Inclusion shouldn’t be just an exercise in compliance mandated by the management, it needs to be part of the digital strategy involving everyone in the organization.
In the digital era, the geographical border, business functional border, the company border, and even the profession border is blurred; indeed, the world becomes more hyper-connected, interdependent, and thus, it needs to become more inclusive.
Cognitive logic: Inclusion starts with a thought process, a mind, besides the conventional understanding of diversity based on gender, race, age, etc. Inclusiveness nowadays is more about how to embrace the cognitive difference, diversity of viewpoints, the color of character, and personal charisma. Each cognitive mind has a perceptual difference. Without inclusion, cognitive gap is one of the serious problems because it disconnects people or things which are supposed to be interconnected and causes blind spots for either making sound judgments, defining the real problem or solving it smoothly.
Each of us is a complex blend of contrasts: positive and negative; intuitive and logical with imperfect judgment In the team setting, to enhance cognitive logic and embrace inclusion, it’s critical to close the gap between subjective perception and objective perception, integrate thoughts to address ignorance, minimize assumptions for making sound judgments, reinventing new knowledge, or developing creativity. So people with cognitive differences need to be open enough to embrace other minds’ perception, always understanding things via different angles, so we can raise the total cognitive threshold by continuous learning from each other, be inclusive, and practice a variety of thinking and reasoning to solve problems collaboratively.
Linguistic logic: In large complex organizations, there are multiple functional dialects, people get divided because they don’t know each other deeply, and sometimes their communication get “lost in interpretation.” To engage, you have to communicate and understand each other empathetically, even better if all parties can speak the language of business. The accurate expression and clear communication are only possible if embedded logic is clarified to convey your thoughts with the style fitting for your audience.
Logic is a significant part of the language. Language is a method of communicating thoughts; remember, actions or words are said to be the second order. Technically, you cannot conceive of a natural language without logic, and you certainly cannot conceive of an artificial language like a programming language or a mathematical language without logic. Thus, always clarify logic, convey thoughts with the language that people understand; the communication can be specified to share invaluable information, and abstract enough to unify and decide; be inclusive enough to drive desired changes.
The logical “inclusion” scenario: Inclusion only happens when the ‘inclusiveness mindset’ is available with top management. Creative energy from top down can rejuvenate the culture of innovation. The talented leaders must work with the right mindset to recreate an inclusive organization with every dip in the business life cycle, to clarify inclusive logic and build inclusion.
A Engagement: To engage, you have to communicate to each other empathetically. Shifting a team’s focus to bigger picture objectives is key and that managers are the owners of this messaging to motivate teams. Any sort of engagement initiative needs to be authentic as opposed to manipulative and have the goal of creating a win-win outcome for varying shareholders and society at large.
B Retention: There must be some compelling reason of personal interest for a person to go to work, and there must be reasons for staying and delivering high productivity. People are more likely to stay if they are engaged, empowered to use their talent for making contributions. Develop the people, make people feel more comfortable with the digital new normal full of chaos, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Foster integrity, trust, and transparency, to nurture the culture of creativity.
C Loyalty: Treat employees as customers; they become loyal when they have experienced something out of the ordinary, with a strong feeling of support or allegiance.
D Productivity/Creativity. Develop the people and you develop the organization, leverage behavioral principles to understand how to motivate effectively, and integrate all crucial success factors into business competency. Those who elicit the high performance from others understand productivity is the outcome of how you engage an employee or a group of employees.
Inclusion shouldn’t be just an exercise in compliance mandated by the management, it needs to be part of the digital strategy involving everyone in the organization. There are plenty more questions people should ask to illustrate the importance of inclusion; it’s important to have an intentional strategy in place to not only increase awareness but to link the power of inclusion to key business initiatives and team effectiveness. Inclusion needs to be strongly supported by management teams, all levels in the organization can reap the benefits of personal and professional growth.
