This month’s podcast special guest is Tracye McDaniel, President at TIP Strategies and also this year’s Chair of the International Economic Development Council. She shares why it is so important to assist your local businesses in executing a corporate diversity strategy:

Instead of asking how we train diverse employees in order to succeed and thrive in our organizational culture, a company really should be asking: How do we need to change to make our workforce better? How do we need to change to actually embrace diversity in our approaches and in our culture and in our opportunities? And I think that is a different lens that we really need to focus on because it will build stronger companies, and I think diversity is a value add when it comes to companies being able to compete in this global marketplace. I think that US companies have, like I said, fall short in this area. And I think if we are really going to compete, and our companies are to be stronger in this environment that’s so diverse, we need to look at diversity as a strategy versus a tactical initiative.

It needs to be an embedded strategy in that company’s culture for this to work. And those types of that attitude shift is important because I think it really takes a stake at how companies are going to survive in the future. There are many companies out that there that struggle to reinvent themselves. How do they survive today in this age of total transparency, accountability? It’s a new norm. It’s totally different from the old industrial hierarchy, and that approach to strategy, budgeting, product development, whatever it was. We have to totally look at it different today to be more competitive in this marketplace, and so we can address these shifts that are so fast. And most of the large companies just can’t keep up.

To listen to the full episode of the podcast, use the player below: