About the Book
Organisational appetites for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) have never been more acute. But how can these new efforts, which often call on old strategies, now result in better outcomes?
This book deconstructs and rebuilds the fundamental concepts of inclusion to reclaim their transformative potential for DE&I practitioners and the organizations they work with.
Organizations of all types are making unprecedented investments in unconscious bias training, diversity recruitment, and anti-racism education. Words like belonging and equity are on the list of aspirational outcomes for these efforts, but the pathways to those goals are unclear because their implementation has been reactionary, supplemental, and in too many instances cosmetic rather than systemic.
In Reconstructing Inclusion, Amri Johnson, CEO of Inclusion Wins, explores why that reactionary stance persists and provides a framework for designing a systematic approach that empowers all stakeholders in these efforts-everyone-to thrive.
In deconstructing and rebuilding inclusion's most fundamental concepts, Johnson illustrates an "Inclusion System" that outlines the conditions critical to inclusion becoming normative-accessible, actionable, sustainable, and positively contributing to the organizational mission.
Reconstructing Inclusion offers a guide to better understanding the historical context of inclusion, a rethinking of the efforts organizations are undertaking now, and an actionable, robust approach to carrying this work into the future.
About the Author :
For more than 20 years, Amri B. Johnson has been instrumental in helping organizations and their people create extraordinary business outcomes. He is a social capitalist, epidemiologist, entrepreneur, and inclusion strategist. Amri's dialogic approach to engaging all people as leaders and change agents (most recently at the research division of Novartis, as Global Head of Cultural Intelligence and Inclusion) has fostered the opening of minds and deepening of skillsets with organizational leaders and citizens enabling them to thrive and optimally contribute to one another and their respective organizations.
As CEO/founder of Inclusion Wins, Amri and a virtual collective of partners converge organizational purpose to create global impact with a lens of inclusion. Born in Topeka, Kansas (USA), Amri has worked and lived in the US, Brazil, and currently lives in Basel, Switzerland, with his wife Martina and their three kids.
Review :
"""Amri Johnson has gifted us with a worthy exploration of the current state of DEI work . . . He recognizes the need for individual awareness, collective action, and structural change, and as an accomplished professional who has worked both inside and outside of organizations, he shows us tangible ways to get there. This book is a powerful resource for anybody who is looking at forging pathways to inclusion and belonging.""
—Howard Ross, author, Everyday Bias and Our Search for Belonging
""Reconstructing Inclusion is an invaluable input for leaders who want to go beyond normative approaches to DEI and people issues in organizations, and create substantive and sustainable change . . . In a polarized society ridden with a focus on human sub-groups and the divisions between them, this book centres humanity as a whole without losing sight of the need to address racial and other forms of social injustice.""
—Sukhvinder S. Obhi, Professor of Social Neuroscience, McMaster University, Canada
""It's hard to keep up with the abundance of books being published on DEI. But don't miss this one. Amri Johnson writes as a friendly critic inside the DEI movement. He beautifully weaves together his story as a Black man with his experience inside a massive pharmaceutical company and shares rich insights about what needs to change in DEI.""
—David Livermore, author and leading authority on cultural intelligence
""Amri Johnson offers a call for practitioners to break the cycle of waxing and waning and not advancing DEI in the ways we desire. This means being in community to co-create our DEI vision, and being dedicated to changing our methods and patterns of behavior . . . I highly recommend this book especially for DEI practitioners who want to be included and inclusive in affecting accessible, actionable, and sustainable organizations through diversity, equity, and inclusion.""
—Carla Carten, PhD, MSOD, Interim Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Mass General Brigham
""Any leader who is committed to fostering a culture of inclusion needs to read this insightful and paradigm-shifting book. As strategic as he is pragmatic, Amri Johnson takes us on a critical journey that will leave any leader rethinking how to sustainably make manifest true inclusion at work.""
—Susan MacKenty Brady, Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Chair for Women in Leadership and Founding CEO, Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership
""Reconstructing Inclusion took me on a journey of exploration and learning. It allowed me to be curious about my personal views about DEI whilst allowing other views to be listened to and explored. The non-binary approach taken brings layers of the subject into view and allows one to peel them away one by one and then put them back together again.""
—Petra Battersby, FCIPD, Chief People Officer, Envision Pharma Group
""Reconstructing Inclusion is a strong message for global organizations who are interested in truly advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in a meaningful way. Amri Johnson's assertion is that deconstructing inclusion allows for expanding structures beyond reducing terms as simply effective vs. ineffective. Instead, addressing the complexity organizations should face to really move the needle. His book clearly amplifies what needs to be done to ensure measurable outcomes and success.""
—Michael Hyter, President and CEO, The Executive Leadership Council (ELC)"
