Insights from working in Race and Public Policy - to the Change Leader:
As outlined the previous article - the increase in DEI Strategies and Anti-Racist agendas (and the sudden decline in interest) has been a key feature of recent organisational practice. Many professionals have spent decades on these initiatives and have fundamentally shifted the conversations within some of the world’s largest organisations. Others some have been thrust into the awkward position of being the ‘most qualified’ person within their existing organisation. I have been fortunate to have many mentors, but if I were to give my younger self some advice - it might look like this.
To the change leader:
Most people - including you - are invested in the maintenance of the system as it is – think this is one people miss – the “oppressed” uphold the “oppressive” structure and seek to obtain benefit from “oppressors” – tackling this requires your acceptance and understanding of how this happens in your life.
Spend an extensive amount of time establishing your goal – your vision for success – what you want to see built or in place – this should be very clear to you. It is very easy to what to destroy, dismantle and delete – we must have confident understandings of what we want to build and what we want to put in place, what our definition of reorder is and what our new world will look like. This should be a priority and crucially gives you a roadmap for developing your own intervention. It also shows you if it exists – which it likely does – and allows you to ask why it isn’t working. As Richard Rohr would say “Order – Disorder – Reorder”
Change is more than shouting in a room – this job is not for the loudest voice on Twitter - it requires negotiating with reality as it is. It’s easier to critique than create, to analyse than announce, it will always be safer to comment on social media or in an essay than to formulate the processes required to drive long-term change.
Set long-term goals – what change do you practically wish to see in 10 years – be comfortable with your own strategic vision for change based on the definition you take time to cultivate with colleagues, experts, members of your community.
You will lose your mind if take all of your interactions at face value
Live as though this is your contribution to slowly chipping away at the rock and shifting this weight ever so slightly in the direction you want. Live in full awareness of where you are and what you have at your disposal (the rules and the tools of the game) – you’ll only really know this after some time being battered by the problem.
Understand and unlearn your biases and fixed views. Operate in more than the ‘now’: Reconcile ‘past’ with ‘present’ and seek to re-construct ‘future’.