Principal of AlignOrg Solutions | Organization Design Thought Leader | Change Catalyst | Author | Speaker.
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Without the proper metrics, it is impossible to understand what works and what does not. Many organizations sabotage their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives because they do not have systems in place to measure success.
Many components that make up an organization affect its performance, such as strategy, leadership, culture, structure and what we measure. If our metrics do not measure factors that drive the right behaviors or reinforce what is important to the organization, people can easily become distracted from our strategic goals or, worse, work on the wrong things.
We often see this in sales organizations. If you reward someone for selling a widget, they'll sell the widget; reward them for selling something else, they'll sell something else. We often are driven by metrics — regardless of whether there is a reward attached to the metric. We constantly look at how we stack up against our peers.
One of my sons was a competitive swimmer. When he was 6 years old, the first thing he did when he got out of the pool was look at the timer to see how he did. How the other swimmers performed did not matter to him — he just wanted to know: How did I do this time? Was it better than last time?
The same question applies to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Unless you have some sort of yardstick, you never know whether you are making progress. Plus, if you measure the wrong things — or you don't measure anything — you're never going to know whether things are improving.
“Achieving DEI objectives requires no more and no less than the use of the same planning, feedback and accountability processes that are deployed to reach targets in sales, product development and budgeting,” Siri Chilazi and Iris Bohnet wrote in the Harvard Business Review (registration required). “Data drives targeted action and creates accountability in these domains, and so it should in DEI as well.” They added, “Our findings and several real-world examples show that when done right, the collection, analysis and disclosure of diversity data indeed holds the promise of being a powerful lever for progress.”
However, just because you have a yardstick does not mean you're getting better. Another one of my sons who competed in swimming had a stretch where he was doing really well. He was reducing time, but his stroke looked terrible. After a few months, his times tapered off. It turneds out he was improving his times not because he was becoming a better swimmer, but because he was growing longer and taller. When other swimmers caught up physically, he was no longer able to produce winning results in the water. That trend continued until he examined his stroke and focused on improving his stroke in practice. With stroke practice, he not only had the physique but also had a decent stroke to go with it.
The same concept applies to DEI initiatives. If we measure the wrongs things, or if we don't measure things that really matter to the organization or truly signify improvement, it might not be helpful. When the proper metrics exist, the organization begins focusing on the right things. People can essentially “jump out of the pool” and look at the yardstick and know whether they are improving.
There are many ways we can measure progress on DEI initiatives. It could include indicators of what types of people we hire each year, or how diverse the managers are who came up through internal ranks. It could also cover softer aspects such as the mix of different ethnicities, races or backgrounds among the leadership team or employee sentiments about how included they feel.
Another factor is what I call “means and ends.” Sometimes we have a tendency to measure activity rather than real results. If I ask, “How busy were you today?” you may respond, “I was really busy!” But if I ask, “What did you accomplish?” your answer might be, “Little” or “Nothing.” The essence of means and ends is about avoiding the trap of simply being busy. Or in the context of DEI, “How many DEI initiatives did we pursue this year?” The answer could be fifty more than last year, but has anything changed? What has truly been accomplished? To answer those questions, we need both quantitative and qualitative metrics in place to indicate how well we are at addressing DEI issues. Consider asking yourself, “Are we measuring activity, or are we measuring results?”
This hit home for me while working with a client several years ago. They had made real progress in diversifying the various management teams around the company. If you looked at each team, you could see they had become much more diverse. At one point, I ran a workshop for people from their various associate resource groups: groups representing Latinos, women, Asians, LGBTQ+ and so on. While chatting over lunch, one attendee asked the others, “Does it really feel different here?” Several replied, “Not yet.” I pointed out that I was seeing more diversity since I began working with the organization. They essentially replied, “You do see it, but it doesn't always feel that way to us. I don't always feel comfortable, or that I am heard, accepted and safe. I still feel like I have to act a certain way so I will not appear too different.”
This example illustrated feedback you would never get from a quantitative measurement. (If you did, it would have to be a fairly sophisticated survey around people's sentiment.) But if you talk to people in places and ways that are safe, you may hear whether you are actually making progress and getting results. There can never be enough numbers to get to that kind of truth. However, these less-formal insights can also help validate whether the metrics you utilize are actually measuring progress toward your ultimate DEI goals. Don't sabotage your DEI efforts by dropping the measurement yardstick.
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