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Business Control

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Continuous Improvement

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You need the right information to make an informed decision.

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Power and Control

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Leadership is the most important cog

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You can tell that all of these people are different from one another. It only takes an attitude to be a leader. All of these people were leaders and they all wanted different things. It takes leading by example to have people follow you.

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As a leader you have to lead by example. Being a boss you need to do that as well and I think a lot of boss's forget that

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This video might be corny but it is an excellent video to show that if you work together as a team anything can be accomplished.

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Good communication is always key in a business. Even though you might think things are going smoothly you might be wrong

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While you may be under the impression that your company is running smoothly and tasks seem to get completed on time, you could be missing the key element to a productive and enjoyable workplace: communication. Contrary to what you might think, just because your employees follow your orders or your fellow team members do what you ask of them, doesn't mean you're a good communicator.

But if things get done, what's the problem and why does it matter? If you want to be a better leader, have great relationships with others and boost your company's morale and productivity, you need to be able to communicate. If you're the type of communicator who only tells people what they should do, points out the negatives or even disregards the feelings of your employees, you're not communicating effectively. Poor communication can result in departments not coordinating with each other, an influx of workplace gossip, high stress-levels and even dissatisfied clients . Communication is essential if you want to grow a healthy, thriving company.

The art of communication is not a skill that everyone is born with, but you can learn. Here are four ways to improve your communication skills.
Pay attention to nonverbal communication.
We all know that the majority of what we say is not communicated verbally -- it's communicated through physical cues like our body language and our facial expressions. Studies show that 55% of communication is body language, 38% is the tone of voice and only 7% is the actual words spoken.

It's incredibly important to pay attention to nonverbal communication if you want to become a better communicator. Avoid sitting with your arms crossed, slouching or fidgeting and try to maintain a good amount of eye contact when speaking with others. When you master these tips for nonverbal communication, you'll appear more open and your conversations will be more enjoyable for both parties, even if they don't consciously realize it.
Record or watch yourself speaking.
A great way to improve your communication skills is to see and hear for yourself how you actually communicate. You can do this by recording yourself talk. For example, record one of your company meetings where effective communication is important. In fact, studies have shown that many employees leave meetings without knowing what they're supposed to do next, so it's the perfect opportunity to improve and implement your new communication skills.

When you listen or watch yourself back, you'll be able to easily determine the areas where you're lacking in communication. Study how you give instructions; were they easy to understand? Listen to how you answered questions; were you listening attentively and did you provide a clear answer or meaningful advice? Just like professional athletes, watching your performance back will allow you to see and hear your mistakes and improve upon them next time.
Listen more, talk less.
You'll never be an expert communicator if you're always talking and never listening. Being an active listener is one of the best ways to encourage open communication with your employees. When your employees know that you're really listening to them, they won't hesitate to come to you again when they need to talk about an issue.

Focus on truly listening to the other person in a conversation, instead of thinking about what you're going to say next. Ask follow-up questions to show that you're paying attention. When you practice these active listening skills often, listening, along with better communication, will begin to come naturally.
Participate in group communication exercises.
A fun and effective way to improve your own communication skills, as well as the skills of your employees, is to participate in group communication exercises. Communicating is not just about saying the right thing and you can't follow a script. Real communication is all about improvisation. Participating in group communication exercises will not only help you become a better communicator, it will also help you and your team work together more effectively.

You can find a ton of team communication exercises online, such as repeating or following exercises, but you can also stick with a classic game of charades or even play board games like Settlers of Catan where communication and negotiation skills come into play. Whatever type of communication exercise you choose to do, play often and you'll start to see a difference.

Great communication will not only help you become a better leader for your company but a better leader in all aspects of life. Whether you're holding a company meeting, giving a keynote presentation, networking at a conference or maintaining your relationships with clients and customers, spend some time each day practicing your communication skills and all of your conversations will come out on top.

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Four Ways To Improve Your Communication Skills And Why It Matters

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While you may be under the impression that your company is running smoothly and tasks seem to get completed on time, you could be missing the key element to a productive and enjoyable workplace: communication. Contrary to what you might think, just because your employees follow your orders or your fellow team members do what you ask of them, doesn't mean you're a good communicator.

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Recruiting is a big deal. You always want to find the right employee fit for your business or your business will not flourish

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A good article on how to keep your employees happy

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It does not end with receiving a fat-pay cheque or a series of hikes and bonuses. Employee satisfaction goes beyond making money and receiving hikes. Job satisfaction comes from a work-driven yet healthy environment, empathetic mentoring, managerial support and much more.

It is crucial to understand what goes in the long run to retain employees who strive to make your business meet its success.

According to recent studies conducted by industry experts, employees with high job satisfaction are usually more productive, engaged and show loyalty to their companies.

Most hiring managers, HR experts and decision makers can bet on the fact that salary isn't the only component that drives job satisfaction.
Want to know the secrets to making a happy employee or a team of happy employees? Here are 5 guidelines that can help:
1) Including Employees in the Bigger Picture

When employees don't understand how or why their work is going to help the organization, they tend to lose directionality which effects the way they perform. Keeping your employees informed about organizational goals, plans and challenges puts them into the context, helps them understand their role in the bigger picture and encourages them to come up with ideas and inputs that drive business growth.

"When you create transparency, you can harness the full intelligence of the team, move faster and smarter, and achieve so much more together," says Shirley Baumer, Product Manager Software Company Monday.com.

2) Equipping Yourself with Good Managerial Skills
Employees like when their managers motivate them, it helps them do better. The more they feel appreciated, the better they perform.
Following three responses topped the list in a survey that checked 'what do employees like the most about a manager:

Rather than just promoting persons and leaving them to learn managerial skills, top management should ensure that they get the required training to better delegate, motivate and communicate in a fine manner with the team. Show them that they matter!

3) Appreciate Your Employees

Feeling appreciated equals doubled productivity. When employees have a sense of recognition for their work, they tend to perform exceedingly well. Even a little as a 'thumbs up' can go a long way in keeping your employees' spirits high at work. Verbal, written or monetary, however you chose to reward your employee, it is an act of rewarding yourself!

4) Allow Your Employees to Choose

An industry of interest and an industry that drives positive global change are two most important factors in motivating employees to perform better. These two elements beat a high salary in terms of creating happiness at work. When employees see how mission-driven your company is, they feel inclined to be part of that mission. Additionally, if your organization is raising a fund, sponsoring a local charity with their earnings, then employees are more than happy to be part of such a company whose ethical values are crucial to it.

5) The Gateway for Professional Growth

When interviewed, survey participants said that the ability to learn, develop and grow boosted their self-confidence and motivated them to do well for their teams. Employees don't want to feel that there is no scope of growth and knowledge-gaining in a job. It is in the hands of a manager to identify growth areas and put their employees in the spot to overcome challenges and grow with those opportunities. The more the growth opportunities, the more the happiness of working in a given job.

While there are many factors that drive employee performance and satisfaction at work, these elements are the most quickest ways to befriend your employee. Have you lately told your employee how much they matter?

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5 Smart Approaches to Keep Your Employees Happy - Nepali Sansar

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It does not end with receiving a fat-pay cheque or a series of hikes and bonuses. Employee satisfaction goes beyond making money and receiving hikes. Job satisfaction comes from a work-driven yet healthy environment, empathetic mentoring, managerial support and much more.

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This is a good article about taking responsibility. For example if Toyota took responsibility for their defects they would not have had such a big impact in their sales.

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Your business is a direct reflection of you. As you experience personal growth, you will notice your business will grow as well. The two are connected. Even with a lot of experience in business, there are always new things to learn. I learned that from my first mentor. He was a successful chef and explained to me that even the dish will teach you something in 20 years.

I learned what it really means to take 100% responsibility for everything that happens in my business, the good and bad. This is a personality trait called locus of control. This refers to how much you believe you have control over your life as opposed to believing that what happens to you is the result of forces outside of your control.
Identify If You Are An Internalist Or Externalist, And Change If Necessary
If you have an internal locus of control, you believe events in your life are primarily the result of your own actions. For example, when you receive the results of a test, you feel the result is because of your level of ability or effort. If you have an external locus of control, you attribute results to external factors like the teacher or the test.

This is the same scenario with business owners. What happens in most businesses is people take responsibility for the good results and blame others when something goes wrong. I was guilty of this for years. But that's simply a disadvantage - when you blame others, you give away your power and your control over the situation. It's the most common way to feel powerless in your business, and there's nothing worse than that feeling. Many failed business owners blame everything and everyone else but themselves. They will even say, "I did everything I could, but if it wasn't for this or that, I would have made it."
The Best Business Owners Make This Mistake
I am an internalist, and I am responsible for my business, but I didn't understand why there were still some moments when I felt powerless. One of my biggest challenges is with my employees. The hardest thing to control in a business is the employees. That's because they are independent people. They have the right to choose what they are doing, and, of course, they are conscious of their actions.

We are paying them to do jobs. We provide them with safe environments and proper training, so we have some expectations of them. It is normal to blame them when they are not doing their job well and it affects your business and the quality of service you provide.

What really changed my business was when I started taking the responsibility for my employees messing things up. I'm sure many of you can relate to this. I even hear business owners say, "I wish I could do everything myself."

A team can only be as good as its leader. I truly believe that everybody in my team has something good to offer because that's why I hired them in the first place. When they are doing something wrong, I have to look at myself first and figure out how I am doing as a leader and what I can do better.

Take Responsibility, Even If You're Right

For example, I had a cook in my restaurant who was arguing with me about the portion sizes. He didn't believe me when I said a particular dish gets four ounces of wine, and another dish gets nine shrimp. After all, I've been doing this for 15 years, and I should know. But instead of playing the game and trying to prove him wrong, I came up with a solution to make the portion sizes more visible and available for everyone and to make sure all my cooks have the instructions right in front of them. In the meantime, we have a recipe binder in the kitchen that has all this information. But I asked myself, "How can I make it easier than having to look in the binder during the dinner rush?"

I had to refocus and not blame my employee for the confusion. After all, it's my restaurant, and I hired them. I took my own advice and put the responsibility for the situation on myself. My job was to come up with a solution, not prove this employee wrong. Proving him wrong would have been the cowardly approach.

By the very next shift, I had all the dish recipes in short form posted at the top of each cooler door in plain sight. Even the busboy could now execute some of the dishes. Now that's a win-win situation.

My answer is simple when it comes to what every business owner needs to know: Take 100% responsibility for you your business. Trust me, you will feel more empowered and successful.

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Take 100% Responsibility For Your Business

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Your business is a direct reflection of you. As you experience personal growth, you will notice your business will grow as well. The two are connected. Even with a lot of experience in business, there are always new things to learn. I learned that from my first mentor.

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This is about span management

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Having a SWOT Analysis would be beneficial to make sure you know where you are at.

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When you are strategically planning you need to make sure that it aligns with your companies mission and vision.

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This article is very good on telling you how to make decisions.

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Communicate your decision, and take action.

Let's look at each of these steps in detail. Each step features a list of related Mind Tools resources to help you further.

Step 1: Investigate the Situation in Detail

Decisions often fail because key factors are missed or ignored from the outset. So, before you can begin to make a decision, you need to fully understand your situation.

Start by considering the decision in the context of the problem it is intended to address. You need to determine whether the stated problem is the real issue, or just a symptom of something deeper.

Look beyond the obvious. It may be that your objective can be approached in isolation, but it's more likely that there are a number of interrelated factors to consider. Changes made in one department, for example, could have knock-on effects elsewhere, making the change counterproductive.

Step 2: Create a Constructive Environment for Your Decision

Can you give your decision the attention it needs? Spend some time preparing yourself before diving in to the facts and figures.

Remember that most decisions will affect other people too, so it helps to create a constructive environment in which to explore the situation together and gain support.

This is especially true when you have to rely on other people to implement a decision that you're responsible for. You'll need to identify who to include in the process and who will be part of any final decision-making group, which will ideally comprise just five to seven people.

Enable people to contribute to the discussions without any fear of the other participants rejecting them and their ideas. Make sure that everyone recognizes that the objective is to make the best decision possible in the circumstances, without blame.

Step 3: Generate Good Alternatives to Decide Between

The wider the options you explore, the better your final decision is likely to be. Generating a number of different options may seem to make your decision more complicated at first, but the act of coming up with alternatives forces you to dig deeper and to look at the problem from different angles.

This is when it can be helpful to employ a variety of creative thinking techniques. These can help you to step outside your normal patterns of thinking and come up with some truly innovative solutions.

Brainstorming is probably the most popular method of generating ideas, but for more tips on how to examine your situation from new perspectives, and how to organize ideas into manageable themes and groups, see the Mind Tools resources in the box, below.

Step 4: Explore Your Options

When you're satisfied that you have a good selection of realistic alternatives, it's time to evaluate the feasibility, risks and implications of each one.

Almost every decision involves some degree of risk. You'll need a structured approach for assessing threats and evaluating the probability of adverse events occurring - and what they might cost to manage. You'll also want to examine the ethical impact of each option, and how that might sit with your personal and organizational values.

The resources highlighted below offer tried-and-true models to help you.

Step 5: Select the Best Solution

Once you've evaluated the alternatives, the next step is to make your decision!

If you have various criteria to consider, use Decision Matrix Analysis to compare them reliably and rigorously. Or, if you want to determine which ones should carry most weight in your decision, conduct a Paired Comparison Analysis.

If your decision is being made within a group, techniques such as multi-voting and the Modified Borda Count can help your team reach an agreement.

When anonymity is important, decision-makers dislike one another, or there is a tendency for certain individuals to dominate the process, use the Delphi Technique to reach a fair and impartial decision. This uses cycles of anonymous, written discussion and argument, managed by a facilitator. Participants do not meet, and sometimes they don't even know who else is involved.

If you're working with an established team, Hartnett's Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making Model is useful for encouraging everyone to participate in making the decision. Or, if you're working with several different teams, or a particularly large group, assign responsibility for each stage of the decision-making process with Bain's RAPID Framework, so that everyone understands their responsibilities and any potential in-fighting can be avoided.

Step 6: Evaluate Your Plan

After all the effort and hard work you've invested in evaluating and selecting alternatives, it can be tempting to forge ahead at this stage. But now, more than ever, is the time to "sense check" your decision. After all, hindsight is great for identifying why things have gone wrong, but it's far better to prevent mistakes from happening in the first place!

Before you start to implement your decision, take a long, dispassionate look at it to be sure that you have been thorough, and that common errors haven't crept into the process.

Your final decision is only as good as the facts and research you used to make it. Make sure that your information is trustworthy, and that you've done your best not to "cherry pick" data. This will help you avoid confirmation bias, a common psychological bias in decision making.

Discuss your preliminary conclusions with important stakeholders to enable them to spot flaws, make recommendations, and support your conclusions. Listen to your own intuition, too, and quietly and methodically test assumptions and decisions against your own experience. BRAIN BRAN BRAND is a useful tool for this. If you have any doubts, examine them thoroughly to work out what's troubling you.

Use Blindspot Analysis to review whether you've fallen prey to problems like over-confidence, escalating commitment, or groupthink. And consider checking the logical structure of your process with the Ladder of Inference, to make sure that a well-founded and consistent decision emerges at the end.

Step 7: Communicate Your Decision, and Take Action

Once you've made your decision, you need to communicate it to everyone affected by it in an engaging, informative and inspiring way.

Get them involved in implementing the solution by discussing how and why you arrived at your decision. The more information you provide about risks and projected benefits, the more likely people will be to support it.

If people point out a flaw in your process as a result, have the humility to welcome their input and review your plans appropriately - it's much better to do this now, cheaply, than having to do it expensively (and embarrassingly) if your plans have failed.

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How to Make Decisions - A Model for Making the Best Possible Choices

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Communicate your decision, and take action. Let's look at each of these steps in detail. Each step features a list of related Mind Tools resources to help you further. Decisions often fail because key factors are missed or ignored from the outset. So, before you can begin to make a decision, you need to fully understand your situation.

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This is important to keep everyone up to date on the correct procedures before you start doing anything.

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Here is an idea of what companies are global.

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You must always change in an ever changing global economy.

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Flickr/Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design
Why change at all? It seems like a nonsensical question, doesn't it?

If you or your organization isn't evolving - innovating, growing, or reinventing - you are in danger of failing.

Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan once said, "Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."

The global landscape is littered with the remains of organizations that rose to great heights only to have their fortunes plummet because they were unable to transform themselves as times changed.

Digital Equipment Corporation and Wang Computers, once the titans of the nascent information age, failed to innovate and were sold off to other companies. Woolworth's, once a fixture on Main Streets across the country, did not adapt its business model to the advent of mega shopping malls and big-box retailers and closed its doors in December 2008. Pan Am and TWA, once the standard bearers of the U.S. airline industry, could not overcome economic pressures and were forced to declare bankruptcy. Transformation was the imperative they all had missed out on.

With the rapid change of the social-technology-economic climate, transformation is the greatest leadership and management challenge of our times.

And no industry is immune to waves of change. The automotive and energy industries are racing to find the next stage of their evolution in a world that is challenged by the question of accessibility to oil in the face of global market demands.

The media is grappling with the democratization of information resulting from the Internet, which has completely eroded the business models of film studios, music producers, and print publishers. The financial services industry tries to recover from the chaos resulting from bad risk taking and regulatory oversight failures, failures so bad that deep intervention by the U.S. government was needed, forever transforming banking, stock trading, and investment regulations.

Disruption and Transformation Is Nothing New

At the beginning of each new business era, the existing paradigm resists with vigor.

Sooner or later almost every organization needs to transform or diversify from their original market intent. Consider the following examples:

Raytheon started as a consumer appliance company that made radio tubes. Today, it's one of the largest defense contractors in the world, and makes microwave communications systems and cruise missiles.

AT&T started out as a telephone network operator, but through evolving markets and regulatory mandates transformed itself into a global provider of Internet carrier services.

Sony began as a recording equipment company; today it's one of the largest media companies in the world.

General Electric was founded as an electricity generator and producer of lighting components to create the power industry. But over its 132-year history, it has continually challenged itself to innovate and has produced everything from light bulbs to jet engines.

As economic conditions change and products reach market saturation, transformation is the only option for maintaining growth and financial viability. The difference between successful and extinct companies is the recognition and successful execution of this transformative process. Embarking on a transformation is more than just deciding to do something different or expanding into adjacent markets. It requires examination, planning, and execution.

To be successful in today's business climate, most enterprises need to transform themselves on a regular basis.

The Way Forward

I have found that the organizations looking to establish an on-going transformative process should prepare themselves by considering the following seven principles:

1: Establish the business purpose of each investment. Is it to enable growth, maintain, or manage risk?

2: Determine whether the metrics you use have changed along with modifications in business, processes and/or technology.

3: Agree upon metrics that show how your organization creates go-forward options. This will ultimately lead to metrics that accurately measure business value.

4: Understand the economic environment and how your organization adjusts its strategy to changes in the environment.

5: Create management capabilities that support prioritization, consolidation, and standardization to manage and define the requirements needed in support of a collaborative culture.

6: Translate the business strategy into tactical plans for short-term and long-term value creation.

7: Instill in teams the behaviors and values that will lead to the best use of information for customer, supplier, and partner relationships.

Transformation is not a singular event. A one-time makeover will not cut it. Growth through innovation must become part of any organization's soul. Successful, sustained organizations are those that are continually transforming themselves, or have segmented themselves to enable overlapping transformative initiatives that allows them to escape economic disruptions.

This requires new organizational thinking, the creation and sharing of new kinds of information, and new processes for creativity and innovation. Only in this way can growth through innovation become repeatable.

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Why You Must Be Constantly Changing In Order To Succeed

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Why change at all? It seems like a nonsensical question, doesn't it? If you or your organization isn't evolving - innovating, growing, or reinventing - you are in danger of failing. Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan once said, "Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."

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You have to be able to think three steps ahead to have a global company. It takes a good leader and thinker to stay afloat in the economy.

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Managing globally is difficult. You have to have all the cogs in the right place in order for it to work.

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This is a great video. It teaches you to go after what you want for a career. If you love what you do, you will never hate your job.

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A manager always needs to know what resources he or she has to work with and what is available to them.

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The different roles of management. They have a lot of responsibility other than just managing a team.

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This reminds me of a lot of the managers at my job. A lot of them are just there to collect a paycheck. A role of a manager is to lead your team into something great. Management should not be there just to be there but to lead people.

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For social responsibility, companies have the power to keep products safe and never let the customer down. You should always hold your values close. Toyota let that go when they tried to become larger and cut corners.

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Toyota announced a massive set of recalls Wednesday to address a series of problems, including a faulty cable that could prevent air bags from deploying and a defect that could prevent car seats from remaining in place during an accident.

Toyota, the world's largest automaker, said it is not aware of any crashes, injuries or deaths caused by the problems.

The largest recall involves 3.5 million vehicles equipped with a spiral cable that can be damaged when the steering wheel turns. The frayed cable could cause a warning lamp to illuminate and a car's air bag to deactivate.

Another recall is aimed at repairing seat rails that contain springs that could break, particularly when seats are frequently adjusted. When the springs break, the seat will not lock into place and can move in the event of a crash, increasing the risk of injury, the company said.

A third recall is aimed at fixing steering column brackets installed in certain European and Asian models that can become unstable when the steering wheel is repeatedly turned with maximum force.

The others are to address problematic windshield-wiper motors and the possibility of fires in starter motors. Those problems are confined to models sold in Asia, Toyota has said.

The five recalls cover 6.39 million vehicles worldwide. The air bag problem affects 1.3 million vehicles in the United States. They include the 2009-2010 Corolla, 2009-2010 Matrix, 2008-2010 Highlander, 2009-2010 Tacoma, 2006-2008 RAV4 and 2006-2010 Yaris models.

The recalls come as automakers are under increasing pressure in the United States to move more quickly to correct possible defects and to inform regulators and the public about possible safety problems.

General Motors is under investigation by Congress, federal regulators and federal prosecutors over its slow recall of 2.6 million small cars equipped with faulty ignition switches. The defect, which GM dealers began fixing this week, has been linked by the company to 13 deaths. Company officials acknowledge that GM first learned about the problem at least a decade ago but did not issue a recall - a decision that new chief executive Mary T. Barra has said she is trying to understand through an internal investigation.

Last month, Toyota agreed to pay a $1.2 billion fine to the federal government for misleading consumers and regulators about unintended acceleration in its cars and trucks. The problem, which was traced to problematic floor mats and sticky gas pedals, prompted the company to recall more than 9 million vehicles.

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Toyota recalls 6.4 million vehicles worldwide over air bags, seat rails, steering or wipers

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Toyota announced a massive set of recalls Wednesday to address a series of problems, including a faulty cable that could prevent air bags from deploying and a defect that could prevent car seats from remaining in place during an accident.

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A lot of companies forget about their ethics and act on what they can do without being in trouble.

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The importance of diversity in the workplace.

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The Importance of Diversity in the Workplace

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Diversity is important for a company to grow. Here is a list of reasons why.

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Diversity comes in many forms: gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, culture, socioeconomic background, etc. All of these contribute to an individual's unique experience of the world.

Sometimes we need to take a step back and examine the presence of diversity in our own life. How diverse is your school? Neighborhood? Place of work? Group of friends? Is diversity something we should strive for in all aspects of our lives? Here are 5 reasons why we at AMP Global Youth think we should:
1. Productivity
Bringing together people of various backgrounds with different life experiences can generate ideas or perspectives that others may not have ever considered or been aware of. Everyone has their own way of viewing a problem, shaped by the individual experiences that they have had. When tackling an issue, wouldn't it be better to have multiple interpretations and approaches, rather than everyone contributing the same thoughts and conclusions?
2. Becoming a World Citizen
If you experience diversity in your every day life, you will have regular exposure to people, cultures, traditions, and practices that are unlike your own. You will learn the skills to communicate and interact with communities and concepts that you are unfamiliar with and gain a more worldly view.

Not only will you enhance your social development, but you will also increase your understanding of the world. This will prepare you to be a part of a global society, whether you are traveling to a new country, working with diverse co-workers, or just reading about events in the news that have heavily impacted a population different than your own.
3. Perspective
Hearing about another's experience can shed light on a life different than your own and provide you a new perspective. When you compare your struggles, priorities, and values, you can really begin to comprehend where an individual is coming from and understand his or her actions and behaviors. Perhaps talking to someone new will change your mindset and priorities, or at least make you appreciate another's motivations and hardships.
4. Growing Acceptance, Diminishing Discrimination
Promoting diversity is the first step to not just "tolerance," but true acceptance. Through growing contact with, exposure to, and communication between new people with unique ideas, individuals may see that they may have more in common than they thought. Or, they may still be remarkably different, and that is okay, too! Increasing familiarity with these differences can alter perspectives (see #3), facilitate acceptance, and diminish the misconceptions and prejudices that fuel discrimination.
5. Richer Life Experience
Diversity is colorful! What if everyone who surrounded you was exactly like you, in every way? Where is the fun in that? We need new ideas, views, and practices to stimulate and inspire us, to show us the way others eat, celebrate, and love!

Together, our differences make a strong, beautiful, world community. Even in the face of intolerance, discrimination, and violence, we must not forget to spread the word about the importance of diversity and to respond to that violence with a love and a celebration of our differences.

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5 Reasons Why Diversity is Important in the 21st Century - AMP Global Youth

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Diversity comes in many forms: gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, culture, socioeconomic background, etc. All of these contribute to an individual's unique experience of the world. Sometimes we need to take a step back and examine the presence of diversity in our own life. How diverse is your school?