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Managing diversity: organizational change part two: managing diversity--third in a series of five articles.

Article Excerpt
The previous article in this series on managing diversity and the camp industry discussed the primary challenge facing any diversification effort is organizational change. The second article in this series described the pivotal role of a leader in a change effort (and indeed if a leader is not the right person to lead a specified change effort, he or she should place somebody in charge that does have both requisite skills and motivation). The third article stressed the need for organizational evaluation and assessment prior to initiating a change effort. This current article builds upon the ideas presented in the earlier articles and offers some suggestions regarding organizational change for the ultimate goal of participant diversification. If a camp has a qualified staff person leading its diversity effort and has performed a diversity audit/assessment, the camp is now prepared to foster diversity within its programs and among staff and campers.

Internal Versus External Forces Changing demographics is but one of the many challenges confronting camps and other organizations. Other challenges include competitive pressure from other youth-serving agencies, changes in parental expectations, and technological advancements. Specific examples include changing state and federal regulations for young workers, fewer employees as a result of higher paying jobs elsewhere, and competition from other organizations that offer summer programming. Thus a camp that is intent on participant diversity will still face other external challenges that must be managed concurrently (all illustrations adapted with permission from Kilburg, R. 2000. Executive Coaching, Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association-see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1 OMITTED

At the same time a camp is facing external challenges, there are a myriad of internal problems that can act in tandem with external forces to create a damaging downward spiral. Some of the forces include co-worker conflict, a lack of mission clarity, weak or inadequate leadership, deviant norms, general workplace apathy, and/or a lack of skills and/or resources necessary for completion of a job. Imagine a scenario in which a camp is faced with a sudden negative outside force for which the director lacks sufficient skills, and the staff members are overloaded with work and are fighting among themselves. Will this camp be able to generate solutions and cope with the external force? A camp administration that recognizes diversity issues rank high on a list of challenges may still have other innumerable internal problems that prevent it from anymore than a mere cursory-and therefore predestined to failure-change effort. (See Figure 2.)

FIGURE 2 OMITTED

Figure 3 demonstrates the combination of internal and external forces that assault...

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