Category: Diversity

Black Business Month Books

The books listed in this blog entry should be available at any public library that is not censoring and banning the books people can read and check out with library cards:

Black Faces in High Places: 10 Strategic Actions for Black Professionals to Reach the Top & Stay There by Randal Pinkett.

Black Founder: The Hidden Power of Being an Outsider by Stacy Spikes.

Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business if You’re Not a Rich White Guy by Kathryn Finney. (I read this book at least 2 years ago and reviewed it here.)

It’s About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage by Arlan Hamilton.

Twice as Hard: Navigating Black Stereotypes & Creating Space for Success by Opeyemi Sofoluke.

These books are geared to acing jobs the corporate world for those of us who aspire to the C-suite.

Though I’m not a fan of thinking a corporate office job is the only one you should get I understand and respect that for other people they want to excel in a traditional workplace.

The point is that these authors promote navigating the corporate life on your own terms with skills you can learn that they give you. Linked to how they got ahead from a job like film studio gopher to CEO and from food-stamp recipient to venture capitalist.

I say to you readers: Go for It if this is what you want.

The Power of Potential

This book on How a Non-Traditional Workforce Can Lead You to Run Your Business Better should be required reading.

The author lists four issues:

You hire based on interviews. You think great talent is the secret to a great business. Your managers are “good enough.” You fire your worst employees.

The four wins he details instead are:

Every employee feels safe. Accountability is a tool for growth. Your work has purpose. Customers love their experience.

The author and his father chose individuals with autism as their target employees and built a business around this workforce.

The father and son operate two high-profit car washes in Florida that employ only individuals with autism.

In the author’s note up front:

“If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism.” The quote originates from Stephen Shore, an Autistic self-advocate and professor of special education at Adelphi University.

This holds true for individuals with mental illnesses.

What bugged me about one 3-star review of my first memoir Left of the Dial was that the critic insinuated that recovery was not possible for the majority of people with schizophrenia.

In fact, individuals diagnosed with and living with SZ are a diverse crowd. In a way there’s a spectrum in how the symptoms of the illness manifest in each person.

Not everyone hears voices who has SZ. Others have only paranoia or delusions.

The four wins for the car washes that have autistic workers hold true across disabilities and business types.

Coming up I’ll devote a blog carnival to writing about how having a mental illness can be an asset on the job.

DEI and Disability Inclusion

If you read one DEI book first read Inclusion Revolution by Daisy Auger-Dominguez. It’s the complete guide to the topic.

My favorite DEI book though is the Antiracist Business Handbook by Trudi Lebron. She owns a million-dollar coaching and consulting business. Lebron believes in Just Commerce–a better alternative to Conscious Capitalism.

I’ll talk about DEI in terms of inclusion for individuals with mental illnesses. In order to thrive in an inclusive workplace you first have to get the job to begin with.

In New York City there’s a Queer in Every Career Job Fair. Why isn’t there a (mental illness) Peers in Every Career Job Fair? Or what I would title a Wheels-to-Work Job Fair for those of us who use wheelchairs?

One DEI book I have on my shelf to read talks about DEIB–diversity equity inclusion and Belonging. Again feeling like you belong in a particular workplace is predicated on getting a job with a savvy company that knows promoting diversity and individuality increases sales. The well-being of staff flourishes too.

Michelle T. Johnson easily 10 years ago wrote the book The Diversity Code. What she said: “Honoring individuality is the highest form of achieving diversity.”

In coming blog entries I’ll talk about alternative career paths.

It begs the question: What if you want to work in an office job? Shouldn’t that be an option?

For a lot of us the corporate office environment is not conducive to our mental health. I’m going to talk about getting a job in a public library which I feel should not be overlooked as a viable career.

Jet Fuel for Job Performance

In Working Assets: A Career Guide for Peers I wrote that “Your personality is your jet fuel.”

There’s no better jet fuel to enhance your performance on the job than using your unique perspective to create innovative strategies.

In the chapter Hope for Improvements in the Post-COVID Workplace I reiterated that today more than ever using your personality to find the right career is non-negotiable.

Can you and I afford to settle for less than full inclusion that allows us to show up on our jobs as our spectacular selves?

I’ve come to think that like Trudi Lebron wrote in The Antiracist Business Book “business is personal.” Forming human connections with coworkers and customers is imperative.

We will not thrive at work and traditional capitalism will fail in the post-COVID world if companies continue with business-as-usual.

If we cannot use our gifts and express our individuality on our jobs–two things that help us succeed everywhere we go–then it’s game over.

And the game of capitalism is over in 2022. The economy stalled precisely because the leaders of businesses couldn’t foresee the pandemic coming.

Those of us with the foresight to plan for the unexpected did better.

Peers with mental illnesses would ideally bring compassion for our company’s customers, loyalty to employers who treat us right, and stellar results for the firm.

Surviving and thriving when you have a hardship would give us the ability to persist in using novel approaches to solve a business problem.

The skills and strategies that peers use in our daily lives could indeed be the very Working Assets that will attract a forward-thinking employer.

Coming up a deeper dive into the mechanics of working at a “professional” job.

Using Individuality to Innovate

In Working Assets: A Career Guide for Peers I talked about different types of employment. Giving advice about working in an office as well.

The more I’m reading business books with a 2022 copyright date I plan on publishing a second career book within 2 years.

Issues exist in a lot of workplaces for those of us who are not “white cisgender male” employees.

Studying DEI-Diversity Equity and Inclusion practices covered in the 2022 business books gives guidelines for how to approach hiring and retaining workers who are happy to contribute their talents.

I’m of 2 minds: in Working Assets I advised that an office job is not the only job out there. I told readers to “Think outside the cubicle.”

Yet shouldn’t corporations “get with the program” in how they treat every employee? Enabling all of us to thrive in an office job. Why should we be forced to work elsewhere if we would like to work in an office?

My experience has been that a corporate office environment is not kind to us “beautiful dreamers” who think outside the narrow boxes we’re expected to fit in.

Research proves that companies with multi-racial workers who feel like they belong outperform the competition and skyrocket financially.

Not just the bottom line is what’s important. The wellbeing and financial security of the workers whose bottoms are warming chairs matters more.

Coming up I’m going to write a carnival of blog entries that link what I wrote in Working Assets to the guidelines given in the 2022 business books.

Focusing my lens on workers with mental illnesses.

We belong in a job environment where management recognizes that our individuality will drive innovation and achievement.

The Future is Today

In coming blog entries I’m going to review two cutting-edge how-to-get-ahead-in-business books.

It’s a fool’s errand to fake being someone you’re not to try to get ahead in life. You won’t get ahead unless you act true to yourself. I dream a day when a person doesn’t have to “code-switch” or whatever the term is for acting palatable to be taken seriously.

Any business that does not value diversity of thought, background, experience, and understanding is going to be left in the dust as the century rolls on.

With a Visionary archetype I see the direction society should be going in. And I’ll go in that direction before anyone else does to create the opportunities I want to see for myself and others.

The future is today. To live in the world that we want to see each of us must act collaboratively to create this world.

Already–though my career book Working Assets is set to be published this summer–I have the idea for a second radical career book geared to individuals with mental illnesses.

No business that wants to thrive make money and stay in business can afford to shut out of employment the very people who can ignite profits with our revolutionary thinking about how to design, create, market, and sell a product or service.

In fact, as job seekers we’re marketing ourselves as the ideal worker to come on board. Researching the companies that value diversity, equity, and inclusion should yield clues as to where to pitch ourselves.

In a future blog entry, I will write about the benefits of inclusion specifically. I have ideas for strategies that I will talk about.

In the coming blog entry, I will review the business book Be More Pirate, or How to Take on the World and Win.

The pirate way deserves a careful read in this environment.

Diversity Equity and No Inclusion

In this and coming blog entries I’m going to talk about disability and barriers to employment.

First up in here I’ll talk about my experience having a disability and working at a job.

I say: Good Luck advocating for yourself and others once you’re hired. My story is a tale of Diversity Equity and No Inclusion.

In June I filled out the online application to join the DEI Council. On the form I identified as person living with a disability. My platform I advanced had this 3-part agenda:

Giving employees hardship pay for working during the pandemic.

Creating a one-month paid time off option for staff who had been employed for 15 years.

Starting an internship program for teens and young adults with disabilities.

Readers, I was rejected for admission to the DEI Council. Was it possible that because my goal of economic reparations would benefit every staff person that the members of the first DEI Council rejected me out of hand?

Sadly, the current DEI Council didn’t connect the dots that paid time off would benefit BIPOC staff who experienced microaggressions on the job.

I wondered if a person with a disability was chosen for the second DEI Council.

According to a RespectAbility internet article corporate leaders don’t think about disability when forming policies on diversity. Race, gender, and sexual orientation/identity are examined.

Per RespectAbility: “Disability needs to be a part of every conversation that the business community has about diversity and inclusion.”

Five months later I still can’t get over the fact that the current DEI Council failed to see as I did that economic reparations should be part of the solution.

It was like they rejected me because my platform didn’t focus only on BIPOC individuals.

In the next blog entry in this carnival I will talk about the reality of barriers to employment when you have a disability.