Assessing ten years of anti-racism from an Organizational Development framework
Part I: Introduction and Background
Introduction
Why were race relations worse for blue collar employees after ten years of anti-racism training? This is the right question to be asking, but it wasn’t the question I started my assessment with. “Why had an anti-racism program seen so much more traction with white collar than the blue collar employees?” was my leading thought. I wasn’t alone either as the Vice President shared my concern. Only after months of strategic trust building, I was privileged with employee’s painful stories. It was then that I could see the damage anti-racism trainings had done blue-collar teams within the Org. Those same employees were then able collaboratively develop a set of strategic recommendations for healing and inclusion.
I would like to make it abundantly clear that I mean in no way denigrate the ten years of anti-racism work of this organization. The leadership took tremendous courage in pioneering this work. It garnered national attention from other orgs in their field and non-profits in general. Without thier fortitude to step into the deeply uncomfortable and divisive work that is the pursuit of social justice, I would have nothing to assess. My hope is that from assessments such as this one, anti-racism work can be move forward from their current academic model of social change to a strategic systems based approach.
Background
A few years ago I had an opportunity to work with a midsized nonprofit in the Pacific Northwest. With approximately 300 employees and 7k volunteers, the Org had been serving some of the most diverse neighborhoods for over 40 years. Facility wise, they were spread out over the region with a central office, a warehouse, and a number of community centers. My work brought me primarily in contact with the warehouse where the majority of the employees were based, though I was also involved in the main offices on a regular basis.
With connections at most levels, the Org was the natural choice as the subject of a yearlong change project and the subject of my graduate synthesis project. After brainstorming three different possible Organizational Development (OD) projects with the Director of Organizational Development (DOD), I settled on the warehouse and community centers DEI project, even though the other projects would have been better for my career as they would have brought me in close working proximity to the C suite. The other projects didn’t have a niggling “why?” driving me.
It was early in the project that the community center half of the project was abandoned. After working with the director of community engagement, we crafted an email to describe the project to the seven centers. Only one responded. Despite the interest of the director, the center was severely understaffed and time was too scarce. In retrospect, given more resources I would have pursued the centers through in person interviews to understand the needs and environment of the centers, rather than proposing a “project”. Even if resources were too short at the moment for the project at least the questions and subsequent thinking might have some impact on what is possible for the centers in the future.
The project ultimately was presented to the VP and Director of Organizational Development as such: In supporting the mission of the DEI program, I would assemble an interdepartmental team to assess the needs of the warehouse employees and make recommendations for future programming. Along the way the VP, DOD, Director of Diversity Equity & Inclusion, and managers would be given regular reports. These reports included more than the usual post meeting notes, they included the design for upcoming meetings. That way they could know about what topics we were going to work on beforehand should there be any concerns. It was no small responsibility I was asking for. As you can imagine, DEI conversations can go bad fast and can have painful repercussions.
Next time: Preparations