Three Steps to Reset Your DEI Efforts

The summer of 2021 is approaching and while we all thought DEI would continue to be front and center for all organizations, many efforts have already started to wither away. As more people in the United States are vaccinated and cities open up again to resume “business as usual,” so are organizations as they focus on preparing for in-person interactions again. Unfortunately, the racial reckoning that many hoped would come has not. If anything, we continue to see the same racial and social injustices happening in our public domain, communities, and places of work. If you’re feeling the slow simmer or burnout of DEI efforts at your organization, here are some tips to help your team reset for the second half of the year.

Step 1: Uncover all the work that you have accomplished

Celebrate and take stock of your wins

If you haven’t already, take some time to reflect and discuss all the work and progress that has been made towards DEI for the past six months. When doing this, list small and big wins without reservation. The point is to get a full understanding and picture of the effort that has been put into this work.

Check it against your original plan

If your organization created a strategic plan, KPIs, or a project plan, revisit these documents to assess your progress. The point is not to see if you have checked off items, but to see if your plans were realistic and reflected your organizational values. For example, if your initial goal by Q4 2020 was to increase diversity hiring by 25%, but after doing some internal assessments realized that you first needed to redesign your hiring process, you should still celebrate the fact that you redesigned your hiring process even if you did not increase your diversity hiring by 25% (but also why 25%?). Once you assess your progress against your initial goals and objectives, determine if you need to shift your priorities.

Step 2: Unlearn practices that did not serve you

If your organization is relatively new to DEI work and you’re approaching it the same way you would approach any other initiative, chances are you are bringing in the same practices and values that you operate with on a daily basis. This wouldn’t be an issue if your organization was rooted in equity, inclusive collaboration, and belonging. However, this is most likely not the case for a lot of organizations and institutions operating within our current systems. I once worked in what you would deem to be a liberal, well-meaning non-profit organization and saw similar and sometimes even worse practices than when I worked in an unapologetic, straight-up capitalist corporate environment. For DEI work to truly be a part of your organization’s culture, you need to do things differently.

What has been helpful for myself and our clients is to understand the characteristics of white supremacy and be able to name where it shows up in their organizational culture. Adapted from Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun, the organization, Showing Up for Racial Justice walks us through fourteen different ways white supremacy characteristics shows up in our workplace. Reference these definitions, explore the antidotes, and determine where it shows up in the DEI work that you do. You can access the definitions here: White Supremacy Culture Characteristics.

Step 3: Unleash your new learnings

If you’ve read this far, no matter where you are in your DEI work, I hope that you can celebrate that you’ve made progress. That doesn’t mean you should stop here because let’s face it, the work is never going to be done, but you need to give your morale some fuel. As someone who has felt immense frustration at how slow organizations are at making change for something as critical as racial equity because of organizational excuses like funding, legal, or “leadership,” it can feel like your efforts barely made a dent in the organization, and society at large. You may be wondering, how does my organization’s DEI efforts affect the greater world?

In adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy she quotes the late activist Grace Lee Boggs, “Transform yourself to transform the world.” She clarifies that this doesn’t mean you should just focus on yourself but “see our own lives and work and relations as a front line, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet.” She goes on to say that “what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” Even if you feel like your DEI work hasn’t advanced as far as you’d hoped or leadership isn’t as fully bought in as you’d think they’d be, consider all the things you’ve learned from this experience and reflect on how it has affected you personally, your relationships, and your worldview.

Now that you’ve uncovered your work, committed to unlearning some practices, apply that to unleashing your new learnings into your work for the rest of the year. Be honest with yourself about what you can accomplish in six months but also challenge yourself to do things differently. Even if your entire company or organization isn’t bought in, how can you bring some other team members along this journey with you? The important thing is to keep learning, growing, and transforming. I have found that the momentum and energy of a few dedicated team members who are well-organized and supportive one one another is more powerful that trying to convince a group of people who are not fully bought in yet. Find your people and support each other.

There may be moments when you get discouraged. When this happens to me, I think about the multiple interviews that Dr. Angela Davis did after the “racial uprising” where she talked about how she still had hope that this moment would bring about change we have never seen before, that this moment was a part of a continuum. If Dr. Angela Davis, who has dedicated her entire life to social justice and equity, and who had been criminalized because of it, could still have hope, I know that I can and you can too.

Good luck on your reset!