The struggle for equality and equity has been going on for centuries. Whether viewed from a gender, race, disability or any other personal characteristic perspective, true equality of opportunity and equity of outcomes are difficult things to achieve. Certain groups clearly benefit more than others from the way society is structured and organised than others and trying to change that is an incredibly complex endeavour.
In more recent years, the fight for equity in the workplace have often been placed under the banner of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I or I&D) or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI or EDI).
However, DEI efforts have not always created the right outcomes for the organisations that have implemented them. There are more and more stories of DEI programmes being rolled back, of DEI groups or departments being removed and of organisations, particularly senior leaders, talking of “diversity” fatigue. There is an open question about where the true ROI (return on investment) lies in DEI. (1)
If we just focus on a gender lens as an example, Men for Inclusion’s research into the UK’s gender pay gap data showed the median wage gap had moved by less than half a penny in 6 years, a rate that would suggest parity is another 35 years. When we look at the progress for individual companies, we estimate that over 24% will never achieve a 50/50 split of men and women in top-quartile roles.
Why is it so hard? Why is progress so slow? Why haven’t we fully realised the benefits of our DEI efforts?
One significant challenge we see for individual organisations is that they are not treating DEI as a transformational culture change programme. Their efforts to date have been the creation of groups to focus on diversity and representation, without joining the dots on how those groups need to be part of a wider change process.
We believe that DEI is a transformational change programme. And transformational change programmes are hard – in fact, there is an argument to suggest that creating a true diverse and inclusive organisation is one of the most difficult change programmes ever attempted in business.
If an organisation’s DEI programme does not look, sound or smell like a transformational change programme, with the right structure, resources, investment, skills, sponsorship, funding, goals, objectives, etc., it is not surprising that it struggles to deliver the outcomes that people are hoping for.
But even programmes that look like they have all of those things, still do not succeed. In fact, according to research by McKinsey, as many as 70% of transformation programmes fail to meet their objectives. (2)
I have had the honour and privilege to lead transformational change programmes on a few occasions. When I do, I typically go back to John Kotter’s work on transformational change to remind myself of some of the pit falls. (3)
Kotter identified 8 key reasons why transformational change programmes fail and I think there are some key lessons for all of us working in the DEI space to consider. Let’s take a look at each in turn.
1. Not establishing a great enough sense of urgency
Just over 18 months ago, Men for Inclusion ran a male allies workshop for 12 senior male leaders for a large UK company. 3 months later, we met with them again to hear about their reflections on what they had learnt from the workshop and what changes they had made personally in the business. The answer to the latter was “not a lot at this stage, but we are going to get together as a group and come up with a plan for our new allies group”.
We spoke again 6 months later and when we asked about the allies group, the response was “we really need to get them going, but we’ve got a lot of other stuff to focus on in the mean-time. Why don’t we regroup in 6 months”.
So 18 months from the first intervention, little had moved forward. Now clearly, those higher priority activities could have been related to other strands of their DEI programme, but it really struck us how comfortable they seemed with continuously putting off action – “we’ll get around to it some day”. Now, I know this is a single example, but this seems systematic of a lot of DEI programmes – loads of intention, lots of good ideas, but limited action. Often driven by lack of time or resources.
If this was truly a critical business priority, executives would be demanding progress quickly, but it is increasingly clear that that urgency simply does not exist, resources & investment are not forthcoming, impact is delayed and people lose interest or lose belief in the benefits it can bring.
2. Not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition
It is easy to think about this one just in terms of senior leadership. Are they truly bought in? Are they willing to spend sufficient personal time on ensuring success? Or even understanding what success looks like? Even more, are they personally willing to change their own behaviours or work practices as well. For when leaders talk about the importance of diversity and inclusion but then don’t practice it, the organisation sees through that. And they think “if it’s not really important to the executive, it can’t be that important to me”.
Examples for when senior leadership do this abound.
How about when, after a drains-up review, the hiring process is changed to make sure the chances of diverse candidates are maximised (e.g. not focusing on time to hire, inclusive hiring training, balanced candidate slates, etc.), one of the executives hires their mate from a previous organisation without going through the new process.
But we need more than just the senior executives buy in (although that is essential). We need them to be active and most importantly, we need them to spring into action to remove blockers – whether that is more investment, their problem-solving skills or through their relationships across the business to help others get onside.
In addition, we need to think beyond the executive – what other groups in the organisation have significant influence and have we made sure they have a role in what we are trying to achieve – that could be HR, Finance, IT, Operations, etc. etc. We need to make sure the guiding coalition for our success is able to help us resolve all barriers wherever we find them.
3. Lacking a vision
The problem with representation which usually has associated targets or quotas, it may not be a vision that everyone buys into. If you are part of the majority and the focus is on the minority, how does that make you feel? Is it vision that inspires you? Some might say yes, but they can see how this might make the business better, but an awful lot will say no (although they may not voice it).
But targets and quotas typically just focus on diversity? But what about inclusion? You can hit all the diversity targets you like, but if the organisation is not inclusive, it will limit the benefits of diversity and will likely ensure that those diverse people will not stick around.
Is the DEI vision in the company, something that everyone will want to support?
4. Under communicating by a factor of ten
I remember a time when my company allowed the local police force to scenario model an active shooter event in our office one evening (with real guns, but not with real bullets) and despite endless communications for all staff to vacate that part of the offices through every single channel we could think of, there were still a smattering of staff sat at their desk in complete shock as they heard gun-fire across the office.
You can never underestimate, especially in large organisations, how little the employees are really listening to widescale corporate messages. Whether around training, policy, risk, cybersecurity, people priorities or technology changes, people are inundated with corporate messaging and as a result, often listen to very little of it.
DEI is no different.
And given it is a highly complex, deeply nuanced subject, which often has no right or wrong answers, the right communication is key. Delivered by the right people through the right channels. Some people will pick up important information through widescale written communication, some through company events, others through line managers and peers.
For DEI to be successful, it needs to have a really well thought out communication strategy and one that is created and implemented by communication experts.
On a broader level, this is one of the challenges of DEI, especially when it is not seen as a transformational change programme. Organisations have not staffed the programme with all of the expertise and skills that it needs to be successful. A lot of companies are relying on “enthusiastic and passionate amateurs” delivering it from the side of their desks. People who have a purposeful stake in building a better culture, but they are often not experts in the variety of roles you need to successfully implement transformational change.
And one of those which is most critical is having a great communication expert – someone who really understands their craft and knows that communication is two-way. DEI programmes spend a lot of time sending communication, but how much time do they spend receiving it (potentially apart from the very context poor approach of using surveys).
We need to spend more time communicating about DEI and that needs to include more 2 way approaches and be led by people who are the experts in this field. And all communication needs to be co-ordinated across all efforts, not just allowing the different sub-communities to communicate unilaterally.
5. Not removing enough obstacles to the new vision
Now this one is playing out in spades before our very eyes. Increasingly research is showing that people are becoming resistant to ideas around equity. (4) Their views are becoming more entrenched and they are becoming at best, quite passive in terms of engaging in the DEI strategy or worst still, actively trying to derail them. And in turn, this leads to executives filing DEI into the “too difficult” box.
Again, you see just these sorts of behaviours in any large change management programme. Whatever the change is, there are likely to be people invested in retaining the status quo, people who want to see the programme fail or who want a different strategy and are going to do all they can frustrate yours.
So any programme or change manager worth their salt, will sit down and create a proper stakeholder map. They will think about some of the key individuals and some of the key groups that they know will be critical to the success of the programme and they will look to come up with a clear plan on how to manage them. That could range from specific interventions to get them onside, to leverage others they trust to support you (e.g. some of the people from the guiding coalition in point 2), to simply finding ways to limit the impact of their resistance.
Because for DEI, the biggest key blocker is going to be people. There will be others – time, money, resources, clients, suppliers, competing priorities – a good programme manager thinks ahead and has plans to deal with them.
You need to get the mindset and (again) the expertise right from the start.
6. Not systemically planning for, and creating, short term wins
Because this is hard, it often takes multiple years for components of a DEI strategy to deliver benefits. And it can also be incredibly difficult to measure.
Although, linked to the vision in point 3), it is good to begin with the end in mind, there are bound to be things that go wrong with the programme and hence, seeing the sub-components of the strategy as a series of experiments can be quite helpful. And it is worth thinking about specific success measures for each of those experiments and celebrating when they are achieved – in fact, celebrating even when they are not achieved, because the likelihood is that you have learnt something.
It is important for your stakeholders, especially your guiding coalition, to feel that results are being achieved. Hence, although the full results and benefits may be many years away, it is worth ensuring that benefits can be highlighted along the way. It may also mean focusing on one area to deliver outcomes quickly, rather than focusing too wide and try to resolve to many of the cultural issues too soon.
7. Declaring victory too soon
Recently, I was in a workshop with an executive team who were looking at further opportunities to create a more inclusive workplace. It was a company that had done a lot of work in this space and rightfully, they felt very proud of the efforts to date, but were also open to what more they could do.
One of our conversations was about how inclusion in their company did not feel like a “burning platform” to the executive. Given comparisons to other organisations we have worked with, I was initially inclined to agree, but as I thought about it, it felt to me that we should not be looking at DEI that way. Because this is about culture and culture change. I felt that if they stopped investing in DEI, that culture could shift if there wasn’t continuous focus. I was ok with the idea of changing the investment profile of the DEI strategy, but I felt it important for the company to continue to see it as a strategic investment.
It struck me that there was a clear parallel with technology strategy. If you don’t invest in your technology as an organisation, it can degrade and atrophy quite quickly. The number of companies that have had a major cybersecurity incident because they haven’t been sufficiently investing in their technology stack to reduce the possibility of legacy vulnerabilities are legion. And these can lead to very expensive legal and financial ramifications, that can be very difficult recover from.
I feel that investment into an inclusive culture is very similar. If you take your eye off the ball and allow your inclusive culture to degrade, then a Confederation of Business Industry or Crispin Odey event might be just around the corner.
8. Not anchoring changes in the corporation’s culture
All learning interventions in organisations risk this happening. People are taken out of their daily place of work and “taught” something in a classroom and expected to apply it to their jobs when they get back. Invariably, people have forgotten what they learnt the minute they arrive back at their desk.
Hence, the more we can do to take inclusive approaches into the way in which things are done is more likely to yield benefits. In fact, actually learning on the job is even better – talking about running more inclusive meetings as a team, in a meeting, is far likelier to generate better outcomes than having 20 minutes of on-line training happening. Having teams create their own culture contract which talks about how they expect to treat each other is better than creating corporate training on the approach.
This is known as “Gemba” learning. Gemba is a Japanese word meaning “the actual place.” In lean practices, the gemba refers to “the place where value is created,” such as the shop floor in manufacturing, the operating room in a hospital, the job site on a construction project, the kitchen of a restaurant, and the workstation of a software programmer.
So, there it is – 8 key things to avoid doing when it comes to improving DEI in your company.
Not too hard on paper, but bloody difficult in reality.
But the first part of finding solutions, is fully understanding the problem. We are trying to solve a problem that has never been solved. We are attempting something – a truly diverse and inclusive organisation – that we have only recently started attempting. So it is no surprise that we are still learning and still getting it wrong on occasion.
If you would like to discuss your DEI strategy with us at Men for Inclusion, feel free to reach out directly to me on LinkedIn.