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The Loudest DuckSummary:The Loudest Duck discusses the constantly changing environment of the work place, and how diversity has been and should be incorporated into it. The principal that many feel about diversity is much like Noah's Ark, an analogy used in the book, where if we could just get two of each in the Ark, we will have succeeded in diversity. As explained many businesses around the world have the idea that diversity as a "must", but while they are “diverse” in including many varieties of people in their environments they are still overlooking the total integration of these people’s differences. Lisa Liswood’s book describes diversity as more of accepting changes and differences. Despite this belief of grouping everyone together diversity is more complicated than that. This “old” approach to diversity including mandatory training, formation of committees and annually spending hundreds of millions hold good ideals and principles but are missing some aspects. Regardless of everything that these businesses are doing to promote diversity they have not been fully successful.Businesses in today’s workplaces deal with many cultural and personal differences that can be challenging to overcome. As the book describes “we are asking people within a diverse population to change their unconscious thoughts, beliefs, schemas, perceptions, role types and behaviors, while acting more consciously among and around others who are not like them.” All this really does is make the work place more complicated. People are unconsciously evaluating others based upon many different aspects from national origin to position or job title, and they are constantly creating these perceptions for others. Liswood calls this bringing Grandma to work. Everyone has their own “Grandma” who is essentially the culmination of everything we learn from our parents, peers, teachers, the media, religion, experience, toys, history, myths and legends. This “Grandma” is what our perceptions are influenced, and given the worlds different cultures and teachings everyone’s is different. The book uses some old sayings to further explain this point. From American culture “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”, where whom speaks up will get attention. The other sayings from Chinese and Japanese cultures “the loudest duck gets shot” and “the nail that sticks out gets hit on the head” suggest that if you speak out and get noticed that you would be punished. In a diverse company in America, the manager would hear the wheel and not the duck because the duck would be hesitant to speak up.These cultures have completely different viewpoints. These different viewpoints are range from things taught by cultures, parents, peers, to our own individual differences from gender to socioeconomic class. Understanding these different viewpoints is essential to the full integration of diversity and it operating smoothly in the workplace. Another major topic Laura Liswood discusses in the book is the dominant and non-dominant groups that are in the workplace. Cornelius Tacitus once said, “The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and accepted by all.” Diversity is similar where small group dare to be different before more join in and then it is fully accepted. Dominant groups in the work place are typically composed of males, the non-dominant groups are made up of women, minorities, and others who are struggling to reach the top. She uses the analogy of the mouse and the elephant to describe these two differences. The elephant, or the dominant, will often go on knowing very little or nothing about the mouse, or less dominant, because they are large and powerful. The opposite is the case for the mouse where they know nearly everything about the elephant in order to impress them and survive in the workplace. The tools, frameworks and analogies in this book provide a new level of awareness and a new understanding of diversity. Diversity itself is not the problem it is how we handle the diversity that affects peoples performance. Diverse businesses can be more creative, more profitable and if they are aware and conscious of whom the individuals working for them are. As Abraham Maslow said “To the man who only has a hammer is the toolkit, every problem looks like a nail.” This book shows that there are many different tools and approaches to dealing with diversity. It is not easy to create a “Noah’s Ark” as this book describes it. There are different approaches to creating a truly diverse environment and this book provides some good ideas and a base to start. Learned/Critique:The Loudest Duck helped me to better understand diversity. Before reading this book I thought of diversity as just mixing up different types of people. I now have a more open concept of what diversity includes and a better idea of how to approach it in the workplace. I think the most interesting part of the book was the comparison between the analogies from different cultures. This was something that made perfect sense, I had just never thought about it like that before. These concepts will be useful during our group work activities and help to explain some of the differences among members. The approach that is suggested will be helpful in dealing with current group members as well as for current and future co-workers. Understanding and knowing how to approach these barriers will ease working with others and ultimately make things come together more effectively. I would recommend this book to others. I feel that the concepts that it promotes are important. It really opened my concept of diversity, and I feel that it can do the same for others. The book was an easy read and I enjoyed the analogies that she used from the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” to the “elephant and the mouse”. They were good examples that are easy to understand and get the message across. The only thing that I didn’t really like was that I felt the book was a bit repetitive. It seemed that after reading the first chapter everything just tied into that and information was just recovered. I understand the need for building a good base for the message I just thought it was repetitive. ................
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