Confronting toxic cultures for change

TRANSFORMATION of societal institutions requires and must achieve more than changing the profile of the people that make up the group, of the organisation or community.

- RUDI BUYS

This is, however, the easiest and most widely applied tool with which transformation is measured, namely in terms of the diversity of individuals that make up groups — both in formal systems and informal assessments.

Race, gender, language, religion and a series of other categories are employed to measure progress. An assumption that underpins the approach to use numbers as mark of achievement is that an individual who is from a particular group within a broader category of diversity will represent the totality of that group, its histories, perspectives, capabilities and potential, such as a black or white worker in the category of race who is taken to represent all that comes along with whiteness or blackness in South Africa.

This view may have some merit but does not enable the goals of deep change that underpins the spirit and intent of a country that is committed to leveraging its diversity for a hopeful and promising future.

There is no doubt that only diverse teams can achieve deep and mean-