We are seeing more businesses taking notice about the importance of Diversity and Inclusion. More senior leaders are genuinely engaging than ever before. This is also starting to be backed up by genuine resources, something that D&I professionals have cried out for over the course of decades. There is currently a wide proliferation of new diversity and inclusion roles springing up across many sectors – something that was not the case this time last year.
So it is fair to say that diversity is higher up on the agenda than it has ever been. The new stumbling block however, is what to do now. As the scale of the task becomes clear, it can be easy to get quickly overwhelmed with the amount of work needed, and how difficult it can be to make meaningful change. This is particularly the case when many issues stem from outside the workplace, which can often touch upon our wider society and upbringing.
With a growing professionalization in the space of Diversity and Inclusion, I believe more can be done to use project management principles to improve the approaches (and thus the success) of diversity initiatives.
Agile is a Project Management approach, originating from software but now commonly used in dynamic projects. This approach is different from common corporate planning approaches where the aim is to plan everything at the beginning, get approval from seniors and delivering the whole project in a ‘big-bang’ approach at the end, which tends to have mediocre success rates as it is increasingly difficult to plan everything at the beginning in our uncertain environment.
Instead, Agile is about delivering in smaller iterations and being adept to changes. The Agile Business Consortium define Agile as “able to move quickly and easily” or to be “able to think and understand quickly”.
From my experience, the best diversity and inclusion champions have been those that have been willing to work smart. Admittedly, this has often been forced upon them – with shoe string budgets and often supported by a disparate crew of motivated but voluntary individuals who can spare an hour here and there. But what is also evident is that this approach follows the basic principles behind an Agile mindset.
In other words, those that are more successful in this space understand the importance of trying different initiatives quickly (and not being afraid to fail at them) as the approach can always be modified once you have learnt what has gone wrong. Organisations often get stuck in getting the solution right the first time, thus spending months (if not years) agonizing over a potential solution. This leads to them both getting criticised for not acting, and when they finally do act, disappointing their stakeholders as the solution is a relatively small action in the end.
So to get Diversity and Inclusion initiatives off the ground, here are a few principles I’ve found that tend to work (and which are inspired by an Agile mindset):
- Start small, and work to make the most of the resources and positive motivation you have available (even if that is only yourself or a handful of volunteers)
- It is better to start initiatives that fail rather than getting stuck trying to find the perfect solution. You can learn from failure, you cannot learn from inaction.
- Accept you will get things wrong, such as using outdated words or definitions. Learn from your mistakes and correct them as you go along.
- Demonstrate value to the business, and communicate how Diversity and Inclusion links to the overall Business Strategy constantly.
Whilst the above does take Agile’s general principles, I also admit I do not reference a lot of other areas that are key to Agile (e.g. key roles and responsibilities, defined ways of working etc.) This is deliberate, as I do not believe organisations are quite ready to put in the resources to devote such a professionalised approach towards diversity currently.
However, as time goes on, I believe we can go further with using a more systemic approach to Diversity and Inclusion using Agile Project Management methodologies. An issue with current activity within organizations is that they can lack coordination, so I do believe bringing a more rigorous Project Management approach will be a way to improve interventions in the future as the D&I field matures.
Are you a D&I professional, Project Manager or simply someone who is interested in the subject more broadly? I would love to hear your thoughts and whether you agree/disagree!