Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is facing backlash. That’s frustrating for many of us, but instead of just reacting, we should see this as an opportunity to go deeper and get more precise in our approach.
Too often, DEI efforts are instrumental—treated as checkboxes rather than integral parts of how organizations function. We need to see that it is these very ad-hoc, formulaic, and often tokenizing interventions that are being attacked through legislation and litigation.
What we need is a comprehensive, strategic approach that embeds our values into the very fabric of our organizations. These deeper values are not only more resistant to attack, they are at the core of the American project. Because our values are to create liberty and justice for all.
This is exactly what our See, Be, Work, Grow Together framework is designed to do. Guide us on how to build organizations that are deeply aligned with our visions and values.
See: A Shared Analysis for Real Solutions
Before we can fix inequities, we need a clear, shared understanding of the issues and their root causes. One major flaw in many DEI efforts and DEI critiques is the reliance on identity markers as proxies for deeper qualities—like competency, effectiveness, and leadership ability. While identity is important, it should not be a stand-in for what we actually care about. For example, simply adding more people of color to a leadership team will not automatically make the culture more inclusive, nor automatically lessen the quality of strategies (as DEI critics claim).
The best way to uncover underlying causes is through our Power, Belonging, and Justice framework:
- Power: Who can do what? Who holds decision-making authority?
- Belonging: Who is included, who is excluded, and who benefits from the current system?
- Justice: What consequences do we accept? What actions do we take in response to the unacceptable in the past, present, and future?
By applying this framework, we can sidestep common DEI pitfalls such as:
- Tokenization – Putting individuals in positions as symbolic gestures rather than valuing their actual skills.
- Identity as Proxy – Assuming that identity alone determines one’s perspective, capability, or role in solving complex issues.
- Platitudes over Precision – Using trendy social justice phrases without understanding their meaning or having a clear plan to act on them.
Be: Relearning How to Relate to One Another
We need to relearn how to see and honor the deep human worth in each other—and to notice and care when that worth is unjustly diminished. Too often, we reduce this complexity to oversimplified thinking about identity.
Sometimes, race, gender, or sex are the right lenses for understanding a situation. Sometimes, they aren’t. When we ignore identity when it’s relevant, we normalize or make harmful power dynamics invisible. When we over-focus on identity when it’s unnecessary, we risk reducing people to their social identities, which can dehumanize individuals and enable harmful behaviors from all directions.
Learning to truly be together is multi-dimensional:
- Personal Work – Recognizing our own biases, taking accountability, and acting with integrity.
- Interpersonal Work – Meeting others with love and acceptance to build real trust and deeper alignment instead of unnecessarily resorting to punishment or exclusion.
- Cultural Work – Committing to each other’s dignity and fostering a shared ability to call forth the best in one another—while also recognizing when aspects of historical oppression are negatively affecting our relationships and our impact.
Work: Building the Right Structures, Processes, and Policies
To truly work together, we need structures, practices, processes, and policies that enable collaboration. The challenge is that when we create these systems, they must not only achieve their core purpose but also positively impact other dimensions of the organization and the people who are a part of it.
For example, a project management system should help people manage projects effectively—but it should also foster trust and create intentional power relationships.
When it comes to DEI, many organizations focus only on obvious areas like hiring pipelines. But if you want to welcome more people from a particular background into your organization, the real issue might not be recruitment—it might be that the way meetings are facilitated is reinforcing unhealthy power dynamics. A holistic evaluation of a group’s structures, processes, and policies is necessary to identify the real barriers to inclusion.
At the same time, poorly designed DEI efforts can unintentionally disrupt necessary organizational infrastructure. For instance, someone may challenge an existing supervision model in order to promote equity but fail to consider the critical coordination that model was providing, and consequently weaken the organization’s functionality.
Ultimately, the question is: Can you create a system of structures, practices, processes, and policies that enable people to effectively work toward their goals in ways that align with their values?
Instead of treating DEI as a siloed initiative, let’s integrate it into how we build better, smarter, and more just organizations. The backlash is real, but so is the opportunity to refine our work and make it more impactful than ever.
Grow: Creating Systems for Adaptive Change
Organizations need to adapt and evolve. They need to be able to sense and respond to the need for change. The impulse to change can come from anywhere—employee complaints, turnover, decreases in impact or production, conflict, external audits, shifts in the funding ecosystem, and more.
Every organization has a way of sensing what it believes is worth responding to, but most are not intentional about this process. Two common patterns emerge:
- Centralization – When only a limited few can activate organizational change, the entire organization only responds to what those individuals deem important. This creates bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and power imbalances.
- Over-responsiveness – When every issue raised demands an organizational response, good intentions can lead to inefficiency and unrealistic expectations. If every discomfort becomes a crisis, constant change can frustrate employees and destabilize operations.
What organizations need is an intentional process to sense what is happening and determine what needs to be addressed—and how. This requires involving the right people in the right way, which varies depending on the issue at hand.
To do this effectively, organizations must differentiate between key capacities:
- Sensing that a problem exists
- Accurately understanding the root causes
- Designing potential solutions
- Understanding how solutions interact with other organizational needs
- Implementing solutions and managing change
- Evaluating solutions over time
This becomes especially critical in DEI-related issues. The ability to notice racial inequities, for example, is not the same as the ability to design and implement solutions. We need to get the right people with the right skills in the right seats with the right lines of accountability.
Ultimately, solutions must be judged based on whether they address the lived experience of those most affected. However, this does not mean that those most affected must determine every nuance of the intervention. Effective change is complex and multi-layered.
Our See, Be, Work, Grow Together framework moves beyond instrumental interventions to evolve the integral parts of how an organization functions to achieve real, lasting change.
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