Archive for January, 2012

24th Annual BBSF Conference, “Manage the Future”

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

The conference presentations and discussions will help you understand the key trends and craft strategies to be successful in the midst of a hypercompetitive global marketplace.  But the highlight of the day just might be the Leap of Faith Workshop and Celebration Reception.  The BBSF undertook an initiative of the same name in 2011 to explore how Darden alumni have navigated difficult and risky decisions in their careers.

Keynote Speaker Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade James Cheng will push participants to face the “brutal facts” about what is ahead, but not to fall into negativity or pessimism about them. He’ll share insights—drawing on his personal experience—of how to do just this. Register now.

How You Can Manage the Future

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Darden’s Black Business Students Forum—the school’s celebrated network organization with the mission and goal of building a stronger community around Darden, UVA and Charlottesville—has gotten ambitious. This year, the organization is launching the 24th Annual BBSF Conference, “Manage the Future,” on February 10, 2012 to answer some bold questions: What lies ahead for professionals entering the hypercompetitive global marketplace of 2012 and beyond? What skills must you have to be successful? What landmines will you encounter? How do you navigate around them? And these aren’t just career issues—they have critical personal ramifications.

The conference presentations and discussions will help you understand the key trends and craft strategies to be successful in the midst of them. But that may not even the most valuable takeaway from the conference. The highlight of the day just might be the Leap of Faith Workshop and Celebration Reception. The BBSF undertook an initiative of the same name in 2011 to explore how Darden alumni have navigated difficult and risky decisions in their careers. When you don’t have perfect information and the stakes are high, how do you step into the future? This workshop will answer that question.

The “master weaver” of the day will be Keynote Speaker Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade James Cheng, who will push participants to face the “brutal facts” about what is ahead, but not to fall into negativity or pessimism about them. He’ll share insights—drawing on his personal experience—of how to do just this. This conference is not to be missed. Register now.

Drive Toward Oneness

Monday, January 16th, 2012

On August 24, 2011, I first posted this blog that I had written for The Washington Post‘s On Leadership series, on our perversion of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. As we celebrate Dr. King today and this week, I feel like this message is worth sending again.

Our perversion of Martin Luther King’s dream

In reflecting on celebrations of the new monument commemorating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I get queasy.I get the same uneasy feeling whenever the King holiday rolls around.The reason is that these become occasions when speakers and pundits routinely tarnish King’s dream.

 Nearly 50years ago, Dr. King spoke of his dream that racial inequality—as well as other forms of inequality—would dissipate with time and people would be judged only by “the content of their character.” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he wrote in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

 Many people think they are leading toward Dr. King’s dream in politics, education, business and other social domains when they argue against separating people into categories by race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.  They worry that highlighting these different social identities is the antithesis of King’s vision.  They say we can’t treat people based on the content of their character (or their qualification for a job or political office) if we remain focused on the color of their skin or the sound of their accent.

 But few things pose a greater threat to King’s dream than this drive toward “oneness.”   Pretending that differences don’t matter is not the same as having differences no longer matter. The push to make us all just human has two benefits for people who espouse it.  First, it’s comfortable because it avoids the hard work of negotiating differences.  People retreat to the familiar place of just assuming that “deep down other people are just like me.”  But a lot happens on the way down to deep.  Peoples’ background and experiences, many of which are shaped by their social identities, make them not at all “like me.”  And that means that if we really want to get to the place in which our differences are unimportant, we must roll up our sleeves to do some work, starting with an honest exploration of how we are different.

Our society is made up of people with vastly divergent experiences, perspectives, backgrounds and talents. Often those differences are defined by the structural inequality that exists today, just as it was in King’s day.  A Gallup Poll of more than 1,300 people nationwide found that 90 percentof whites and 85 percent of blacksthink civil rights for African Americans have improved in their lifetimes. Yet wide gaps between blacks and whites remain in average income levels, and access to housing, education and employment.Similar statistics can be found to make the case for gender and class inequities.And a few sound bites from contemporary debates on gay marriage reveal how far we are from treating people of different sexual orientations equitably.  On the positive side, differences that are well embraced can generate the breakthrough innovation, community cohesiveness, and the commitment to making society extraordinary rather than merely ordinary.

 The drive toward oneness—toward “we’re all just human beings”—tends to discount both facets of difference.  It rewrites the story of structural inequality as one in which the Promised Land has been reached.  We hear things like, “We are post-racial.”  “Discrimination is not as bad as it used to be, and it’s getting better.”  “Young people don’t worry about this stuff the way the older generation does.”

 This denial infuriates people who live a life in which their experience of being disenfranchised is glibly attributed to them being oversensitive.  And it creates privileged but vulnerable people who think they live in a world where everything is really getting better, leaving them unequipped to deal with the discontent of the disenfranchised.  The drive toward oneness also deprives us of the opportunity to come up with new ideas and perspectives because it makes it undesirable, or even dangerous, to express a novel and unusual way of seeing the world.  It becomes bad to be unique.

 Of course, it is possible to foster divisiveness by overemphasizing differences. Poorly executed diversity initiatives like hiring or admitting candidates based too heavily on skin color or gender is not good for a company or school, nor is it usually good for the person of color or the woman who enters the institution.  Overemphasizing social identities can relegate people who are different to being seen (and feeling like) one-dimensional aspects of the people they truly are.  King’s dream comes to fruition only when we neither ignore nor overinflate the importance of social identities in how we engage differences, whether in neighborhoods or schools, businesses or government agencies.

Getting to King’s“content of their character” place requires more than just leveling some metaphorical playing field.  This place of clarity, in which people truly see one another for who they are, comes from being willing to engage—not avoid—our differences.  It comes from letting go of the mindless habit of looking for similarity and commonality, and cultivating the ability to open oneself up to looking for and learning from difference. This is the leadership charge we should hold before us as we memorialize Dr. King’s legacy.

 

UVa Facilities Management Leadership Forum

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

This annual event provides Leadership Tools for Supervisors, Managers, and Directors of Facilities Management. Martin will be speaking on diversity and inclusion, and the principles from his new book, The End of Diversity as We Know It: Why Diversity Efforts Fail and How Leveraging Difference Can Succeed.  

A Conversation on Diversity

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

Please join the Darden School of Business for a conversation on diversity in honor of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. This discussion will explore the challenges and opportunities for fostering diverse and inclusive communities in educational institutions, businesses and larger society. Conversationalists and audience members will address the ways in which we can build on our accomplishments as well as overcome our obstacles as we work towards creating energizing, generative, and just communities.  The point of departure for the conversation will be Darden professor Martin Davidson’s provocative new book, The End of Diversity as We Know It: Why Diversity Efforts Fail and How Leveraging Difference Can Succeed.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.virginia.edu/mlk/DardenPanel.html

University of Virginia Leadership in Academic Matters

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

Leadership in Academic Matters (LAM) is a faculty development opportunity focused on supporting, inspiring, and rewarding those who have demonstrated leadership characteristics and future potential. Sponsored by the Vice Provost for Faculty Development, LAM provides participants with concrete resources, access to expertise, and experiential learning opportunities focused on a variety of topics including teambuilding, negotiation, managing change, strategic decision making, financial management, developing successful networks, and finding life balance in a dynamic and growing career.

Martin Davidson will be speaking on Friday, January 20, from 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. in the South Meeting Room in Newcomb Hall on the principles of Leveraging Difference from his new book, The End of Diversity as We Know It: Why Diversity Efforts Fail and How Leveraging Difference Can Succeed.

For more information, contact http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/administration/faculty/faculty-dev/lam