Recommended Resource – University of Houston’s Diversity Management Certificate Course

Diversity Management Certificate Course
Craig B. Clayton, Sr. PhD
Director and Diversity Strategist
Bauer College of Business
University of Houston

Website Address: www.bauer.uh.edu/degrees-programs/certificates/diversity-management.asp

About the Reference

The Diversity Management Certificate Course provides participants with the tools they need to identify and communicate the business value of a diverse and inclusive work environment. Topical areas covered by the Diversity Management Certificate Course include:

  • Strategic Planning: presents methods for developing the business case for diversity and inclusion relating the impacts of having/not having an inclusive environment to the ‘bottom line.’ Includes training for communicating the business case to executives and board members
  • Human Resources: examines organizational behaviors and biases and how these impact the selection, promotion, and rating processes. Ties these behaviors and the resulting outcomes to the ability of an organization to attract, retain, and motivate diverse talent
  • Training: describes the various diversity and inclusion training types, such as awareness and skills training, and the benefits and challenges of each
  • Marketing and Sales: illustrates the impact of diversity and inclusion on an organization’s ability to market and sell its products and services to an increasingly diverse marketplace. Highlights methods by which affinity groups have and can help significantly improve an organization’s public image and open up markets; all of which increase sales and enhance the ‘bottom line’
  • Procurement: discusses diversity and inclusion of suppliers/vendors and the impact on the organization’s culture and its ability to market products and services to other organizations
  • Production (operations and maintenance): explores the impacts of engaging versus disenfranchising members of the workforce on production. Translates this impact, along with the impacts of undesired attrition, into ‘bottom line’ results

Benefits of Using this Reference

Significant, irreversible forces are flattening our world; bringing all people closer together in ways previously unimaginable. Today’s business environment offers unparalleled opportunities to richly combine the talents of the increasingly diverse workforce for the benefit of increasingly diverse clients if leaders can motivate and inspire each member of our team to contribute the fullest measure of his/her knowledge, skill, and experience to the achievement of mission goals. This level of engagement, however, only exists in accountable, diverse, and inclusive organizations.

While many individuals believe diversity and inclusion is the right thing to do, the Diversity Management Certificate Course helps these leaders express both their convictions and the business value of a diverse and inclusive work environment. By communicating the business value, these leaders earn the support of previously undecided executives and managers who now recognize the untapped value potential diversity and inclusion offers. Having garnered the critical mass of support, the organization can move toward increased accountability, diversity, and inclusion to the benefit of all.

By definition, strategy driven organizations are accountable, acting consequentially to promote the timely accomplishment of the organization’s mission, which subsequently enhances value creation. StrategyDriven Contributors believe accountable organizations will naturally be diverse and inclusive or becoming more so. The tools and techniques taught in the Diversity Management Certificate Course quantitatively illustrate this value relationship making this course a StrategyDriven recommended resource.

Diversity and Inclusion – What Does Your Environment Communicate?

We have often asserted that organizations, like people, act in a manner consistent with its shared values. Subsequently, those ideals in which an organization’s members truly believe manifest themselves in every aspect of the organization’s physical and social environments. These environments are categorically represented as an organization’s:

  • physical environment
  • social environment
  • decision environment
  • positional environment
  • developmental environment
  • recognition and rewards environment


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Additional Information

As with all self assessments, there exists a wide array of tools that can be employed when examining each organizational environment. These tools range from the concrete direct observation to the less tangible surveys and interviews. Recommendations regarding the collection and synthesis of self assessment data can be found in Evaluation and Control Best Practice 1 – Data Synthesis and the Information Development Model.

Additionally, the most valuable self assessments use standards of excellence as their comparative basis and apply a highly critical eye to the organization’s conditions and performance. Information regarding the application of this high level of scrutiny can be found in:

StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 6 – Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 1 of 3

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 6 – Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 1 of 3 elaborates on Organizational Performance Measure Best Practice 1 – Vertical Cascading. This discussion…

  • defines vertically cascaded performance measures
  • explores the reason vertically cascaded performance measures are critically important to the strategy driven organization

About the Contributor

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Decision-Making – Evaluating Decision Options, part 3 of 3

StrategyDriven Decision Making ArticleAlternative selection is the point in the decision-making process where art meets science and academic knowledge meets hands on experience. There is often no one perfect solution or one best solution. Rather, there will exist several alternatives within the acceptable value range from which the decision-maker will ultimately have to choose one option.


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Business Performance Assessment Program Warning Flag 1 – Inwardly Focused Performance Assessments

StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program Warning Flag ArticleOften practiced, it can be highly misleading to base the organization’s performance standards relative only to internally identified best practice methods and characteristics. While at times the organization’s performance does represent the highest standard, it is more likely that individual activities are performed more effectively and efficiently by other organizations, particularly those seeking to improve performance in an effort to compete with perceived industry leaders. Top performers recognize this trap and augment their internal search for effective performance with an outward examination of other relevant businesses.


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Additional Information

The following StrategyDriven recommended best practice is designed to support introduction of external performance information to the business performance assessment process: