As a leader and DEI practitioner, you’ve likely encountered more red dragons than Game of Thrones ever did. You're probably used to facing all sorts of dragons: toxic leadership, archaic policies, salary negotiations for pay equity, and employee concerns about the unhealthy racial climate. While I can't promise that becoming an HR pro will arm you against every menace, I can offer insight into how to slay the oft-daunting dragons that come with the territory.

Here are three dragons you need to slay to realize racial equity and why you can slay them without becoming a martyr, more vulnerable to recession-inflicted damage, and under-prepared to pivot when the economic tide turns.

I help trailblazing leaders like you, who are stuck between mainstream minutiae and resistance from status quo keepers, pivot organizational systems from unfair to equitable.

When you enroll in The Equitecture® Academy for Decolonizing Leadership, you shift from:

• Risk aversion to fortified, unshakable leadership
• Mainstream generic approaches to unprecedented models for more racially equitable outcomes
• DEI burnout to tenacious healing and growth
• Martyrdom , reactivity, or inaction to honorable gamesmanship
• Misaligned and unclear to found providence
• Being an isolated load bearer to cooperative command

Work with me to expand your leadership capacity in care-curated leadership crucibles, sustained coaching, community, and battle-tested curriculum. If you want help applying these concepts, enroll in The Equitecture® Academy for Decolonizing Leadership. 

Dragon#1: Slay the misconception that Goliath-sized systems are inconceivable to pivot in our lifetime

Dragon #2: Slay the 3-steps forward, 2-steps back, what-about-isms

Dragon #3: Slay the uninterrogated notions of readiness

Dragon#1: Slay the misconception that Goliath-sized systems are inconceivable to pivot in our lifetime

Let’s start with being honest about fears associated with systems change. When you hear the word systems change, what comes to mind?

• Nation-wide movements? 
• Multi-industry, cross-field institutions (legal systems)?
• Social phenomenon that crosses sectors at a state and country level (housing, banking, land rights)?

When our association with systems change brings up these levels of scale, we can feel overwhelmed, and inundation, and like David facing a Goliath, we can’t defeat. Most of us have seen, heard, and learned from those who’ve come before us - change at this scale didn’t happen in one lifetime. 

Sound familiar?

Let’s say your approach to systems change is so brilliant it’s read as an inelastic good in your organization - meaning demand for it remained even during a recession. What’s your pivot and go-to when you decide to undertake systems change under these conditions? Is it effectively working for you in the change you’d like to see?

How I’ve slayed this dragon:

I’ve found that I can successfully drive systemic change at a different altitude and scale in my lifetime. At the scale of a 200,000-person company. It started with how I study organizational behavior. 

I see systems at an organizational level as consisting of a web of interconnected people. 

And when I think about it, I can influence people. 

If I can influence people, I can influence systems. 

With this theory of change, I successfully compelled organization systems in one of the big five tech companies to pivot. 

I validated that systems do bend to agency and my methods for building leverage. 

How would this work if we worked together?

First things first: In partnership, we look at what I call a 2-D systems map of the inter-relationships between varying parts of your current system.

See Figure 1 for an example 2-D Systems map of dynamics around representation rates. In this Representation 2-D map, I theorize about the low representation of talent of color at multiple levels in an org. 

At first glance, what do you see? Complexity, lots of elements interacting with each other, and at least 4 cycles that we may or may not want to repeat.

I'm seeking here not to map the problem itself but the underlying structure of the problem.

While there's room for more info, the 2-d map begins to chart a series of events and decisions within a hiring system across varying stakeholders that might reinforce each other and yield a specific outcome.

The 2-D systems map adds real value to the typical bar graphs. They help to:

- depict the underlying structure of the problem

- see how and why not only what

- increase the ability to ID effective solutions

- create an opening to identify nodes of strategic intervention + leverage

To give you a better sense of the difference, in Figure 2: Before vs. After Working with R+E, I compare what the strategy design might look like before compared to after working with me.

Many organizations are familiar with taking a one to two intervention toward an organizational process with short-term results, while others grapple with multiple interventions that turn out to be misaligned and have few gains.

Distinct from others, I design racial and social equity strategies organized around high-leverage points.

Leverage points might be new terminology so let's pause to level set on language with what leverage points are and are not.

Leverage points are not:

- organizational processes

- singular projects or programs

- work accomplished by a single stakeholder or function

- outcomes that drift

- high effort, low alignment

Leverage points are:

- places systems pivot around

- determined by analysis of the root cause

- integrates across numerous factors

- and get used to streamlining choices among too many priorities & interventions

Leverage points can be high and can be low. It's better to have high leverage points.

The difference between a high and low leverage point is:

1. whether it transforms beliefs underlying org process, practice, and policy that don't consistently produce equity, in effect.
2. amplifies equity when the elements underpinning them get repeated
3. and corrects/balances inequity when elements underpinning inequity get repeated

If you're thinking, wow...this is a lot. Does it actually produce results?

I'm glad you asked. 

In my experience, yes, it does. Because it’s empirically grounded and strategically rigorous.

Most importantly, my approach, as shown in Figure 3: RE Results, has decreased gaps by race in organizational systems by sizable percentages (actual numbers confidential).

It's also shifted behavior. 

Moved bystanders to catalysts.

Moved groups unprepared to handle racialized harm to repairers.

And increased the capacity of people to learn to build muscle to handle discomfort.

I've also seen my work shift on emotive and cognitive levels. See Figure 4: RE Results.

Specifically in terms of a sense of self-efficacy, capacity to recover after a mistake, racial anxiety mgmt, self-confidence in intra- and interpersonal interactions, especially people who manage other people, and consciousness about a range of racial realities.

It’s true that larger-scale systems are Herculean and abrasive. But it’s a misconception that they are completely invulnerable to our agency, especially at the scale at which we work in teams and organizations. 

Trailblazing leaders who enroll in The Equitecture® Academy for Decolonizing Leadership work with me to build their capacity to transform them within the community, care-curated leadership crucibles, sustained coaching, and battle-tested curriculum.

Dragon #2: Slay the 3-steps forward, 2-steps back what-about-isms

The “what about-ism” detours tend to arise when you center race and its intersections. Let’s say your team analyzes company attrition data and conclude the most adversely impacted employees are black, women-identified, differently abled, and from a low socioeconomic background.

Pop quiz. 

What do you hypothesize would stick out as most salient to status-quote keeping members of the team? 

What do you hypothesize pushback would sound like?

Did you answer “What about…[fill in the social construct who’ve benefited thus far]?”

Sound familiar?

What’s your pivot and go-to when what-about-isms arise? 

Is it effectively working for you in the change you’d like to see?

How I’ve slayed this dragon: 

When I’ve heard these what-about-isms, I’ve:

1. Treated them as emergent data on organizational behavior
2. Coded them as part of the organization’s cultural response to race and intersectional analysis, 
3. Accepted that my leadership of the change efforts will have to have a relationship to them in order to create and maintain momentum.
4. Focused on unstated fears and work avoidance behaviors.
5. Excavated the underlying limiting beliefs and mythology
6. Asked, what task gets accomplished? What losses do “what about-ism” detours avoid? Does the team achieve its mission better or faster by keeping vs shedding these losses? 

Every organizational transformation I’ve led has faced these elements that produce the three steps forward, two steps back oscillation. 

I’ve slayed this dragon using the nine steps above. Give them a try yourself. If you want help applying these concepts or slaying other dragons in your life, enroll in The Equitecture® Academy for Decolonizing Leadership.

Dragon #3: Slay the uninterrogated notions of readiness

Readiness is an interesting phenomenon. Interesting in that it seems to be asked with one intention, yet in some ways, conceal an underlying function.

When I hear the question of readiness, the timing and moment it’s asked are always significant. 

As well as who is asking.

Ask yourself these questions when you’re engaged in change management and the readiness question gets raised…

What task does asking it actually accomplish? Does it lead to a more nuanced and differentiated approach? Wonderful. Such is in alignment with the original utility of readiness. 

However, in the DEI world, this is not consistently the case. 

Let’s reflect on your context for a minute. When notions of readiness arise, what task usually gets accomplished? Does work end up stopped, delayed, or diluted?

What’s your pivot and go-to? Is it effectively working for you in the change you’d like to see?

How I’ve slayed this dragon:

I begin with critical inquiry. 

• Do conclusions about readiness rest on assessment and data analysis or guesswork and speculation?
• Do questions about readiness halt the effort completely? 
• Do questions about readiness dilute the DEI work so much that it will have little to no impact on the most adversely impacted? 

• Do conclusions about readiness overlook the people who are ready and largely center on those who aren’t ready?
• Do you notice a racial pattern among those who gets seen as ready and not ready? 
• Do conclusions about readiness shirk responsibilities to those who need this effort the most? 

If you answered any of the above in the affirmative, then it’s time to get critically curious: 

1. who’s readiness are we asking about? 
2. Ready for what exactly? 
3. If they aren’t ready, how do we know? 
4. what do we fear will happen if we start with who is ready?
5. And how often do critical moments of growth in life wait for us to be ready?

Rarely is the question of readiness being asked of the people who are most adversely impacted or the most marginalized. 

My sense is we are ready. Stay ready

Ready to experience less racially-gendered harm. Ready to share the load and the risk.

When notions of readiness go uninterrogated and people with decision-making power default to stopping DEI efforts, for this reason, it’s important to sincerely explore how long everyone else has to wait for them to get ready. And, does the impact on the pace of progress outweigh the benefits to the whole?

Tip: your answers to these questions need to inform the path, positioning, and place of your change effort. For me, it shaped how I integrated skills, knowledge, and leadership competencies into systems change design and implementation. 

So there you have it, three ways to slay the dragons that are blocking your path to racial equity. 

Now it’s time to take action and apply these principles to your life so you can see results. 

If you want help applying these concepts or slaying other dragons in your life, enroll in The Equitecture® Academy for Decolonizing Leadership.

Together we’ll learn how to build strategic leverage, engage in critical inquiry, and respond to readiness as we transform systems. Click here to learn more and join now.

These are unprecedented times that we're living in, and it's ok to feel scared. You don't have to become a martyr or get laid off in order to make a change. You can use strategic leverage to compel big scary systems to pivot. And when readiness becomes an issue for you, use critical inquiry as a response to what about statements. If you want to learn more about how to do all of this, enroll in The Equitecture® Academy for Decolonizing Leadership. It's a great way to network and learn from other like-minded individuals who are also looking for ways to navigate these tough times.