt that differing opinions on the “climate emergency” were obviously terrible enough ideas to exclude from the idea bucket, but some other company, whose CEO and mission is otherwise inclusive, may feel more like me, that there isn’t a climate emergency, and may exclude the “climate emergency” ideas from the final idea bucket. Can both companies with opposing views be inclusive? If every company and every inclusive directive has different values and qualifiers, it doesn’t really seem like we have anything novel in this inclusion ideal, but more-so something resembling business as usual, that is, selective inclusion based on personal biases. If we try to remedy that by being more strict about what politics are inclusive and what ones aren’t, then maybe we don’t have business as usual, just politics as usual, and this book felt like politics as usual.

This paradox described here isn’t discussed in the book.

[Sylvana Caloni]

Alison Maitland and Rebekah Steele have made a significant contribution to the literature on diversity and inclusion. As they point out the benefits of diversity of perspectives and lived experiences are not captured and have little impact if those perspectives and experiences are not included in the formulation and execution of workplace policies. Through case studies and practical examples and suggestions the authors provide an excellent resource for senior management, middle management and individuals alike. Making meaningful and lasting changes can only occur if all levels are included. Changes are not someone else's responsibility; we all have a responsibility and part to play.

[Liz M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful text! As I’ve read through, it has allowed me to ask questions about how my organization handles inclusion vs. diversity which I think (as the book notes) many people/organizations confuse quite often.

I truly appreciate the ease of this text as content of this nature isn’t typically easy to digest. The breakdown within each chapter of senior leadership, middle management and individual was a unique and very helpful addition.

Would recommend this book to everyone especially those who are aligned to DE&I efforts.

[Dahlia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dry reading, but I saw ways to apply to my role and my workplace. I appreciated the action items at the end of each chapter, and the appendix with all the action items in one place.