Originally published in the February 2003 Issue of Link & Learn.

During the past two decades I've worked with thousands of people at companies throughout the United States, helping them understand how their views of race, nationality, culture, and ethnicity affect all aspects of their businesses. Over time it became clear to me that the old frameworks for cultural understanding were no longer useful for interpreting the wide range of values and beliefs that characterize our increasingly multicultural society - if, in fact, they ever were.

I began searching for a new approach to cultural diversity management. My search led to the development of the framework that I call "The 10 Lenses" (detailed in my book, THE 10 LENSES: Your Guide to Living and Working in a Multicultural Word; publ. Capital Books, 2001). The 10 Lenses form the basis of a new model for dealing with cultural diversity in the workplace. This model can help you break through the complex realities of a multicultural workforce where people's belief systems and values are shaped by different educational backgrounds, legacies, family histories and personal challenges.

Seeing through different lenses

The 10 Lenses are ten distinctly different belief systems that influence how individuals view and respond to cultural race, ethnicity and cultural differences - patterns I saw time and time again in conversations, movies, newspaper articles, political speeches, employee interactions and human resources policies.

The lenses include:

1) The Assimilationist - who believes that everyone should act like a true blue American;

2) The Culturalcentrist - who believes that a person's race or ethnicity is central to their personal and public identity;

3) The Meritocritist - who is sure that if you have the abilities and work hard enough you can make your dreams come true regardless of race or culture; and

4) The Victim/Caretaker - who believes that because of bias they will never succeed.

The beliefs, values and behaviors associated with the lenses have been confirmed by The Gallup Organization, which conducted a groundbreaking, 4,000-person nationwide survey on The 10 Lenses in 2001.

I like to think of the lenses as a decoding device. They are one of the keys to managing conflict, increasing effectiveness and creating positive change in individual employees as well as institutional systems and entire organizations.

Underlying these "lenses" are some important precepts that you should consider before you implement a next-generation diversity training initiative within your organization. They may seem obvious at first glance - but they have been missing from much of the dialogue about corporate diversity education.

1) Don't ignore the problem.
Among the most arresting figures we gleaned from the Gallup survey were these: 31 percent of survey respondents said they'd been discriminated against or harassed in the workplace based on race, culture or ethnicity. Even more alarming: 24 percent of survey respondents said that as a customer or consumer they had been discriminated against or harassed based on race, culture or ethnicity - and 16 percent of those had boycotted the business or product. Through an understanding of how "lenses" affect employee and customer interactions, you can identify potential sources of conflict before they harm your company.

2) Join the twenty-first century.
Generations of management consultants, human-resource leaders, researchers and journalists have persisted in talking about what whites think, what blacks think, what Asian-Americans and American Indians think. But we all know that beliefs and attitudes differ within groups. Think of the differences between Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, and Colin Powell, for example, or between Bill Clinton and Jerry Falwell. The 10 Lenses moves beyond old paradigms about racism, group-identity politics, and civil rights-era strategies for eliminating intolerance.

3) Recognize "strengths" and "shadows."
Each lens has potential strengths. But each also contains "shadows" - the seeds of intolerance and discrimination. Making your organization more inclusive is not simply a matter of rooting out "bad apples" who are biased against others. With The 10 Lenses as a starting point, organizations can begin to see how even the best, most well-meaning employees inadvertently miss opportunities, undermine their colleagues and put themselves and their companies at legal and competitive risk.

4) Push for top-down change.
We all want to believe we're enlightened. It's natural for senior-level managers who have been responsible for developing and maintaining the current company culture to resist organizational shifts - even if those shifts would create a more inclusive, tolerant and productive company. The 10 Lenses enables you to step back and recognize the "lenses" embedded in your management structure, your human-resource systems, and your product-development and customer-service strategies.

5) Prioritize diversity as a business imperative.
The costs of intolerance, prejudice and insensitivity in the workplace are higher than ever before. For today's global companies, cultural diversity is an enterprise-wide issue spanning law, customer relations, marketing and advertising, sales, human resource management, executive education, workforce training, leadership development, public opinion and consumer research, and organizational transformation. To be truly effective, you need a strategic blueprint for that defines your diversity-related goals and objectives and outlines an enterprise-wide implementation plan.

In our global society, advances in communications continue to connect us technologically with even greater numbers of diverse cultures and individuals. The most successful corporations of the twenty-first century will be those that learn to keep pace with the new multiculturalism, rather than running to catch up with their peers.

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