DEI is DOA!

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

There are many reasons DEI is dying in corporate America. I can tell you why it failed where I worked. If you’ve haven’t clicked on my LinkedIn picture, I’m a mid-fifties white male from the South. I was the DEI guy for my business line with over 1000 employees under me.

I thought it was a joke when my boss made me the champion of DEI, but I immediately set out to learn all I could. I asked to be sent to training somewhere to learn. Nope. I asked to bring a professional DEI person into the building for a day to teach DEI to all the managers. Nope. Money for both was available from the company DEI pot so we wouldn’t be out a penny. He wasn’t much of a fan and according to him, neither was his boss. He’s a minority and she’s a female, so I was surprised at the attitude. Leadership 101, if it’s not important to the boss, it must not be important.

I listened to all the company videos who spoke of respectfulness and fairness, but those are a play on words from the company’s principals’ statements. There was a lot of talk about pronouns and why I should ensure my pronouns were on my company profile. I never did.

I sat in on numerous DEI calls where the C-Suite DEI person talked about pronouns and respect, but not a lot of explaining the importance of DEI, or how to actually apply it in the real world that’s just trying to get the trains to leave on time. What they were saying sounded great if you’re taking a month to find an assistant to the marketing director while sitting in an office building with glass walls so everyone can see the signal to meet at the cappuccino machine, but when you need a manager to lead your IT department in your building, you need it now.

When someone asked how to answer a question when someone doubted the reason or application of DEI, they were met with hostility as if they should just know the answer. I didn’t have the answer. The result was HR became the defacto DEI rep for us. Isn’t HR the fallback for everything though? She was as unqualified as me, but I’m sure she tried.

Everything I know about DEI, I learned myself through research. It did make me rethink a few things and address my bias’s. By bias, I mean something about other people that makes me treat them differently or maybe overlook them for promotion. I am biased against loud people, mid-level performers getting promoted, braggards, the unhelpful or unwilling, gossipers, and of course bad people like liars and backstabbers. Most of my biases are against traits that are different from mine that I don’t care for and wouldn’t want to spend all day working alongside. Some of my biases are good to have and some not so good.

Is DEI value added? I have no idea, and I don’t think most major corporations know either.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up