Chapter 4
Redefining DEI Through Measurable Outcomes
To move beyond good intentions to meaningful impact, we must first redefine what DEI actually means in practical terms. Rather than vague aspirations, Zheng proposes outcome-oriented definitions that transform abstract concepts into measurable realities.
Equity is "the measured experience of individual, interpersonal, and organizational success and well-being across all stakeholder populations and the absence of discrimination, mistreatment, or abuse for all." This can be measured through multiple concrete metrics: retention rates across demographic groups, advancement velocity to leadership positions, pay equity ratios at all levels, hiring rates for diverse candidates, promotion rates across groups, and the frequency and resolution of discrimination complaints. Organizations can track year-over-year improvements in these metrics to gauge progress.
Diversity is "the workforce composition that all stakeholders, especially underserved and marginalized populations, trust to be representative and accountable." This definition challenges the common "butts in seats" approach to diversity, where companies focus solely on hiring percentages. True diversity extends beyond simple headcount to examine representation at all organizational levels, in key decision-making roles, and across different business units. It also considers cognitive diversity, experiential diversity, and the intersection of multiple identity factors.
Inclusion is "the achievement of an environment that all stakeholders, especially underserved and marginalized populations, trust to be respectful and accountable." While diversity focuses on workforce composition, inclusion addresses the intangibles-organizational culture, interpersonal norms, and employee well-being. This can be measured through employee engagement scores, participation in company initiatives, psychological safety metrics, retention rates, and feedback from employee resource groups.
These definitions center on trust and measurable outcomes rather than just good intentions. They acknowledge that diversity without inclusion is tokenism, and inclusion without equity is performative. By focusing on outcomes, organizations can move beyond symbolic gestures to create environments where everyone can truly thrive. This means implementing specific programs with clear metrics, such as mentorship initiatives with tracked promotion rates, bias training with measured behavior change, and recruitment programs with defined diversity targets.
What's revolutionary about this approach is how it shifts the conversation from abstract values to concrete results. Instead of asking "Are we committed to diversity?" organizations should ask "Do our employees across all demographic groups experience equal opportunities for advancement?" This outcomes-focused approach makes it much harder to hide behind good intentions while maintaining inequitable systems. It requires regular data collection, transparent reporting, and accountability mechanisms that track progress against specific goals. Organizations must establish baseline metrics, set clear targets, and regularly assess their progress through both quantitative data and qualitative feedback from employees.
Success in this framework requires organizations to move beyond annual diversity reports to implement continuous monitoring and adjustment of DEI initiatives based on measured outcomes. This might include quarterly progress reviews, regular pay equity audits, and ongoing assessment of promotion patterns across different demographic groups.
Chapter 5
The Historical Roots of DEI's Failure
Understanding why DEI efforts consistently fall short requires examining their historical development. The first proto-DEI initiatives emerged from psychologist Kurt Lewin's "encounter groups" in the 1960s, where George Leonard (a white psychologist) and Price Cobbs (a Black psychiatrist) adapted this model to address racial tensions through "racial sensitivity training." Their infamous 24-hour workshop in 1967 produced chaotic results where interracial friendships dissolved amid heightened distress.
These encounter groups gained widespread popularity after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968, either as "safe" ways for white organizations to process Black America's feelings or as convenient methods to comply with new affirmative action mandates. The US military undertook one of history's most ambitious race relations training programs, developing a comprehensive 235-hour curriculum through the Defense Race Relations Institute.
Despite creating well-informed equity advocates, the program quickly faced backlash from white participants who resented being labeled as "racists." Leadership responded by watering down the program, putting untrained unit commanders in charge while relegating trained specialists to advisory roles. Post-program analyses revealed troubling outcomes: white participants' perception of discrimination decreased while Black participants saw no improvement in their actual experiences-essentially making white participants more oblivious to ongoing inequity without reducing it.
The 1978 Bakke Supreme Court decision marked a pivotal shift away from outcome-oriented affirmative action by ruling quota systems illegal while allowing race as a consideration only for achieving "diversity." When Reagan was elected in 1980, his administration targeted affirmative action programs through deregulation and weakened labor unions. The impact was devastating-Black and Latine representation in top colleges remains lower today than in 1980.
This history reveals a pattern: whenever DEI initiatives gained traction, they faced backlash that diluted their effectiveness. Understanding this pattern helps explain why today's DEI efforts continue to struggle with accountability and impact.
Chapter 6
Trust: The Currency of Organizational Change
Trust serves as the essential currency that powers all change initiatives, particularly in the realm of DEI work. In high-trust environments, stakeholders rarely question leadership decisions and willingly lend support when asked, creating a foundation for meaningful transformation. But trust isn't infinite-it operates like a bank account where deposits and withdrawals constantly occur. It's expended when employees share experiences in surveys or use feedback mechanisms, and only renewed when their input is visibly respected and acted upon with transparency.
Unfortunately, most organizations break trust regularly through both major and minor infractions. When employees who share feedback face subtle retaliation or isolation, when those awaiting promised promotions are kept waiting without explanation, or when leaders fail to address microaggressions, trust depletes rapidly. Even seemingly small inconsistencies between stated values and actual behaviors can erode trust over time. In low-trust environments, even the most well-intentioned and aware leaders will find stakeholders unwilling to cooperate, viewing all initiatives as merely performative exercises designed to create the appearance of progress.
Zheng identifies three distinct trust levels that dramatically impact DEI strategy effectiveness, each requiring a different approach:
In high-trust environments, organizations can follow a relatively linear implementation process: priming the organization for change through open dialogue, conducting comprehensive assessments of the current state, telling a compelling story about findings that acknowledges both progress and challenges, experimenting carefully with interventions while maintaining transparency, and iterating based on measurable results. These organizations can typically move faster and take bigger risks because stakeholders give leaders the benefit of the doubt.
Medium-trust environments require leaders to "get skin in the game" by making specific outcome-focused commitments that demonstrate their personal accountability. This might include tying executive compensation to DEI metrics or publicly sharing demographic data about promotion rates. Organizations must create employee-led accountability groups like DEI councils and empower non-leader change-makers with real decision-making authority and resources. Progress comes through accumulating small wins that gradually build enough trust for larger systemic changes, with each success carefully documented and celebrated.
Low-trust environments present the hardest context for effective DEI work, requiring patience and humility from leadership. Here, organizations must "let change find them" by allowing those with the least institutional power to make the first move. When confronted by employee movements or complaints, leaders must resist defensive responses, instead offering genuine apologies and ceding power through formal commitments to specific changes with clear timelines. Organizations must act decisively during rare windows of opportunity-like leadership transitions, public controversies, or external pressure-to explicitly subvert cynical expectations through bold, decisive action that demonstrates real commitment to change.
This trust-based framework explains why identical DEI initiatives succeed in some organizations but fail in others. The approach must match the organization's trust level to have any chance of success, and leaders must be willing to invest the time and resources necessary to build trust before expecting significant progress on DEI goals.
Chapter 7
Understanding Power Dynamics for Effective Change
Every organization has a structure-formal and informal rules, roles, and responsibilities that coordinate behavior toward organizational goals. To understand how change happens within an organization, we must examine three key dimensions: centralization (how decisions are made), formalization (how processes are institutionalized), and complexity (how functions are divided).
Equally important is organizational culture-"how things feel"-which manifests through rituals, myths, and stories embedding unspoken rules. Key cultural dimensions include power distance (how much inequality is accepted as normal), in(ter)dependence (how much people see themselves as part of a larger whole), uncertainty avoidance (how much ambiguity is avoided), and failure avoidance (how much failure is feared).
Understanding these structural and cultural elements allows change-makers to reverse engineer outcomes and create different results. Power exists in many forms-formal, reward, coercive, expert, informational, and referent-and everyone has access to these forms in varying degrees, regardless of their formal position.
Consider a fictional tech company "Zorm" where leadership responded to a leaked controversial DEI document with denial, threats, and investigation. When they later surveyed employees about the issue, they were shocked by the dismal 23% response rate. The centralized structure placed all power with senior leadership, with middle managers merely executing decisions. Though formal processes existed, the unwritten rules governed: senior leaders call the shots, what they don't know doesn't exist. The punitive response to the leak created fear, leading employees to avoid responding to surveys-they didn't trust the process or believe leadership would listen to their concerns.
Once you understand these dynamics, you can use power more effectively. Even non-senior leaders can effect change despite limited reward or coercive power. DEI practitioners have outsized expert power when leadership lacks this expertise. Employees can leverage informational power by creating communication channels across departments. New sources of formal power can emerge through DEI councils, employee resource groups, or unions that gain legitimacy by representing employee voices.
Chapter 8
Everyone Has a Role in Creating Change
Achieving diversity, equity, and inclusion requires widespread systemic change involving everyone in an organization. Contrary to stories about change-making "heroes," effective change never happens with just a few people. Each person must find their "sweet spot" based on their skills and position to maximize impact.
Successful movements involve people playing different but equally important roles:
Advocates speak up loudest about issues, forcefully arguing that the status quo must change-sometimes risking themselves to expose inequity. They inject energy into movements, reminding stakeholders of an issue's urgency.
Educators help stakeholders develop accurate understanding of issues, taking people from "interested ignorance" to "informed intentions" through patience and creativity. They increase stakeholders' potential to create change and help movements resist misinformation.
Organizers transform well-intentioned groups into effective forces for achieving specific goals. They excel at reading situations, seizing opportunities for change, and building unlikely alliances.
Strategists take a bird's-eye view of issues, focusing on the "why" and "how" behind problems and solutions. They coordinate other roles and synthesize complex situations into straightforward strategies.
Backers legitimize movements, bringing them from fringe to mainstream. Often part of the status quo themselves, backers endorse movement efforts at critical moments, normalizing them and forcing decision-makers to take concerns seriously.
Builders create what doesn't yet exist-new structures, policies, and practices. Focused on execution and outcomes rather than intentions, they translate abstract mandates into tangible realities.
Reformers maintain and steadily improve the new status quo, building on elements created by builders. They thrive on incremental change based on continuous feedback, using the system's tools to better it.
Movements fail when they don't activate even one essential role. Without advocates, toxic status quos extend indefinitely. Without educators, people misunderstand movement goals. Lacking organizers, movements lose focus. Without strategists, movements waste resources on costly mistakes. Without backers, movements never gain legitimacy. And without builders and reformers, commitments never become reality.
Your formal position often predicts what movement role you'll occupy. Individual contributors excel as advocates and organizers; managers as backers and builders; senior leaders as strategists and backers; DEI professionals as educators, builders, and reformers. Understanding your organizational position helps identify your most effective movement contribution.
Chapter 9
From Performative to Pragmatic: Building Real Solutions
The initial positive perception of companies' DEI work in 2020 quickly diminished. By 2021, even mainstream outlets were critiquing "rainbow-washing" during Pride Month, with companies facing backlash for temporary logo changes without substantive policy improvements. Similar criticisms emerged for corporate approaches to autism awareness, where symbolic "light it up blue" campaigns were increasingly seen as superficial gestures that failed to address real workplace inclusion challenges.
We're entering a paradigm where "performativity" condemns entire corporate playbooks, not just the worst offenders. Stakeholders have simplified their demands to a single refrain: not talk, not commitments, not good intentions, not naive interventions-but real change. This shift reflects growing sophistication among employees, customers, and activists who can distinguish between meaningful action and corporate theater.
The core critique of "performative" efforts is that stated commitments don't translate to measurable impact. While simple tasks have clear accountability (either the trash is taken out or it isn't), complex issues like systemic inequity are harder to measure and easier to obscure with proxies. Organizations often default to tracking surface-level metrics like training completion rates or diversity hire percentages without addressing deeper systemic barriers.
These persistent disparities explain why stakeholders reject symbolic gestures like rainbow logos or Black History Month celebrations without corresponding policy changes. They've realized that corporate metrics like employee engagement scores, philanthropic dollars given, revenue growth from diverse markets, and brand awareness are poor proxies for actual impact. The carefully constructed "business case" for DEI has faltered academically, with studies showing mixed results, and the public is catching up-they want problem-solving, not proxies.
Despite stakeholder skepticism, real success is achievable by breaking large challenges into measurable problems with specific outcomes. For working-class contract workers seeking equity, success means fair pay benchmarked against industry standards, harassment-free environments with clear reporting mechanisms, positive relationships with management measured through regular feedback, and meaningful inclusion in decision-making processes that affect their work. For older employees seeking respect, success means active participation in key projects, continued growth opportunities through targeted development programs, recognition of their expertise and contributions, and equitable promotion rates tracked across age demographics.
We can achieve true equity (measured success across all stakeholder populations), diversity (representative workforce composition trusted by all stakeholders), and inclusion (respectful environments accountable to all stakeholders). But first, we must regain trust from marginalized populations who've lost patience with performative actions. This requires transparent goal-setting, regular progress updates, and most importantly, demonstrated willingness to make difficult structural changes when needed. Organizations must move beyond superficial changes to address root causes of inequality, whether in hiring practices, promotion criteria, or workplace culture.
Chapter 10
Toward a More Equitable Future
Despite decades of effort, organizations remain far from achieving true diversity, inclusion, and equity. This failure has eroded trust in organizations, institutions, and the DEI industry itself. While cynicism is understandable, the early 2020s present a unique opportunity for meaningful change as traditional paradigms are being dismantled.
Finding effective DEI practitioners is currently inefficient and convoluted. Organizations need to assess practitioners by effectiveness (ability to create promised outcomes), approach (methods used), and style (manner of implementation). DEI work must demonstrate effectiveness through pre-and-post testing, longitudinal impact tracking, or evidence-based practices.
The DEI field currently lacks formal training pathways, with practitioners needing to develop specialized expertise based on their role. Communities of practice organized by expertise areas offer promising ways to share best practices, build knowledge bases, and provide mentorship.
No single practitioner or consulting firm can fully address an organization's DEI challenges. Organizations typically need multiple services: survey assessment, equity audits, network analysis, leadership training, coaching, policy guidance, and more. Practitioners should specialize rather than offering generic services, refer problems to colleagues with the right expertise, and help organizations build problem-solving teams tailored to their context.
The author envisions organizations where leaders recognize DEI as an operational imperative requiring stamina and resilience. Organizations must thoroughly understand their systems, structures, and impacts through assessment and exploration. They must fix problems using all available tools, with leaders balancing decisiveness and humility while involving all stakeholders.
Organizations must honestly assess their efforts, celebrate successes, correct failures, and continuously adapt. This ongoing process should continue until diversity, equity, and inclusion are achieved and maintained, ultimately influencing their industry and society at large.
If done right, DEI work can achieve equity within our lifetimes, creating a world where everyone can truly thrive. The path forward isn't through naive idealism but through pragmatic hope-understanding our past failures, building trust, engaging all stakeholders in their appropriate roles, and focusing relentlessly on measurable outcomes that improve people's lives.
