v0.6

Summary

In this essay I hope to convey some of my observations over the past decade, to help courageous organizations understand the scope of what we undertake when we take anti-racism work seriously.

Could diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work be the most socially and personally challenging work in the United States? In taking on DEI, relatively small workplace cultures are working against hundreds (if not thousands) of years of national cultural pressures. Cultural change is not a common subject in our schools and universities, so American minds are not well prepared. However, there is movement, people have started programs, and those who are paying attention, are learning.

I have identified three common pitfalls that DEI programs commonly encounter. They are not entirely separate, but for the sake of simplicity I have framed them as short, encapsulated stories. These stories run the gamut from economics to personal development. Along the way, I make apparent that what is called for is a covert, generative, and systemic approach to these contentious social change projects. This is so that DEI work more clearly includes and benefits those who would otherwise sabotage it.

Background

In this essay I aim to share my insights into the field of Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) with a broader audience. They are based on fourteen years of study composed of ten years observing and participating in a groundbreaking, organization-wide DEI program led by nationally recognized leaders in the field, two years of graduate studies in Organizational Development (OD) focused on DEI, and another two years’ continued research with the Center for Ethical Leadership (CEL).

I have had the rare opportunity of having been embedded in an organization that was an early adopter of a DEI initiative prior to, as well as during, my graduate studies in OD. I have experienced this DEI program both from the inside as an enthusiastic, blue-collar participant, and from the outside as an OD practitioner assessing the very same program.

This essay is not a “how to”. This essay is here to help us think about how we see consultants, to help us notice how seemingly unconnected social norms can impede social change, and to help us consider the benefits of framing DEI as a deep and long-term engagement.

Introduction

I would like to start with an analogy: let us pretend we are the leaders of a fictitious organization located in the USA. We have decided that switching our organization to the metric system would be advantageous; it is simpler, more intuitive, and it would remove a barrier with the wider global measurement system.

So we switch all our internal measurement processes over to the metrics system. Several things will follow:

A few employees with science backgrounds might applaud the switch.
We will also have a large portion of employees who will go along to ensure their continued employment, but will drag their feet.
And then, we will have another portion of employees who will detest having to learn a new system, and may even actively/passively sabotage the transition.

This pattern of informal coalitions is common after limited OD interventions.

Remember that all these folks will have to deal with outside vendors and customers who still use the US customary system. Our legal and media system still uses the US customary system, and everyone will go home to friends and family who still use the US system.

Unless you’re a research or engineering firm, switching to metrics is going to be a hard sell; it’s going to be hard for folks to see how this helps anyone. In essence, as the leaders of this organization, we are “asking” everyone to be on the cutting edge of social change, with little support, whether they want to or not.

This mental exercise, less emotionally loaded than undoing institutional racism, hopefully has broadened our scope of the social systems that surround and influence an organization. Like our “metric denier”, each race denier in our organization is surrounded by their own community beyond our reach that reinforces those beliefs. Questioning those beliefs requires remarkable emotional and social resiliency. Navigating changes to relationships when one switches allegiance to the “other tribe” can be harrowing and alienating.

“Tribe” is the right term to think about in this situation. Much of our language is more about signaling our “tribe” than conveying information. As soon as we recognize that someone is from an opposing tribe, everything they say is suspect and our defenses go up. Just so, when we mention diversity, equity, or inclusion to any audience, basic human neurology shuts down the ability to make sense of or learn from for a large portion of the people in our audience.

This is why I posit that we need to start thinking about covert and systemic approaches to contentious social change projects: informal coalitions of “tribes” already exist in any organization. Overt DEI programing formalizes, exacerbates, and compounds the divisions between such coalitions, moving them toward full-fledged factions.

I want to digress here briefly, because I recognize that one simple approach to this situation is to slowly get rid of the race denying coalition by laying off, stalling their promotions, or not hiring. Here I would argue that these are “our people”: the people we have an existing relationship with, and can thus support through the change we wish to see in the world. Disposing of them only justifies their resentment and forces them to seek out employers who don’t engage DEI, further deepening divisions in our society.

Returning to informal coalitions: if our organization hasn’t yet been called out yet to address issues of racial or ethnic disparities, then even though we have informal coalitions around race, we are not yet expending energy to manage the conflicts between coalitions. (Energy is being expended but it’s lower in the organization.)

Our organization’s latency gives us the opportunity to think strategically about how to shift our organizational culture to one that not only “values” diversity, equity, and inclusion, but actually benefits from the creativity and dedication which arises within any actually diverse, equitable, and inclusive organizational culture. Such a transformation takes ten to twenty years… so we might as well take some time to think strategically about how to best invest in the process.

Had our organization taken a bold, public stance about new values, intolerance of discriminatory or insensitive behaviors, and already started a DEI program, then the can of worms is out of the bag. We would have those three informal coalitions we saw before:

a small group passionate about social change,
a large group who say they support DEI but aren’t willing to do the actual work,
a large group who are angry, disenfranchised, and “feel oppressed,” themselves.

In organizations that do overt, public-relations driven DEI, these informal groups become publicly aggravated by bringing the contentious topic of race to the surface in a showy way, without preparing the organization internally to handle the conflicts and traumas that this aggravates. All the while, Pople Of Color (POC) still don’t experience significant positive change, and end up bearing the brunt of the disenfranchised coalition’s ire.

(This is precisely the situation I found in assessing the effects of a ten-year DEI program where implementation had gone “well” –exactly to plan.)

If we find ourselves in this state, then we’ve got to figure out how to advance cultural change without framing it as DEI overtly as this will continue to aggravate informal coalitions.

As I’ve mentioned before, the factionalization of an organization is common after limited interventions. It’s a natural and predictable result of normal human response to any change: meaning-making, reinforcing one’s sense of competence, and fostering a sense of “tribe” through informal conversations.

This being the soft side of organizational dynamics, it would seem far beyond the control of managers and policies. However, if management and policy is where you can intervene, this is not a hopeless situation.

By presenting the following pitfalls accompanied by stories and possible strategies to avoid them, I hope to point us in a direction that results less in factions and more in collaborations. The stories are as follows:

Limited Organizational Integration
Skipping the Assessment Phase
The Expert Trap

The first two of these pitfalls are the most obvious, from an Organizational Development perspective, however, it is entirely understandable that they continue to be problematic, since they originate in the dominant North-American educational model. The third pitfall is very subtle and has as much to do what we expect from experts, and what experts expect of themselves.

Limited Organizational Integration

To illustrate all that is involved in fully integrating an organizational change, I will introduce you to the Galbraith model. In short, it is a list of overlapping policy areas that must all be addressed for changes in any one area to have effect. (E.g. changing hiring standards does not change kindness in an organization that retains existing policies in any other area.)

A DEI program, like any cultural change intervention, should to be integrated into the overall organizational design. Addressing the whole system is critical to ensuring a cultural change intervention sticks and will endure unrelated organizational stresses. In looking at the pitfall of limited organizational integration, we are really focusing on the formal processes, systems, and structures of an organization. The informal processes, systems, and structures are covered in the second pitfall. The formal processes, systems, and structures are the aspects of an organization that are governed by policies.

To bring about DEI outcomes through policy-making and -adjustments, an organization must integrate changes in all aspects of policy. A widely-accepted and -used OD tool in examining organization-wide policy-making is Jay Galbraith’s Star Model.

I suggest we use the Star Model to help us think about how broad a scope and influence policy actually has, and how much deeper DEI may need to be integrated than is generally the case. In Galbraith’s model the five areas of policy design are:

Strategy (direction)
Structure (power)
Process (information)
Rewards (motivation)
People (skillsets/mindsets)

Galbraith’s point is that policies are the concretization of culture and as such they generally all reinforce each other as a whole system. If we want to make a change in policy to say help support better work-life balance, we will need to look at all five areas and make changes:

Strategy– Show how work life balance makes for greater productivity, and lower turnover and integrate into strategy.
Structure– Set up an inclusive team to make decisions about improving work-live balance.
Process: Make transparent employees hours worked, pointing out unhealthy overtime.
Rewards: Eliminate overtime pay and offer flex time instead.
People: Make coaching available to help with work-life balance and work/pay addiction.

In contrast, most DEI programs focus on the People area of design via trainings; imparting new mindsets and skills. This is understandable, as the dominant academic model of “transferred knowledge” is where we turn to automatically when faced with people problems; it’s the process white collar people are familiar and comfortable with (think of all the hours in college classrooms). Along with trainings, there are usually also additions to the mission, vision, and values statement of the organization, a light review of policy, and usually a new hiring process. That leaves Strategy, Structure, Process, and, Rewards left only lightly touched.

Here is example of a deep policy change in a for-profit organization. As leaders we should focus first on Strategic planning or direction. In this approach a DEI program will need to establish a return on investment. Through our marketing department we can determine the extent of untapped diverse markets, and their potential value; this is the language of for-profits. Approaching our C suite with a return on investment for a vigorous and systemic DEI program (diversifying our organization and creating the inclusion and equity in order that our new found diversity can be tapped as a resource to be able to reach a diverse market) is a very different proposition. A report showing marked advantages and a clear ROI can be used to influence boards and C suits to take diversity seriously as an investment. Without their full buy in, any intervention is likely to be little more than a PR campaign.

Another small example, this time in the area of Process or information, is wage transparency. When an organization makes employee wages public, it allows those employees to compare their wages to others with similar job descriptions. Information allows employees to have meaningful conversations about disparities, and forces employers to clarify what they value in employees. This has the added bonus of employees knowing precisely what skills they need to develop in order to warrant a higher wage.

Wage transparency shows how vital information movement is in a system: without information travelling down the hierarchy employees are unable to understand their value to an organization. The next pitfall will focus on the flipside of that equation: information travelling up the chain of command.

Skipping the Assessment Phase

I believe the main reason for organizations skipping the assessment phase of an intervention is simply cost. Most DEI consultants have a prepackaged program they can modify to a company’s needs. That is, the needs as the C suite see them, which may or may not be aligned with the actual organizational needs. One of the first eye opening things I learned from doing assessment work was the disincentives to information passing up the chain of command. A well done assessment may be the only opportunity for directors to get a sense of the informal atmosphere within an organization. While that alone may be of interest to directors, the real value of an assessment is in making visible the values, perspectives, and narratives throughout their organization for the purposes of communications design.

Our communications officers know well that understanding our audience is essential. Framing our internal communications and programs in our employee’s perspectives and values can be humbling, and yet it is the most effective. Assessment allows a change practitioner to get a sense of what is important for people at several different levels and areas of our organization, because it won’t be the same, even within a single department. They can begin to make out patterns and design interventions and language specifically for certain groups.

Assessment also offers the opportunity to build an inclusive team to oversee a DEI project. Cultural change is a complex endeavor, and needs a well-built team to carry out. Interviews are an opportunity to identify individuals who sense the pulse of different areas of the organization. Having those folks on the team is invaluable for design feedback, and can prevent much of the factionalization that can happen during an intervention. One dimension of diversity that is usually overlooked when assembling such teams is economic class. This oversight results programming designed by and for the upper and middle class employees being applied to lower class employees as well.

Say we have a whole arm of our organization who are blue collar workers; they probably don’t care for top down “schooling” and are going to be resistant to being asked to sit down for a lecture especially if they don’t see a direct connection to their work. Approaches to DEI work in a blue collar culture need to take a very different angle than either the classroom approach or the “encounter circle” approach. Instead you may have to wait until an issue arises organically (such as safety or customer service) and sneak in cross cultural communication patterns into that subject matter. DEI is linked to everything: safety may be exacerbated by cultural barriers, unconscious bias that prevents whites from hearing POC concerns, or lifelong racial trauma that may prevent employees of color from feeling like their concerns will be believed and suggestions supported.

Other non-classroom approaches might be to focus on developing the skills of change agents at all levels of the organization. One such exemplary model is Dr. David Wiley Campt’s White Ally Toolkit: wherein change agents are trained in covert long term strategic persuasion. Other change agent modalities may include Listening Training, mediation skills, Gracious Space, restorative processes, identity groups, etc.

Horizontal approaches to DEI like these, brings to mind the work of the Center for Ethical Leadership. CEL, with funding from the Kellogg’s Foundation, worked nationwide on engaging communities for the common good. Rather than gathering a diverse community into a room and addressing race right away, they focused on a common challenge such as high school drop-out rates. By focusing first on developing understanding and trust within the group, CEL was able to create the safe environment for racial concerns to arise organically; all the while the group is focused on a common concern.

People need to have an incentive to do the hard work and an environment where learning is supported; otherwise the status quo is the path of least resistance.

Devising a supportive and learning environment in itself could be the center of an entire cultural change project by itself. The kinds of consultants necessary for this particular work are rare, and are worth the search. This bring us to our final pitfall.

The Expert Trap

Long before my studies of social change theory, I experienced a certain disconnect between what was said and what was practiced in DEI trainings. I’ve come to call this disconnect the Expert Trap and it has as much to do with our expectations as the actual expert. Below are a comparison of what is often expected from an expert and what is actually needed for effective cultural change agents:

Expectations	Actual Need
Best practices	Generative practices
Efficiency	Resiliency
Reasoning/academic	Authenticity/relational
Confidence	Open mindedness

These expectations are understandable. Approaching race is fraught with hazards, it makes sense that we would want someone who has an academic background, perhaps has written a book or two, can lay out a clear intervention based on best practices (read current practices) and speaks with confidence and reassurance (the kind of person we would expect could hold their own against race deniers). The reality of social change is that there are no “best” practices, there are principles, and there are tools. Even those tools usually need to be modified or hybridized to meet the unique needs of the group.

More important, and perhaps most challenging for anyone labeled an “expert” is that the approaches, language, policies, design, etc. need to at least feel like they are being generated from within the organization. A mentor of mine, who ran one of the largest Nonprofits in the NW for a decade, relayed to me that all his systems thinking and models fell flat when introduced to the organization. He had to slowly shepherd them towards systems thinking over a long time while using their own language. Principles need to be discovered in situ. His perseverance and success speaks volumes to me about the slow and generative approach.

Another expectation of experts is that they come armed with critical race theory, and reams of historical and statistical evidence, as if they are presenting a logical argument.

“Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired” ~Jonathan Swift.

Debate and reason play a much smaller part of social change than people think. For example, I didn’t set out to champion DEI when I began studying OD. I wanted to know how an existing hierarchical organization could change to have the dynamism, creativity, and resiliency that I had experienced in co-operatives. Studying group dynamics was a core competency in my graduate program. Watching how the dynamics in a diverse team were affected by social expectations, it became apparent to me that DEI could not be just a footnote in Organizational Development as a field. Oppression, real or imagined, inhibits both communication and creativity. By pursuing my own value of collaboration, i came to my own conclusions about the importance of DEI.

The last part of the Expert Trap I want to cover is perhaps the most subtle; it’s only after years of witnessing it, then experiencing it directly, and then carefully unpacking it with peers that I became aware of it.

Our expectations of efficiency and productivity run counter to the slow and generative approach. When an expert is in a small learning group, there is a hunger to see an effect, to prove their expertise as a change agent. So despite the preambles of “we’re all equal learners here” and “this is a safe space”, DEI facilitators can have a predatory quality toward anyone courageous enough to learn out loud. This puts them at emotional odds with the confusion, doubt, guilt, or anger that are common with the learner. Where they should be empathic and allowing the learner to progress at their own pace, facilitators leap in eager to be “effective” and take a victory where there are so few.

Proclamations of “safety” are a perfect example of this shortchanged care. No one can be guaranteed safety: strong emotions can be triggered by all kinds of situations that no one can predict or prepare for. Developing norms which support and care for strong emotions without stigma and judgment, is how we create a safety net. This takes many hours of practice and reflection on authentic and vulnerable human connection. That kind of safety really relies on peer level support, something difficult for anyone tagged as an “expert” to manifest interpersonally. Fixing and advising has no place between hearts.

Conclusion

I have spanned from policy to authentic human connection. That is the nature of cultural change, there is no aspect of human life that is untouched by race and oppression. It’s easy to get caught up in policies after all we have the most control over those, but I hope I have made this clear but DEI is an interpersonal path. There is a term “spiritual bypass” which denotes when an individual has focused on spiritual development but has skipped their interpersonal development. That is, they haven’t reflected on their history and how that plays out in current relationships. Pursuing enlightenment is a lot less painful than relational self-reflection.

Bypass then is a useful term. We can talk about political bypass, social justice bypass, philosophy bypass, etc. all the things that make us feel competent in the world, but frequently interfere with authentic human connection (which can only be practiced in real-time with another person). And such a waste, I cannot begin to convey the profound world altering feelings that can arise from authentic human connection. I wish there was some way we could tap it as a fuel source….

DEI work is overwhelming. It is complex, emotional, and potentially divisive. Personally I don’t know how to balance the public demand for urgent change and the knowledge that sustainable social change is a slow and generative process. It’s a sobering dilemma. Perhaps moving forward is the only way we can learn; that only through experiencing the pain and suffering of moving forward can we realize we are unprepared for this kind of pain and suffering. Only from honestly facing that suffering can we develop the courage to look toward new and more honest ways of relating to each other.

“Equity cannot be taught. It can only be demonstrated.”-Rev. Ron Harris-White

Post Script

This essay would not be possible without the generous governmental and community support I have received during the Covid-19 pandemic. Without the space to breath, reflect, learn and grow that comes from not having to think about basic survival, I would not have had the courage to commit to very difficult inner growth. If I had to buck up and show up for an employer, I would have rightly known that I didn’t have the emotional resources to plumb depression for its wealth. This essay is a token of my appreciation for so much support, thank you all.

Organizations

Human Connection as Medicine:

https://seekhealing.org/

DEI Consultation:

https://www.ethicalleadership.org/

White Ally Toolkit:

https://www.whiteallytoolkit.com/