Leading Diversity for Competitive Advantage: The Twelve Strategic Competencies

by Peter Linkow

Overview

Despite investing billions of dollars, the world's institutions are making scant progress toward the promise of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The central cause: top leaders lack the means to construct and implement comprehensive diversity strategies that are responsive to the unique circumstances of the organizations they helm.



Leading Diversity for Competitive Advantage: The Twelve Strategic Competencies provides the evidence-based strategic models, methods, tools, and templates that top leaders require to create equity and inclusion and drive sustainable diversity competitive advantage in talent and customer markets. Peter Linkow, who has devoted his career to the study and practice of diversity and business strategy, delivers the full range of competencies that top leaders need to guide their organizations to strategic diversity success.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646638352
Publisher:	Koehler Books
Publication date:	11/15/2022
Pages:	504
Sales rank:	987,810
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

Peter Linkow is the founder and chief executive of Lead Diversity, which provides consulting, research, and content development on diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy and leadership. He was previously president of WFD Consulting, a global diversity and work-life consultancy, and CEO of two organizations serving people with cognitive and mental disabilities. For the past twenty-five years, Peter has consulted, written, and spoken globally on business strategy, change management, and diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School as well as graduate degrees in educational policy and psychology from Harvard and Indiana Universities respectively. Peter earned his BA from DePauw University.

Editorial Reviews

2023-02-09
Linkow delivers a comprehensive strategy manual for increasing diversity in the workplace.

In his nonfiction debut, the author aims his dissection of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace at “boards of directors; the C-suite; strategic business unit and function leaders; top diversity, human resources, human capital, and talent leaders; and those emerging leaders who wish to leave a diversity legacy engraved in the stories of their lives.” Linkow, the founder of a DEI consulting firm, views this top-down approach as essential, as he believes that successful DEI initiatives are the product of leadership commitment. Linkow comments that “diversity strategy in many organizations is more an agglomeration of bright, shiny best practices than a cogent, integrated strategy,” and here he breaks down his subject to provide readers with just such a strategy, built around 12 core “competencies”; notable highlights among these include how to institute inclusion and diversity in your workplace, how to exemplify it through your own leadership, and how to build policies designed to measure your own follow-through and competency. As he points out, considering the changing demographics of the modern workforce, a greater focus on DEI shouldn't be surprising, from corporate policies to language (“If we are going to engage in dialogue that transcends and builds bridges across differences,” he writes, “then we need an arbiter of what language is appropriate and what is inappropriate”). Linkow’s long experience in the field is evident on every page, and his extensive use of graphs and charts is effective, making his big book a surprisingly easy read.

A sweeping and urgent guide to corporate DEI advancements.

Kirkus Reviews