This story is about the formation of an equity, diversity, & inclusion (EDI) committee. It centres around an intermediate engineer, Blair, his colleagues at a well-established mid-sized corporation, and their President John.
The new equity, diversity, and inclusion initiative
Blair had been working for the company for 2 years when his director made an announcement at their all-hands meeting. “We’re going to be starting an EDI team this year.” She announced. “If you’re interested in helping us bring more equity, diversity, and inclusion into our company culture and day-to-day operations, please consider submitting your application for the committee.”
The team would be formed over the next three months. They’d aim to have a diverse group, with representation from each of the regional offices, which the Director of People & Culture and the company’s President would ultimately select. One of the senior executives would attend all meetings to make sure there was action from senior leadership.
Met with mixed emotions
Blair tried not to get his hopes up, but he couldn’t deny his excitement. This was a huge step for corporate. He had worked for several companies in the past, and none of them had initiated anything like this. He had spent most of his life so far, plodding along at work or school, hiding his differences from everyone. Grateful he could pass as a ‘normal white guy’, but never really comfortable to be his whole present self. If the company was serious about raising up diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, it would be huge for him.
Some of Blair’s colleagues were skeptical though. It was probably just the latest PR stunt for the company. Many corporations were starting EDI teams these days. Similar to when they created sustainability teams several years ago. What exactly had those sustainability committees accomplished? They had annual ‘pick up garbage day’ and collected recycling in the office, before either were mainstream. The sustainability committee would plan an Earth Day lunch, and put together a report at the end of the year on how much electricity was consumed at the office. It was something, but not much. Would the EDI committee be more of the same thing?
Applications open
Nina was the first to submit her application to join the EDI committee. As soon as the email came out, she set 20 minutes aside to fill out her application. Today’s work could wait, tomorrow’s work of more equity, diversity, and inclusion was much more important. Plus, she couldn’t help but take some credit for this win. The President of the company, John, publicly thanked Nina in his email address announcing the committee’s creation. He thanked Nina for pushing him to consider the value in diversity and starting up the initiative. Many of Nina’s colleagues stopped by her desk to give her thumb’s ups for her persistence. There was no way she would miss out being on this committee.
Once the application process opened, Blair hummed and hawed about applying. He asked some of his friends outside of work, “do you think I should apply?” He sounded nonchalant about it, but inside he felt like he would explode.
“I mean, ya, if you want to!” his friends encouraged.
“I don’t know… Nina’s going to get in, she’s great. She’ll advocate for all the right things… I don’t know if they need someone like me in the group.” Blair made excuses for why he shouldn’t apply. “Malik will also probably join. That’ll be two people from our office already.” He rarely talked seriously about this stuff, and he kept his tone conversational.
“If you feel you’re represented by good people, then I guess you don’t have to join,” one of his friends tried, shrugging. If Blair was just so-so about it, there was no pressure to join.
“Ya, Nina and Malik will be great. Maybe I won’t apply, it doesn’t matter.” He changed the subject before they could think too hard about his response, and didn’t bring it up again.
Harnessing passion and enthusiasm
Nearly three months later, the initial EDI committee was formed and the first meeting held. Blair hadn’t submitted an application, but when Nina saw him loitering around the conference room door, she waved him in. “It wouldn’t be an EDI meeting if drop-ins weren’t accepted.” She smiled, welcoming him.
John joined the meeting and gave an enthusiastic brief but then remained quiet for the rest of the session to let others talk. In the head office, were Nina, Malik, Blair, and John. The conference room’s big screen split between the 4 other offices spread out around the country. Folks joined in from their respective conference rooms, and one from her laptop at home.
Malik volunteered to take notes, “More often than not, a woman takes notes in meetings. So I want to break that trend.” Each participant stated what they would like to see the committee focus on, while Malik meticulously copied everything down. After the meeting, he would consolidate the notes and send them out to everyone. It was pretty low key, like everyone was feeling each other out, not sure what to expect.
More female leadership
As the meeting concluded and the conference call ended, John joked “there really need to be more women on this call!”
“We were pretty equal in number of men to women,” Nina objected, always comfortable challenging their President. “I counted.”
“But I mean, look at this room!” John kept on going, “I’m going to ask Lisa to join some of these, it’ll be good for more senior leadership exposure too.” He smiled at his own suggestion. Lisa was the company’s Chief Technology Officer, and only woman C-Suite executive.
“That sounds great,” Malik, Nina, and Blair agreed.
A few months passed, and Nina and Malik naturally slid into leadership roles on the EDI committee. Nina was unapologetically proud of her non-whiteness, and Malik had taken an extra year during his software engineering degree to complete a certification in EDI training at university. They were both extremely passionate about making positive changes to the workplace in respect to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Blair kept showing up at meetings, and slowly grew more comfortable voicing his thoughts and opinions. They all encouraged each other, even when they didn’t agree. John would join sporadically when his schedule permitted, and Lisa promised to join, but hadn’t been able to make a meeting yet.
A safe space for discussion
During one meeting, John left early to take his kids to a baseball tournament, the conversation blew wide open. Before John left, he pressed the committee to propose goals for the year. He wanted to make sure their initiatives were aligned with corporate ones, and include them as part of their company playbook. This way, it would be obvious to the rest of the company, customers, and investors, what they were doing to promote more equity, diversity, and inclusion.
When John left the room, Blair asked “Do you think he really believes in this? or is it all just for show, to him?”
“Does it matter?” Nina retorted, “John’s giving us the space to do what we feel is important. He’s listening to our perspectives, to our suggestions, and he’s pushing them on the rest of the company.”
Debate ensued after that. The group was more or less divided on if leadership honestly cared about equity, diversity, and inclusion or not. But everyone left the meeting in agreement that this work mattered. Studies show diversity in the workforce breeds more successful companies, and inclusive environments enable more innovation. So even if leadership didn’t care about EDI, they would be on board with the outcomes from having more of it in the company.
Open debate continued into the next meeting, which John missed completely. One person raised how this was the first time they had felt comfortable questioning their company’s culture before. Another thanked all the women for ‘putting up with us men’ and pushing them all to be better people. “It really does make our solutioning better, having the female perspective.” This caused cringing behind coffee mugs, but the dialogue that had ensued over the past few months reinforced that this comment had come from a good place. Nina admitted, these past few months, had been the first time she had thought to interact with as many folks from different teams.
Leaning in with data
They collected anonymous diversity data from the staff and prepared visualizations to show the company’s diversity statistics by different categories. With a few hundred responses, it allowed them to break down statistics like race, gender, and diverse ability (yes or no) by level and team. It was decided to refrain from getting more granular than that for now. The data made it easy to see where there was imbalance, and help them choose where to focus their efforts.
Based on findings in the data, next they wanted to overhaul the hiring process, performance reviews, and bring in a 3rd party to audit the company at the end of the year. Since John was too busy to attend every meeting, he caught up separately with Nina, who had become the defacto team lead, and continued to give them encouragement on what they were doing.
More stakeholders, more opinions
Then Lisa made an appearance. Nina was excited to be joined in the head office by another woman, and one as smart and important in the company’s CTO.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to join earlier,” Lisa started with an apology, “it’s great that you’re all enthusiastic about this, diversity and inclusion in the workplace is so important!” Lisa was met with smiles and waves. “Would you mind walking me through your committee’s goals?”
Malik brought the annual and quarterly goals up on the the big screen to share, and talked Lisa through them. “We did a diversity survey last quarter, and have started analyzing the data and displaying it.” He flashed some pie charts up on the screen. “Based on that, we decided we should make our hiring process more inclusive. Our process is old school and we need to revamp it to get better at attracting diverse candidates. Especially for senior positions.”
He then started to talk about the review process and promotions, how currently it’s way too biased, and that it would need to change. Nina finished off the summary sharing some information from a 3rd party consultant she had been speaking to, who did initial EDI audits on companies for free.
Lisa nodded, unsmiling throughout the presentation. When they were done, she said “Okay, so you’re proposing a lot there. Can you send me these reports? I’d be curious to look at the analysis results.”
“Sure.” Malik nodded, “Yes.” Nina expressed. Lisa sat quiet for the rest of the meeting. Once it was done, she packed up here notepad and briskly walked out of the conference room, back to her corner office.
Blair wondered why Lisa didn’t say more, it was awkward. Judging by the sideways glance Nina gave Malik, she thought so too. But then he checked himself. He was used to John’s bold, confident, charismatic way of saying whatever popped into his head at any given moment without worry about repurcussion. He didn’t know Lisa well, despite being part of her org, she was quite reserved. Maybe she was selective about the words she used, calculated. It’s difficult getting that high up in a technical role in general, and especially so for a woman. Immediately he felt ashamed that he had assumed her reaction was negative.
A meeting with the president
The next day, John saw Blair in the hallway. “Hey Blair! What’s up? Do you want to get lunch today and catch up? It’s been a while.”
Completely caught off guard, Blair already had lunch plans with his team, but felt he couldn’t refuse the President’s proposal. “Oh, of course, yeah!” After he got back to his desk, he sent his team chat a message, ‘sorry, gotta go for lunch with boss-john, hopefully don’t get fired :grimace-emoji:’
Blair waited for John in the lobby at noon. “Sorry I’m late!” John apologized when he showed up 10 minutes after the hour. “No problem,” Blair quietly brushed it aside, shrugging.
“Where do you want to go?” John asked.
There was new sushi restaurant around the corner Blair had wanted to try out, they decided to go there. Fortunately it was a big place, so it didn’t take too long for them to get a seat.
“So Blair, I wanted to ask you how you’re liking this EDI team,” John dove straight into questioning, while ordering a bento box from the server at the same time.
Here it is, thought Blair, the reason for this spontaneous lunch date.
“Do you think it’s helpful?” John pressed, “Do you think we’re focusing on the right things?”
Blair fought his natural tendency for skepticism. Told himself it was good John was asking his opinion on the matter. Always a little nervous when the President spoke to him, and especially uncomfortable now that it was on the topic of EDI, Blair responded, “It’s good, I like it.” Then venturing, “we don’t always agree on things, but it’s good discussion. I think it’s very progressive to have that environment curated in the workplace.”
“Great, that’s really great Blair,” John was shovelling his appetizer into his face as he said this. “Yeah on that, I hear there’s some tension in the discussion. Do you think we’re spending our time effectively? There’s so much work to do, and I want to make sure we’re prioritizing the most important things across the business.”
There it was. John, or someone high up, was worried about the time they were spending on EDI. Blair wasn’t up for a debate, but he had to say something in the committee’s defense. “I mean, everyone has their priorities, but I think the statistics were a good place to start. It makes it obvious in the data we’re doing a great job in bringing in a diverse team at the junior levels, and then it kind of becomes homogenous at the senior levels.”
“I looked at the charts Malik provided, we’re doing better than most companies in our sector.” John retorted, “Look at our leadership, Lisa’s the most senior person in the company after me.”
Blair shrugged, unsure how to counter that. The server brought his rolls and John’s bento box out, giving him an excuse to sidestep the non-question. He would later think that statement over and realize he should have brought up the fact that, after Lisa, there were only three women in director and senior management roles across the whole org of 500 staff.
“I just want to make sure we’re focusing on the right things, Blair” John continued, ”I value your opinion a lot, you’re very important to this company!”
Blair had more opinions, and ideas of what else they could do, but he generally agreed with Nina’s direction. “I mean, there’s some stuff I’d like to see different, but it’s pretty good…”
“Well, you know you can always come to me if you don’t feel comfortable pushing for it in a big public forum.”
Blair thought of asking why he was talking one-on-one to him about this, asking if John had done the same with Nina or Malik, or any of the others. But before he could figure out a way to ask, John glanced at his watch. “Shoot, I’ve got to get back to the office.” He drained his beer, flagged the server, and paid their bill. “Great chat, see you back there!”
Seeds of self-doubt
Blair, halfway through his lunch, stayed and ate the rest, alone with his own silence. He had worked closely with John on several projects over the past 2 years, and had suffered his way through other awkward lunches. The President was a busy guy, he was always running from one thing to another. But this time it felt weirdly personal.
Maybe he shouldn’t have joined the EDI team after all, it was too close to his heart. Perhaps he should just keep his head down, like he’d been doing the rest of his career. Nothing good happens when people with differences mix personal and professional life, he thought. He felt guilty about it, but sometimes he liked pretending he was just another boring white guy. It was so easy for everyone to assume he was. And if that’s what they thought, it was easier for him to coast on through.
Thoughts are better off shared
As he took the short walk back to the office, feeling the refreshing wind on his face, and the satisfaction of a stomach full on sushi… Something about Nina’s candidness and Malik’s fury made Blair consider, maybe things were different this time. This time, maybe he could make a difference, be part of something bigger than himself. So he opened a private message thread, and told them about his strange lunch with the President.
“Ya, John pulls me aside all the time for one-on-one conversations about the EDI team.” Nina admitted. “I usually message Malik about it after and we compare notes.”
“And then John catches me for similar stuff, at the coffee station.” Malik shared. “It’s just how he likes to communicate. Personal interaction, face-to-face. Email sometimes. He’s old school man, that’s how he works.”
Blair felt a bit better after that, and the three decided to keep each other informed, as the head office EDI crew.
An injection of strategy
Lisa didn’t join the next meeting, but John did. “Thanks for moving the meeting guys, so I could attend. No baseball today!” He thanked the rest of the committee for their flexibility around his insane schedule.
The meeting started in typical fashion, Nina updated everyone on the diversity statistics. Then Malik walked through the status of their goals and tasks, quickly going through everyone‘s individual updates on their todos from last month. Then John made an interjection.
“Before we jump into issues and discussion, I want to give an exec update.” Everyone paused, waiting for John to continue, expectedly. They hadn’t received a direct executive update in many months. “I want to start with saying, I think us focusing on equity, diversity, and inclusion is extremely important. I love all the energy you all are putting into this, challenging me to be better, challenging each other. It really drives us forward to become a better company. But the work that’s come out of this committee so far, in it’s first 8 months… I get why you’re doing it, but not everyone in senior leadership is on board. I’m working really hard to convince them, but yeah there isn’t alignment on what are the most important things to focus on in EDI.”
It was quiet for a few moments. Nina finally spoke up, “are we getting canned?” the looks on the video screens said that was what others were thinking as well. “I thought that was the whole point of that goal proposal three months ago. Aligning the committee with business objectives.”
Feedback is useful when given
“No…” John drew out a breath, “this committee isn’t getting canned. It’s just, in a bit of a precarious position right now. We might need to refocus what our goals are.” He continued to ramble off feedback he had gathered from senior leadership.
- Data seems hand picked to support preconceived notions
- Overhauling performance process is a ton of work, what’s the cost-benefit of time spent versus value gained?
- Enthusiasm around themed social events. Can committee focus more on that instead of operational practices? seems easier from a resourcing and intrusiveness perspective
- Is this best use of time for the skillset we have? if we need to change operations, consider hiring HR or operations staff
- Do we have evidence our hiring process is biased? overhauling it seems like a lot of work, the data suggests we’ve been doing okay
- 3rd party consultant, is it worth our time? maybe run a training session with a smaller group so we can vet before bringing them on to do a full audit
“Thank you John,” Malik acknowledged. “With all due respect, it would have been much more helpful to hear this feedback when we proposed our strategy three months ago. Then we could have avoided this ‘precarious position’ you speak of.”
“I know, but feedback takes a while to collect, and I didn’t want to give you half-baked thoughts.” John avoided directly apologizing.
After the meeting, Ben messaged Nina and Malik in a private chat. ‘What the hell was that about?’
The three speculated. None of them wanted to say Lisa’s name, but they all silently wondered if she had something to do with it. It was Nina who always had the last word. ‘I’ve know John for over a decade, I know he never does anything half-assed. He cares about this initiative, he really believes it’s for the good of the company to be more diverse and inclusive. I think he’s fighting internal politics. I trust him.’
Building a case for inclusion
Malik went to work making new data visualizations. Nina started a powerpoint presentation. And Blair collected quotes from his peers in engineering and middle-managers in support of the efforts the EDI committee was working on. By the end of the week, the committee had put together a case for their work.
They included a breakdown of company statistics versus the industry, and research snippets to back up their claims (such as boards needing at least 3 women on them and 30% being the universal tipping point for sustainable change).
Nina made sure to tie each EDI initiative to an annual corporate goal. And where possible, they linked the revenue implications, such as: costs associated with recruitment, staff acquisition and retention; market sizing; and the growing diversity of their client-base.
After the 15 minute presentation and 10 minutes of questions. John asked if there was anything else anyone wanted to say.
It was at this time that Blair raised his hand from the back of the room. “Before the EDI committee. Before this group of people came together to talk about equity, diversity, and inclusion at work. I worked hard, but just hard enough. I made suggestions for improvements, but just once in a while. Now, these people have encouraged me to be more courageous. To embrace my differences, and theirs, to become a bigger contributor to this company. My team’s productivity has increased by 25% since then. I want to keep getting better and better; I care about our success, because I know there’s people who care about me. Don’t you want that? Kill this committee, and you kill the potential for making this good organization truly great.”
Unanimously, the executive team voted to keep the committee and incorporate all 4 proposed initiatives into the company strategy for the next 18 months. Blair received a private message from Lisa after the meeting, ‘thank you :)’. It was a win that day.
Lessons Learned
This is a fictional story, with fake characters and scenarios. But rooted in real life workplace experiences, it’s a story we can learn from as leaders and managers.
Summary of takeaways
- Culture-oriented versus business-oriented. In this story, the company introduced the new Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion committee as a culture-oriented initiative, rather than a business-oriented initiative.
- While the committee members were enthusiastic about the cultural value of EDI, not all members of senior leadership were.
- Once the business value was incorporated into the EDI initiative, and tied to the company’s strategic objectives, senior leadership was much more receptive.
- Equity, diversity, and inclusion mean different things to different people. Some people roll their eyes or bristle at the words. Others feel excited and empowered when they hear them.
- Ultimately, the underlying importance is to embrace difference and foster environments where people can be their best selves every day.
- Data is a powerful weapon. People will use data to support their beliefs, and use it as an excuse to do nothing. How you share your outcomes, and how you get others to buy in, matters just as much as the data you use for support.
- Communication is key. In this story, honest and open communication between Blair, Nina, and Malik created the trust necessary to lead an effective team. Their trust in each other’s abilities enabled them to act quickly when facing the committee’s dissolution, and convince everyone else to support them in their efforts.
- A leader can only force their will so far. John embraced what the EDI team was doing, but he struggled to convince key stakeholders of it’s corporate value. It’s important for leaders to provide the support, advocacy, and space for diversity and inclusion to flourish, and promote equity whenever they have the chance. In this tale, John wasn’t perfect, but he created enough space for others to prove the value of EDI.
- Not everyone is comfortable speaking, and nor should they be expected to be comfortable raising their opinions.
- Blair’s evolution of becoming a spokesperson is powerful, but most people are more likely to quietly support from the shadows than to risk their job or reputation.
- Lisa’s character is an example of someone in a position of power, who can’t speak too loudly about EDI without risking her position.