DEI Under Fire: Why the Old Playbook No Longer Works, with Lily Zheng

Jackie - 00:00:10:

Welcome to Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox, the podcast where bold ideas meet inspiring stories brought to you by The Diversity Movement. I'm Jackie Ferguson, author, investor, business leader, and human rights advocate. Each episode, I sit down with trailblazers, game changers, and boundary pushers to uncover their journeys, insights, and strategies for success. Whether it's innovation, inclusion, or personal growth, we're here to ignite meaningful conversations that empower and inspire. Thank you for joining me today. Let's get started. Lily Zheng is a no-nonsense strategist, consultant, and author who helps leaders and practitioners build FAIR, accessible, inclusive, and representative organizations. Lily's work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, and NPR, and their best-selling books, DEI Deconstructed, Reconstructing DEI, and the forthcoming Fixing Fairness, laying out the practical skills and knowledge anyone can use to create the healthy workplaces we all deserve. Lily, welcome to the show.

Lily - 00:01:24:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be having this conversation and looking forward to getting to all of the many topics that we're going to be talking about today.

Jackie - 00:01:35:

Absolutely. Me too. Well, Lily, let's start with you. What inspired you to pursue a career focused on creating change and how has your personal journey shaped the work that you do today?

Lily - 00:01:47:

Yeah, it's a great place to start. So I think like a lot of people who get into this work, I was very much motivated by my own personal experiences. So, you know, of course, growing up as a Chinese-American, second gen, and also as a, you know, queer and trans person, I have had my fair share of negative experiences moving through the world, right? We talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I've absolutely experienced the opposite of those things, right? Homogeneity, inequity, exclusion, right? Like I've had my fair share of negative experiences. And I think especially as a young adult, when you encounter these things, one of the most common things that comes to mind is why does this happen in the world, right? Like why can otherwise good people engage in harmful behavior and, and, you know, hurt those around them. And that curiosity and that inquiry really, you know, took me down my current path, right? I, uh, really studied social psychology in college, was really interested in this idea that, you know, if only we design better systems, if only we engage more effectively with people, we can reduce prejudice, we can increase pro-social behavior, we can fix some of these big challenges. And then I kind of went into organizational sociology, not just looking at interactions between people, but also interactions between these big systems in the world, the institutions, our broader societal culture, the policies, the processes, the practices within workplaces, institutions, societies writ large. And I started realizing that, we or at least science knows a lot about how it is we make a better world. But there's a gap, right? This kind of knowledge action gap. If you look at all the social science research, you might come away with the conclusion that we've all got it handled, right? Like we totally get how all of this works. And then you look around at the world around us and you're like. I feel like no one. No one's doing the particular things that we know. Work. And so I made it, you know, my, my. Maybe call it a life's purpose, right? To be executing on some of this incredible wisdom and incredible knowledge that those who have come before us have built up so that we can actually live according to our values, and make workplaces that work for everyone, and fix some of these big thorny challenges facing. Not just, you know, our society, but also like you know. The world. Like these are really big. Hard problems that, um, I think, you know, for better or worse, people don't have, have. The skills and the experience to be fixing yet. Yet.

Jackie - 00:04:54:

That makes sense. I appreciate that. That's, you know, it's, it's inspiring to take that step back and say, okay, what, how can we create real change? Like how are. The things that we do and the way that we treat people, it's just all interconnected with. The way the world is and the world works and how do we make it a better place? I think that's amazing. Lily, let's talk about your book. So DEI Deconstructed. So you provide a guide for creating systemic change in organizations. Tell us how your approach differs from traditional DEI strategies, especially in today's political climate.

Lily - 00:05:37:

Yeah, so in writing this book, I envisioned it as a love letter to the community and also a very loving, very friendly little slap in the face. Because I think these things need to coexist, right? Like there are several things that are true. One is that this work has never been more important, right? This work is not only morally imperative, but something that everyone or a vast majority of people in society truly want. We all want workplaces free from discrimination. We all want workplaces where everyone gets a fair shot. We all aspire to something as close to meritocracy as possible. And yet when you look at the efforts that are happening within workplaces, right? You think this DEI work should be really ambitious and really effective. You think, okay, DEI is going to end discrimination. DEI is going to make things better for everyone. And then, you know, you go to your average workplace, your average company, and you're seeing people do, you know, a cultural heritage celebration every two months, a lunch and learn that's not mandatory, that maybe 20 people attend, occasional social media posts saying like, we're really committed to DEI. And you look at the numbers. For example, the discrimination rate. Right, for black Americans hasn't changed in something like 30 years. Like that's. That's rough, right? Like, how is there such a gulf between our stated intentions and the real impact? If we're actually trying to fix things, then I think we as practitioners and we as leaders have a responsibility to succeed. And We're not quite. Succeeding yet, right? Perhaps, you know, this is even one of the factors, one of the many factors that's feeding into our current wave of backlash. When people ask, What has DEI done for me? Sometimes practitioners don't actually have the answers, right? They say, well, we've relied on status quo DEI. We have some employee resource groups. We have some events, right? We've stated our commitment. We release a report every year. And that's that. Meanwhile, people are getting underpaid. People are getting discriminated against and retaliated against by their managers, right? Harmful behavior and discrimination and microaggressions are happening in the workplace. And none of these things are changing. So I wrote this book. To say, look, everyone, right? Like, I care about us, I care about our work. And because this work is so important, I'm going to be a little hard on us, right? It's tough love. Because I think this work needs to improve, it absolutely needs to improve. And luckily, we have a huge amount of research that shows us exactly how, right? We know that if our work is outcomes-based, right, really focusing on results, rather than just good intentions, that we achieve things, right? One of my favorite studies finds that hiring discrimination goes down dramatically by doing something very mundane, which is standardizing the hiring process. Right. There was a study that looked into racial discrimination within hiring. And the single most effective thing was to make a hiring rubric. Like how boring is that? But how huge is the impact?

Jackie - 00:09:05:

That's right.

Lily - 00:09:06:

Right. And there are dozens and dozens and dozens of practices just like this that are not even that exciting, not even that controversial, but promise to create these really big wins for not just marginalized communities, but everyone in the workplace. Right. When we have a more fair workplace, everyone benefits, not just people of color or women or disabled people or queer and trans people, right, or Muslim or Jewish people. But your, you know, average cisgender, heterosexual, Christian white man also stands to benefit when the hiring and promotion processes are fair, when the workplace is respectful, when people are paid fairly, when managers are supporting their direct reports. Like these are things that help everyone. And so I tried to sum all of that up in the book. It's not just kind of my opinions on DEI, but are really sometimes dense. People have told me sometimes it's a little dense. But because, you know, like I really wanted to pack in effective practices in there, right? I sometimes tell folks that this book can take anyone from any level of exposure or experience with DEI into a halfway decent practitioner. And I think that's essential at this time, right? Like people have been talking for years and years and years that DEI is great work, but it suffers from a little bit of a quality control problem. Right? Like there are there are folks calling themselves practitioners that might have read a book or two and said, you know what, I think I can do this and bless their hearts. But sometimes they're not the most effective and we could all stand to benefit from becoming more effective.

Jackie - 00:10:47:

Lily, you're so right. And so many things that you said, I could like unpack every sentence, but a couple of points that I just want to reiterate is one, understanding how to communicate about the work that you're doing is so important for practitioners. And that's something that oftentimes they're not practicing. How to communicate on a leadership level about the work that you're doing. And then making sure that your DEI is not just a program, right? But it's integrated within every aspect of that work. And one of the very important ways that I actually had a conversation with someone today about is the rubrics for hiring. Because, you hear, you know, unconscious bias and, and. Whether you're talking about DEI or unconscious bias, there's this immediate defensiveness, right? Because of the way that those terms have been politicized and weaponized. And really... When you think about Fairness, right, if I have a conversation with someone who went to my same college and I had a wonderful conversation with that person because we talked about the city that the college is in and did you have this professor and, right, I'm not gauging if that person is qualified for the job yet. Right? And so now I bring someone in that I really, really enjoy talking to, but may not be the most qualified of all the candidates, then my company loses. And that's what people don't really understand about DEI that are just taking it on its face of, does this help Black professionals, LGBTQ plus professionals? It helps everyone, as you said. And I think that's so important for us to reiterate and continue to reiterate and share with people so that they can understand more than what they're hearing in social media and the news, et cetera. So thank you for sharing that.

Lily - 00:12:52:

Yes, the win-win is so, so very important. It's something that I lean on a lot in this work. Right? People, even if they don't say it, everyone wants to know what's in it for me.

Jackie - 00:13:03:

Absolutely.

Lily - 00:13:03:

And if you can't articulate what's in it for you. Right? Especially to people who have it all right under the current status quo, right? Like we need to be able to articulate a better status quo. Than the present one. Otherwise, people who are doing okay right now are going to inevitably feel like it's a zero-sum game and we're trying to take things away from them. And we know that that's the pathway to defensiveness, the pathway to backlash. And sometimes the pathway to you know, really unproductive behaviors that might cause more harm and good. But if we can just say, look, you know, Think about all the opportunities you have. Think about how you feel at work. Think about how happy you are at the end of the week. And your wellbeing and your opportunities. Now imagine you have more of all of that. Right. Imagine it's better. Imagine it's better not just for you, but for everyone. How might that happen? And you often see people going like, oh, I don't know, right? It's pretty good for me. It's all right. But you push them. How might that happen? If your team culture was a little healthier. If your work-life balance was a little better, if your manager was a little more attentive to your needs. Right. If the workplace policies and the workplace processes for promotion or feedback, right, or opportunities for learning were better. Would you have a better time? And most people would say, yeah, I guess I imagine it could be better, but I didn't even think that was possible. And you say, that's why we're doing this work. Right? Because it has to be possible, not just for you, but for everyone.

Jackie - 00:14:38:

So well said. Thank you for that. Lily, many companies are scaling back their DEI efforts. We're seeing this in the news due to economic pressures and external criticisms. How can practitioners and leaders who are championing DEI and employee engagement advocate for the importance of this work during such challenging times in our society.

Lily - 00:15:04:

Okay, so I'm going to... I'm going to push a little bit because this is actually one of my very recent pet peeves. If just, just out of curiosity, if you were to guess what percent of companies are planning on scaling back their DEI efforts in 2025. What percent would you guess? Just throw a number at me.

Jackie - 00:15:27:

I know that it's lower than what it seems like in the media. So 15 to 20%.

Lily - 00:15:34:

12th. It's 12th, right? It's not that many. 65% are holding steady. 22% are increasing their investment, and 12% are pulling back. Right. So I think we really need to unpack some of this this like communication that we're throwing around, because when you when you just look at those numbers. Right. I look at that data and I say a non insignificant, but, you know, small proportion of companies is pulling back on DEI. Right. What are we going to do about that? How do we limit it to just this small number of companies? Which companies are doing it? Why is it all the big tech companies are doing it? Are they trying to curry favor with the current administration? What's going on there? But overall, I look at the ecosystem and I see a more complex picture. It's not just that, you know, oh, everyone's running away from DEI. DEI is dead. It's it's a little more interesting than that. What I see right now is employers that are standing strong by DEI, but rattled by the increased risk of taking a public position on it. We're seeing a lot of employers go quiet. I've seen a lot of companies saying like, all right, all right, well, we'll keep doing everything the way we've been doing it, but take it a little underground so that we don't become targets of attack. Now, at the same time, there are some more troubling numbers. Only 52% of Americans support DEI right now. That, I think, is a real big challenge. Because what this indicates is that corporations might actually be doing okay in terms of their DEI investment, but the popular consensus around DEI may be shifting. Right? Employees, workers might be getting more skeptical. They might be getting more concerned or worried about DEI. They might be being influenced by the news media, right? Or federal government or social media to adopt these, I would say, blatantly false ideas about what DEI is, right? Like, like people say things like, oh, DEI is quotas. We haven't had quotas for 50 years. Like, quotas just don't happen in the U.S.. And if they do happen, please sue the heck out of the company doing them, right? Because that's, like, they're very illegal. And yet, you know, people repeat this misinformation all the time. They say, oh, you know, I just dislike that our company's doing quotas. Or, oh, I dislike that our company is giving jobs away to unqualified people. And I say, wow, show me a case where your company gave a job to a person just because of their race or gender. And I'll show you a great lawsuit, right? Like, like, that isn't what a DEI work is. DEI work is eliminating barriers to success for everybody. DEI is, you know, changing our culture and our processes and our practices so that our workplaces can work better for all of us. DEI is leveling the playing field. It's giving everyone opportunity. And it's anti-discrimination. Right. Like like I was writing the other day, the opposite of DEI is discrimination. Because this is why this work started, right? We had really discriminatory workplaces. And DEI popped up to say, maybe we should have a little less of that. Maybe we should have better workplaces. And right now, the narrative's been twisted. Where people are now saying like, oh, DEI is the discrimination. Right. I think it's. Frankly, brilliant marketing from the anti-DEI folks, but it has zero basis in reality. And those of us who maybe are a little more connected to that reality, I think have the responsibility to push back very firmly and very clearly with what DEI is and its benefits to everyone. Because the anti-DEI people aren't very good at communicating the benefits of getting rid of DEI. They're just busy here saying like, oh, it's evil. It's the devil. It's terrible. It's anti-meritocracy, right? And I'm like, well. Can you do anything besides slinging mud, right? Can you actually create? Can you build? Can you recommend something better? Crickets, right?

Jackie - 00:19:45:

Right, you don't. They don't have a good answer for that. That is so true, Lily. Thank you for sharing that. Accountability is a central theme in your work. Tell us how organizations can maintain accountability for those DEI commitments with everything that's happening in our society.

Lily - 00:20:06:

Yeah.

Jackie - 00:20:06:

Can you give us some advice there?

Lily - 00:20:08:

So I'm a big critic of DEI, which is funny, because I'm also apparently a staunch defender of DEI, right? But just because we love something doesn't mean that we can't identify where it can be better. And accountability has been very sorely lacking. Do you remember in 2020, corporations pledged billions of dollars of assistance and aid, right, to further racial justice? A lot of people have tried to track where that money went. It's just evaporated, right? And no one's even talking about it. So what does it mean that companies can say pretty much whatever they want, can make these really big, really bold PR statements saying like, we're going to save the world. And then as soon as the news cycle passes, they're like, psych, just kidding, right? Like we weren't going to do anything. That's been the problem with DEI for ages, where we can say one thing and do another. Or we might even do something, but because we don't measure the effectiveness of it, we have no evidence to show that it's even working. I've talked with companies saying, look, what progress have you created for your employees, right? Have you reduced discrimination? Have you made things healthier, right? Have you increased the well-being of your employees? Have you reduced these barriers to entry? And they'll say, well, Lily, I'm really proud to say we did an unconscious bias training. And I'll say, great. What did it achieve? And they'll say, what do you mean? It's all saying, no, no, no, like... A training is a tool. It's a means to an end. Right. Hopefully the training was good. But the only data you seem to have is what percent of people liked it. Okay, great. Ninety five percent of your people like the unconscious bias training. Did it reduce bias? And they say, you know, I never thought of that. Geez, right? Like we can't be having this in the industry, right? Like there's very little other work that... Is so unrigorous. And when we, you know, we as practitioners, we as leaders are doing this work, we always have to be thinking of whether we are setting ourselves and our clients up for success. Like, and there's a great long history, right? Like look at, look at marketing, for example. They've got A/B testing. They've got pre and post testing, right? They've, they've got metrics out the door. They know exactly what lands and what doesn't land so that they can keep shifting what they do so that they can reach more people. In the meanwhile, look at DEI, right? It feels like we're held together with duct tape sometimes just going like, oh, you know, everyone, please try your best to discriminate a little less, but we're not even going to measure that. So, you know, good luck. We can do better. We can do a lot better.

Jackie - 00:23:04:

Absolutely. I totally agree. And understanding how to measure your impact is so important as a practitioner, because again, that goes back to the communication and allows you to say, here's the impact that we're making. Here's how we're benefiting our culture and our employee base. And that's exactly right. You've got to measure those things so that you know what's working, what's not, where the impacts are, where they're not, right? And so you can continue to adjust similar marketing, continue to adjust your strategy around it. I think that's totally right. Such good advice. Lily, as someone deeply engaged in this space, what gives you hope amidst the current challenges that our DEI practitioners are facing right now?

Lily - 00:23:52:

Well, I think this is a bit of a watershed moment. And I'm not going to understate how awful things are right now for a lot of practitioners, right? My heart goes out to all of the DEI practitioners who are doing incredible work in the federal government who are now out of a job and likely going to be fired, right? This is probably the hardest time in the last five to 10 years to be doing effective DEI work, right? Like that's no joke. It's quite difficult. Almost every practitioner I know is at the very least a little stressed about the current climate. And so when you ask me, you know, what gives me hope, I'm not going to say something trite like, like, oh, the human spirit endures. We're going to get through this. Right. Instead, I think what what I've been seeing right now is a renewed focus and a renewed determination from not just practitioners, but leaders across the board who support DEI to be doing this work more effectively. Right? I have heard such a huge push for folks to say, okay, our DEI work needs to be airtight. It needs to be communicated cleanly. It needs to be effective. It needs to be embedded across the board. And so at the same time that I see some companies pulling back, I'm seeing the other companies really hone and refine their approach, recognizing that we sort of win or lose based on the quality of our DEI work. And. If our DEI work was never communicated well and could never articulate the benefits to everyone. I think, you know, I'll take the strong perspective that maybe it should never have happened like that, right? Like maybe it should have been better in the first place. And I'm really heartened by efforts I'm seeing from my colleagues that are building better programs now, right? Like really robust programs, really effective programs. And so. Times are really hard. I'm seeing a lot of people focus that adversity into impact. And that does give me hope, right? That ultimately we'll come out of this on the other side with much stronger, much more effective programs than the ones that we saw post 2020.

Jackie - 00:26:15:

That's fantastic. And you're right. That's heartening, especially when you're thinking about the headwinds, right? But a lot of practitioners are digging in and they're saying, okay, how do we maximize our efforts? How do we make sure that we're communicating what we're doing, that we're refining our policies and our programs? And I think that's so, so important and amazing work. And just a shout out to all the practitioners out there that are navigating this work at this time, keep pushing forward because we need more equity in our world. That's wonderful. Lily, what are some of the most creative or effective ways that you've seen organizations drive inclusion, especially in today's environment?

Lily - 00:27:09:

Yeah. So I talked a bit about it earlier. I talked about win-win. So something I've been working on is a new framework that I call the FAIR framework. So it stands for Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation. It's not just an alternative to DEI, right, in the case that DEI becomes untenable for some folks in some workplaces or some sectors, but a reimagining of the way we do this work to be more effective. And the reason why I bring that up, I'm not just trying to shill for it, is because there are four major tenets as part of this framework that directly build on the research for effective change-making interventions. And those four tenets are outcomes, systems, coalitions, and win-win. Right. So we talked a bit about outcomes. You need to measure. Right. Like measurement is one of the most important things for this work. If you don't measure your impact, if you don't measure your outcomes, you have no way to improve your work and you have no way to hold yourself accountable. We talked a bit about that. Right. Let's talk about systems. Also, I see a lot of companies deploying a very individual focused set of interventions. Right. So they see discrimination happening. And instead of thinking, how did this environment enable discrimination? They think one person broke the rules. We must punish the one person and the problem will go away. And we know in our workplaces that it's almost never just one person. If one person is engaging in harmful behavior, it's because the culture enables it. It's because there are no safeguards or policies and practices to prevent it. And so the systems approach is about doing the mundane things. So we talked about hiring rubrics, right? Like if you're seeing discrimination in hiring, do you sit every hiring manager down and shake their shoulders and say, be less biased, stop being biased. Or do you institute a scoring rubric? I'd say do the scoring rubric, right? And a lot of companies are doing the equivalent of shaking their hiring managers and going like, stop that. Stop being discriminatory, right? It doesn't work. It doesn't work, right? Like people have biases, whether conscious or unconscious, hopefully more unconscious than conscious. But we've seen again and again and again. That these biases slip into our decision-making if the processes allow for it. If you do things like hiring rubrics, if you do things like training all of your hiring managers to use the rubrics so that one person's five out of five is another person's five out of five. Right? If you require multi-source feedback or hiring panels, right? So it's not just one person making the decision. These are all practices that are boring, mundane, go a huge way in fixing discrimination. Right. And there are lots of other ways we can apply this with inclusion as well. Right. Let's let's look at accessibility. Right. A lot of companies take on a lot of the term is called accessibility debt. By just kind of not doing anything to make their services or their products or their websites accessible. And they're just like, oh, we know our product is awful. We're just going to wait for a disabled person to say, hey, I have a problem with this. And then we'll do a little Band-Aid backend fix with some duct tape. And we'll just do that over and over and over again, because we don't have the time and effort to spare to actually make our systems robust. The alternative is to have a design process early on where you say, hey, you know, members of the community, members of our audience, right? The people who we're designing for, come and give your feedback into this thing we're designing early on in the process so that we can make sure that it works for everyone. So we have to spend less time doing all of this one at a time after the fact, right? Like Band-Aid solutions. Not only is this more effective, it saves money, it saves time, it saves PR, right? Companies aren't doing that yet. And so that's another one of the principles, right? And then let's also look at coalitions. I talked about coalitions a little bit. DEI work has for a long time been relegated to, oh, we're going to have the marginalized communities fix their own problems, right? We often say like, oh, there's racism. Like, please, Asian people, right? Latina people, Black folks, like Middle Eastern folks, Indigenous folks, please tell us how to fix our workplace. It delegates a lot of labor onto folks whose jobs it shouldn't be to fix the workplace. Coalitions instead say, how can we build a case for everybody in the workplace to feel invested as part of the solutions? Right. There's a great example in an article that I wrote shared by Brad Johnson, who I talked to as part of it. And he said, look, when you look at like child care policies. Right. Some of the people who are most dissatisfied at them are men. Right? Like men are really frustrated with these kinds of sexist assumptions that men, you know, don't want to spend time with their families and men don't care about their families. There are a lot of men in today's workforce, especially in younger generations that really want to connect with their children. I mean, who'd have thought, right? Like parents want to connect with their children. And we have all these outdated policies that are just like, oh, you know, we're going to give some flexibility to women because women are clearly, right, the only gender that's allowed to love their children. How outdated is that? When we talk about improving these policies, we often focus just on the marginalized group going like, oh, it'd be so much better for women if this policy were a little more generous. We can do better. It's better for everyone if this policy were more generous. Let's appeal to men. Let's appeal to all parents. Hell, let's talk to some non-parents, right? Let's find ways to make this policy work for everyone so that when we say, hey, who stands to benefit from this policy? Everyone raises their hand. Right? Not just the women, not just marginalized folks. Coalitions are how we get there by communicating the win-win of DEI work on everyone, not just certain groups.

Jackie - 00:33:49:

Absolutely. That is such good advice. And you know, That's one of the things I think that practitioners are not communicating as a whole group, all of us, right, are not communicating that win-win. And then it allows the small minority of folks that are saying DEI is discriminatory, it's illegal, it's bad. To have more of a voice than they would if we as the group of practitioners, the group of leaders who understand the benefits of DEI can say, hold on, this is a win-win. Here's how it appears in our organization. Here's how you can use it to benefit your full employee base. And I think that's Excellent advice. Excellent advice.

Lily - 00:34:43:

Yeah, I think until we can get to a place, right, where when the anti-DEI folks say. What has DEI done for you? And white men across all of our workplaces can say quite a bit, actually. Right, that we're going to continue seeing this kinds of backlash. Right now, white men are saying Oh gosh. I know, it's a good thing, but it's not good for me. It's good for everyone else, right? Like, it's just my job to shut up and grin and bear it. And then I think, wow, like, that's not what DEI was supposed to be at all, right? So why is it that this is the impression that you're getting? What are we missing in terms of our communication? What are we missing in terms of the interventions that we're using? And how is it that we've created this environment that's so vulnerable? To you know, really, you know, malicious actors, just kind of, you know, spreading this misinformation and getting people to think that DEI is the problem, right? Instead of, I don't know, authoritarianism.

Jackie - 00:35:51:

Absolutely. That's exactly right, Lily. For those listening who are passionate about equity but discouraged by the societal and political dynamics, what advice or encouragement would you offer to help them stay engaged and excited about their impact?

Lily - 00:36:09:

Measurement. Measurement's really good. So I talked a bit about measurement being effective. Let's forget about that for now. Measurement holds you accountable in a way that gives you hope. Right. Like, Before I started measuring the impact of my work, right, like five or six years ago, I would just go into a company do a workshop and think, I sure hope that worked. On my good days, I would say, wow, I think I'm such a good practitioner. On my bad days, I would think, Oh my gosh, I couldn't do anything. That was just a waste of everyone's time. I'm a fake. I'm a fraud. I didn't help anything. I didn't fix anything. Right? And now I have numbers. Now I'm like, you know what? I actually do think I helped improve retention for this group. I actually do think I helped increase people's willingness to take action when they see harmful behavior. I think I did increase people's confidence using these processes or these, you know, practices. I use pre and post metrics now, right? Like I send surveys before and after the things that I do. I collect robust people data as a part of my client engagements, right? Like I encourage them to do a lot of survey work. And then, you know, I ask, right, like which of these interventions was effective in the last X period of time? Look, I'm not a perfect practitioner. Sometimes I design interventions that just don't work. So when I learn about that, I'm like, oh, shit, right? Like. Time to fix that. I'm so glad I have that data. And sometimes the intervention does work. And I think, yes, that's great. Let's scale it. Let's do more of that, right? Like, I'm glad I did something that helped. And that measurement, right? Like, people underestimate the importance and the value of knowing that you're actually creating an impact, not just informally from having one or two people walk up to you going like, wow, I really like the workshop. That's great. It's kind of fleeting. If you know, right? Not just qualitatively, but quantitatively, that you have done something enduring, that gives you the validation that you're doing effective work, right? And there's a bit of challenge there. If you get an indication that what you're doing is not working, then now you can feel empowered to improve the way you work as well, right? Like, it's good for everyone.

Jackie - 00:38:29:

Absolutely. That's, you know, I appreciate that. That's. It's such a great thing to reiterate because whether you're feeling good about your work or not so good, that measurement and being able to see the progress and the momentum. And, you know, just a reminder for practitioners out there. On those surveys, a very small movement in the right direction can have infinite impact on the culture of your organization. So even though you're seeing small movement in the surveys, it can have a big effect on how people feel in the workplaces that you're helping to create right cultures for. So small impact in the survey can mean a lot in the culture. So keep doing that work and keep measuring that work because that helps you communicate the value of your job and the work that you're doing. It helps to communicate the impact on the organization from a culture standpoint, from an outcome standpoint, from a productivity standpoint. So I think that's 100% right. Lily, outside of your work, how do you recharge and find balance in your own life?

Lily - 00:39:49:

Well, I... Spend a lot of time trying to rest because rest is extremely important. I spend a lot of time with my community and loved ones. I like to exercise. I go to the climbing gym a lot. It's great. It's a lot of fun. I don't know, I eat good food. I try to sleep close to eight hours. I have a double papasan couch thing. You know those, it's like a bowl on a stand. Feels like a nest. It's great.

Jackie - 00:40:25:

It's fantastic.

Lily - 00:40:25:

They're very comfortable.

Jackie - 00:40:26:

They are so comfortable.

Lily - 00:40:29:

So, you know, I do my best to relax and to find comfort and to connect with my loved ones and community, chosen family. And, you know, all of that is really, really important because I think. You know, this work isn't sustained by individuals doing things on their own and sustained by collectives. And just as we need to work in community, right, to work in collectives, we need to also rest and recover in collectives. I think, you know, building that kind of support network for myself has been probably one of the best things that allows me to keep on doing this work because I'm not going to mince words. This is a very stressful profession, right? Like if you don't have that set of anchors, right, if you don't have that support network, it can get really overwhelming really fast. And I certainly remember points in my life where I was not very much in control of my well-being and I was just burning out really hard doing this work because I felt, you know, it's so important. I don't have time to rest. I need to help people, right? Other people's needs come before my own. It was very noble. It was very self-sacrificing and it ultimately didn't help anyone because it was burning me out.

Jackie - 00:41:44:

Absolutely. I think that's right. The work is hard and burnout is easy to run into if you're not prioritizing self-care and community and opportunities to recharge. I think that's such good advice. Lily, when you think about your legacy, what do you hope that people will remember most about your work and the impact that you've made?

Lily - 00:42:09:

Legacy. So I hope people remember my work as... A body of work pushing people towards greater effectiveness. Like I hope people remember me as someone that, you know, held the industry to higher standards. And that showed that, you know, you can, You can measure, you can be accountable, you can be effective, and also you can be warm and you can be connecting and you can prioritize the people, right? Like it's not a binary between people and numbers, right? It's using numbers to be better with people. You know, if nothing else, right? Like, like whether... Whether or not, for example, the new framework I'm developing, FAIR, sticks, those tenants, right, outcomes, systems, coalitions, win-win. I need people to get on that train, right? Like, I don't even care if you use a different term, right? Like, I'm not married to it. But again, right? Outcome systems, coalitions, win-win. You need to be doing that in your work. And if that sticks around, I'll be very, very happy.

Jackie - 00:43:22:

I love it. I love it. I think that's a great framework because it, it pushes you out of the, you know, what are the programs, right. That we're creating from a DEI perspective and, you know, what, what is the impact that we're making? I, I totally agree with that. Lily, this has been an amazing conversation. Tell us, what do you want to leave our listeners with today?

Lily - 00:43:47:

Yeah. Well, we talked a bit about hope. I usually try to end with that conversation, but I said it already. I think, look, I'll say this. Things are hard right now. I think It's on us to stay grounded, to stay in community, and where we can to spend some time introspecting on what this moment means for us, not just our capacity as practitioners, but also our impact as folks who really want to be doing this work. Are there ways you can safeguard your work against external attack? Are there ways you can improve your work so that you can be even more proud of it than you currently are? Are there ways you can better serve and reach and benefit the people you're working on behalf of, right? Like, these are all questions that, to me, feel daunting, but empowering in the sense that we can do something about this, right? Like, the worst feeling of all right now is powerlessness. And for those who may be feeling it, I don't blame you. The new cycle is designed to make us feel awful. But, you know, we just have to... Stop scrolling, turn off our devices and sit down and say, okay, you know, like given everything happening in the world, how can I feel empowered? How can I be doing that work that makes me feel grounded? And that is even better for the folks that I'm working on behalf of than my work was just a few years ago. And that is, I think what we all need to be doing to get through this moment. Yeah, and we need to be doing it more.

Jackie - 00:45:26:

Absolutely. Lily, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. This has been such a great conversation, so many amazing insights and some good inspiration for those of US doing this work that need that conversation, that push of hope, that ray of sunshine, you know, in a time that's difficult for us right now. So thank you so much for the work that you're doing and for inspiring us today.

Lily - 00:45:54:

For sure. Thank you so much for having me.

Jackie - 00:46:01:

Thank you for listening to Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox. This episode is produced by Earfluence. If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with someone who inspires you and leave us a review to help others discover the show. Follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn to join our growing community of change makers. Until next time, keep pushing boundaries and building a world where everyone belongs. I'm Jackie Ferguson. Take care of yourself and each other.