Critical Inclusion Leadership

Since June of 2013, we’ve been talking about The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan with an emphasis on how SDMWVBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Minority, Women, or Veteran Business Enterprise) business owners might benefit from their insights. Chapter eight discusses four areas of competency leaders must master…

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Colorful Arms

Spending some time on Facebook last week, I saw that a photographer friend had re-posted a photograph that really caught my attention: This reminded me that supplier diversity has its roots in the equal opportunity legislation of the late 1960s and early 1970s that we’ve written about in the past. In 1971, federal agencies were directed to…

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We’re Certified, Now What? Revisited

In speaking with newly certified  SDMWVBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Minority, Women, or Veteran Business Enterprise) business owners or those seeking certification the question “What does certification do for me?” is often asked. In most cases, just being certified does not help grow your business; it is how you’re able to market your certification and utilize programs…

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Certification Alphabet Soup (or fun with acronyms)

In the world of diversity certifications there are many acronyms, some more familiar than others. This alphabet soup contains WBE, MBE, DBE, SBE, VBE, DSBE, HUB, LGBT and that’s only half of them. Some of the abbreviations are shared by government and third-party certifiers (MBE, WBE) and others are specific to the Federal government (8(a),…

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Diversity Dividends: Reducing Bias

Bias is the very human and perhaps unfair preference for or dislike of something. Its synonyms include prejudice, partiality and favoritism.  At the heart of the original equal opportunity movement, laws and regulations were enacted to mitigate conscious bias in American education, employment and procurement opportunities. As SDMWVBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Minority, Women, or Veteran Business…

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Inclusion Dividends: Taking the Initiative

During the summer, we talked about The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan, intending to relate the book’s concepts to supplier diversity and how we SDMWVBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Minority, Women, or Veteran Business Enterprise) businesses might be able to incorporate this information in our organizations.…

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Shameless Request for Votes!

We’ve applied for a Mission Main Street℠ Grant in Chase’s program that will award twelve (12) small businesses with grants of $250,000 in January 2014.   You can learn about last year’s program and listen to interviews with last year’s winners. Abator, always a WBE, knows getting certified as diversity owned can be challenging for small businesses. And…

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Similar, But Not the Same

Having researched the UCP (Unified Certification Program) for all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands; I thought I had a pretty good handle on what to expect from the certification process. Recently though we’ve experienced some new quirks as we’ve sought certification in additional states as a part of our…

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Lean In and the Chaos Imperative

By now it is probably evident that we’re a bunch of readers here.  This time we’re taking another break from The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan to talk about Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work and Will to Lead and The Chaos Imperative: How Change…

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Inclusion Dividend: Business Case

In late June, we talked a bit about The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan, with the intent of relating its concepts to supplier diversity; and, how it might apply to us as SDMWVBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Minority, Women or Veteran Business Enterprise) businesses.  Chapter two’s…

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