His demeanor shifted. Well, ah—I’m not sure we have the budget for . . . it’s not exactly in the, ah, scope of what I was planning to talk to you about today. I’m sure, I’m sure I could connect you to a colleague of mine that might be interested in talking about other ways to partner afterward. For now, let’s focus on this talk. Does the offer work for you? The other practitioner flashed a conciliatory smile. “I know in my heart that what I do works. And other people do, too. Isn’t that enough?” Zheng's words here are valid and empowering— society calls for a sincere, significant, and long-lasting approach to DEI. Hope for a better future is important. We need to see the DEI industry and DEI work in general as an endlessly improving discipline with room to grow that has meaningfully achieved change. Much of this progress was not achieved in isolation but instead in collaboration with and supporting social movements, activists, and advocates who unapologetically work toward a better world. At the same time, our actions have consequences, and we bear an enormous responsibility toward all marginalized groups to ensure our work moves the needle in the right direction and mitigates unforeseen negative consequences.

Zheng identifies several DEI failure modes through five questions that fail to get asked in this space, and then spends the rest of the book answering these questions based on their experience:Using their signature decisive and direct voice, Lily Zheng delivers an accountability-centered and immediately actionable road map to building a more equitable and inclusive modern workplace."

She looked at me, slightly put off. “My own work? I facilitate hard conversations to help people recognize their unconscious biases and become allies to marginalized communities. Are you suggesting that it doesn’t work?” Why it’s a must-read: We’re all biased, but when we identify and understand our biases, we can overcome them. This book has more than 30 tools to help you recognize and move past your own biases. That includes a list of ways to identify and reframe your unconscious thoughts. Summary: Overt discrimination may be easy to spot, but subtle actions can exclude employees at your organization. Jana and Baran provide a practical guide to identifying these microaggressions and lay out how to stop them. This book can guide you toward a company culture of belonging for all employees. How do we know that, when people tell us they “enjoyed the session,” this means our interventions did what we wanted them to do? Even if they say we changed their mind, how would we know if that were true? To overcome denial Zheng says it is critical that organizations recognize advancing DEI starts with fixing systemic issues. For example, when it comes to increasing demographic diversity, companies often set diversity hiring targets but fail to fix the biases within their recruitment processes or policies.Content aside, the logistical deployment of DEI training is often one-time and too short in length to create any sort of lasting impact: for example, many iterations of allyship training aim to increase bystander intervention, 5 but effective bystander intervention training often takes five hours or more, 6 while allyship training can often be even as short as an hour. Everything about how I approached diversity, equity, and inclusion changed in 2016 when I first read an article in the Harvard Business Review (it’s not every day I mark a period of my life with a business article but still, bear with me). The article? “Why Diversity Programs Fail,” by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev. Both sociologists argue that companies’ command-and-control deployment of diversity programs, hiring tests, and grievance processes have failed to move the needle on the representation of women and non-White racial groups in the US. Their data are hard to argue with.