The DEI Plan That Actually Gets Done
About this Episode
In this episode of DEI Will Not Die, Dr Bree Gorman tackles a hard truth: most DEI strategies spend more time gathering dust than driving change.
Bree unpacks why so many plans fail, starting with the common mistake of focusing on “fixing the people” instead of fixing the systems. They explore what it takes to design a plan that’s holistic, actionable, and embedded across the organisation — not one that lives solely with the DEI team or HR.
You’ll hear why fewer, well-chosen actions are more powerful than a long list you’ll never complete, and how vague metrics can slide into tokenism. Bree also shares what effective governance looks like and how to make your DEI strategy a living, breathing document that evolves with your organisation.
If there’s a point in this conversation you’d like to see explored further, let us know, because in DEI work, everyone’s perspective matters, and the conversation is never one-and-done.
For tools, coaching, and support: breegorman.com
What You'll Learn
How to ensure your DEI plan is a living, breathing document
How to avoid a DEI plan that collects dust
“Folks doing DEI work spend much more time writing plans than they do implementing them.”
We cover what Bree wants to see in a DEI plan, including steps you can take to get there
Resources Mentioned
Follow up with this blog: Mandatory DEI Training: Why It Doesn’t Work
Need help with your Diversity, Equity & Inclusion strategy in your workplace? Book a call.
Are we connected on LinkedIn?
Keep Learning & Connect With Bree
Want practical strategies for navigating resistance and building real momentum in your DEI work? Access my free webinar on evidence-based DEI strategies here. It’s packed with tools you can start using today.
If this episode sparked ideas or questions and you want to talk more about how I can support your team or organisation, book a free 20-minute callwith me. I’d love to hear what you’re working on and explore how we can move the work forward—together.
And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter for fresh insights, events, and tools to support your inclusion journey. Because real change doesn’t happen in silence.
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Bree Gorman: [00:00:00] Is DEI dead? Not even close. I’m Bree Gorman and this is DEI Will Not Die the podcast for people doing the real work of inclusion. Whether you are leading a team shaping DEI strategy or just trying to make change that lasts. You’re in the right place. We will cut through the fluff and dig into practical insights that will help you lead with clarity, courage, and impact.
Want more tools and support? Head to breegorman.com
Well welcome to episode two. Today we’re gonna talk about the DEI plan that actually gets done. This is one of my favorite topics. Can’t wait to explore it with you, but before I do, I just want to acknowledge the Wadawurrung people that’s whose lands that I get to live, work, and play on, and pay my respects to [00:01:00] elders past and present, and acknowledge that the land that I’m on always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Thanks for tuning in. As I said, I’m gonna talk about the DEI plan. That actually gets done, and the reason for this topic is because I’m gonna hit, here’s my first controversial opinion that I hope you think is actually not that controversial. Folks doing DEI work, DEI, practitioners spend much, much, much, much more time writing plans than they do implementing them.
If I had a dollar for every client that has shown me a diversity, equity and inclusion plan. That has had one or two actions done across the life of the three or four year plan, I would be incredibly rich and probably not sitting here doing a podcast on DEI. No, that’s not true. I do [00:02:00] love the work, but the reality is the majority of DEI plans don’t get implemented.
And what are the reasons for that? Well, there’s multiple reasons that feed into that. Design of the plan is definitely a major reason and that’s what I wanna talk about today. Recognizing that, you know, I often say this in my coaching programs for DEI practitioners demonstrate a little bit of self-compassion.
We’ve all written a plan that didn’t get implemented, so okay, maybe not all of the listeners. But there’s plenty of you listening in who have absolutely been working in an organisation that didn’t implement its plan. Or perhaps you are a DEI practitioner and, and you’re the one who wrote the plan and they never got traction on it.
A little bit of self-compassion goes a long way in this work. It is a really hard work, and we are often not given the resources or the authorising environment required to actually [00:03:00] do the job, to be able to implement the things, and quite often we don’t have the skills or experience to know firstly what to put in the plan and then how to implement it.
So I want you to always approach this with self-compassion. It’s a learning journey. We are all learning. We can see from the global response to diversity, equity, and inclusion work that there have been plenty of mistakes in this work and there have also been plenty of successes, and I know you’ve had both or will have both if you’re just starting out on your DEI journey.
So don’t fear we are here for all of it. So let me go into why do DEI plans fail? I’ve picked out a few reasons here. It’s not an exhaustive list, but let me walk you through them. My number one reason. Is that we’re focused on fixing the people. And not the systems. It’s the systems we need to fix. And our DEI [00:04:00] plan should be predominantly focused on fixing the systems.
It shouldn’t be full of women in leadership programs, mentoring programs, sponsorship programs, that’s fixing the people stuff. Now, I’m not saying there’s not a lot of value in those things. There are people who absolutely want to learn in an environment with other people who have similar lived experience to them.
That’s helpful, that’s empowering, and can create a brilliant learning environment. But as organisations, if we are tackling DEI work, if we are saying, you know what, with this plan, we really want to shift the status quo, we wanna create sustainable, meaningful change for our people and for the people who will interact with our business in the future, then we need to take a systems approach.
A plan that takes a systems approach is gonna be not only a lot more impactful, but I’d also argue easier to [00:05:00] implement because when we’re just running program after program, those programs sap so much energy. Anyone who’s run a mentoring program or a leadership program know how time consuming that is.
If you’re in a larger organisation, you’ve got organisational development folk whose job is to run development programs and they do it really, really well. Why aren’t we as DEI practitioners tapping into that resource and actually just being able to inform that program, co-design the content so that one of its key objectives or outcomes is inclusive Leadership is an equitable environment.
So probably taken a little bit of a tangent then, but what I’m getting at is the DEI plan needs to think holistically about the systems and not just looking for those bandaid solutions that will just run a Women in Leadership program next year. And then the year after, we’ll have [00:06:00] all of these women in our leadership roles because we know that’s not what happens.
And it’s not a great use of our time and resources if we wanna create that long-term change. So look at the actions within your plan. Are they focused on fixing the people? And so by that I mean the people who are from underrepresented, underserved, marginalized backgrounds. Or are they focused on fixing the systems and creating an environment where all people can thrive and be their best?
I know Thrive is a bit of a buzzword, but work with me on this. It’s still still a useful word in this context. Where was I? Right systems. So let’s look at how we identify the barriers that exist in our organisation and actively remove them. And I suspect most of the time the barrier is not a lack of skill or a lack of confidence on the part of [00:07:00] people who are from underrepresented backgrounds.
It is more likely a result of the system. Okay. Point two, change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I know it’s cliche, but the reality is our DEI plan can do nothing if it just sits in the DEI team. The DEI plan needs to be written as an organisational wide plan, and I know how difficult that is. I get it. You could be someone working in an organisation with DEI as your title.
You’ve got five to 10 managers between you and the CEO. You don’t ever get time with the manager of, with the head of marketing. You aren’t necessarily in that authorizing environment, and I get that that happens. And yet our plan still has to, to have any traction be embedded across the organisation. So we have to develop relationships with [00:08:00] the head of marketing, and we have to work out how that happens.
We have to be on good terms with the facilities manager. So that they also contribute to the plan so that they are telling you, no, that’s impossible. Yes, we can do that, but it’ll cost $5 million so that you are getting real useful input into the development of the plan. So that requires us to really understand our stakeholders.
It does require us to advocate for that access. Sometimes, you know, maybe if there’s no chance of you getting a conversation with the head of marketing, maybe it’s not the right role for you if you’re a DI practitioner in that organisation. ’cause clearly the structure isn’t set up to enable you to thrive.
Or maybe you’ve got a brilliant head of people and culture who will do the advocating for you if you give them the right information. I dunno what situation you’re in, but I know that this is vital and important. I often tell my coaching clients, if [00:09:00] you look at a DEI strategy or plan, and you look down the list of responsibilities against actions.
If over 80% of those actions are assigned to the DEI team or HR people and culture, you’ve got a problem. The actions need to be distributed across the organisation for this plan to take shape. Now there’s other ways that we can create that authorizing environment where we can, you know, get across the institution and then some organisations will use committees to do that, which can be successful and can be not.
And we might have a whole episode about that another time, but whatever way you do it, it has to be embedded across the organisation. Alright, number three. Sorry, I keep looking at my notes because, you know, ADHD I’m not gonna remember this off, um, the top of my head. So if you watch it on YouTube, you’ll be able to see me take a look at my notes as we go through this podcast journey.
Um, number [00:10:00] three is too many actions. I once had an argument with a client. Because they had done a quite comprehensive consultation process with their employees and broader community people who interacted with the organisation, and she believed that every action that they had suggested needed to be in the plan.
This was community representation and then that if those actions didn’t show up in the plan, then they would lose complete trust and engagement from their stakeholders. Now, I agree that if we’re gonna do consultation, we need to act on that. That needs to be in the plan, but I think there’s a line.
Because if that means we create a plan with too many actions that we can’t implement ’cause we don’t have the resources for, then we are hurting trust way more by doing that than not including those things at all. This is just about, you know, good communication. Yes, we heard all of these things. We have power to [00:11:00] tackle these things and this is what we’re gonna prioritise based on your feedback or based on whatever process you go through to prioritise those actions.
And then you resource those actions accordingly and you deliver. I think there is way more harm in putting actions in that we don’t do than leaving actions out. So keep it short, keep it simple. You know, if you have a team of 10 and a whole bunch of resources, go for your life. Build that plan out. But the reality is we don’t, and I understand the complexity here when it comes to accreditation programs.
So often there’s accreditation programs that demand specific actions are in our plans, and that demand that we cover certain topics. And so that by its nature creates a big plan. I would strongly encourage you to reflect on that and whether it is absolutely necessary to have all those actions in the plan, knowing that you’re not gonna be able to deliver on them.
Maybe you need to think about how you write the [00:12:00] actions and whether maybe you’ve got some best practice actions in there, and maybe you’ve got just someones that are just more. To be honest, tick the box because you need to get through that accreditation program. We have to be weighing that up in our head.
Let’s not create plans that we can’t deliver on. So let’s be realistic and achievable. Now, I don’t mean that that gives us all like a green light to just do poor practice and to not really challenge the things that need changing because they’re too hard and we won’t be able to do it anyway. I’m just saying be realistic with your stretch goals and don’t create a hundred actions within your plan that you can’t even manage, let alone implement.
Project management skills are not always in the DEI roles of the people and culture teams necessarily, right? So let’s be realistic about what we put in the plans. Alright. Point four is vague metrics or outcomes. [00:13:00] If I see another plan that says, as an action, we are going to raise awareness of unconscious bias, and then the outcome is we ran training on unconscious bias.
Tick, like, come on. This is literally the definition of tokenism. Raising awareness of something is really not an action. Maybe if it’s specific, maybe through our consultation we identified that people who are breastfeeding and needing to use lactation rooms or lactation facilities are experiencing specific discrimination.
If that came out strongly in our consultation, then we might need to put an awareness goal around that. But let’s be specific about what the outcome is, and let’s think about, well, we’re writing the plan, how we’re gonna do that. So maybe it’s raise awareness by dot and maybe the outcome rather than we’ve held a [00:14:00] panel or we’ve ran a training, maybe the outcome is people who are accessing our lactation rooms have had an improved experience and we are measuring that.
’cause we might have a little iPad in that room for people to say what experience they’re having. I don’t know. I’m making it up. Let’s get specific about our metrics. Let’s measure real stuff. Let’s measure people’s experiences, measure diversity if we need to, if that’s a value for that particular goal that we’re trying to achieve.
Let’s get specific and let’s not let ourselves off the hook by just, ah, we run a training tick. Let’s be much more specific about our metrics. And the last point I wanna make here is around poor governance. I see so much poor governance in DI plans, and I see it in practice. I don’t have like a hard and fast rule for how these plans should be governed.
It’s very context specific and it needs to match [00:15:00] what works in your organisation. It needs to be in the plan as to how this is governed, and we need to not be just creating DEI committees that just share information that’s of no value to anybody. If there’s a DEI committee, and if that committee’s role is to drive the implementation of the plan, then let’s make that specific and let’s hold them accountable and let’s give them the resources to actually deliver on that goal.
Let’s be really thoughtful and considerate about the governance models that we use and spell them out. Have some transparency around them in our DEI plan. So I’ve told you a lot about what I don’t like in A DEI plan. Maybe I should just summarise this up to highlight what I really do like. I wanna see a plan, as I said, that is focused on system change.
Rather than just behavioral change. Behavioral change is important and has a role to play here for [00:16:00] sure. But I want our DEI plan to have a really strong focus on systems change. Two, I want meaningful outcomes. Detailed in the plan. What are we really trying to achieve with this, and how are we gonna know if we got there?
Now some organisations choose to have overall metrics for their plan. Others have just action by action outcomes or metrics. And you know what? As much as I’m data driven, I’m also okay with that second piece that sometimes we might not know in this space what the overall outcome looks like. Like do we look more diverse in our leadership team?
You know, do we have those overarching organisational metrics around gender pay gap, that kind of thing. Sure. But honestly, I think the metrics that are more important are those that are against the specific actions because that’s what drives us to do the work because we can really see what we’re achieving and [00:17:00] I’m really interested in those metrics.
You know, did we see a shift because of this particular action? We can’t always link it. It’s, you know, not always correlative, right? Or causative. It’s hard. This work is not, is very gray and that’s okay. Let’s make sure that we know what we’re aiming for, and knowing what we’re aiming for on each particular action really helps and mobilize us to do that work.
I wanna see a plan that’s owned by leadership and embedded into the accountability structures that already exist in the organisation. Are we ensuring that our leaders are accountable to the plan across the business? And how are we doing that? Of course, we wanna see strong statements from our leaders in the plan at the beginning, but.
Let’s move away from this generic language that everybody’s using, like we [00:18:00] commit to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation because we celebrate and value difference, yada, yada, yada, right? The statements that really hit home. These DEI plans are ones where clearly they’re specific. We identified these problems, we are using this plan to address it, and this is the start of our journey, and we are committed to these values.
The values of X, Y, Z. You know, lay out guiding principles. Have your leaders like assert that this is what we’re about as an organisation and build it into their accountability measures. Final thing I’ll say is I wanna see a living plan. I want that plan to be refreshed. I wanna see actions in the plan that involve more consultation to review how it’s going after a year.
Is it being successful? Do we need to pivot or change? What has changed in the social context? Because that’s always changing. Cannot write a diversity, equity, and inclusion [00:19:00] plan and just leave it for. Five years and expect it to deliver the outcome. The world changes way too quickly for that, so keep it live, living and breathing.
So you’ve heard what I would like to see in a plan and what I would not like to see in a plan, but you might have your own ideas, so I would love to hear that from you. Different ideas, thoughts, challenges to what I’ve said. And also, if there’s something I’ve talked about today that you wanna delve into a little bit deeper on a future episode, let me know . Now, like all ADHDers
I’m really bad at ending conversations. So the end. Hope you tune in next time.
Well, that’s it for today’s episode of DEI Will Not die. Want more resources and support to do the work Well, why don’t you visit breegorman.com and don’t forget to follow or share this episode with someone who cares, and maybe also [00:20:00] someone who should.