Written by: Helen Duce

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” said renowned strategist Peter Drucker

If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then culture will surely starve without strategy. While building a diverse and inclusive workplaces is all about enabling significant cultural change, cultural change is hard, and the hardest part is knowing where to start. Strategy is how you get started. Read on to discover the eight compelling reasons why investing in a diversity and inclusion strategy is crucial.

1. Harnessing the power of the ‘red thread

Based on our experience with fortune 500 companies, the best first step on your D&I journey is to take the time to develop a clear, well-structured, evidenced-based strategy.  Whether we are working with one dedicated D&I professional or an entire department of D&I specialists, we typically find that they are busy working across a broad range of well-meaning yet random activities. Scratching the surface, we find two key issues. 

First, there is no ‘red thread’ that connects these activities to an intended impact statement or explicit objective. So as industrious and committed as the D&I folks are, it’s unclear if their efforts will deliver their desired results. This is compounded in multinational, heavily matrix organisations, where every division, function, or region is busy working on different, unrelated D&I projects.  

Second, at best the chosen activities lack evidence that they are effective, at worse there is compelling evidence that indicates they do not work at all! Activities tend to be based on what was done last year, what the competition is doing, or what is floating around in the general zeitgeist of the D&I community.   

2. Keeping laser-focus

My favourite definition of strategy is: ‘where to play and how to win’. It clarifies where you will focus your D&I efforts in order to achieve your stated goal. But do you really need it? Will a simple plan with outlined projects not suffice? 

Jumping straight into activities without a strategy risks wasting time and resources on the wrong things, on activities that will not deliver a positive impact or lead you toward the change you want to see. 

Inversely, there are many benefits from taking a step back and the time out to craft a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy. 

3. Charting a course for success

One key benefit of the strategy process is establishing a clear and compelling vision of the future. This defines what success will look like for your organisation. Without explicit common agreement on what the organisation is trying to achieve,  efforts and resources are at risk of being wasted. 

Somewhat controversially,  I believe this does not necessarily mean setting numeric targets or objectives. While quantitative representation targets are established best practice, as they have been shown to drive impact, we find many clients are not ready for this. In some cases, they lack the data, and in others, they lack leadership buy-in to the concept of D&I and so setting targets seems premature. There is also a groundswell of understanding that we need to move beyond chasing representation data to instead centre our objectives on inclusion and equity.  I like to use a leaky bucket analogy; diversity focuses on increasing the water flow into the budget, whereas inclusion and equity are about fixing the hole so the water stays put in the first place. 

Your organisation’s vision of the future needs to move beyond numbers, providing clarity of what success looks like, while also inspiring and motivating employees and other stakeholders. For example:

We have a culture of inclusion where all individuals feel respected, are treated fairly, have work-life balance, and an opportunity to excel in their chosen careers.

4. Understanding what really needs to be fixed

Beyond a clear vision, a D&I strategy enables you to identify strengths and weaknesses, and how to leverage or address them to meet your longer-term vision.  Albert Einstein allegedly once said “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Jumping straight into activity robs you of the opportunity to ensure you’ve really understood the root cause of the problem. This leads to a mismatch of activities and vision. For example, we see companies focusing on ensuring diverse representation of underrepresented talent on recruitment slates, when proper data analysis shows their underlying problem is actually poor promotion rates of their existing underrepresented talent.  

5. Benchmarking

Building a more diverse and inclusive workplace poses a distinct challenge due to our ever-changing societal landscape. External forces are consistently shaping and morphing our employee expectations and forcing a reevaluation of our leadership skills.  A thorough strategic process offers us the opportunity to take an outside-in approach that helps us understand and stay ahead of the changing external environment. This perspective also encourages us to benchmark against competitive and comparative organisations to ensure we can stay industry-leading.

Also, not everyone can be a specialist in what works when it comes to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. In many organisations, D&I is left to HR generalists or Employee Resource Group leaders, who are committed and passionate but often lack expert knowledge. Even if you are a dedicated and experienced D&I professional, it’s challenging to stay abreast of the latest data and research across all the diversity dimensions. An intentional focus on building an organisation-wide strategy allows you the opportunity to tap into external expertise for the latest evidence and data of what really works.

6. A framework for sound decision-making

Those who avoid or skip D&I strategy development can be misguided in thinking that it is a waste of their time and that they would be better served by just getting on with it.

Done well, a one-off strategy development process saves time later.  It provides a framework for decision-making which enables you to make informed choices about where to focus efforts and ensure you invest your limited resources in things that drive meaningful change. Perhaps more importantly, the strategy also informs decisions about what not to do. Your D&I strategy becomes the criteria by which all decisions can be swift and consistent, where projects are straight-lined into delivering the overall vision. For example, should you launch an Employee Resource Group focused on Race, provide a close captioning function for all videos and presentations for the visually impaired, or invest in unconscious bias training for all staff? In an ideal world you’d do it all, but in a world of limited budget how do you prioritise and decide between options?  A thorough and well-thought-through strategy will easily and quickly guide this decision.  

7. Driving alignment and efficiencies

Culture comes down to a common way of acting; it is a pattern of behaviour that is ubiquitous throughout the organisation, across functions, divisions, countries, hierarchical levels, and across time. So if you are to build a new culture, one that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive, then you need everyone, everywhere across your organisation to behave in a new way all the time. This is no mean feat at the best of times, but if you are operating without clear alignment it becomes infeasible. Your D&I strategy provides a rallying cry, driving alignment on the end goal as well as on the key steps along the way. Designed and embedded well, your D&I strategy will guide the entire organisation to align energy, efforts, and budget in one direction. Without a strategy, you risk the different parts of the organisation driving disparate, competing activities. 

8. Keeping on track

Being crystal clear about where you want to go allows you to track where you are and assess your progress.  In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice comes to a fork in the road and seeing a Cheshire cat in a tree she asks, “Which road should I take?” The Cheshire cat replies, “Where do you want to go?” Alice answers, “I don’t know.” “Well,” says the cat, “it doesn’t matter. Any road will get you there.“ Without strategic clarity not only will you struggle deciding which road to take, but also in assessing where you are on the journey, how far you have come, and how close you are to your final destination. 

In conclusion, the best way to fuel cultural change is to feed it a strategy-rich diet. Take the time and effort to build a robust Diversity and Inclusion strategy that defines your intended future state, prioritises the latest evidence-based initiatives, and drives alignment and efficiencies across your organisation.