A: I think your partner is right. If you think this client has been difficult to deal with in past just wait until he opens your bill with six months worth of arrears attached to it without prior notice or a full explanation of amount owed.

Sending such a bill is like dropping a bomb on client's desk, and I guarantee you fallout from resulting explosion would end up landing squarely on your head.

So question then becomes, how do you collect money that is rightfully owed to you from a client who has a history of being difficult? That's easy, Louis. You make your partner call him.

Seriously, whether client owes you money or not is a moot point. Yes, you made an accounting mistake, but if client agreed to pay you a certain amount each month in exchange for certain services rendered, and you have been under-billing that client for delivering those certain services, client owes you money, period.

I have found that in situations like this it is always best to be proactive and face problem (or what you perceive as a potential problem) as quickly as possible. This will save you hours of needless worry since most of time problem is not as big a deal as you imagined it to be.

There can only be three outcomes in this situation.

(1) The client will understand and pay you without argument.

(2) He will argue point, forcing you to offer a compromise plan.

Or (3) He will flatly refuse to pay, forcing you to decide how far you're willing to go to collect what is owed. You should be prepared for either occurrence before getting face-to-face with client. Remember this: In a business negotiation, he who is prepared least gives up most.

With that in mind, here's how I would handle situation.

As you look around your office, is everyone just like you? Probably not. The demographics of American workforce have changed dramatically over last 50 years. In 1950s, more than 60% of American workforce consisted of white males. They were typically sole breadwinners in household, expected to retire by age 65 and spend their retirement years in leisure activities. Today, American workforce is a better reflection of population with a significant mix of genders, race, religion, age and other background factors.

The long-term success of any business calls for a diverse body of talent that can bring fresh ideas, perspectives and views to their work. The challenge that diversity poses, therefore, is enabling your managers to capitalize on mixture of genders, cultural backgrounds, ages and lifestyles to respond to business opportunities more rapidly and creatively.

Here are two examples of challenges inherent in managing a diverse workforce:

An American health insurance company hired employees from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. The variety of different native languages and cultures, however, did not mix. Instead of making employees feel that they had a sub-group within their larger team, it gave rise to paranoia ("They must be talking about me.") and assumptions ("They think they are smarter than everyone else."). When group needed to learn a new intake system, rather than pull together, they became even more estranged and productivity and morale plummeted.

In an American subsidiary of a global bank based in Japan, a few Japanese female workers complained to management that their older Japanese male bosses were being disrespectful to them. The human resources manager questioned all of women in office. Every Japanese woman reported problems with Japanese men. In contrast, American women reported no problems at all. Confused, human resources manager questioned Japanese male managers. The answer? The Japanese men responded that they understood American expectations related to sexual harassment, so they were careful about what they said to American women. They were perplexed by responses of Japanese women. “What is problem?” Japanese men wanted to know, “They know that we don’t mean anything. Any Japanese person would understand.” Communication, which has never been straightforward and easy in first place, is becoming even more complicated as organizations take on global partners.

Diversity is no longer just a black/white, male/female, old/young issue. It is much more complicated and interesting than that. In The Future of Diversity and Work Ahead of Us, Harris Sussman says, "Diversity is about our relatedness, our connectedness, our interactions, where lines cross. Diversity is many things - a bridge between organizational life and reality of people’s lives, building corporate capability, framework for interrelationships between people, a learning exchange, a strategic lens on world."

A benefit of a diverse workforce is ability to tap into many talents which employees from different backgrounds, perspectives, abilities and disabilities bring to workplace. An impressive example of this is found on business cards of employees at one Fortune 100 technology company. Employees at this company have business cards that appear normal at first glance. On closer inspection, raised Braille characters of employee information are evident.

Many companies, however, still face challenges around building a diverse environment. Part of reason is tendency to pigeonhole employees, placing them in a different silo based on their diversity profile. If an employee is male, over 50, English, and an atheist, under what diversity category does this employee fall? Gender, generational, global or religious? In real world, diversity cannot be easily categorized and those organizations that respond to human complexity by leveraging talents of a broad workforce will be most effective in growing their businesses and their customer base.

So, how do you develop a diversity strategy that gets results? The companies with most effective diversity programs take a holistic approach to diversity by following these guidelines: