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Increase Your Personal Diversity and Enhance Your Business Value - By Joe Santana

Often, when people hear about increasing diversity and inclusion, they think of companies’ efforts to address workforce, workplace and marketplace needs in a competitive manner. But individuals can derive major benefits by increasing their personal diversity, and thus their personal competitive advantage, something that’s crucial in today’s economy. Here’s why:

  • First, any specialized career can lose demand, or go away, never to return.  According to Amy Kahn, Director of Diversity at the University of the Rockies, a graduate school specializing in social and behavioral sciences, “A subject matter expert in today’s workplace will soon find their expertise outdated.” Just as new technologies create new jobs (like desktop computing) or business models (like outsourcing relationship managers), other jobs disappear for good. This cycle of job emergence and disappearance is faster than ever, and it’s safe to assume the pace will only accelerate. Applying your talents in an overly narrow fashion can leave you high and dry when a shift comes.
  • Second, your ability to drive value is linked to your ability to innovate. As Frans Johansson notes in his book The Medici Effect, innovation generally comes at the intersection of different types of ideas. If your personal knowledge and/or the knowledge of your personal network are limited to the same subjects as your colleagues, your fund of available ideas shrinks. You can take solace in affirming each other’s views, but little that’s new is likely to surface.
Today, the best strategy is to be as broadly value-driving and portable as possible: for example, a college professor who can repurpose herself as a corporate consultant or executive, or an executive who can transition into academia. Maximizing personal diversity is crucial to enabling these types of transitions. So how can you increase your personal diversity and, by extension, your career options and value? It’s surprisingly easy. Here are five actions you can take to get started right away:

1. If you are in school or planning on going back to school, explore courses that offer many options instead of a narrow path. Says Kahn, “Those who are best equipped to serve modern organizations will be armed with a network of influence mixed with the ability to manage in the midst of change.” If your career’s just beginning, pursue a broader curriculum rather than a narrower degree.

2. If you’ve already finished your education and begun a career, start to picture yourself as a product or service provider. Says Pamela Mitchell, author of The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention, “Stop thinking of yourself as a static job title and start thinking of yourself as a collection of skills and bodies of knowledge.” Mitchell notes that an attorney who prepares defense strategy with clients, creates legal briefs and tries cases in court is employing strategic, writing and presentation skills, augmented by knowledge of the law and the court system. An economics professor who develops a lesson plan, elaborates on his theories in papers, and teaches classes is applying the same set of skills. Either of these people can build their value driving capabilities by adding other skills applicable to their existing bodies of knowledge (for example, group discussion facilitation) and/or acquiring new knowledge (like learning a new language). Always attempt to increase your value by diversifying your skill set, knowledge base, and options for application. “Separating skills from bodies-of-knowledge broadens your range of options and developmental opportunities,” says Mitchell.

3. Wherever you are in your career, plan to continue building a network that constantly enables you to add skills as well as knowledge and options. Make your online and offline networks as broad and inclusive as possible. Seek out people with different skills and bodies of knowledge than you possess. Kahn advises: “Expand your circle of friends, colleagues and associates by intentionally exposing yourselves to others. Attend conferences where you meet and network with different professionals and focus on helping leverage your collective capabilities. Look for strength in others and focus on how you can work together better. Recognize strengths and hone in on ways to capitalize on the value of these strengths. Tap into all the variety and qualities of talent around you.” Kahn also advises continuous formal education to acquire more skills and knowledge whenever possible.

4. Always look for roles that enable you to derive maximum value from who you are and what you’re becoming, instead of trying to fit into pre-determined roles. Says Mitchell, “You can either look for a job…or create a role that uses who you are.” Constantly review your skills, knowledge and options. To find the best applications, Mitchell advises asking yourself, “How are these combinable in different ways and who would benefit from your services?”

5. If you find that one job cannot contain your skills and knowledge, consider developing a portfolio career. “One job may not fully utilize all you have to offer or develop all aspects of your talent and/or network,” says Mitchell. “The answer is having a portfolio career comprised of more than one role which you create for yourself via various combinations of your skills and bodies of knowledge.” For example, you may be a speaker, writer and executive around one or more bodies of knowledge. So rather than leaving some skills and knowledge dormant, continue to develop and express them via one or more roles.

Corporate diversity and inclusion efforts are good business, and personal diversity efforts are good for individuals. Your individual efforts are the best way for you to develop unique, value-driving capabilities and set yourself apart from the crowd in today’s highly-competitive, rapidly-changing global business environment. As Mitchell puts it, “homogeneity is out, diversity is in!” This is as true for people as it is for organizations, so diversify yourself.

Joe Santana is Senior Director, Diversity for Siemens USA, and a member of the INSIGHT Into Diversity Editorial Board.

Originally published in our December 27 issue (Winter 2012).
 
 


INSIGHT Into Diversity