The Loudest Duck: Moving Beyond Diversity while Embracing Differences to Achieve Success at Work

Chapter 1

Beware of Noah’s Ark

Two women, two Asians, two people with disabilities, and two African Americans: diversity accomplished—or so we once thought. At some point, corporate diversity came to mean the inclusion of at least two of every kind. Far too many managers and leaders figured that if you crammed a pair of each minority into a company or into a boardroom, you had accomplished the task of creating a diverse work environment.

Nothing, in fact, could be further from reality. We’ve thought long and erroneously that diversity was achieved merely by re-creating Noah’s ark. At least, that’s how the thinking has gone. The push for diversity came to be about numbers, committees, employee networks, and mission statements; strategic plans, tracking systems, business cases, and scorecards. It’s true that in Noah’s ark, those might all be necessary; but we’ve come to find that they are not sufficient.

The problem with this artificial ark is that much of the time, the giraffe looks at the zebra and thinks—consciously or unconsciously—“That animal is just kind of funny looking. He doesn’t look like me. He has a foolishly short neck, silly black and white stripes, and eats what looks like garbage. However, as a giraffe, I have an elegant long neck, beautiful brown and white spots, and eat carefully; only the finest leaves and bark.” And that’s just the beginning of how all of these creatures see each other. The gazelle inevitably thinks that the hippo is ridiculously fat and ...