At Goddard, we believe that the combination of diversity and inclusion
are key contributors to our success and being
spotlighted as one of the best places to work in government.
D&I is also critical to maintaining our leadership and
to achieving our future goals and objectives. Research has
shown that organizations committed to D&I reap enormous benefits
including enhanced productivity through increased
creativity, innovation, employee engagement and team collaboration.
I want to leverage the diversity that exists in our workplace
including both visible and invisible characteristics that
make each of us unique, such as education and veteran status as
well as sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, gender, and
disability status.
Practicing inclusion skills such as conflict resolution,
inviting people to the table, respecting differences, and working
together cooperatively and collaboratively will lead to
better decision making and increased overall performance.
We operate in a complex and dynamic environment
where the pace of change has increased exponentially.
Demographic shifts have made it imperative to focus on D&I for
strategic competitive advantage.
As Baby Boomers age and retire we must find talent from new
sources and create an inclusive environment to attract folks and
to retain them.
I see inclusion skills as a critical leadership competency
for our future and want to ensure that our managers and
supervisors have the skills to effectively manage broadly
diverse teams.
In the coming years I want to focus on developing
managers and leaders with enhanced team facilitation,
communication, cultural competency and conflict
resolution skills in order to effectively manage the evolved workforce.
There is an expanding body of research that shows how focusing
on D&I brings bottom line business and performance results.
For example, in an article titled Making the Business Case
by Marjorie Derven the author showed that during a 10-year period,
the index of publicly traded companies in Diversity
Incorporated's Top 50 Companies for Diversity outperformed the
NASDAQ by 28 percent, the S&P 500 by 25 percent. and the Dow
Jones Industrial Average by 22 percent.
In his book The Difference, researcher Scott Page showed
that leveraging diversity of thought within organizations
leads to breakthrough innovation and ideas.
Our diverse experiences and backgrounds increase the
knowledge capital of work groups which can improve outcomes.
It's like having different tools in a tool box vs.
all hammers to build a house.
Inclusion is the other half of the equation and a necessary
factor to unleash the potential of diversity, and that is why I'm
very excited about our upcoming efforts to move D&I at
Goddard to the next level through our focus on Inclusion.
In closing, I think that the Center's D&I efforts are vitally
important and I encourage all of you to pay attention to what's
going on, to contribute ideas, and, to the extent your
situation allows, to get involved in D&I activities at
Goddard in some way.
Thanks for all of the great work that you do and I look forward
to working with you as we continue our collective and
individual journeys of diversity and inclusion, learning and discovery.