Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation Strategist. Bestselling Author of Reconstructing DEI and DEI Deconstructed. They/Them. LinkedIn Top Voice on Racial Equity. Inquiries: lilyzheng.co.
There's a good chance, if your workplace has attempted #diversity, #equity, and #inclusion work, that it's at times fallen into the trap of admiring your problems rather than solving them. I've seen this dynamic play out nearly a dozen times. An organization kicks off an inclusion campaign with a big event spotlighting employee experiences and raising awareness about exclusion. It's a big lift from employee volunteers, but it feels more than worth it. People's eyes are opened, and their appetite for change is huge. Committees get formed. Initiatives are launched. Tasks get divvied up and slowly start moving. The following year, to mark the anniversary of their efforts, leaders organize another event. Executives attend and speak out about their commitment to DEI. Employee volunteers once again make a big effort — whether to share their stories, publicize the event, or show up in great numbers — to help it succeed. Attendees there are broadly supportive. They nod solemnly at remaining barriers, cheer loudly at successes, and leave feeling satisfied about their commitment. But behind the scenes, the committees are slowing down. Change is taking longer than it should. At some point, leaders might try to put on another event. Executives might still be willing to show up. Attendees might still be excited to commemorate and celebrate. But the volunteers don't materialize. No one wants to share their story. No one wants to put in that unpaid labor yet another time. Behind the scenes, the committees have been disbanded or abandoned as their efforts to end exclusion have all hit major roadblocks to changing an organization that seemed more excited to talk about their problems than actually fix them. This is how DEI efforts die in real life; not from a social media firestorm (though those don't help) but from the slow suffocation of real change in favor of empty performances. These artifacts are about as similar to DEI as shed snakeskin is to the snake itself: pretty, but destined for the compost heap. Escaping this trap of admiring our problems — be they racism, sexism, ableism, inequality or otherwise — requires that we shift our focus from events to interventions. For every action we take, we have to ask ourselves: "what issue is this working to solve?" "How will this effort fix a problem?" "How is it incomplete, and what other work is required to follow through?" Measurement and accountability are absolute requirements. If you're working to end exclusion, then you measure progress by measuring inclusion, whether people's feelings of respect, value, and safety, or through proxy metrics like retention and engagement. "Number of event attendees" is irrelevant. If your interventions make a difference, scale them up. If your interventions don't move the needle, put your effort elsewhere. It can be easy in this moment to treat public commitment to DEI as the end-all-be-all. But impact, both then and now, is what matters most.