5 reasons your DEI strategy is going to fail
People ask us to review DEI strategies often. We’re often invited to do these reviews after the strategy has already been written and is on its way to some kind of implementation. We often don't take on these kinds of review jobs because in that scenario we'd be taking on a communications role and just reviewing language. Our interest in DEI or equity strategies has little to do with semantics, and everything to do with what problem you’re trying to solve, how you’ll be solving it and how you’ll measure and track the effectiveness of these solutions.
Because we don’t often take on these projects here's what you can look for as an indicator of success or failure in your DEI strategy or plan:
Unclear about what equity challenges specifically, the strategy is trying to address
Actions either don't exist or are totally intangible
No way to measure progress and success
No resources attached to strategy
Focuses on individual learning as the bedrock of diversity, equity and inclusion
Let’s get into it
Unclear about what equity challenges specifically, the strategy is trying to address
We sound like broken records at this point, but specificity is your friend. A strategy should not be the beginning of the work, but somewhere in between learning your equity challenges and solving them with the guidance of your strategy or plan. Clarity about what you are working to solve means clarity about your way forward. Even more, clarity about who the challenge has affected and its full anatomy will get you intimate enough with the challenge to better see it through. For instance, without specificity, your strategy is focused on diversification and general inclusivity. This means your strategy or plan will focus on general and random solutions. On the other hand, specificity that focuses on existing, identified challenges like pay inequity, gendered language, homophobic and transphobic benefits means your strategy is focused on solving these specific challenges and all the peripheral challenges they may have caused.
Actions either don’t exist or are totally intangible
Many of us have had some engagement with strategy writing and implementation. Unfortunately, when it comes to DEI, the basic principles of good strategy are forgotten or completely ignored. One of these principles is clear tangible action.
DEI strategies should not be theoretical documents but clear, tangible documents that include the actions taken for success. We often see strategies that are focused on outlining the aspirational identity of the organization. These strategies do a fantastic job of adopting a vision and mission statement, but leave so much to be desired in tangible, measurable actions. These actions - as mentioned above - need to be focused on identified challenges, and outline the steps to be taken in service of seeing through the success of the strategy/plan.
No way to measure progress and success
I’m sure you already know where we’re going with this one. If you’re clear about the problem you’re trying to solve, and you’ve identified tangible actions in service of addressing these challenges - logic would demand you build a method to define success and measure the efficacy of your actions.
If measurement feels daunting to you, we can recommend a simple, straightforward way to approach this:
Define what success looks like with the actions you have laid out. ie. If in correcting pay discrepancies, your action is to review/audit all compensation and correct discrepancies, success may look like full pay equity in the organization and new systems to ensure pay equity is maintained regardless of role changes or attrition.
Identify your indicators. If you know what success looks like broadly, indicators help you get successful and provide ‘proof’ of that success. You’ll want your indicators to be both quantitative and qualitative. So if you’re focused on pay discrepancies, your indicators may be in 12 months, 70% of roles have had their pay reviewed and compensated and 50% of staff express clarity about how compensation decisions are made.
Decide how you’ll be collecting these indicators. This simply means having a straightforward way to collect these qualitative and quantitative indicators ie. observation of the number of completed reviews and surveys to measure clarity about compensation decisions.
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘what’s not measured is not done’, this remains true for equity strategies. As demonstrated above, measurement of your actions doesn’t need to be complicated. They are simply meant to give you markers for success, hold you accountable and show you where you need to course correct.
No resources attached to strategy
If your strategy has actions, I hate to break it to you, but they will need resources.
By resources, we mean time, labour, expertise and money. Whether you can commit to all of these, one of these, or a combination, you will need to commit some resources up front. Strategies are flexible in that they can clearly indicate the exact strategies available to you, or they can indicate the resources required, and be negotiated later.
There is no way to get past assigning resources to your actions. Your strategy will fail if you do not commit to some level of resource allocation.
Focuses on individual learning as the bedrock of diversity, equity and inclusion
This article wouldn’t be on brand unless we mentioned anti racism and unconscious bias training.
This is controversial, but if the single most critical part of your strategy and actions includes building knowledge of the most privileged people (especially in leadership roles), your strategy will fail.
No other organisation strategy involves general knowledge building as a central tactic, and neither should your DEI strategy. We encourage you to explore equity training that is specific to identified challenges or specific roles (eg. building equity into product design or copy writing), however training that focuses on general anti-racism, or linguistics will do little to address systemic inequity.
So there it is, our strategy review cheat sheet. If you’re looking for robust support in identifying challenges and building a strong strategy, get in touch! We’re happy to help. For support with digging into your strategy and its implementation, learn more about QuakeCare - our offer to be your in-house equity team.