"In The Elephant and the Mouse, award-winning speaker and diversity and inclusion expert Laura Liswood delivers a thought-provoking and insightful new business guide that explores workplace diversity and offers new ideas for gaining the real benefits from your diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The Elephant and the Mouse refers to the dynamic in organizations that are roadblocks to consciously inclusive success. The Elephant, often dominant group leadership, knows little about the experiences of the Mouse, the non-dominant groups, while the Mouse knows so much more about the Elephant. In diverse workplaces, these two groups live in different worlds. Success will come only if everyone works in a true meritocracy. You learn what may be easy for some to do in their career is much harder for others to do.
In this book, which builds upon Liswood's groundbreaking book, The Loudest Duck, you'll explore the powerful case for diversity, equity, and inclusion and the often-overlooked risks posed by a homogeneous workforce. You will learn the hard truths about why many DE&I efforts fail, millions of dollars are wasted, and why organizations confuse efforts with outcomes. You'll also consider new ways of leading others, with a strong emphasis on tactics and strategies employed by successful Elephant and Mouse leaders, including women leaders."
"Written in the accessible style of Seth Godin and Spencer Johnson, The Loudest Duck is a business fable which offers readers an alternate view of diversity through the use of practical stories and cultural anecdotes. It will explain, for instance, how a culture such as China teaches its children, 'The loudest duck gets shot,' a viewpoint that gets carried into adulthood, while many Americans are taught the opposite idiomatic lesson: 'The squeaky wheel gets the grease.' What you find as a result are two distinct ways of doing business, neither one being necessarily the right way or even the better way. Yet by understanding the viewpoints from which others see the world, readers can understand how better to work with them. The Loudest Duck is a book for managers and executives faced with the productivity and leadership challenges of a heterogeneous, multicultural workplace. It's a book for anyone working his or her way up the ladder in this new corporate world order. It's a book for anyone who belongs to a non-dominant group, be it women, people of color, short people, or employees who don't play golf but whose bosses do."
