Imagine putting an entertainment center together in your living room and finding out that you missed an important piece when you finish (this has happened to me several times - oops!). For some of your decor, it might not be that big of a deal; however, are you going to take the risk of putting your new QLED flatscreen TV on it, knowing that it may not be sturdy enough to hold it? Yeah, me neither!
As odd as it may sound, this is a lot like integrating an equity lens into your work. Reading the directions might require us to take a pause, but the outcome in the end tends to be better for everyone involved. In your work to advance equity, you must include equity as a core part of our process from the beginning, because it typically doesn't work as well when done retroactively, which can bring risk and harm to our organizations. Before we continue, let's take a second to define equity. There are many definitions of equity, so I will explain using an analogy I learned from a friend and colleague of mine. Think about equity like a pair of shoes. I wear size 13 shoes, so whenever I go to the shoe store or bowling that's what I look for. If I walked into a store and everyone was given a size 10.5 shoe, I would be negatively impacted and would likely develop some sort of foot pain or issues leading me to see a podiatrist. The podiatrist could just give me a size 13 shoe and send me on my way, but the harm has already been done. What if I could walk into that store and have received a size 13? What health challenges and long-term effects could I have avoided by getting the right size shoe in the first place. When you approach our work equitably, you appropriately resource individuals and groups, to address historical and persistent harms, to ensure the best outcomes. In essence, you are ensuring that one's social group identity isn't a predictor of negative or disparate outcomes. My friend Jaya Mallik with Jaya Mallik Consulting recently wrote an article titled, "DEI Programs: Their Existence Depends on Our Intentions". In this article, Jaya talked about the restructuring of our hiring practices in the contentious landscape of DEI work and ongoing efforts to derail, defund, and dismantle this work. She asserts that a (traditional) focus on hiring quotas can create negative unintended consequences on organizations, including bringing an incredible amount of risk. Instead, she offers the need to focus on the characteristics, knowledge, skills, and abilities of talent that don't rely on social group identity markers. To actualize this approach, with a net benefit of minoritized groups, it is essential to have an approach that builds equity into the beginning and throughout the process. So how do you use an equity lens in your work? I'm glad you asked! I recommend that organizations use this 7-step process to begin examining their work through an equity lens.
Finally, an assumption you should make in this process is that you are regularly engaging with those impacted throughout the process. Start by integrating small changes into a process so that it's iterative and can be modified and fixed along the way. There's a large margin of error when you build a project plan and seek to check the boxes. Transforming the approach can help you make continuous progress and move you to your overall goals and outcome faster while mitigating risk. Who wouldn't want that?
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