A reflection on DEI work moving into 2024- A 10 minute read with hours of resources
As 2023 comes to a close, we are reflecting about what we've learned in DEI consulting alongside our clients and share a few of those lessons with you now:
Organizational Assessment- While our assessments were thorough, reports were rarely read and acted upon. Creating change centered on assessment results was a big obstacle for organizations. It's important we help our clients develop solid change management and project management practices. Creating actionable, tangible outcomes (not just an assessment report) is where shift happens.
Training- In our efforts to educate, we realize content overwhelm is real. Most appreciated was the opportunity to have discussions and actually apply tools to scenario based learning. We hold firm that training is only one kind of DEI organizational intervention. To produce outcomes, it's important that we couple training with a holistic strategy for change.
Policy Review- Making more equitable suggestions on hundreds of pages of HR documentation is tedious to do, read, and act upon. Yet these day to day employee experiences through policy, practice, and procedure is part of how organizational culture is influenced. Using a lens to center those with the most marginalized identities will help us rewrite policies that benefit all employees- not just those with dominant identities.
Leadership Coaching- We learned the importance of power undergirding this work and how important it is for leaders to share power and let go of power scarcity through ‘power with’ not ‘power over’. We must help leaders walk and talk DEI in order to champion change and co-create solutions alongside their employees. Decolonized organizational structures are helping us to move leaders into creating a liberatory workplace.
Group Facilitation- Despite our best efforts and skills, harm is often created in diverse groups. We apologize for the harm we unintentionally created or allowed to go unrepaired during our facilitations. Tools such as the SAE accountability model and RAVEN framework have been implemented to reduce harm and restorative justice practices are followed to repair it.
Organizational Development- DEI efforts rarely succeed when leadership, communication, morale, and teamwork have shaky foundations. Three years after dual pandemics and a current mental health crisis led us to focusing on organization healing.
As the domain of DEI adapts and evolves, we learned a lot from impactful bodies of work from Tema Okun, Dr. Ericka Hines, Dr. Barbara J. Love, John A. Powel and those who came before them. Recent thought leaders challenge and advance our praxis such as Lily Zheng, Dr. Janice Gassam Asare, adrienne maree brown, Edgar Villanueva, Tiffany Jana, and Resmaa Menakem. Our top book recommendations for 2024 are DEI Deconstructed and its workbook, Decolonizing Wealth, and The Wake Up. We have also revised our Guiding Principles for how we approach this work with less judging and more seeing each other in our full humanity- connecting with each other in ‘right relationship’. As always, we continue to curate free resources for us all to continue learning and growing together in this work.
In 2024, we are grounding ourselves in an Awareness, Acknowledgment, Accountability framework. The awareness of systemic oppression and trauma that communities have experienced, the acknowledgement of where our policies and practices exacerbate inequities, and the accountability to not permit them to persist in our organizations or ourselves.
With compassionate accountability and criticality we invite you to share with us how we can grow and improve in our practice to help organizations become more inclusive, equitable, just, and liberatory. We are also here to host a compassionate listening space to hear your reflections and plans to continue your DEI work in 2024. We invite you into a brave conversation in the new year- feel free to schedule some time with us, reply to this email, or fill out this anonymous 3 question survey. Thank you for continuing this hard but necessary work in your organization, community, and life. We look forward to being in partnership with you for the long-term “until we are all free”.