Hook me with How

“Greatest Strength” by MTSOfan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Diversity and Multiculturalism are words that are often interchanged. But these words simply describe a community and mean nothing without adverbs attached to them. “Our inclusive multicultural environment” rings stronger to me, yet even this statement tells the reader nothing about how you are creating such an environment. To an immigrant arriving in a foreign country, it might be attractive to hear about the diverse nature of an organization but I believe the hook is in the how.

Diversity statements are a dime a dozen and after a while they all begin to sound alike. Similarly, at least  front facing pictures often reflect a multicultural community. But I would proffer that the cultural competency and/or cultural humility of an organization is what counts. So my question is this: how transparent are we in displaying our cultural competency to our stakeholders and, more importantly, how do we measure and hold ourselves accountable to cultural competency as a systemic framework for continued improvement?