When It Comes to DEI, Engage Executives and Avoid Excuses
“It has to start at the top.”
We hear this all the time relative to diversity and inclusion efforts at companies -- this notion that if the leadership team is not bought in and engaged, then the efforts will be dead from the start.
There’s a lot of truth to this, for pretty much every company, but we also have seen this used as a cop out pretty frequently. “Because our leadership team isn’t bought in, we can’t really do anything on this front. Maybe next year.”
Not okay.
Holistic is endeavoring to solve this problem by creating an organized, efficient way to get leadership teams engaged, bought in, and directionally aligned on DEI issues. We call it our “DEI Analysis and Executive Goal Setting Session” and it is a two-month process which is highlighted by a half-day session for a leadership team to really focus on generating ideas, goals, and focus areas for DEI efforts.
Here’s how it works:
Phase 1: Data collection and analysis
Through a series of interviews, modest surveys, and other data analysis efforts, Holistic conducts an initial assessment of the company landscape. What has happened to date? What are the stated priorities? Any pain points? How are people feeling? How close are we to consensus?
Phase 2: The event itself
About two-thirds of the way through the process, we meet for the half day session, usually facilitated by Holistic CEO Tom Alexander, DEI mentor Acasia Wilson Feinberg, and the rest of our team.
The session starts with open discussion and level-setting, in which we’ll not only engage in a general directional discussion, but we’ll also share the results of our research and data. Then, we’ll move into some module trainings and discussions, where we’ll share best practices and thoughts relative to the specific findings of our research, and use those as fodder for activities and discussions. Finally, we’ll close with a facilitated goal setting session, where we’ll focus on real, actionable, and attainable goals that can be accomplished immediately, over the next six months, and through the next year.
Phase 3: Post-event
Following the event, we’ll gather a bit more data and then produce a report of findings, complete with a proposed action plan and timeline. This can serve as a DEI roadmap for the organization, and indeed a lot of our partners actually adopt this document wholesale as their plan of action. Holistic works with the company leadership and officials to determine what is the “lowest hanging fruit”, what are the areas that merit further discussion, how these plans can be rolled out to the broader corporate population, and more.
Aligning and engaging leadership of organizations around DEI is essential, but hard. One of the major factors is around organizing the group and finding constructive ways to have everyone’s voice heard and get to a solid, concerted outcome. This can take a ton of time and energy and in many cases this ends up becoming a deal-breaker; companies can’t get past even the initial organizational challenges to be able to be successful.
But everyone can spend a half day talking through this stuff in an engaging session. Let us help with the rest.
Read more about it here.
