DEI Journey Map
Overview
Although it is not an exact science, research, many years of discovering and applying best practices, the IEDEIA team shares a proven pathway that leads to success. By following the DEI Journey Map, you’ll be best positioned for success.
The DEIA Journey Map is a framework that provides guidance and support for IEDEIA members at all stages of your diversity work. It is designed to help develop a plan. As you move thru your DEI journey, you will utilize the guides, tools and templates to assist you in setting a clear vision and actionable steps that will be integral to your overall DEI strategy. The IEDEIA team will partner with you to provide relevant good practice resources and guidance in the following areas:
- Gaining executive and leadership commitment, and understanding organizational readiness
- Developing and executing assessments to understand the current landscape of your organization’s culture, equity and inclusion health
- Analyzing and reporting on the findings
- Developing a strategic plan, including your “North Star”, conducting a SWOT analysis, prioritizing goals, identifying actionable steps at the organizational and department level
- Executing and implementing the strategic plan, which also may include further revisions or the creation of new goals along your journey
- Making it Stick within the culture of your organization until it Equity, Inclusion and Belonging become embedded into the DNA of your organizaiton
Strategies & Guides
Video Resources
Stage 1: Gain Commitment
It’s important to set the stage by first identifying if your leaders are truly on board by sharing the value of DEI, not just on an organizational level, but on a personal level as well. Share the sense of urgency, the risk of not creating an equitable and inclusive environment, and the benefits and intended outcomes.
You’re past the thinking phase and your organization is beginning to work toward getting commitment.
- View the video: “Why Diversity Matters”
- View the video: “Will to Change” with Dr. Ron
To uncover the organizational leader’s readiness and willingness to commit to the DEI journey, as you begin the process, use the DEIA Journey and Engagement Lifecycle worksheet to explore the following questions:
- What have we already done to make sure the leaders who will drive DEI, are FULLY COMMITTED?
- What are the leaders “WHY”? How have you captured this at the organizational and individual level, and from who? (See Assessing Leadership’s Commitment)
- How mature are your DEI efforts? (If you have not already had leaders and your team take the DEI Maturity Assessment, this might be a great next step.)
- How can you communicate what you’ve done as you kick-off your journey?
- How will you communicate and highlight the commitment of your leaders and their actions to be accountable?
Step 2: Conduct Assessments & Gather Info
Conducting regular culture and DEI assessments ensures the ongoing health of your people, systems, programs and initiatives. This helps provide critical information that enables an organization to address vulnerabilities that may develop before they become a problem. It’s also important to incorporate questions about the accessibility of your physical space because 61 million Americans (1 billion people worldwide) live with a disability and in order to build a more equitable and inclusive world, accessibility needs to be valued and prioritized.
To uncover the organizational leader’s readiness and willingness to commit to the DEI journey, as you begin the process, use the DEIA Journey and Engagement Lifecycle worksheet to explore the following questions:
- What have we already done to assess what our people believe and feel or any concerns they have about the organization?
- How many communities of people did we gather information from? Did we gather disaggregated data? Should we gather more?
- HOW have you looked at the accessibility of your physical space, digital capabilities, products/services and culture?
- Did we lead with effective change communication, so our people understood WHY we were gathering information?
Step 3: Analyze Organizational Data & Develop DEIA Strategy
In this phase all information you’ve gathered, both qualitative and quantitative, will be sliced and diced into something meaningful and help you to uncover the gaps of where you are and where you want to be. This step is critical before you take any actions. And if all of your data comes back that everyone is perfectly happy all the time and the organization has no room for growth, we might want to reexamine the questions asked or the psychological safety of the organization (do people feel comfortable expressing their authentic feelings and beliefs without fear of punishment).
Step 3 helps define the who, what, when, why, how and where the DEI strategy will fit. To uncover the organizational leader’s readiness and willingness to commit to the DEI journey, as you begin the process, use the DEIA Journey and Engagement Lifecycle worksheet to explore the following questions:
- What does the data gathered say that we’re doing well? (Appreciative Inquiry)
- Where are the areas for improvement? (utilize SWOT Analysis and VOE)?
- Looking at disaggregated data, what top 3 critical and desired outcomes do we need to focus on? Explain.
- After you’ve gathered the right people and conducted your strategic planning workshops, developed your final SMARTIE goals, developed your KPIs, created a plan of action, how will you communicate this to your employees?
Step 4: Conduct Departmental Equity Assessments
Having a strategic DEI plan in place will help your organization to track progress toward goals. It will help each department and team understand their role and responsibility in meeting your company’s larger strategy, and their progress can directly impact the overall success. The organizational leaders and DEI council helps to develop areas of focus and action plans. They help to drive and monitor outcomes and shifts that need to occur for the specific DEI change initiative(s) to be successful.
To uncover the organizational leader’s readiness and willingness to commit to the DEI journey, as you begin the process, use the DEIA Journey and Engagement Lifecycle worksheet to explore the following questions:
- Do you have the right people to help build the strategic plan? Where are you starting? Create a strategy map.
- SWOT, Visioning, Objectives, Key Results, Project plan, Scorecard. Outline each area of review and pathway forward.
- Which departments will be a priority? Think about financial, legal and culture impact.
- Once you identify the priority sequence of the departments you will conduct an equity assessment, Use form to look at programs, policies and practices.
- When developing your SMARTIE goals, leverage your strengths. (see Appreciative Inquiry), while identifying opportunities
Step 5: Execute/Implement and Operationalize DEI
It’s not uncommon for this stage to consist of pilot projects. Once reviewed and refined, the leaders and team will prepare for roll-out. While the final version of your DEI strategic plan may exist, because DEI is a journey, and not a one-time event, it’s important to keep in mind there may be needs for continuous improvement. So you need to remain flexible. But having a framework helps guide the journey, set the mission, goals and vision and provides expectations.
To uncover the organizational leader’s readiness and willingness to commit to the DEI journey, as you begin the process, use the DEIA Journey and Engagement Lifecycle worksheet to explore the following questions:
- Did you use your strategy map and prioritize what should happen when?
- Now that you’re in implementation mode, what do you need to adjust?
- How will you incorporate continual leadership DEI training?
- How will you measure the effectiveness of leaders commitment?
- How are you taking the action plan and holding owners accountable during implementation?
- How are you taking the action plan and holding owners accountable during implementation?
- How can they become coaches?
- Implementation gives many a chance to get involved. Who else can you bring in to help in implementation?
- Give many people a chance to get involved. How can you create ambassadors throughout the organization?
Step 6: Make it Stick
Like any company-wide push, prioritizing equity, inclusion and creating a culture of belonging means ongoing senior leaders buy-in (from a business and moral perspective), continually gathering feedback, pinpointing clear objectives, setting targets and measuring results. Accountability throughout the entire organization will help drive DEI into the DNA of the organization. It is also important to continue change communication.
To uncover the organizational leader’s readiness and willingness to commit to the DEI journey, as you begin the process, use the DEIA Journey and Engagement Lifecycle worksheet to explore the following questions:
- What does accountability mean to you and your team? How will you create an environment where you can freely give feedback to each other. (Look at the video, providing feedback with CARE)
- A culture of inclusion also creates a FEELING. How are your employees FEELING? Have you asked? What are they saying?
- What are you seeing happening on the MICRO level? That’s when you know real culture change is sticking.
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