People who know our work at IQS Research know that we have been conducting DE&I research for about a decade. But, we have only been running DE&I workshops for the past year.
We didn’t plan to offer DE&I workshops as part of our portfolio, but there was an important need and we didn’t see anyone filling it. I don’t know how long we will stay in this space, because honestly, the margins are better when we focus on the other parts of the company.
Still, I’ll say that these workshops are energizing! The organization for the most recent workshop has about 400 employees with about 60% being Black or African American, about 35% being white, and the remaining being of other races.
We enter the DE&I space the same way we approach other issues.
- There are problems (or there is a problem)
- The problem needs to be understood
- The problem needs to be addressed
- We are going to come together to understand this problem and put a plan together to make improvement
When the problem is racism, you have to tackle the underlying components because racism isn’t a single issue – it is a confluence of several issues. However, if there is a group of committed and empowered people, then a lot can happen.
And if it is done correctly, then what happens is real progress to address the issue, not just a series of feel good exercises.
In the case of this workshop, we chose to address two disparities that exist between white and Black employees. One disparity is around Black employees being promoted at different rates than whites and the other centers on fair treatment of Black employees.
There is 20-point gap between the opinions of Black and white employees in these areas, so the rationale to choose these two was pretty strong.
Now here’s the thing, this group of about 30 individuals, not only committed to take these issues on, they put together the first steps to address the issues, they set a goal for how much of the gap will be fixed with the first set of actions, and they set a deadline for when their progress will be measured again.
Their work may not be perfect, and they will surely hit bumps along the way, but what gets me so excited about their work is that:
- It is real
- It is specific
- There are people and resources committed to start making progress and those people will stay with the project for the next two years
- There are people on the committee who have authority and can implement changes
- There are deadlines
- There is a commitment to check their work again as a specific date
If this feels very engineering-ish, it is. And while there are dozens of details needed to successfully combine the head-work of an engineering process with the heart-work of DE&I, the combination is powerful.
I believe DE&I is one of the most important issues our country is tackling right now. And I think we have to move past the feel-good exercises so that we can focus on changing organizations. The feel-good stuff has a place, but it has to be followed by internal commitment and real change to the way the organization operates.
That type of change is hard – you could tell the people were mentally fatigued at the end of the workshop. However, if we aren’t willing to tackle the hard work, then we are just putting window dressing on the problem and nobody has time for that bullshit.