Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Boil the Ocean vs. One Elephant at a Time
Hello there! Dr. Lepora here!
I hope that you are safe and well. The question that I often get is exactly how much scope of diversity, equity, and inclusion should an organization take on at a time? Let me just point out, diversity, equity, and inclusion are all three very distinct concepts within themselves, related to complement each other but different. That could be a master class in itself. That being said, the answer is, “it depends”. There are various factors that go into that and we're going to talk about that today.
So, again, we want to often ask ourselves. Can we even boil the ocean of diversity, equity, and inclusion? When we know that there is a good thing, we want it immediately, it makes good business sense, it’s good for our customers and good for our organization. When we know that it's a good thing, we tend to want it all immediately. And so the answer to that is, “Yes, we can boil the ocean, but not all at once”. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are goals that are so important that you want to keep a line of sight of those even aspirational goals at all times within your organization. So in that sense, you want to keep your line of sight on that ocean, on that entirety of potential opportunity while biting one chunk at a time. And that one chunk at a time is going to depend on your organization and we're going to get into the factors that influence the chunks that your organization will take at a time. Nonetheless, regardless of your organization, you should be taking a methodological approach to getting to that inspirational D, E, and I utopia if you will.
So what we've seen in the past with D, E, and I is sort of this one blast, one done effort. If you're good you may do that one blast once a year or twice a year has tended to look like a simple training class or sensitivity session. What we have been realizing many of us before and what the world is now realizing is that the diversity, equity, and inclusion issues that exist at least within the country of the United States, and I know it exists in many other places, but I'm going to speak specifically of the U.S knowing that it’s more intimately. These are very systemic, deeply and ground issues that require systemic and holistic solutions that address not just the topical skill set of people, but the practices, and institutions, themselves, policies, culture, representation, and a holistic effort if you truly want to transform to be a healthy D, E and I organization, and that if it's obviously there because we always have that choice.
So now what you see is specifically an organization diversity, equity, and inclusion maturity model. This shows pretty much a journey that you would take as an organization to get to that sustained level, what I call D, E, and I utopia. Let me qualify by saying there are very few organizations at that sustained level. Do I say that to discourage you from aiming at it? Absolutely not. I believe that every organization should be aiming there, but I say it in a sense of showing how much work every organization truly has to do to make a systemic transformative difference.
Well, I’m not reading this in its entirety. You can look at it by yourself at your own leisure. The theme that you will see here is an organization graduating from a basic level, a level that is purely reactive and solely concerned with D, E, and/or I for reasons of compliance, legality, lack of liability. That's your basement if you will rock bottom level of D, E, and I within an organization, and then you can go all the way to the sustained level, the most graduate level. And at that level, quite frankly is not about external effort, as you will see more so within these medium areas of awareness, appreciate and integrate. Once you get to the sustained level, your organization is D, E, and I. It is ingrained in the culture, it is institutionalized so it's not about it being a separate entity. If you were to change the D, E, and I within your organization, you would change the culture. If you were to lose the D, E, and I, you would lose some of your organization's culture. That's what that sustained level looks like. In between there, it's really a focus of one from appreciating the importance of the D, E, and I, valuing it to hiring other people on the outside to help you to do it, to aiming to do it inside, to holding people accountable for it, and then ultimately getting to that sustained point of it being institutionalized and a significant part of who your organization is, what your organization is.
So in any transformational effort, and we're specifically speaking to organization diversity, equity and inclusion right now. What you will see are methodological steps that should be taken in order to successfully transform in the way that your organization desires to, because every organization is different.
There are some essential steps that you need to take in order to do it right.
So first and foremost, there needs to be a burning platform. What does burning platform mean? That basically means there's either a danger to not changing, the house is on fire so to speak, or it's a danger of what you will miss out on if you do not transform with this. diversity, equity, and inclusion. Every organization that takes on the endeavor of transforming their diversity, equity, and inclusion emphasis within the organization may have different burning platforms. Some may be similar, some may be different. For some organizations, it may be an issue of liabilities. They're tired of facing legal liabilities connected to discrimination. In other organizations, it may be a lack of ability to recruit good candidates. Another organization's burning platform may be more positive. It may be because they strive to be an organization that provides the best for their customers, an organization that provides a diverse, collaborative, innovative, integral part within the organization, and that may be their burning platform. The strong reason, also known as the burning platform will vary.
Another essential component is for your organization to have a vision that is strong, closely tied to what you want to seek. This includes the goals that are tied to your vision, which is also equally important. So what does that look like from a vision perspective? It's about the appropriate communication from the perspective of…
It is simple and is well-focused so that someone can easily understand what you are attempting to attain.
Is it communicable? Meaning that you can communicate it in a way where people understand.
Is it imaginable? This begs the question. Obviously, this is subjective, but for your organization, can people imagine this vision actually happening, or is your culture so far from that vision that they can't even imagine your organization getting there?
Very importantly, is it desirable? Is the vision desirable? Meaning do you have enough of the right stakeholders and you would know what the right stakeholders are? People, who have influence within the organization, who are needed by the organization, who desire this vision, who desire to upgrade your D, E, and or I efforts and feasibility.
Is it shown to be doable? Is it shown to be a feasible response? Meaning when you compare it to other alternatives, does it make sense? Have you done your due diligence regarding how it's actually going to happen?
Lastly, a very important one is its flexibility. Being flexible. Is your organization flexible enough and the vision to take it on. While knowing a vision is not an implementation plan, but flexible enough to adapt in order to be successful in it, because any time we do something new, they are going to be unexpected occurrences and when that happens, it's important for us to be flexible enough to pivot in order for what we seek to be successfully implemented.
So we went into the importance of burning platform, the importance of having a vision and what that good vision looks like, and goals. And then there are your alternatives. People will often argue if you truly have A as a goal, you don't want to talk about B and C because that discourages you from focusing on A. And what I would argue is that you do want to talk about B and C, even if you ultimately are committed to A, you want to understand B and C because, for one, it will make your plan A better, because you may include some elements of B and C with A. And secondly, you want to understand the skepticism within your organization. If there are people who have alternative suggestions, you want to understand their needs so that you can address them with whatever you commit to, and you want to understand them to manage resistance to change, which often comes when there are those desired alternatives. So that is a very important reason to address your alternatives.
You want to ensure you have sponsors. That is another very important step in building your diversity, equity, and or inclusion transformation strategy. Sponsors are those individuals who do just that. They sponsor the effort. That is, they have enough power and resources to make the effort happen. The effort may not happen without those sponsors. Those sponsors are often most likely the top leaders of the organization. They are the ones who when they grab the microphone, people will listen to, and they are also the ones who tend to have the purse strings. So whether it's the CFO, the Director, or the CEO. It's obviously the most desired. These are very important sponsors to have because while we often love to cheerlead and desire that whole change from the middle up and it does happen. When we work with transformational change, we know that typically change is not successful without those top-level sponsors.
And then importantly, in accord with that very related to that, we want to ensure that we understand the investment level of our transformation. An investment is not just talking about money but it's also talking about the time investment, which oftentimes equals money that is going to be required by different stakeholders. We're talking about the investment of people not from just a staffing perspective, but from the perspective of different desires and opinions. There is that people, element if you will, that can either go up with engagement and satisfaction or can go down. Now, what is well known with most transformational changes is that our people engagement, our people satisfaction oftentimes go down before it goes up. Now, why is that? It's because oftentimes there is anxiety related to change. We want to resist it because it is unknown to us. So we are uncertain regarding whether or not it's going to benefit us, and it may be even a possibility that we think it may hurt us. Part of that investment for any transformation in D, E, and I is not an exception. Is that investment that cost, if you will, of that people factor. If it is the right change, I believe the D, E, and I are. That. the ROI will be well worth the investment. What you will get in the long run is that more innovation, greater collaboration greater customer suitability is going to be worth that short-run discomfort if you will invest that you may experience, and then, there are other investments. Technology is a great example. A lot of times in this day and age, technology tends to accompany most transformations. That is because there are technologies that tend to make our lives, our work better in every area. So usually if you are administering a transformation, there is an upgrade in technology that is at least available.
Then you decide whether or not it's worth making an investment. But at the bottom line, you want to ensure that you do understand the investments that will be required for the level of the vision, to which you and your organization aspire. A very similar to the sponsors, you want to ensure that you are choosing the appropriate team strategically to work toward this transformational effort for diversity, equity, and/or inclusion. The team is consisting of people, of course, who are influential, their subject matter experts, either the D, E, and I, as well as in other areas of the organization. Because in order to institutionalize the D, E, and/or I within these different areas of your organization, you need to have the subject matter experts of those respective areas engaged, whether that is marketing or IT, or if that is the overall business strategy area and human resources. All these areas need to be integrated within the D, E, and I so they need to be very well involved.
And now a very important and big piece of the strategy is a cultural approach. And of course, that is covering quite a few things. When you look at the cultural approach specifically, we're talking about various elements and decisions that need to be made. One of those decisions is specifically about how you're going to roll out the transformation, and that is tied to who your organization is, which is tied to the culture.
One, is your organization highly centralized where everything is decided upon and rolled out at the center, or is it highly decentralized? Whereas all these different areas, perhaps you have different offices around the world, different continents and if it's a highly decentralized organization, that means there's a lot of power in these different locations. So given that there's a lot more diplomacy that needs to take place, a lot more effort of alignment that needs to take place when you have a decentralized operation. Now, of course, there are significant benefits in a decentralized organization, but you do want to keep in mind that extra effort that is going to be tied to rolling out the transformation, because it will be not just one transformation, but it will be several transformations and all of these different hubs that you have within your organization.
Part of that cultural approach deals with whether your organization is hierarchical or consensus-based. Is the organization that has this side together about everything, or does the leader just drive it down, and then it's one and done? So that's going to be a very important component to consider.
Is your organization mature with change, whereas you can basically roll out the vision completely upfront?
Is it so immature with change and risk-averse that you have to take more of a snowballing effort? Introducing little by little.
These are things that you want to take in mind and consider, as well as part of what your culture is and how that approach ties to what you will be getting done.
One thing that is part of the cultural approach is timing. The timing is different. As I mentioned about the change maturity of your organization, that is going to have a large, huge impact on what that timing looks like, whether it's
Incremental or Radical Change, as I mentioned.
Is it something even that you're ready to do now immediately? Or are there certain prerequisites your organizations have to do culturally in order to implement later?
Is this going to be a slow implementation because your organization needs to build the capacity app or the skills or the resources? Or it's just not used to fast change culturally, or is it going to be a fast change one where your organization is ready to pivot? They are nimble and have great capacity and resources and a high level of change maturity.
Is it going to be a transformation that is flexible, whereas you're learning as you go, and you admit that you're not necessarily 100% sure how this vision is going to be implemented? Or is it one that is more inflexible, whereas leadership is staunch on specific things happening and definitely not open to hearing from that?
And lastly, as far as timing, what is your organization's tolerance for individual transitioning? This is very important because you have organizations that are like night and day from each other and even within an organization while you have shared cultures, you still have a great diversity of individuals within an organization. They transition differently, they progress differently, they learn differently, they adjust differently. And your organization has to decide what is going to be your talent for individual transitioning. If there's an individual who is stuck in his or her own ways, what are your talents or patience levels for those types of individuals? These are elements that need to be decided.
Lastly, you want to make sure that whatever assumptions that do exist upfront are shared in a transparent way. And this will help to prevent and reduces the level of confusion. It will help also to be prepared for what obstacles or challenges may happen to the transformation toward more diversity, equity, and inclusion. Certain examples of assumptions include…
Will your business model change?
Will your systems technology change?
Will the processes change?
Will your department be reorganized?
Will your workforce need to be augmented because you don't have the right skill sets inside?
How will your employees need to be trained?
What are the dollar limits? We may say, Oh, we absolutely want this to have, and we're absolutely behind it. But we need to know, how much money are we truly willing to commit?
How much time are we truly willing to commit to this effort?
These types of assumptions, if they exist, they need to be well communicated, well-aligned, so that people can work together in a healthy collaborative way.
These are very important components that go into a healthy transformation for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Again, achieving holistic the D, E, and I is a transformational shift. It's not a lightweight move. It's definitely not just a training class or a session, and it's something that you want to do in a very methodical, rigorous way so that it can make it truly important and beneficial impact on your organization.
If you do have any questions regarding this topic, feel free to email me and I will provide some answers for that. If you have found this master class helpful, please do share it with others.
Have a phenomenal day.
Best,
Dr. Lepora
